Matt Whitaker seems destined to take in infamy a status surpassing that of his predecessor Robert Bork who, at least by virture of his Office of Solicitor General, WAS SENATE CONFIRMED!
Not that it’s a big deal.
However, with each passing hour we’re finding out more about just how wacky this guy’s ideas and behavior are, even for a Republican. We’re talking Incitatus/Harvey (and not the good one) level. On the other hand Horses and Dogs are known for their loyalty so it all makes a kind of paranoid twisted sense.
Acting Attorney General Once Declared Courts ‘Inferior’ and Criticized Supreme Court’s Power
By Charlie Savage, The New York Times
Nov. 8, 2018
The acting attorney general, Matthew G. Whitaker, once espoused the view that the courts “are supposed to be the inferior branch” and criticized the Supreme Court’s power to review legislative and executive acts and declare them unconstitutional, the lifeblood of its existence as a coequal branch of government.
In a candidate Q. and A. when he sought the Republican nomination for senator in Iowa in 2014, Mr. Whitaker indicated that he shared the view among some conservatives that the federal judiciary has too much power over public policy issues. He criticized many of the Supreme Court’s rulings, starting with a foundational one: Marbury v. Madison, which established its power of judicial review in 1803.
“There are so many” bad rulings, Mr. Whitaker said. “I would start with the idea of Marbury v. Madison. That’s probably a good place to start and the way it’s looked at the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of constitutional issues.”
I have to stop. Really. Marbury v. Madison? What the heck is the University of Iowa teaching? I got this in 3rd Grade Social Studies.
Though Democrats called on Mr. Whitaker to recuse himself from overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s associates conspired, the Justice Department has said he will supervise Mr. Mueller. Past statements suggest that Mr. Whitaker has already made up his mind that the investigation will fail to show that Mr. Trump or his advisers aided Russia’s disruption.
“The truth is there was no collusion with the Russians and the Trump campaign,” Mr. Whitaker said in an interview on “The Wilkow Majority,” a conservative political talk radio show, in summer 2017. His remarks were reported earlier by The Daily Beast.
“There was interference by the Russians into the election, but that is not collusion with the campaign,” he added, views that dovetailed with Mr. Trump’s longstanding complaints about the investigation. “That’s where the left seems to be just combining those two issues.”
…
Mr. Whitaker’s criticism of Marbury aligned with the view of some conservatives that the 1803 case — or at least how it came to be interpreted — gave the courts too much power to strike down laws. But Mr. Whitaker also criticized famous decisions in which the Supreme Court declined to strike down laws that conservatives do not like, including 1930s cases involving President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and the 2012 case in which the court declined to strike down President Barack Obama’s health insurance law.He also criticized the Supreme Court for “all New Deal cases that were expansive of the federal government. Those would be bad. Then all the way up to the Affordable Care Act and the individual mandate.”
Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, said that Mr. Whitaker’s expressed views of the Constitution and the role of the courts “are extreme and the overall picture he presents would have virtually no scholarly support” and would be “destabilizing” to society if he used the power of the attorney general to advance them.
Simultaneously criticizing the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review while criticizing cases where it declined to strike down laws regulating economic and health insurance matters was a sign of an “internally contradictory” and “ignorant” philosophy, Mr. Tribe said. Because the attorney general oversees decisions about which laws the Justice Department will defend and can decide which ones not to enforce, he said, Mr. Whitaker’s views were likely to have faced sharp scrutiny even from Republicans in a confirmation hearing.
“He seems to think much of the fabric of federal law that is part of our ordinary lives violates the Constitution of the United States to which he is evidently going to take an oath,” Mr. Tribe said.
Mr. Whitaker’s 2014 interview also suggested that he is likely to hold fast to Mr. Sessions’s position in a lawsuit brought by Republican-controlled states seeking to have the Affordable Care Act’s insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions struck down. Under Mr. Sessions, the department sided with the plaintiffs instead of fighting to keep the law intact.
“We need to do everything we can to repeal it, defund it, delay it — we need to do whatever it takes,” Mr. Whitaker said of the Affordable Care Act in 2014.
He also signaled opposition to abortion rights, saying that he believed “life begins at conception,” and to same-sex marriage rights, saying that “it’s traditionally been up to the churches and to God to define that.” He expressed frustration that the Iowa Legislature had not pushed back against a State Supreme Court ruling in 2009 that permitted same-sex couples in Iowa to marry.
Mr. Whitaker voiced a hard line on immigration, saying he did not believe in “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants who are already inside the country — he did not address the so-called Dreamers, or people brought to the United States as children — and talked about visiting the southwestern border while he was the United States attorney for the Southern District of Iowa during the second term of President George W. Bush.
“I was able to see what our border looks like and the fact it is under assault on a daily basis from people trying to bring illegal people and illegal drugs into our country,” he said. “What do I think the solution is? We need to secure the border first and then look at ways to reform the system, whether that’s getting rid of chain immigration,” in which migrants trace the paths of relatives or others they know to come to the United States, “or increasing the number of skilled-worker visas.”
He indicated that he did not believe mass shootings justified more restrictive gun control laws, and said he believed the federal government should play no role in public education.
“The Department of Education should be disbanded and the resources either returned to the taxpayers or put into the schools,” he said. “Bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., shouldn’t know how to better educate my kids than I do.”
On the issue of climate change, Mr. Whitaker said he was “not a climate denier,” but also said that while the globe may be warming and human activities may contribute, “the evidence is inconclusive” and “that’s very small and it may be part of the natural warming or cooling of the planet.” As a result, he said, he did not believe in regulations aimed at curbing carbon emissions that could “hamstring” the American economy.
“I don’t believe in big-government solutions to a problem that doesn’t appear to be that significant or quite possibly isn’t man-made,” he said.
You might be interested to know that David Berkowitz is a saved Born Again Christian who is anxious to get back out on the streets and share the Gospel of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Have you repented?