The Freedom Bulletin

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, have both been in the news recently – DOMA because the Obama administration announced on Thursday that they would no longer defend it against lawsuits, and the ACA because a judge upheld its constitutionality against a religious-freedom-based challenge a week ago. Other than that, these two laws don’t have much in common. But this made me think, why did the Obama administration decide DOMA was unconstitutional while enthusiastically defending the constitutionality of the ACA?

DOMA defines marriage as between one man and one woman and, as a result, denies same-sex spouses of federal employees some benefits that are given to opposite-spouses. The Obama administration decided it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment. As Attorney General Eric Holder wrote, “The record contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships – precisely the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus that the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.”

The Democrats’ health reform law, the ACA,  makes it illegal (for the vast majority of people) not to buy health insurance, and punishes people who disobey this requirement with fines. The Justice Department’s website has a prominent page dedicated to its “vigorous” defense of the law in federal courts.

Why does the Obama administration believe Obamacare is constitutional but DOMA is not? DOMA merely stops some people from partaking in a benefit offered through their spouse’s employment with the federal government. It might be fairer if both same-sex and opposite-sex couples  were offered the same benefits, but (a) the fairest thing for gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, married, and unmarried people would be not to offer benefits to spouses at all but only to actual employees; and (b) people don’t have a fundamental right to government-given health benefits based on their spouse’s employment. The ACA, on the other hand, outlaws the decision to opt away from health insurance and instead pay for all of one’s health services oneself. In other words, it takes away the ability to spend one’s own money as one chooses, which is a fundamental right.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to allow people to form whatever romantic relationships they want (or none at all) without government labels or interference, and to choose whether to buy insurance or pay for health services in cash? I sure think so, but I guess that’s just me.

Sadly, although not too unexpectedly, Julian Assange lost his battle to avoid being extradited to Sweden on accusations of rape and sexual assault. Chief Magistrate Howard Riddle dismissed Assange’s arguments that the European Arrest Warrant was issued improperly, that his alleged actions don’t constitute a crime in Britain, and that Sweden’s practice of holding rape trials in secret would violate his rights.

He and his lawyers are appealing the ruling to Britain’s High Court, and possibly the Supreme Court or even the European court. His bail conditions will remain the same during the appeals process.

As always, Assange addressed the media outside the courthouse, which you can watch above. Contrary to what David Leigh wrote in an obnoxious column, I thought this was a great speech because he took what was a serious legal setback and turned it into an opportunity to fight back against the system and call on others to do the same.

More articles from the BBC, Telegraph, Guardian (and their liveblog), AFP, NY Times, and CNN.

Read the full ruling here.

Yesterday, Congressman Mike Capuano (D-MA) told a union rally…

“Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.”

Just last month, he said in an interview about the shooting in Tucson, AZ that left six dead and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords seriously wounded…

“Many of us were afraid for a long time that something like this would happen, with the level or the tone of the discourse over the last several years. It’s gotten violent and personal.”

And he said in another interview…

“Everybody knows the last couple of years there’s been an intentional increase in the degree of heat in political discourse. If nothing else good comes out of this, I’m hoping it causes people to reconsider how they deal with things.”

So much for toning down the rhetoric. So much for the Tea Party and Sarah Palin being responsible for the heated political climate.

In honor of Presidents’ Day, Gallup released the results of its annual poll on who Americans consider to be the greatest president. The winner? Ronald Reagan. There were some interesting inclusions and omissions in the top results, which you can see below:

1. Ronald Reagan (19%)
2. Abraham Lincoln (14%)
3. Bill Clinton (13%)
4. John F. Kennedy (11%)
5. George Washington (10%)
6. Franklin Roosevelt (8%)
7. Barack Obama (5%)
8. Theodore Roosevelt (3%)
9. Harry Truman (3%)
10. George W. Bush (2%)
11. Thomas Jefferson (2%)
12. Jimmy Carter (1%)
13. Dwight Eisenhower (1%)
14. George H. W. Bush (1%)
15. Andrew Jackson (less than 1%)
16. Lyndon Johnson (less than 1%)
17. Richard Nixon (less than 1%)

In my opinion, Reagan is a reasonable choice for the winner, and Lincoln definitely deserves his second place slot. But Bill Clinton third? Washington only fifth and Jefferson tied for tenth? Those two certainly deserve to be higher. So does Andrew Jackson, who received less then 1% of the vote, and so do Calvin Coolidge, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams, none of whom were even in the top 17. And don’t even get me started on Obama with 5% of the vote.

It is understandable that the results are skewed toward more recent presidents, since people are more likely to think of them, but people need to be more aware of our nation’s history and have more respect for the early presidential greats.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie is known for speaking his mind and following through on his promises. Although perhaps not the most eloquent or elegant, he has had some real results in his first year in office:

“When Christie took office, his state faced an $11 billion shortfall. His approach was to declare a state of emergency and start reducing state spending. No new taxes was his campaign promise, and he has lived up to that commitment. He has taken on the powerful state employee unions and is fighting against automatic teacher tenure.

