November 9, 2010

DADT and the Courts

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Responding to my post earlier today about Republicans, not Democrats, being primarily responsible for blocking repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Glenn Greenwald tweeted:

DADT was gone – done – and Barack Obama brought it back, probably for years. That’s just a fact.

Glenn was talking about the fact that the Department of Justice is appealing a September district court ruling that held DADT unconstitutional. But this is an argument I have a real problem with. It’s not because I have a problem with court rulings on issues like this, but because I have a problem with district court rulings on issues like this being used as a handy excuse for presidents to overturn laws they don’t like.

Let’s face it: if you pick your jurisdiction right you can probably find a district court judge to rule just about anything unconstitutional. It would be easy, for example, to find a district court judge somewhere to say that the healthcare reform law was unconstitutional. If this happened in 2013 and President Palin decided not to appeal the ruling, thus overturning the law, what would we think of this? Not much, and rightfully so. A district court judgment is just flatly not sufficient reason to overturn an act of Congress.

I guess the reason this is on my mind is that George Bush is back in the news, and it strikes me that this is the same category of reasoning he used to justify the use of torture on enemy combatants. Bush, of course, didn’t bother with the fig leaf of a court ruling, but he used OLC memos to provide the same kind of excuse to uphold only the laws he wanted to uphold. A lot of liberals spent a lot of time condemning this at the time, and we were right to do so. This is really not a tactic we should be defending now just because the law at stake is one we don’t like.

On a different note, I sometimes think that Republicans must be busting a gut over all this. Here they are, working loudly and relentlessly to prevent the repeal of DADT, and what’s the result? Lots of liberals sniping at each other. You can almost hear Karl Rove cackling over his Diet Coke. Political strategy rarely pays off so beautifully.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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