Friday, May 14, 2010

Due Diligence

It came out yesterday that Eric Holder hadn't actually deigned to read the Arizona immigration bill that he and the rest of bien pensant America has been bashing in recent weeks. So, do you suppose that if a lawyer is going to offer a legal opinion, they might read and ponder the actual statutory language? That would seem wise. Then again, as Andy McCarthy points out (via Ed Morrissey), why bother?

He hasn’t read the Arizona immigration law, even though reading the law is the basic duty of any lawyer (let alone the U.S. Attorney General) who is called on to assess a legal situation.

Thus, he hasn’t got reasonable suspicion that Arizonans are violating the Constitution, even though reasonable suspicion is the basic investigative standard we expect law-enforcement to satisfy before officials harass Americans with stepped up scrutiny. …

If a police officer, without taking elementary investigative steps to inform himself about the facts of a situation, and thus without reasonable suspicion, simply assumed a person must be guilty of wrongdoing based on the police officer’s avowed prejudice, what would Eric Holder call it?
The invaluable Morrissey draws an interesting conclusion from the behavior of the man who heads the Justice Department: he's profiling Arizonans.

Let’s see. Reaching conclusions based on a “glance”? Check. Relying on hearsay and rumor about a people instead of using independent thought? Check. Putting law-enforcement resources into attacking something based solely on appearances? Check.
Just a hunch -- when the history of the Obama administration is written in the future, one thing that will amaze the historians is how lazy and arrogant it was. Obama's pals in Congress, bless their twisted souls, are plenty industrious -- Henry Waxman and his staff of gremlins can crank out a 2,000 page bill at the drop of a hat. How the heck can the Attorney General think he can get by without reading a law before offering an opinion? It's astonishing, really.

6 comments:

Night Wrtier said...

How the heck can the Attorney General think he can get by without reading a law before offering an opinion?

It's not so tough, once you assume we're a nation of feelings, not laws.

W.B. Picklesworth said...

But I thought we were getting an administration that was all smart and stuff, elite leaders who were going to read, write and know 'rithmetic. One out of three. Ah well, as long as their hearts are in the right place.

Anonymous said...

I am not defending Holder. He's a jackass for commenting on the law without having read it. No question. But I can't help but note that McCarthy read the original law and was able to weigh in and assure us all that no profiling could take place and no one could be stopped without cause. That was before the legislature deemed it necessary to revise the statute three times because it was so difficult to interpret and the police associations were coming out against the law. Let's be honest, it was a poorly written piece of legislation that reasonable people people had cause to be leery of.

Regards,
Rich

Gino said...

didnt i say this was all about election year politics, and not about the border?

holder did his job, and got the mojado class riled up for november, causeing the GOP to run from an accusation that is not true (racism), in order to limit their efectiveness on polling day as they spend the next several months on defense.

what that law says has nothing to do with it.
what that law can be construed to say is all of what matters.

CousinDan54915 said...

b>Holder is incompetent. So is his boss. Any questions? b>

Mr. D said...

Let's be honest, it was a poorly written piece of legislation that reasonable people people had cause to be leery of.

Reasonable people who have actually read it, that is. :)

I'm not going to argue that point, Rich, because most legislation these days is poorly written. It's a huge problem in Arizona, Washington, D.C., Springfield, St. Paul, Madison and just about every other place where laws are written.

And poorly written laws cause many problems, the most important of which is this: they erode respect for law generally.

There's actually a post in there somewhere that I ought to write.