Holder: U.S. Arizona Immigration Lawsuit Isn't Political

[cal04]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-11/arizona-immigration-lawsuit-isn-t-political-u-s-attorney-general-says.html

Politics wasn’t behind the U.S. government’s decision to sue Arizona to block the state’s new law aimed at reducing illegal immigration, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said.

It’s “not true at all” that the Democratic Obama administration is trying to brand Republicans as anti- immigration before the November midterm elections, Holder said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” today.

“The basis for this was a legal determination by those of us at the Justice Department that the law was inconsistent with the Constitution,” Holder said. “There are a substantial number of Republicans and people in law enforcement who thought the decision that we made to file the lawsuit was, in fact, the correct one.”

(snip)
Holder also said in the CBS interview that “a variety of entities and a variety of people” are the subject of the government’s criminal investigation into the BP Plc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

[CTyankee]

1. That is correct. The Constitution is pretty clear on this issue.

States cannot make their own foreign policy nor their own immigration policy. That is a federal responsibility.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Unfortunately, the AZ law is neither

While the media is claiming this is a slam dunk, the lawyers I know, including law professors are not so sure. Many expect small parts to be declared illegal but it will be a narrow enough decision that it can be worded around. They do not expect anything sweeping from the current SCOTUS.

[CTyankee]

3. So what is the Justice Dept.'s rationale here? nt

[blondeatlast]

4. Oh, that pesky Constitution, always getting in the way of political opportunism.

The DoJ is right to pursue the law.

FWIW, I'm a LONG time Arizonan.

[slackmaster]

5. What nonsense. The AZ immigration law is political, therefore any response to it is also political.

Especially a response by the Executive branch.

[slackmaster]

6. Double-tap

:nuke:

[Igel]

7. Odd set of presuppositions.

One is that if a decision is legally correct it cannot also serve an important political goal--or that all prosecutions and suits that are legally justified must be pursued. Ofc ourse, neither is true, but must be true for his logic to hold.

In other words, Holder made a claim and didn't actually bother to support it. What evidence he could adduce to conclusively prove it is beyond me, but "trust me" is hardly it. One thing to start off with would be to say that proving that it isn't a political decision to any extent is impossible because it helps set where the bar for proof should be set. Saying he'd gotten no indication from the White House that it supports or decries the decision to file suit would be a start--but would be counterfactual. Showing that it runs against what the WH or the party Holder belongs to should do to secure greater political benefit would also be counterfactual.

It would help if he showed that defending the jurisdiction of the executive and legislative branch is plausibly his entire goal. Of course, that means with the DOMA ruling in Mass. (?) he has no choice but to appeal and argue strongly for its being overturned and that the administration can't just decide ex parte to stop enforcing DADT. It matters if the entirety of his decisions can't be taken to show an ideological bias, and he should show this to be the case. Otherwise, he's left with little defense against "ideological bias" as a contributing factor in his decisions. That leads to "political decision."

I take this to be the underlying reason for the phrase that "It's 'not true at all' that the Democratic Obama administration is trying to brand Republicans as anti-immigration before the November midterm elections." There are ways to show that this is conclusively not true but all rely on some trick to specify a specific meaning to refute. I read it primarily as his saying the Democratic Party as a whole may be trying to do the branding, Obama may be trying to do the branding, Congressional leaders may be trying to do the branding, but his administration per se, i.e., Holder himself and his apparatus, wouldn't engage in politics. But that inexorably leads back to the previous paragraph.

Better to not say anything or have his boss deny that any influence or pressure was posed rather than provide footage for a commercial: "Holder says the DOJ isn't political, but look at X, Y, and Z, all aligned with Dem political preferences and interest groups; look at the same thing said about the * DOJ, and how it was condemned by these Dem politicians, saying that the DOJ must be above reproach." No, it doesn't matter that counterexamples can be given.