U.S. Rep. Jared Polis
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis is now the second member of Congress to fall victim to John Aravosis’s campaign of misinformation. Chairman Frank was the first.
Today, Polis told Chuck Todd on Hardball (at 5:40):
Well, what a number of us were disappointed with was the President’s decision to defend DOMA and the language he used in a brief a couple of weeks ago. First of all, he could have chosen not to defend it. There’s not a legal requirement to do that. The Attorney General of California chose not to defend Proposition 8 to the state Supreme Court. If he had chosen to defend it, he could have used legal arguments that were a less offensive to the community than some of the citations that were included.
I’m sorry to see a Congressman so clearly get his talking points, without question, directly from AmericaBlog.
Here are four posts to help out Polis and his staff: two from me (first and second), one from Prof. Nan Hunter and a final from Prof. Art Leonard.
Finally, Polis actually expanded from Aravosis’s misstatements also to state that California A.G. Brown somehow should serve as an obvious example for President Obama. Brown decided not to defend a newly passed state constitutional initiative that he argued ran counter to previously existing state constitutional provisions — and got smacked down by the Supreme Court in its opinion for doing so (”The Attorney General’s argument is fundamentally flawed on a number of levels.”). I don’t see how this unsuccessful state example is a pointer for what President Obama should be telling his Justice Department to do in its presumptive defense of a 13-year old law that all agree was validly enacted and has been repeatedly upheld in several federal court challenges.
And Chuck Todd, really? Nothing?
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Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found
Chris,
Thanks man. Keep exposing that douche bag Aravotis. What a pig. I just don’t understand why is it that some people—intelligent ones like Aravotis actually thinks that lies and lack of integrity is a good thing when aiming criticism—as if that validates it. It saddens and enrages me that a guy like that is working overtime to keep gays in a “victim” state of mind.
And he knows exactly what he’s doing. What a jerk.
Thanks again.
~ Derrick aka renwl
I think representative polis misspoke. I doubt he was referring to the novel argument the AG made in the prop 8 cases in the CA supreme court; it sounds like he was talking about the brief he filed in Perry v schwarzenegger.
But the Perry brief is not before the CA Supreme Court; it is before a federal district court in CA. Also, the parallel would make no sense then, because it was CA AG Brown’s job to defend Prop. 8’s CA state constitutionality, just like it’s the federal AG’s job to defend DOMA federal constitutionality.
The options are (1) either Polis is an idiot or (2) he’s been misinformed by the widespread false claims made by Aravosis and others. The latter is slightly more likely.
My point was he misspoke when referringto the California supreme court. He’s done this before. He’s a businessman not a lawyer. The difference between the ca sup court and the us district court for the northern district of ca, which are both in SF, might escape him. Either way the AG had a statutory duty to defend the law and a constitutional duty not to defend unconstitutional laws. Polis’s point that the Obama administration was in a similar position is, I think, well taken.
(1) Where is the constitutional duty not to defend unconstitutional laws?
(2) How does one know ahead of time whether a law will be found unconstitutional or not?