Say Anything Blog

Eric Holder supports granting voting rights to DC citizens.  Unfortunately, voting rights for DC citizens is unconstitutional.  But that doesn’t matter to a resourceful guy like Holder.  He’ll just find a way to work around that.

Because apparently what the Constitution actually says doesn’t really matter that much any more.

Justice Department lawyers concluded in an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the historic D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional, according to sources briefed on the issue. But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who supports the measure, ordered up a second opinion from other lawyers in his department and determined that the legislation would pass muster.

A finding that the voting rights bill runs afoul of the Constitution could complicate an upcoming House vote and make the measure more vulnerable to a legal challenge that probably would reach the Supreme Court if it is enacted. The bill, which would give the District a vote in the House for the first time, appeared to be on the verge of passing last month before stalling when pro-gun legislators tried to attach an amendment weakening city gun laws. Supporters say it could reach the House floor in May.

In deciding that the measure is unconstitutional, lawyers in the department’s Office of Legal Counsel matched a conclusion reached by their Bush administration counterparts nearly two years ago, when a lawyer there testified that a similar bill would not withstand legal attack.

Holder rejected the advice and sought the opinion of the solicitor general’s office, where lawyers told him that they could defend the legislation if it were challenged after its enactment.

I’ll grant that sometimes our Constitution is wrong and needs to be changed.  In fact, our founding fathers recognized that as well and left us with procedures we can use to change it.  And we have, several times.  We’ve granted voting rights.  We’ve banned alcohol…and then subsequently un-banned it.  So I’m ok with change.  It’s just that, if we’re going to change the Constitution, we should actually change it.  Not just find some work-around to get by what it actually says.

Because the process of amending the Constitution is important.  It’s a long, arduous process but that’s only to ensure that the changes made reflect the will of the people.

Holder and others who think the Constitution is merely a hurdle to jump on the way to getting what they want don’t really care about the will of the people. They just care about getting what they want.