Lady Booth, a tax attorney
Posted on 08/23/2010 11:51:19 AM PDT by CA Conservative
Ted Olson and his anti-Prop 8 media machine have been aggressively leveraging his past associations with conservative legal causes in support of his newfound support for the invention of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. In so doing, they’ve tried to obscure the fact that the position that the Constitution can and should be interpreted to invalidate traditional marriage laws can’t possibly be reconciled with the conservative legal principles that Olson used to purport to stand for. (I’m not addressing here the very different question whether a conservative can soundly support legislative revision of marriage laws to include same-sex couples.)
For anyone who has wondered what really accounts for Olson’s new position, I pass along these excerpts from a New York Times article last week on the influence of Lady Booth Olson, Olson’s wife since 2006:
Lady Olson was more than just a minor behind-the-scenes player in this potentially pivotal case.
“Lady could not have been more supportive of this,” Mr. Olson said in an interview shortly before Vaughn R. Walker, chief judge of the United States District Court hearing the case, ruled on Aug. 4 that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. “And she’s certainly influenced my views — her ideas, her approach, her feelings.” …
Mr. Olson’s previous wife, Barbara, was a conservative commentator who was killed on Sept. 11, 2001, when she was on the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Some friends hypothesize that Lady Olson just might have softened some of her husband’s views.
“In my innermost thoughts, I like to think he thought that on some level, but Ted’s never said that,” Mrs. Olson said. “He’s very proud. He owns his own decisions.”
I think that I’ll refrain from further comment.
Barbara clearly was his better 1/2.
He follows his wives.
how pathetic. He is only worthy of pity. He has no convictions of his own.
It’s sad this has happened. You know he is being influenced by this fool he married.
I will never understand how same-sex marriage belongs in the courts in the place.
If Ted Olson and others believe that we should change our marriage laws and social policies to include same-sex couples, they can believe that. I wish they would be intellectually honest enough to admit that everyone is treated equally under current marriage law, and that judges have to change the definition of marriage in order to accomplish what they want to see happen through the courts.
But there is not intellectual honesty on the left, so, the left decides that same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue, then the courts get involved. Then gay groups don’t even have to lobby legislatures to change marriage laws. They just find a judge to declare something unconstitutional, and viola, we have new laws without them having to work to change the law.
I wonder how homosexual marriage became a liberal cause. If you review the 1996 congressional vote on the Defense of Marriage Act, you will see that it passed with over 80% support. And, you will see that many liberals voted for it.
It’s amazing to me that 20 years ago, marriage was about the least controversial issue in America. Nobody seriously questioned how it is defined or who the partners are. Now a beauty pagent contestant or anyone can be severely criticized in the MSM and by the left for thinking that marriage should be a man and a woman.
And why does Barack Obama get away with saying he believes marriage is a man and a woman? Why do some liberals even today get a pass from the radicals who want to institutionalize same-sex marriage?
I knew it.
Ahem!
She’s got his name, she’s got his number, she’s got him by the .....................
I met him at a professional function some years ago. I couldn’t get over how long his hair was, which of course was amplified by the fact he was speaking to a room full of Navy and Marine Corps lawyers. Unless your name is Ted Nugent, conservatives don’t have hair that long. Just saying.
When Opposites Influence (Dear Ted - it’s called PW for a reason)
“He would have never been able to take the other side,” she said, before adding with a laugh, “He wouldn’t have had a wife after that!”
She continued: “After eight years of knowing Ted, I thought this is something I can jump into with two feet, really sink my teeth into, and we can do this together.”
And jump she did. For the large team, working round-the-clock in their San Francisco office, Mrs. Olson provided a down-home dose of Southern hospitality. She was also a perpetual cheerleader; a front-row presence for nearly every day of the trial; a moot-court spectator and, not least, a Georgetown-educated lawyer with a master’s degree in tax law from New York University. And, as she put it, Mr. Olson’s “Girl Friday, Friday through Thursday.”
She offered her legal perspective (“I was delighted that Ted occasionally listened to me, since that is not his normal habit around the house,” she joked, but would not share any specific details on what they discussed), and went on sushi runs for her husband when the court broke for an hour lunch. (“We found a sushi place that took six minutes to get there, six minutes to order, six minutes to eat the sushi, and six minutes to get back,” she said.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/fashion/19Lady.html?_r=1&sq=C-SPAN&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all
Mary Boies, a friend of the couple who is married to Mr. Boies, said: “He’s just a kinder, gentler Ted, but I think he’s more relaxed and more enjoying of a good time, and in that way I think she’s been a very big influence on him. He probably is more tolerant of Democrats now. Not that he agrees with them, but there’s no point in being the ant at the picnic.”
| Contributor | Occupation | Date | Amount | Recipient |
| BOOTH, LADY GREAT FALLS,VA 22066 |
SELF EMPLOYED/ATTORNEY | 4/15/08 | $1,800 | Obama, Barack (D) |
| BOOTH, LADY E MS GREAT FALLS,VA 22066 |
SELF-EMPLOYED/TAX LAWYER | 3/26/07 | $2,300 | Giuliani, Rudolph W (R) |
Source: OpenSecrets.Org
Lady Booth, a tax attorney
Thanks for the pics...like everybody else, I was curious what she looked like.
