Bush on our side in Heller?
In preparation for oral arguments Tuesday on the extent of gun rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has before it a brief signed by Vice President Cheney opposing the Bush administration’s stance. Even more remarkably, Cheney is faithfully reflecting the views of President Bush.
The government position filed with the Supreme Court by U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement stunned gun advocates by opposing the breadth of an appellate court’s affirmation of individual ownership rights. The Justice Department, not the vice president, is out of order. But if Bush agrees with Cheney, why did the president not simply order Clement to revise his brief? The answers: disorganization and weakness in the eighth year of his presidency.
I don’t buy it. Even if I did, how pathetic is his presidency that he can’t (won’t) reign in his own employees? More:
The president and his senior staff were stunned to learn, on the day it was issued, that Clement’s petition called on the high court to return the case to the appeals court. The solicitor general argued that Silberman’s opinion supporting individual gun rights was so broad that it would endanger federal gun control laws such as the bar on owning machine guns. The president could have ordered a revised brief by Clement.
But facing congressional Democratic pressure to keep his hands off the Justice Department, Bush did not act.
He was shocked! And did nothing. And his actions have gun rights at stake because the Solicitor General always gets to argue.
Fuck that guy.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:47 am
The Solicitor General is autonomous before the Supreme Court. He does not take orders either from the Attorney General (DOJ) or the White House. I’m not even sure that the President could fire him over something like this.
It’s happened before, relatively recently. Ken Starr, Bush I’s Solicitor General, filed a brief in direct opposition to the Department of Justice in a case brought by the Department of Justice. (Starr, unlike Clement, took the anti-statist position BTW.) It effectively ended his career in government. He was on the fast track for an appointment to the Supreme Court. He ended up chasing the Clintons and is now a law professor.
As an attorney, I understand it. The Solicitor General’s client is The United States of America and not the DOJ or the President who appointed him. He has a duty to exercise independent professional judgment on behalf of his client, free from all external pressures.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:24 am
As former Republican (libertarian type) Congressman, Bob Barr has said, the Bush Administration is more anti-gun, behind the scenes, than the Clinton Administration was.
March 13th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
— fixed it for you.
March 14th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
We all knew that Bush was in fact a Bush, didn’t we?
“He [the SG] has a duty to exercise independent professional judgment on behalf of his client, free from all external pressures.”
Free from the letter and spirit of the Constitution? That’s a lot of “freedom”.