Loretta Lynch, politician
Substituting her views of what is right for federal law.
I opposed Loretta Lynch’s nomination to be Attorney General because I found her congressional testimony lacking on fighting the politicization of the federal prosecutorial function that was the hallmark of Eric Holder.
I was concerned that by confirming Lynch, we would be elevating someone who would not resist the urge to impose political views in the guise of law enforcement and prosecutorial discretion.
Not being Eric Holder is not enough – vote No on Loretta Lynch
It pains me to come to the conclusion that Loretta Lynch should not be confirmed as our next Attorney General.
As I wrote before, Lynch was a law school classmate. While we were not “friends,” we were acquaintances. I have only good memories of her, and it does not surprise me that she has accomplished so much….
Holder leaves behind a tattered and disgraceful legacy that will take a strong new Attorney General to clean up.
Lynch could have been that person to clean up Holder’s mess and put the DOJ back on the non-political path….
At that critical moment when Lynch could have convinced us that she could do what Holder never could, put law enforcement above political policy, Lynch blinked.
The issue was Obama’s executive action on immigration…. Obama’s executive immigration action is politics, and political policy. No part of it in reality has to do with better enforcing existing law — it is a way around the legislative power which is delegated to the Congress.
The Obama executive action did not start to better law enforcement, but it is using law enforcement principles such as prosecutorial discretion as cover for the politics.
Yet when Lynch was asked how she would assess Obama’s immigration policies as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, obligated to enforcement of the law, she obfuscated and demurred. Prosecutorial discretion, when applied as Obama and Holder have as cover for politics, knows no boundaries, something Lynch could not bring herself to admit….
The testimony and questioning was painful to watch, particularly when Lynch agreed to elevate illegal immigrants to legal work status as a right, notwithstanding existing law. (Power Line has key transcripts) ….
Ultimately, Lynch did what Holder would do, mask political policy of the Executive Branch as law enforcement policy of the Department of Justice.
That tendency has now played out with respect to transgender rights in two key respects. First, with regard to North Carolina’s so-called bathroom law, and, second, with regard to school policies on bathrooms and other school functions.
As Hans Bader notes, there is no federal law protecting against discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Whether there should be is a completely different matter, and even if there were, it would be a further reach to hold that providing a separate non-gender bathroom (in addition to men’s and women’s bathrooms) would be deemed discriminatory.
This interpretation is very strange, because one’s internal gender identity is not always the same thing as one’s sex. That’s why transgender people go to the trouble of getting a sex change: they are not the sex they want to be.
It’s also why legislation has been proposed in Congress to expand federal antidiscrimination laws to cover gender identity, rather than just sex. Congress has declined to pass such legislation, but now, the Obama administration has effectively legislated on its own, by decree, in violation of the Constitutional separation of powers, which vests legislative power in the legislative branch, not the executive branch….
I am sympathetic to many requests made by transgender students as a policy matter. It makes more sense for a male-looking transgender student to use the boy’s restroom, or a female-looking transgender student to use the girl’s restroom, regardless of their biological sex. Requiring otherwise would likely increase, rather than reduce, student discomfort. The last thing we need is bathroom police. But federal bureaucrats only have jurisdiction to enforce Title IX, not their own notions of public policy. Title IX does not mandate national central planning for bathrooms.
Instead, the Obama administration argues for the extension of federal law prohibiting discrimination based on “sex” to cover self-described gender identity. And the administration is using its executive powers to accomplish that extension of the law throughout the federal government and by use of executive power.
Yet, when Lynch gave a press conference announcing a Justice Department lawsuit against North Carolina, Lynch acted as if there was no dispute that federal law prohibits gender specific bathrooms on the basis of it being discrimination based on “sex”.
Lynch compared separate bathrooms based on gender to Jim Crow laws, threatened federal funding even while the lawsuit was pending, and mostly gave a political speech as to what she thought was right:
I was against Loretta Lynch’s nomination because her congressional testimony suggested she would be a politician in the mold of Eric Holder.
She just proved me to have been correct.
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Comments
‘She just proved me to have been correct.’
Actually, Prof., EVERYTHING she’s done has proven you right. Every. Thing.
Lynch is Holder 2.0.
Holder and Lynch are what happens when you have a bunch of chickenshit RINOs in Congress refusing to even consider fighting back against Obama’s imperial edicts.
Prof., this isn’t too difficult. Probably a creature of Critical Legal Theory, Lynch simply persuaded herself that as long as the law is about power, why not use it in just that way? The comparison with Jim Crow is telling. In a case of psycho-political projection, she’s reversed the relationship, now playing the role of twisting law to serve her ends. See “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman.
