The Federal Bathroom War

In the past month, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory dug himself a very deep political hole and then crawled into it when he, with an unhelpful assist from his state legislature, sought to defend a new law about transgender people and their access to bathrooms. It was, as I wrote earlier this week,an astonishingly foolish decision for a man running for re-election. Whatever the merits of North Carolina’s position on the law or the issue, volunteering to be the man to stand in the bathroom door is pretty much the definition of political stupidity. Casting himself in such a role in what appeared to be an escalation of a new battle in the culture wars over gender and sexual identity was embarrassing.

But if it was ridiculous for a state government to start involving itself in the question of who should or should not be admitted to particular bathrooms, how crazy is it for this to become something of a national priority for the federal government?

That’s the question we have to ask today after word spread that a letter signed by officials from both the Department of Justice and the Department of Education to every public school district in the nation directing them to allow transgender students to choose what bathroom they wish to use and tacitly threatening all of them with legal action and perhaps loss of federal aid if they do something to thwart the will of the Obama administration.

Regardless of how one might feel about the issue, this is an example of federal overreach on an Olympian scale. The Justice and Education departments are not acting to carry out the orders of a court or to implement any law passed by Congress. Indeed, there are no such orders or legislation for them to enforce. Instead, they are choosing to interpret Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments to the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a creative fashion unsanctioned by any authority but their own.

If Congress had chosen to amend Title IX in this fashion it would be the duty of both departments to enforce the law in that fashion. If the federal courts were to decide that, against all the evidence, that it was the intention of the framers of a measure or the clear meaning of a law that is best known for mandating equal access to scholastic sports for girls and women, to apply to transgendered people and bathrooms, that, too, would be legal. But while perhaps we should have grown used to this sort of thing from a president who believes he has the right to enact and then enforce laws that Congress has specifically chosen not to pass, today’s letter is still an act that betrays a contempt for the rule of law that is breathtaking in its scope and dimension.

Let’s agree that any acts of discrimination or abuse that might be involved in the treatment of transgender students would be abhorrent. It is easy to sympathize with some of the sentiments about discrimination articulated by Attorney General Loretta Lynch when she was discussing the conflict with North Carolina. But it is another thing for government to threaten to use its awesome power to intimidate local officials in every state, county and town in the country to enforce non-existent guidelines on an issue that has never been adjudicated or legislated on the federal level.

The only possible result of this sort of grandstanding by the administration is legal chaos. School districts are being asked to deal with an issue that is relatively new on the national agenda. Indeed, up until the North Carolina brouhaha, it is something that, however serious to those involved, had not been subject to the sort of discussion and debate that might make it intelligible to ordinary Americans who are now wondering why the federal government is issuing complicated and confusing orders to schools about the use of bathrooms or other facilities.

It may well be that the majority of Americans will ultimately agree with the administration if, like the once highly charged but now almost uncontroversial notion of gay marriage, if it is the subject of debate, legislation, and litigation. But while it was easy to see why a majority in a recent poll opposed a North Carolina law that was framed in a manner that made it seem, as Lynch claimed, “mean-spirited,” I highly doubt there is anything like a majority to be found in favor of a sweeping federal mandate demanding transgender bathroom access across the nation. To the contrary, it is almost certain that most Americans don’t want the federal government imposing such mandates on local school districts, especially when such rules are untethered to any legislation or court rulings on the subject.

Though McCrory and the GOP-majority in the North Carolina legislature that began this confusing debate have no reason to be proud of themselves, this latest action by the administration almost makes their decisions look reasonable. An issue that raises difficult and complex issues about privacy and the rights of all students may be capable of resolution given a commitment by reasonable people to be fair to all involved. But the imposition of a confusing federal mandate that has been issued on what must be considered a legal whim or wish rather than to enforce an actual law is bound to make peaceful accommodations on a local level far less likely, if not completely impossible.

It is a certainty this rule will be challenged by local or state authorities, and unless the next Congress passes a law backing up the letter, it is likely to be overruled by the courts, as many examples of Obama administration imperial overreach have been. But before that happens the government will once again prove that it is usually more of a problem than a solution to perplexing issues. Rather than enforce the law, the administration has once again tried to make law. Whether or not you like the impact of this ruling, everyone, be they liberal or conservative, ought to worry about a process that substitutes the whims of any administration for law and due process.

