"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Obama's a Liar . . .

. . . according to his own Justice Department. It seems that when defending DADT, the DoJ doesn't put much store by the president's words.

As a matter of legal fact, the Obama Adminstration’s Department of Defense has stated that the President was not speaking the truth. As Dan Woods, a partner at White & Case, Log Cabin’s law firm put it
Using President Obama’s exact words, Log Cabin’s lawyers then asked the government to admit that what the President said was true. Justice Department lawyers objected, Log Cabin filed and won a motion to compel the government to answer the questions, the government appealed, and the court rejected the appeal. Consequently, on Monday, April 12, 2010, the government finally had to answer the questions and, when the Justice Department lawyers answered, they denied the truth of what the President had said.
This puts the President in a difficult position. He is talking out of both sides of his mouth. His Department of Justice speaks for him. It makes legal arguments that are consistent with the principles and factual conclusions of his administration.


Here's a lengthier comment on this contretemps from Joe Sudbay.

If anyone's confused as to what Obama's position is on this issue,, see this, from John Aravosis.

I'm bemused by the continual references by Speaker Pelosi and others to DADT being a "controversial" issue. Huh? FTLOP, 67% of teabaggers think it should be repealed. Although to be fair, the teabaggers don't fall into the religious right/anti-gay nutjob range of far righties. They're don't seem to be too rabid about so-called "social issues" -- maybe because they favor people minding their own business.

2 comments:

Piet said...

Interesting that the teabaggers have actually put themselves into classic formal conservative territory if they truly do not believe they should be meddling in people's private lives. Unlike modern Republicans, who think their big tent should include only those people vetted by the religious right (and willing to get their kinks on the downlow until they're discovered and brought to shame).

Hunter said...

I'm not taking that survey as the final word on teabaggers' attitudes toward gays, although in light of the comments I found by militia members a couple of days ago, it would seem that there is a significant division on the right (and make no mistake, the teabaggers are right-wing, overwhelmingly, as are the militias) as to the importance of "social" issues -- the tax-free, small government righties don't really want to be bothered with imposing their theology on everyone else, as a rule (although I don't rule out a certain amount of spill-over between segments).

I'm not sure the teabaggers have actually thought about things all that much -- a significant proportion seem to want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare and Social Security benefits, depending on Glenn Beck's latest piece of performance art.