Posted on 09/04/2015 9:57:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
We’re in a weird place as a party when Trump, the would-be strongman who’s going to smash sclerotic American government as we know it, is more of a “rule of law” guy than Ted Cruz is. And way, way more of one than Mike Huckabee is.
Trump prefers an accommodation in which gay couples can get their licenses, as the Obergefell ruling requires, and Davis can opt out so that she’s not involved in something that violates her religious beliefs. But she doesn’t want to opt out. She wants to force the whole office to opt out by forbidding her deputies from issuing licenses without her approval. As recently as yesterday, during her contempt hearing, her lawyers were warning people that marriage licenses issued today by her staff (there have already been two as of 10:30 a.m. ET) while she’s in jail won’t be valid because they lack her signature as county clerk — and she might not be wrong about that. What she’s doing, as Charles Cooke put it, isn’t so much seeking a conscientious objection for herself as demanding a right of secession for Rowan County from the post-Obergefell legal regime. Cruz and Huckabee seem okay with that. Trump evidently isn’t.
“The other simple answer is rather than going through this, [because] it’s really a very, very sticky situation, a terrible situation — 30 miles away they have other places, they have many other places where you get licensed, and you have them actually quite nearby,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s another alternative. I hate to see her being put in jail. I understand what they’re doing. It would be certainly nice if she didn’t do it, but other people in her office do it but from what I understand she won’t allow other people in her office to do it.”
Bottom line, host Joe Scarborough said, is that if Supreme Court makes a decision, that’s the law of land, right?
“You have to go with it,” Mr. Trump said. “The decision’s been made, and that is the law of the land.”…
“She can take a pass and let somebody else in the office do it in terms of religious, so you know, it’s a very … tough situation, but we are a nation, as I said yesterday, we’re a nation of laws,” he said. “And I was talking about borders and I was talking about other things, but you know, it applies to this, also, and the Supreme Court has ruled. It would be nice to have other people in her office do what they have to do.”
Smart point, but the Cruz/Huckabee take on this is that a “lawless” Supreme Court opinion doesn’t count as “law” the way a statute does. Cruz, at least, knows better, but it’s in his political interest to push that argument. I’m curious to see if he comes after Trump over this at one of the debates, sensing that it’s a rare chance for him to out-populist Mr. Populism. If he does, Trump should come back: Who gets to decide which court opinions are sufficiently “lawless” that they needn’t be enforced? We’re left with Trump, the alleged revolutionary, standing up for the long tradition of judicial review while more mainstream GOP pols argue that that tradition has been so discredited by left-wing double standards that conservatives should take the same a la carte approach to law enforcement. Let every county clerk go their own way. In hindsight, Obama should have cited his, ahem, deep religious convictions as grounds for granting executive amnesty.
Exit question via a Twitter buddy: How come no one’s standing up for the conscience rights of Davis’s deputy clerks? What if one of them enthusiastically supports gay marriage and wants to issue licenses in Davis’s stead? The state’s telling Davis that she has a duty to obey Supreme Court rulings and she’s telling her deputies that they have a duty to obey her personal religious beliefs. Why is the former less legitimate than the latter?
NOPE. She was elected by the PEOPLE. They pay her salary. This judge is not her authority as it pertains to her job. He also is not her superior in the workplace.
Sure as hell wouldn’t hurt.
Correct, sir! And they didn't suffer in 2012 because the GOPe brilliantly ran the one candidate who couldn't fight on that ground.
Gonna have to agree to disagree. Trump has been hammering home “we are a nation of laws etc...” he can’t follow that up by saying this woman should ignore the law (or court order etc...) Ignoring the law is what the illegals and democrats do. I don’t like it, I don’t think she should be in jail, but that is for her lawyers to figure out. trump didn’t stir this shitpile, she did.
And for the record, the woman everyone is lining up behind is a four-times divorced registered Democrat. Kind of a weird standard bearer for this situation.
And Freepers were whatever kind of “God” they could conjure up that tickled their ears apparently....
If this immoral order stands, you can bet that the next one will be even more immoral.
And having accepted this one, we will be told we dare not reject the next one.
“What LAW did the clerk break that now has her in jail?”
She stopped issuing marriage licenses, which is her job. She was ordered by a judge to go back and do her job, which she said she could not do for religious reasons. She was held in contempt for refusing a court order and put in the pen.
