My book, which came out this time last year, is now on a steep discount for Amazon at the low, low price of $8.12. That’s a 71% discount off the cover price! If you haven’t already, consider buying a copy.
My book, which came out this time last year, is now on a steep discount for Amazon at the low, low price of $8.12. That’s a 71% discount off the cover price! If you haven’t already, consider buying a copy.
Villanova LawProf Tuan Samahon has been waged in a lengthy FOIA court battle to obtain records concerning, among other things, the relationship between President Johnson and his crony Justice Abe Fortas. The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story focusing on one of the more bizarre allegations in the paper: that LBJ ordered Fortas, along with J. Edgar Hoover, to dig up gossip, and try to break up the relationship Johnson’s daughter was having with actor George Hamilton!
For a few months in 1966, the budding romance between film star George Hamilton and Lynda Bird Johnson, daughter of the 36th president, was the talk of Washington. …
But a previously confidential FBI file – which a Philadelphia judge last week outlined in an opinion and ordered to be released – shows for the first time how far Johnson went to protect his daughter and his presidency.
The file indicates Johnson enlisted Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to investigate every rumor they could find about Hamilton, including claims that he was gay and a draft-dodger, in a bid to dig up dirt on the actor.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno called it not only an improper probe but a “potentially illegal use of executive power.”
The documents were the focus of a four-year court battle by a Villanova Law School professor, Tuan Samahon, and his students. But they also offer a window into a presidential administration and an FBI that apparently thought little of violating the privacy of American citizens – an accusation that has resonated for modern presidential administrations.
According to Robreno, who reviewed the controversial file, the documents ended up reflecting most poorly on the FBI itself.
“This case is about the ability of the federal government to pry into the private lives of U.S. citizens with virtual impunity,” he wrote in his opinion. “The file can be read as an effort by the FBI to uncover embarrassing details about a private citizen as a personal favor to the president.”
The article discusses how Samahon pursued these documents:
The FBI file burnishes a long-established record of the excesses of Hoover’s agency and Johnson’s willingness to use it to investigate perceived threats. But that wasn’t what Samahon, who teaches courses on constitutional law and federal courts, initially went looking for.
He wanted to know what role the FBI may have played in the 1969 resignation of Fortas from the highest court after only four years. Fortas, a Johnson appointee to the court, had been the president’s former attorney and longtime confidant.
Samahon filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2010 to see a memo that he hoped would give him material for a book on Fortas. At the time, he believed it could indicate the FBI used knowledge of some illicit relationship Fortas had with a man to pressure him into disclosing confidential information about a Supreme Court case.
The Department of Justice released the memo but redacted a single name, saying it could reveal embarrassing details about a private citizen.
Samahon rejected the argument, saying there was no legal reason to keep the name confidential, but the FBI didn’t budge. So Samahon put his students to work, and in 2012 sued for the documents’ release, as well as for the release of the file containing the memo. Samahon said 19 students and Beth Lyon, another Villanova professor, devoted many hours to the case over two years.
The memo Samahon wanted was a two-page report by Cartha DeLoach, deputy director of the FBI and Hoover’s right-hand man.
DeLoach, then the third-highest-ranking official in the FBI, had investigated some of the nation’s most notorious crimes, including the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was a Hoover loyalist with close ties to Johnson, and many believed he regularly leaked information to the White House about the most salacious FBI investigations.
Here are the specific allegations concerning Fortas, who by 1966 was already on the Court.
As the romance blossomed between Hamilton and the president’s daughter in early 1966, DeLoach and Fortas were given the uncommon task of sabotaging the relationship. The president, DeLoach wrote in his memoir, also wanted “a full rundown” on Hamilton.
“As far as the president was concerned, Fortas’ seat on the Supreme Court didn’t preclude him from doing a little moonlighting for the president,” DeLoach wrote.
DeLoach and Fortas had a laugh over it, according to DeLoach, then began what DeLoach called a “discreet background check,” reviewing the actor’s family, friends, credit history, draft deferment, and more.
DeLoach became anxious as they failed to turn up anything damaging.
“Every few days I would hustle over to Abe’s office in the Supreme Court building,” he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Hoover’s FBI: The Inside Story by Hoover’s Trusted Lieutenant. “He would sweep in, his robes fluttering, and the two of us would pore over the gossip columns and try to think of ways to break up a young couple in love. . . . Each day we expected the president to call and chew us out.”
When it was clear there was no more to be done, Fortas called to thank DeLoach for his help. DeLoach preserved the conversation in a memo to his boss.