Now the ‘media’ trots him out every time they want to argue against conservatives and he allows them to use him. Sickening piece of garbage.
Ted Olson, your wife Barbara deserved better you hypocrite.
******
the man she met in person won her over and the two eventually married. Olson had previously been married to conservative commentator Barbara Olson, who was killed during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But while his new wife has “certainly influenced my views [with] her ideas, her approach, her feelings,” Olson was less converted to the cause of equality by Booth Olson than supported by her as he undertook the suit that challenged the constitutionality of rescinding legal rights for minorities at the ballot box. As Lady Booth Olson put it, the issue was not about political left versus political right, but rather a matter “of right and wrong, justice and injustice, and discrimination is something that offends at any time.”
“During the trial, I kept looking down at my wedding ring and thinking, ’Gosh, I am so lucky to be here,’ “ the article recounted her as saying. “I waited until 45 to get married, taking it for granted the entire time.”
In a Jan. 9 op-ed piece published by Newsweek, Olson outlined his reasons for taking the case. “Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage,” he wrote. “This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize.
“Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation,” continued Olson. “At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities.
“Marriage requires thinking beyond one’s own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society,” Olson noted. “The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.”
I will never understand how anybody looks to government instead of God to bless and sanctify Holy matrimony. Ted Olsen is a very good man and is right on in his Constitutional argument.
To invoke Barbara's name to attack him is beyond the pale. There should have been a barf alert.
Government does not have to sell fishing licenses, but if it decides to do so, it may not discriminate on an impermissible basis. When homosexuality, adult consensual sodomy , adultery, and bastardy were decriminalized, government no longer has any pretense of a legitimate role in domestic contracts.
Barbara Olson (3rd wife)
Lady Booth (current wife)
Olson’s wife Booth has described herself as a registered Democrat. She has contributed to the campaigns of Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani.
******
He took on the case last fall, after he received a call from Chad Griffin, a gay activist in California who was part of a team looking for a lawyer to challenge Prop 8. A former in-law of Olson’s suggested they reach out to Olson. Griffin was skeptical. “He was the conservative enemy,” he recalls thinking. Griffin was surprised to find that Olson was anything but hostile. The two men talked for hours. Olson spent the next several weeks consulting with friends, fellow lawyers, and family, starting with his wife and political sparring partner, Lady Booth Olson, herself an attorney and a Democrat. He put the same question to all of them: why shouldn’t gay people have the right to marry? “I asked them to give me their best argument. They had all sorts of intangible instincts and feelings about what’s ‘right,’” he says. “But I didn’t hear any persuasive response.”
Ed Whelan, a lawyer who worked with Olson in the Bush administration, says his first reaction was “surprise, followed by disgust that Ted would abandon the legal principles he’s purported to stand for, like originalism and judicial restraint.” But Whelan also knows that Olson—who arrives at work each morning by 6:30 and reads centuries-old law texts in his spare time—is a formidable adversary. “There’s a definite chance he’ll win. That’s what makes it all the more outrageous that he’s pushing this.”
Olson is surprisingly emotional about the case, and his eyes mist up repeatedly when he talks about the hundreds of letters—positive and negative—that he’s received. “We should be welcoming our gay colleagues and friends as equals,” he says. Kristin Perry, one of the plaintiffs in the case, says that whenever Ted sees her and her partner, Sandy Stier, “he tells us, ‘I think about you two every day. This is the reason I’ve taken this case.’” Some conservatives, still trying to figure out what happened to their old friend, have asked him when he decided he was for gay marriage. Olson seems puzzled by the question. “I don’t know that I was ever against it.”
******
PUKE!
Mrs. Olson told the paper, “He would have never been able to take the other side. He wouldn’t have had a wife after that!”
Mrs. Olson, a lawyer herself, was a significant presence behind the scenes on the case. And by simply speaking with the paper, she is continuing to extend her influence. She agreed to the interview so that people could see her and her husband as “happy heterosexuals who are completely supporting this,” and support it as well.
How the Olson's Marriage Could Influence Yours
Edwin Bonilla
"It's important that Ted Olson's wife helped him understand the right of same-sex marriage because without her, we wouldn't have the talent of Ted Olson representing the plaintiffs, along with David Boies"
She's most likely got a GAY CHILD.
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