Posted on 02/23/2011 2:09:33 PM PST by EternalVigilance
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder doesn't know the difference between the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments.
From CNN :
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Attorney General Eric Holder today sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, after determining that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, “as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment.”
Aside from the sheer immorality of this move, the equal protection clause is not in the Fifth Amendment, it's in the Fourteenth Amendment:
"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." -- the Fourteenth Amendment
CNN has the text of Holder's letter here ...
Paragraph 1:
After careful consideration, including review of a recommendation from me, the President of the United States has made the determination that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), 1 U.S.C. § 7, as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment. Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 530D, I am writing to advise you of the Executive Branch’s determination and to inform you of the steps the Department will take in two pending DOMA cases to implement that determination.
*hat tip to Savvy at AIPNews for catching this!
Eric Holder is no different from any other Obama appointment, none of them know chit from Chinola.
Your initial post was to the effect that Holder (or those at the Department of Justice who actually drafted the letter in question) don't know the difference between the 5th and 14th Amendments because the letter references "equal protection" in connection with the 5th Amendment.
That there is no "express" Equal Protection Clause in the Fifth Amendment goes without saying. It should also go without saying that, right or wrong, the Supreme Court long ago in fact found that there is an "equal protection component" to the 5th Amendment. Again, that may be correct as a matter of constitutional jurisprudence, or it may be wrong. But that is what the Court has found.
Given this, the DOJ letter hardly provides support for your assertion that Holder, et al. have revealed some gross misunderstanding of the Constitution.
Many, if not most, lawyers will probably agree with you, and with Holder, on this point.
But I’m thinking most regular folks, who have to rely solely on what the actual words of the Constitution say, will agree with me. (After all, the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly requires “equal protection,” while the Fifth makes no express mention of it.)
In fact, the posts already on this thread are an illustration of the point.
Lawyers in America today are overwhelmingly caught up in straining at the gnats of the doctrines that have been built up around the law, even if the words of the Constitution don’t support them, while at the same time swallowing the camel by ignoring most of the important clear imperative requirements of what the document actually says and means.
Which raises an even more important point: If we all agree, which we apparently do, that the Fourteenth Amendment requires that the states provide for the equal protection of the laws for all persons in their jurisdiction, and that the Fifth Amendment requires the national government to do the same, why are they not providing equal protection to all persons? Why are thousands of little persons continuing to be butchered in this country every single day?
Why does one subclass of immoral person have a “right” to do what our civilization has always considered to be an abominable act, while another subclass of persons don’t even have the most fundamental protection for the most important thing any human being has, their own life?
Well, completely beside the point of whether he misunderstands equal protection, and which Amendment may or may not require it, he, and they, do grossly misunderstand the Constitution. Otherwise, they wouldn't be turning basic right and wrong on its head and claiming there is a "right" to do wrong.
Ironically, apart from all the legal mumbo-jumbo that surrounds the question of incorporation, I think the Fifth Amendment was always intended to protect the God-given and therefore unalienable rights of all persons. And that obligation has always existed for all human governments, preceding the existence of a Fifth, or a Fourteenth Amendment - or a U.S. Constitution.
In fact, that's the cornerstone principle of our republic.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
Eric Holder is, to say the least, a very poor Attorney General, but I do think that he "knows the difference between the 5th and 14th Amendments." He may have no regard for them, or for the Constitution itself, for that matter, but there was nothing in his characterization of the 5th Amendment today that suggests the sort of gross ignorance that you would apparently ascribe to him. With all due respect, I think you weaken your case by overstating it in such fashion.
For my part, I reject the notion that there is any "equal protection" issue here at all. I don't think that any legal status, or constitutional "classification," should be assigned to a person on account of his or her sexual practices.
Could we impeach Attorney General Eric Holder for misfeasance? Doesn’t his duty as a Cabinet Officer, Attorney General, and representative of the American People require defending DOMA instead of doing the President’s bidding?
Holder and Obama both have little knowledge of the Constitution.
Can you say “affirmative action”?
Even if I erred in my zeal to go after this worst of all Attorney Generals, we’ll survive that.
But will the republic survive the legal and political elites’ failure to provide equal protection to tens of millions of persons in the womb, or their determination to pervert equal protection by granting such it to perverted sexual licentiousness? It’s highly doubtful.
One thing we know for sure: tens of millions have not survived it.
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