“Justice Fortas called at 10:30 this morning to express appreciation for the information the Director had me furnish him concerning the George Hamilton matter,” the memo states. “Justice Fortas advised he agreed with the Director that no further action need be taken at this time.”
The article also addresses allegations that Fortas frequented a male prostitute.
In fact, Fortas later confronted claims that he had a dalliance with a male prostitute. In 1967, DeLoach informed Fortas the prostitute had alleged having a sexual relationship with the justice. Fortas, according to the FBI memo on the incident, denied the allegation and thanked DeLoach for informing him.
I have heard some other rumors about this allegation.
This just may be the biggest en banc decision I can recall. Halbig is it? Really Big! (I’ve been saving that pun for a really long time).
The New York Times Editorial Board has taken a position on whether the D.C. Circuit should grant review in Halbig. Has the Times ever editorialized concerning an en banc call before?
Now the fight has shifted to an arcanelegaldebate over whether the full appeals court in the District of Columbia should rehear the case or allow it to be appealed directly to the Supreme Court.
The law’s defenders would prefer a rehearing. They are confident that the full court, with a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents, would overturn the panel’s ruling. The opponents want to fast-track the case to the Supreme Court, hoping that the five conservative justices will uphold the ruling. They argue that there should be no rehearing because the case is not of “exceptional importance,” one factor the appeals court considers in deciding whether to order a rehearing.
The stakes here are high, since the Supreme Court is almost certain to step in when different federal appeals courts reach opposing results on the same question. If the full D.C. appeals court were to overturn the panel’s ruling, there would be less reason for the Supreme Court to get involved. But the legal maneuvering should not obscure the fact that six of the eight federal judges who have considered the challengers’ subsidy claim have seen right through it.
I’ve explained that this perception–that Obama nominees will rule for Obama–is a “dangerous mindset.” The politicization of the courts may seem advantageous in the short run, but I fear what it means in the long run. If we learned any lesson from NFIB, it’s that courts do not react well to pressure from the media–or at least they don’t react the way we think they will.
Let’s assume that en banc review is granted. Then for the next 6 months, there will be pressure on the D.C. Circuit–in particular the newly-appointed judges–to uphold the law. Do you really think this is the type of pressure the judges would want to go through? Especially when the Court would likely grant cert in any event? The D.C. Circuit, keeping with their practice of seldom granting en banc review, may be counseled by letting this one go, and allowing the Court to deal with it.
As a reminder, the SG’s Brief in opposition to cert is due on September 3.
One of the greatest frauds (and there are many) of Kelo is the farce that the requirement of a “comprehensive plan” prevents abuse. This shibboleth is absurd, as courts have found the comprehensive plans need not be comprehensive, nor plans at all. Taken seriously, Kelo will permit the exercise of eminent domain whenever there is any idea written down about how property may be used to improve the tax base. This usually gives any non-stupid staffer the ability to concoct some hair-brain scheme to take someone’s property. But in the past, there had to be something on paper.
And then there’s New Jersey. As you may have read, Atlantic City is in dire conditions. Several casinos just filed for bankruptcy and are closing down, including The Revel. Earlier, to help those failing casinos, the City had decided to take the home of Charlie Birnbaum, a 67-year-old piano tuner, whose parents were Holocaust survivors. Now, that the Casino has gone bankrupt, the plans have totally fallen apart. So does this stop the government from taking the property? Of course not. With no plans, but a hope and a dream, the city is proceeding with the eminent domain proceedings.
The lawyer for the Casino Authority explains that there will be a comprehensive plan one day, which is good enough for taking the property now.
Stuart M. Lederman, the lawyer for the casino authority, said that the details of the shops and restaurants to be erected can await a developer’s conceptions.
Unbelievable. The best laid schemes of mice and men. But with Steinbeck, there was actually a plan!
This comprehensive plan is neither comprehensive, nor a plan, nor even an actual idea. It’s a work of fiction. An IOU that one day there will be a comprehensive plan. If this survives Kelo, then anything will survive Kelo. A promise to act is not cannot possibly suffice. But again, this is New Jersey.
Yesterday, after the President admitted that he didn’t have a strategy with respect to ISIS, I tweeted, somewhat facetiously, “Is it possible the President also doesn’t have a strategy on immigration?” Since his June press conference in the Rose Garden, where the President announced that he would go it alone on immigration, countless rumors have trickled throughout D.C. The most outlandish rumors suggested the President would extend DACA to the 5 million family members of the Dreamers. Rep. Gutierrez insisted the President would do this! We were told, at various points, that this news would come around Labor Day. But nothing was confirmed by the Administration. I wondered, much like the uncertainty over how to deal with ISIS, maybe the President also doesn’t have a strategy on immigration?