He added to his popularity when he told the federal government to keep its billions and killed a $9 billion tunnel project under the Hudson River for commuter trains. The project was the most expensive transportation project in the country. Christie said his citizens couldn’t afford it, and he didn’t want them liable for potential billions in overruns. He said ‘Thanks but no thanks!’”

Read the rest at CNN.

Many people want Christie to run for president in 2012. He says that he’s focusing on his current job right now, which I think is probably a good decision, since he has three more years left in his term. Whenever he decides to run, if at all, he’s definitely someone I would consider supporting.

A court hearing took place today in the effort by several WikiLeaks volunteers and associates to keep the U.S. Department of Justice from accessing their Twitter records:

The government has requested personal Twitter information for Assange, Bradley Manning – the Army private who is suspected of supplying classified material to WikiLeaks – Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activits who is also a member of Iceland’s parliament, and computer programmers Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch citizen, and Jacob Appelbaum, an American.

The case goes to the heart of the larger debate about WikiLeaks itself and whether the site’s disclosing of thousands of classsified government documents was free speech or a violation of national security. A judge ordered Twitter to turn over the information in a Dec. 14 ruling.

Jonsdottir, Gonggrijp and Appelbaum were represented by three defense lawyers, including one from the American Civil Liberties Union, in Tuesday’s hearing.

Read the rest at the Washington Post…and more from the Guardian and NY Times.

Also, Harvard Law professor and civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz is now advising Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in their brewing legal battle with the DOJ. He has won 13 out of the 15 murder and attempted murder cases that he has worked on, and is probably best known for his roles in the OJ Simpson and Pentagon papers cases.

Young Americans for Freedom, which proclaims itself to be the nation’s oldest conservative/libertarian activist group, expelled Ron Paul from its advisory board in the wake of his victory in the CPAC straw poll. Aaron Marks, its senior director, said that Paul was “off his meds,” bragged that YAF is “more aligned with Obama” on national security,” said that Pual’s pro-liberty beliefs “border on treason,” and laughably accused him of “failure to uphold his oath to the United States Constitution.”

Aside from the utter preposterousness of an organization called Young Americans for Freedom expelling Paul for not being authoritarian enough on security, it is utterly demeaning and classless to suggest that a person’s beliefs, even if those beliefs are wrong, which Paul’s aren’t, are due to a physical abnormality in their brain.

Earlier, Donald Trump bashed Paul, saying at CPAC that he has “zero chance of getting elected.” Paul shot back that he has won elections 11 times, while he doesn’t know how many elections Trump has won.

And Kevin McCullough at Fox News wrote one of the most offensive editorials* I have read in a while, in which he writes of “disrespectful libertarians” who “hijack CPAC poll”  and “immoral libertarianism that actually advocated for legalized pot and the redefinition of marriage to include homosexual unions.” He calls libertarianism “radically disrespectful,” “libertine,” “uber-disrespectful,” “animalistic,” and even “the worst form of political affiliation in the nation.” Additionally, he characterizes libertarianism as “combining the desire of economic greed, with the amoral desire to promote any behavior regardless of the cost to our culture” and calls it a “strange combination of policies that add up to anarchy without moral limits.”

First of all, Mr. McCullough, yes, libertarians do advocate for legalized pot. God forbid that people be allowed to decide what substances they want to put into their own bodies. And many libertarians, actually, advocate for getting the government out of marriage altogether so that all people, straight, gay, bi, and asexual, are treated equally under the law.

Libertarianism is based on the belief that people have the right to do whatever they want, as long as it does not violate the rights of anyone else. Anyone who does not recognize this as a moral theory has serious problems. So does anyone who considers freedom over one’s body, freedom from surveillance, economic freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of travel to be a strange combination. Is paying lip service to private property and individual responsibility while taking away civil liberties, telling people what they can and cannot do with their bodies, and forcing them to conform to arbitrary social norms a more sensible combination?

Yes, some libertarians may have said that President George W. Bush considers the Constitution a mere “piece of paper.” Some may have expressed support for gay rights groups such as GOProud. Some may have called security measures that trample on privacy and liberty “illegal.” And some libertarians may have criticized Vice President Dick Cheney. I don’t see anything wrong with any of that. As for the alleged “pornographic calendar” handed out by libertarians at CPAC 2010, I attempted to find evidence of its existence, but the first page of results in both Google and Bing for “CPAC 2010 pornographic calendar” was filled entirely with copies of this very editorial on various websites.

If McCullough considers himself a conservative, all conservatives should be ashamed to be associated with him.

Shame on YAF, shame (at least a little) on Donald Trump, and major shame on Kevin McCullough!

Check out some good opinion pieces from Reason, the Atlantic, and LewRockwell.com.

* To be fair, McCullough does criticize Mitt Romney for supporting an individual mandate in Massachusetts, which I appreciate. But that is the only thing in this editorial that I appreciate.