A tale of two judges

Two judges, one a Clinton appointee and one an Obama appointee, made news with their decisions over the last couple days.

In Baltimore, U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake, the aforementioned Clinton appointee, refused to halt Maryland’s new and draconian gun laws, stating she was not convinced the plaintiffs, gun owners and advocacy groups, would suffer irreparable harm if the law took effect. Blake was quoted in a Washington Times story by Meredith Somers as noting, “Potentially the only economic harm could be on behalf of the dealers… There’s a strong public interest in lessening the risk of tragedies.”

So it’s obvious this jurist is an economic expert who ignores the fact that crime is a detriment to the overall economy and places with more (legally-owned) guns on the street tend to have less crime. She also must be a crack shot, because she also stated that “the worry that 10 rounds would not be enough for a homeowner to defend themselves against an intruder ‘appears to be based on a lack of accuracy.'” In my way of thinking it’s better to have more bullets than you need than to run out because you’re limited to ten, but she probably has multiple security personnel so for her there’s more opportunities to incapacitate a would-be attacker.

Yet the overarching question reaches beyond Judge Blake’s decision, which only means the law goes forward to a future court date to be determined. While I think Blake has let her judicial role and political leanings go to her head – as tragedies brought on by armed criminals preying on an unarmed population continue apace – one has to ask whether it was the right move to not back more fully a referendum drive to stop the law in its tracks earlier this year. MDPetitions and those who argued for this method of fighting the law in court certainly rolled snake eyes on this bet, whereas we could have had the law stopped many months ago and perhaps overturned for good next November had the referendum been more strongly backed.

On the other hand, an Obama appointee made a surprising decision in the Eric Holder Fast and Furious case. As my blogging friend Bob McCarty writes:

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled Monday against Eric Holder, saying the U.S. attorney general could no longer hide behind executive privilege and refuse to produce a portion of the records called for in a subpoena issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the United States House of Representatives.

In short, this likely means that a fierce battle will take place soon in the Republican-controlled House to get at the truth about the “Fast and Furious” scandal involving supplying criminals and Mexican drug cartel members with guns that were later used to kill Americans along the nation’s southern border.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the Obama administration won’t obfuscate, connive, or otherwise try to throw cold water on an investigation which would have probably had a Republican president impeached. (With this chief executive, it’s like take your pick between Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandals, and probably a couple others already forgotten thanks to the next shiny object.)

Nor is this the first time Judge Jackson stymied the Obama regime, as she also ruled against the EPA in a 2012 case involving their withdrawal of a waste disposal permit for a West Virginia coal mining project.

So we see once again the problem of rolling the dice and depending on a court to rule correctly or stop bad law.

One thought on “A tale of two judges”

  1. Refer to me as a “blogger” or “blogging friend” again, and I’ll dispatch a team to keep you from doing it again. I’m an investigative journalist and author of two nonfiction books. I ain’t no stinkin’ blogger!!!! LOL

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