Maybe, just maybe, because he doesn’t think he wants to spend his political capital on taking a dive on it.
He won’t take a dive on it. No one cares about ACORN but the teabaggers who are already inaccessible to him anyway. He’d take a much greater political hit if he started participating in the GOP’s ridiculous (and transparently racist) vendetta against ACORN, both in terms of support from his own base and from the logistical support which is incidentally derived from ACORN’s voter registration drives than he would by just tabling this ruling and ignoring it.
None of these agencies are bothered by the decision. It’s pretty much what they all wanted.
But that’s the thing, Dio. The Constitution doesn’t even say what a bill of attainder is. It just says Congress can’t pass one. When I first studied the Constitution in seventh grade, I thought it referred to ALL laws that call out an individual. Imagine my shock when I found that Congress is not forbidden to settle a benefit on an individual. It made me realize that I didn’t really know exactly what a Bill of Attainder is.
I’m still not sure.
I dunno, I just feel more inclined to trust Bricker’s intuition than yours on an issue like this. No offense, I just feel I’d rather have a pleasant surprise than an unpleasant one, if a surprise is going to come.
Why no mention of Lovett? In Lovett, Congress tried to legislatively kick people out of their government jobs upon determination that they were Commies. The bill they enacted sought to bar any future payment for their work to them, and effectively barred them from federal service. The Court said that was a bill of attainder because it was punishing them without benefit of a judicial trial.
The fact that this funding is for a discretionary benefit doesn’t matter. Otherwise we should have no problem with a bill that prohibits NRA members from receiving Social Security, or a bill that declared Blackwater to be Very Bad and to permanently bar them or any of their affiliates from ever receiving a government contract.
Neither am I, but I would hope my conservative friends such as Bricker would at least be a bit troubled by the idea that Congress could write a law to make life difficult for a particular individual or corporation. I’d hope the courts would interpret the prohibition on bills of attainder as broadly as possible to prevent that sort of abuse of power.
(The legislature’s being able to say, “You, Frederick Quincy Somerville (I made that name up, hopefully there isn’t a person with that name - Google isn’t turning up any hits!), yeah, YOU can’t ever win any Federal contracts or grants ever again. Why? Because we don’t like you!” certainly strikes me as an abuse of power.)
Could it be used by parties in Congress to deprive their political enemies of business opportunities open to others similarly situated? That’s what they just did, so yes. If the courts rule that that’s as legal as church on Sunday, it’ll open up a world of hurt for the opponents of whichever party is more ruthless over time.
You should know that wasn’t what I was talking about, but I guess you had to try and score some kind of “you want to ignore the law” point, so I hope it was fun for you.
The issue is whether the Defund Acorn Act violated the Bill of Attainder clause. The Supreme Court has created a two piece test for that determination, one specificity and one whether it is punishment. The law is certainly specific, of that there is no doubt. The question then is if it is punishment, which, as I’ve said, it is. And the Court found it was without having to “ignore all the legal mumbo jumbo” as you assert. Your insistence on gotcha gameplaying at the expense of analysis is sad. Not surprising coming from you, just sad.
One thing that helped me get a quick grasp on the issue is this piece written by the Congressional Research Service It gives a good introduction to the Bill of Attainder ("the Supreme Court has defined a bill of attainder as a “law that legislatively determines guilt and inflicts punishment upon an identifiable individual without provision of the protections of a judicial trial”). There is much more there, much of it dealing with the ACORN act. I hope it helps.
On the bright side, his exquisite parsing of the word “punishment” offers some hope for the Shoot All the Lawyers Bill of 2011, if it can be expressed as a matter of social hygiene and not as “punishment”.
I notice that the subject of the thread has been changed. I wonder if it’s because the OP has realized that his initial stance was poorly grounded and based on ideology.
I wonder.
Lovett involved an Act of Congress that forbid the discretionary payment in the future to a group of people after a right wing witchhunt finding that they were disloyal, bad people.
Oh… Wait…
Yes, that’s my sense. But, knowing that Bricker tends not to be in the habit of makng up his arguments out of the whole cloth, I’d very much appreciate being pointed to a source where I can educate myself on the specifics of l’affaire ACORN.
Speaking of…
…did we ever settle up our NSA eavesdropping wager from 2006? I honestly don’t recall…
Ummmm, we were speaking of why you think Judge Gershon’s ruling will be overturned on appeal and your insistence on playing gotcha instead of actual analysis of the issue. We weren’t speaking of illegal wiretapping.
As I remember, it was a wash. The only court that ruled on the merits of the case found it to be unconstitutional, but the 6th circuit dismissed it relying on a standing issue. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
Yes, that’s true. But it reminded me of our earlier discussion, since that, too, was predicting the results of an appeal from a district court decision to the federal circuit, with each of us predicting a different outcome. In other words, this discussion of prognostication reminded me of a similar discussion we had in the past.
That rings a faint bell… seems to me the bet hinged on whether the state secrets would be dispositive, and it got dumped on standing.
I’m still curious as to why you think the Obama adminstration would be motivated to challenge this decison at all.
I just don’t know how this could be true. After all, ACORN was the victim in the embezzlement case.
That’s correct, they were. You dispute that?
Apparently he’s commenting on Harshbarger’s criticism of them for having such sloppy management that embezzlement could occur so easily. Which is still blaming the victim, of course, but at least has some veneer of reasonability, unlike Mr. Moto’s earlier and more choleric partisan excoriations.
How is this materially different from what Conason and Harshberger wrote?