She’s a Homey.
Speaking of the execrable Eric Holder, he’s getting an honorary degree from SUNY Stony Brook later this month. As an alum, I’ve already expressed my opinion in no uncertain terms.
As was the case with obama, so it is with holder and lynch. It is all about the color of their skin and not the content of their character or competence. If this marginally qualified woman, as was holder, was white she wouldn’t have been confirmed. But the cowards in Congress fear nothing as much as being called a racist even when it is a false charge. Didn’t obama’s elections teach us anything? BTW, no caps for people I think are traitors to our nation.
As I see this, this whole mandating of “positive rights” for transgenders is an exact metaphor for how the Ruling Class elites self-Constitutionalize: the text of the Constitution and law is black and white as is a person’s sex. But these Authoritarian Fundamentalists would interpret the law as a transgender does his gender – with fluidity; as being contingent on your intent and not the law.
Truth, the dictionary meaning of words, scientific fact… absolutes are what’s being flushed, in this case, for the sake of reverse utilitarianism and tokenism – providing the greatest happiness to the less than one half of one-eighth percent of the nation as opposed to the greatest number of people. In doing so the state seeks to define your happiness and your pursuit of it.
Perhaps utilitarianism is still in play. Two core leftist principles are that the ends justify the means and deception is an admirable skill.
1) Who does benefit from this latest action?
2) Is this latest action a distraction? What are we not supposed to be watching?
To a leftest, the only absolute is absolute power over people.
This whole mess is because some liberal activist on a city council, decided to come up with a solution that was looking for a problem.
It was the Mayor of Houston, LGBT Anise Parker. She was affiliated with and back (I am sure) by some extreme lefties. She is now out of office and has left town. We (not me) elected another unqualified black , Sylvester Turner. We didn’t learn from Lee Brown.
Just being nominated by Obama was a pretty good sign that she would turn out to be Holder in a skirt.
Expecting a person of character to be an Obama choice is like expecting nutrition from a Twinkie. Wishful thinking don’t make it so.
You can thank the Republiscams who held the Senate majority for giving us Loretta Lynch. We desperately need the Tea Party again. The Left has their Communists. Let’s give 4 parties a try.
Not sure about Loretta. She’s packed on a few lbs, looks like she might be “transitioning”.
I noticed that too. She hasn’t been reading the ladies’ magazines’ articles “how to get your beach body back in time for summer.”
And the GOP fought against allowing this politician in sheep’s clothing tooth and nail. Never they cried. We will fight on the beaches… They didn’t? Never mind.
The fiats, orders, edicts, etc. coming down from the Obama WH coterie reveal the true nature of bullying: getting one’s way by shaming(comparing “separate bathrooms based on gender to Jim Crow laws”), denigrating a state’s law and intimidating their victims by withholding federal funds from schools, which is also meant to shame the state into submission.
The same methods of bullying have been applied as this WH invoked its power to create “truth” regarding the “settled science” of climate change. The Inquisition that has followed has consisted of shaming, blaming and the clearly annunciated intimidation of being legally harassed by AGent Lynch.
Britt Hume made a comment today that if a man by birth but a woman by choice went into a female locker room and went to the showers with long hair and breasts but still had his junk what do you think the reaction of the other females would be? He believes they would not tolerate it. I know I wouldn’t care if a woman by birth but a man by choice came into my shower. I wouldn’t feel threatened by him/her either. I’ve always felt like if two gays can carry on in the military, showers and foxhole duty, why can’t two straight man/woman do the same?
Others might say that we shouldn’t be this way, but all that this is doing is legitimating “Sauce for the Goose is Sauce for the Gander” and when the political winds change, as they always have, someone is going to drive that point home as hard as possible.
Lynch is political in that claiming this crusade for “transgender rights” is the new Jim Crow makes no legal sense (although perhaps it makes political sense, at least to some).
After all, Jim Crow was challenged primarily on constitutional grounds, not on the basis of statute law. Yet this transgender crusade is supposedly justified on the basis of the ever-versatile Title IX, which is obviously statute and not constitutional law.
If Lynch means this is a moral crusade, well, again, she’s not talking law, is she?
Lynch is suited for a position in some banana republic, not the United States government.
Though do consider that putting a corrupt, malignant clown like Obama in the highest office in the land just might make the U.S. a candidate for banana republic status.
Anyone else remember the press conference wherein Barack Obama nominated Jeh Johnson for DHS secretary and Johnson thanked him stating “I remain loyal to you, Mr. President”? I found that particularly disturbing, but it does fit the pattern.