Judge Lashes Out At Obama Administration’s Contempt
The US District Court Judge who ruled the Obama administration’s oil drilling moratorium unconstitutional last year has noticed that the administration has been studiously ignoring his ruling. From the WSJ:
A federal judge Wednesday blasted the Obama administration for “determined disregard” of his order to lift a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling last year, giving fresh ammunition to the oil industry and its allies on Capitol Hill who want the Interior Department to speed approvals of new offshore drilling projects.
The ruling by Judge Martin Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana means the Interior Department could have to reimburse Hornbeck Offshore Services LLC, a Louisiana drilling company, for the costs of litigation that the firm brought last year challenging the legality of the drilling moratorium…In his ruling, Judge Feldman said Hornbeck was owed the money because the government’s conduct amounted to contempt of court.
A spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declined to comment late Wednesday. In a written statement, Hornbeck’s general counsel, Sam Giberga, said “What is striking about today’s ruling is that it holds the government, acting through its highest levels, in contempt of a federal court order.”
Striking, perhaps, but hardly surprising.
The Obama administration’s de facto contempt of the court’s order is no different than it’s publicly stated intentions following Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling against the Obamacare, or the congressional Democrats’ “pass-it-so-we-can-see-what’s-in-it” approach to passing that legislation in the first place.
For liberals, contempt for the rule of law, and for those who believe in that founding principle, is nothing new. Their elitism and sense of entitlement falls somewhere between monarchism and congenital disability. But for ordinary Americans, on both sides of the partisan aisle, respect for the rule of law lies at the very heart of America’s exceptionalism. Obama’s contempt for that respect, and his appalling, unfounded arrogance will be his undoing in 2012.
H/T:DB
