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Genero36
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
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StevenHW
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 10983
Location: Sacramento, California
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 Posted: 01/31/17 8:13 pm ::: |
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| Why does this remind me of the time when Elliot Richardson resigned his Attorney General position under duress during the Nixon Administration during the height of the Watergate scandal? All this because Richardson refused to fire Archibald Cox as the Special Prosecutor? (Richardson's second-in-command, Deputy Attorney General Williams Ruckelshaus also submitted his resignation for the same reason)
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ArtBest23
Joined: 02 Jul 2013
Posts: 14550
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| Posted: 01/31/17 11:42 pm ::: |
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It's easy to try to equate her to Richardson, but there are a couple serious questions about how she went about things.
First, many feel the proper course would have been for her to have resigned in protest, like Richardson and Ruckelshouse did, rather than direct the department not to defend an action by the President. I think that's probably correct.
Second, her memo was murkey as to whether she actually had determined as a legal matter that the order was, in its entirety, illegal and unenforceable. Rather, she wrote that she was "not convinced" the order was legal. That's pretty shaky. It's her responsibility to decide, and to be sure, and not to issue a direction like this until she is. Reportedly her Office of Legal Counsel had already blessed it. There may at least have been some parts of the order that were legal and she should have been willing to defend those portions.
So while I applaud her principles, I'm not sure she necessarily went about this in the best or most appropriate way, and by directing DOJ not to defend any portion of the Executive Order, may have gone too far.
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CamrnCrz1974
Joined: 18 Nov 2004
Posts: 18371
Location: Phoenix
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| Posted: 02/01/17 11:02 am ::: |
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| ArtBest23 wrote: |
It's easy to try to equate her to Richardson, but there are a couple serious questions about how she went about things.
First, many feel the proper course would have been for her to have resigned in protest, like Richardson and Ruckelshouse did, rather than direct the department not to defend an action by the President. I think that's probably correct.
Second, her memo was murkey as to whether she actually had determined as a legal matter that the order was, in its entirety, illegal and unenforceable. Rather, she wrote that she was "not convinced" the order was legal. That's pretty shaky. It's her responsibility to decide, and to be sure, and not to issue a direction like this until she is. Reportedly her Office of Legal Counsel had already blessed it. There may at least have been some parts of the order that were legal and she should have been willing to defend those portions.
So while I applaud her principles, I'm not sure she necessarily went about this in the best or most appropriate way, and by directing DOJ not to defend any portion of the Executive Order, may have gone too far. |
I rarely agree with ArBest23, but I completely agree with Art on this one. Her memo was unclear if there was a determination that the order was illegal and unenforceable. It seemed as if she was dancing around it.
Resigning would have been the proper course to protest if she was not entirely convinced of the order's illegality.
Still, I applaud her principles.
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