Now, I find that I was somewhat right. The Times reports that the President will ditch his plans to act in September, and will now wait (shocker) for after the mid-term elections to decide.
Under pressure from nervous Democratic Senate candidates in tight races, President Obama is rethinking the timing of his pledge to act on his own to reshape the nation’s immigration system by summer’s end, and could instead delay some or all of his most controversial proposals until after the midterm elections in November, according to people familiar with White House deliberations.
The president vowed in late June to act unilaterally out of frustration with what he termed Republican obstruction, and said he would announce a decision soon after receiving recommendations from top aides at the end of the summer.
But now Mr. Obama and his aides appear to be backing away from a firm commitment to that timing. In remarks to reporters on Thursday, Mr. Obama hinted at the possibility of a delay.
In a terrible choice of words, Josh Earnest (an inapt name for a Press Secretary if there ever was one), says that the President wont put “the cart before the horse.”
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Friday that the president was “as determined as ever to take that kind of action on his own.” But he and other White House officials declined to repeat the president’s earlier pledge of an announcement by the end of this summer, or to say whether the president was considering delaying some of his decisions until later this year.
“That’s putting the cart before the horse,” Mr. Earnest said. “Those who are speculating about how those recommendations might be implemented are a little ahead of themselves.”
Why is this word choice tragic? The President’s “I have on strategy” blunder yesterday was framed in almost identical terms–which makes me think this was a vetted talking point. Or not.
“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” Obama told reporters during a White House news briefing. “We don’t have a strategy yet.”
This is very significant,as we were assured, all summer, that we would get unilateral executive action soon! I imagine immigration rights groups are now getting very, very nervous. They may not get what they were hoping for.
A person familiar with the White House deliberations disputed part of a report on Friday in The Los Angeles Times that suggested Mr. Obama might announce tighter enforcement measurements in the coming days and then delay until after the election a proposal to shield from deportation millions of illegal immigrants.
“The notion that we would divide up enforcement and the other recommendations is highly unlikely,” the person said. But the person declined to say whether an announcement might be delayed or divided up in another way.
The debate within the White House is fierce:
Inside the White House, the timing of an announcement has become the subject of a fierce debate.
Some of Mr. Obama’s advisers are urging him to postpone it, fearful of the political ramifications of a sweeping action to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation and provide many of them official work papers. Such a move by the president, some senior officials worry, could set off a pitched fight with Republicans and dash hopes for Democrats running in conservative states.
Democratic control of the Senate hinges on the outcomes of about a half-dozen close races in states where Mr. Obama is not popular, and strategists fear that an immigration announcement could complicate Democratic efforts to prevail in those states, including several races in states that Mr. Obama lost in both 2008 and 2012.
Wait a minute? I thought that immigration reform was a sure winner! How could it be that it would hurt electoral prospects. Maybe this issue is more divisive than we were led to believe.
Others in the White House almost want the President to dare the Republicans, and hope they drag him into an impeachment battle.
But others inside the White House are pushing the president to stick to his promised schedule, regardless of the immediate political consequences. They argue that Republicans will criticize the president and attack Democratic candidates even if Mr. Obama delays parts of his announcement until after the election.
And some argue that the Republican reaction — which could include calls for impeachment of the president or a move to shut down the government — could benefit Democrats politically by creating a backlash against Republicans among voters.
In any event, the President continues to cite congressional intransigence as a rational to act alone:
“Some of these things do affect timelines, and we’re just going to be working through as systematically as possible in order to get this done,” Mr. Obama said. “But have no doubt, in the absence of congressional action, I’m going to do what I can to make sure the system works better.”
But working around this gridlock (also known as bypassing Congress) has a cost:
At the same time, the president’s repeated efforts to go around a gridlocked Congress have already prompted a Republican lawsuit alleging that he has abused the executive powers of his office. A decision to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation would provide new ammunition to critics who accuse Mr. Obama of building an “imperial presidency” with little regard to the nation’s laws. …
“If he acts unilaterally right now and goes in and grants five million people status in the country, I think he blows up the debate, destroys the debate,” said Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican. “He is going to ignite a furor in the country if he thinks he can do that by executive fiat.”
…
A broader move could risk an impeachment conflagration that could consume the remainder of his presidency, and a clash over the balance of powers between the executive and the legislative branches of government could reverberate for decades.
Today a colleague presented a paper on DACA, and I had a lengthy chat afterwards about immigration policy. I recognize I am in a small minority of people who support the DREAM Act but oppose DACA. I appreciate the policy objectives of providing some status to the DREAMERS, but not if it is done in an unconstitutional manner.