Now we have this corny excuse (after the fact) that because SCOTUS ruled bans on gay marriage unconstitutional that there is “no law” in Kentucky for issuing any marriage licenses and therefore she has committed no offense.
There is no ideological bias. She simply stopped working. That’s her choice. But she has no ground to stand on that she just was minding her own business and was chucked into jail because she was a Christian.
What law was broken? I don't know about a law that says "Do what a judge tells you or go to jail."
SCOTUS ruled that gays have a constitutional right to marry. We all think that was overreach. But the constitution gives the judicial branch that authority to make that ruling.
So we need to impeach those justicies, But in the meantime gay marriage is the law of the land.
A judge in light of the SCOTUS ruling specifically orderd her to issue the licenses. She disobeyed the judges order. The judge has the legal right to hold her in contempt of court which he did.
In truth, the laws are a mess because of the Supreme court ruling. Kentucky laws are clearly written for a man and a woman to be married not this abomination that SCOTUS has favored.
You would trade the core reason for America’s founding? Freedom of Religion?
REALLY?????
We agree.
No it isn’t the law of the land. The Supreme Court constitutionally can not make laws. It is not authorized just to make shit up and insert its elitist beliefs into the constitution. Yes they have gotten away with it but its beyond time that it stops. There is no more a requirement that states issue gay marriage licenses than there is a requirement that they license Easter bunnies. YOU KNOW IT and I know it. Quit being an idiot. We are not ruled by the men and women in black robes and its insane that people are saying something is “the rule of law” that is the product of the abuse of power and violation of the constitution.
What should be done is that these judges should be shown the law up close and personal.
Cruz's polling average was about 8% when Trump entered the race, not much different from where he is now. It's not Trump's fault that Cruz isn't connecting with voters. If Republicans wanted Cruz, he'd be polling higher.
No, she refused to dish out from a crap pile and call it food.
I support Cruz.
Trump should say what you just said. He is sounding like Jeb Bush with the law is the law and we jut need to move on. Those a not fighting words those are surrender words.
You get it too.
RE: Can you cite any precedence where a state kept a law on the books that was ruled unconstitutional, and enforced it until their state legislator got around to repealing it? I would love to hear where it has happened and worked.
We don’t need to go through all that. THAT IS IF WE REALLY FOLLOWED THE CONSTITUTION.
For one, the constitution is SILENT on the issue of same-sex marriage.
Therefore, since it is silent, we have the 10th amendment.
The 10th amendment tells us that :
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”
Since it is reserved to the States, then Kentucky should GET TO DEFINE ITS ONE LAWS ON MARRIAGE.
It just so happens that Kentucky has and currently, it PROHIBITS same-sex marriage.
Kim Davis is trying to UPHOLD Kentucky Law ( a law 5 black robed judges are usurping ).
Whereas, in Dred Scott, the justices defied natural law and presumed a “right” for whites to own blacks, the court’s 2015 Obergefell decision likewise defied natural law and presumed to deconstruct and redefine the institution of marriage.
Both decisions are illegitimate, and here’s why. For the U.S. Supreme Court to justifiably overturn some law duly passed by the United States Congress, its opinion must be deeply rooted in one or more of the following:
A clear reading of the U.S. Constitution;
Some prior court precedent;
History and the Common Law;
Our cultural customs or traditions;
Some other law enacted by Congress.
As the high court’s four dissenting justices rightly observed in Obergefell, the “five attorneys” who invented this newfangled “right” to “gay marriage,” failed, abysmally, on each and every requirement.
The same was true of Dred Scott.
And so both opinions should be summarily ignored.
Article III, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to “check” judicial activism, up to and including when justices illegitimately legislate from the bench: “[T]he Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.”
Our Republican-led Congress, from a regulatory standpoint, has the absolute constitutional authority to smack down this rogue Supreme Court. Unfortunately, to date, it has either been unwilling or unable to do so.
Still, it’s not Republicans alone who must halt this judicial imperialism. Every Freedom-loving American, to the extent that such animal yet exists, must also join the fight. After the Dred Scott opinion, they did.
They ought to do it in regards to what 5 lawyers of the Supreme Court did as well or we lose our freedom.
Yes, quite so.
No it did not anymore when SCOTUS ruled that bans against interracial marriage were unconstitutional did any state prohibiting it all of a sudden have no marriage laws.
Until you can cite for me where they were marriage licenses in those states CEASED until a new law was passed, then you are just playing hard and fast looking for a legal loop-hole that isnt there.
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