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The French Will Make Things Worse

With the Middle East peace process lying dead in the water for two years, what harm could come from an effort led by France to revive talks between Israel and the Palestinians? The answer is that, whenever one thinks things can’t get worse, the reality of this conflict is always there to remind us that yes, things can always get worse. Moreover, they almost always do when even the best-intended people try to pretend that another conference or paper or the right negotiator can solve a problem that has nothing to do with forums, resolutions or even skillful diplomacy.

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Claiming a Scalp from the IRS

Nearly two years have passed since IRS Commissioner John Koskinen’s famous testimony before the House Oversight Committee. His testimony in relation to the scandalous claim that its tax exemption division tied up the applications of conservative groups and, thus, limited their ability to participate in political activities in 2012 was judged by many to be unsatisfactory, at best. For those less inclined to be so charitable, Koskinen’s testimony was deemed insulting, flippant, and actively misleading. On Friday, House Republicans invited the IRS commissioner back to Capitol Hill, but the offer was hardly cordial. Koskinen will be testifying in hearings that will determine whether or not the House of Representatives will vote to impeach him over the allegation that he misled Congress and violated the terms of a subpoena.

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Remember the Clinton Cash Scandals?

Does anyone remember the Clinton Cash scandal? Thursday’s Wall Street Journal report about the way the Clinton Global Initiative set up a deal that benefitted a company with ties to the former First Family should ring a bell. A year ago, the political world was focused on a wide-ranging scandal involving conflicts of interest, possible corruption, and sweetheart deal involving the former president and secretary of state. The publication of Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash not only caused a furor because of the serious questions it raised about the Clinton Global Initiative and the private foundation that is run now by Bill and Chelsea Clinton, but also because it encouraged the New York Times, the Washington Post,and the Journal to conduct their own investigations. Those efforts uncovered even more questionable conduct about the doings of Hillary Clinton, who was then and still is today the likely presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

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The New Republican Radicals

Well before Donald Trump became the presumptive leader of the Republican Party, the outlines of a schism within its ranks were apparent. The precise factors that precipitated this crack-up were and remain elusive. Some on the right argued that it was conservatism itself that no longer appealed to the GOP’s base voters. Others contended that it wasn’t arguments over policy but strategy that created fissures within the movement. The mercurial Donald Trump has not lent much clarity to this debate, and his deliberate vagueness has allowed critics of the GOP to impose on his candidacy their priors and biases. For the time being, the fault lines within the party are still more easily explained by disputes over tactics rather than the average primary voter’s ill-defined frustrations over this or the other policy. To distill the matter further, the GOP split has been driven primarily by Republican voters’ contempt toward incrementalism. These Republicans want radical change, and they want it yesterday.

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First Shot of a New Hezbollah War?

Mustafa Amine Badreddine, Hezbollah’s military chief (i.e., chief terrorist), has died in a mysterious blast near the Damascus airport, which is widely suspected to have been a bomb dropped by an Israeli warplane. Whatever the exact circumstances of his demise, it can only be cheered for he was one of the deadliest terrorists in the world.

Badreddine had a great deal in common with his cousin and brother-in-law, the late Imad Mughniyeh, whose responsibilities he assumed after Mughniyeh was assassinated in a joint Israeli-American operation in 2008. Both were poor boys from the Shiite slums of Beirut, who got their start with the PLO and achieved their greatest notoriety as de facto Iranian operatives in Hezbollah.

As Omri Ceren of The Israel Project reminded us, both were involved in the massive October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 Americans. Just two months later, Badreddine masterminded another series of attacks in Kuwait, which killed six at targets including the U.S. Embassy. In the 1990s, he helped to establish Hezbollah’s Unit 1800, which helped to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A decade later, he created Unit 3800 to carry out attacks against America and allied forces in Iraq, adding to the amount of American blood on his hands. In 2005, he masterminded the murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri with a massive car bomb. More recently, he has been supervising Hezbollah’s operations in Syria in support of the Assad regime, which has been responsible for killing the vast majority of the 400,000 plus dead in Syria’s civil war.

In short, Badreddine was one of the worst mass murderers in the world, and he got what was coming to him. But to say that justice was done is not the same thing as suggesting that it will make much of a difference. It won’t. Hezbollah has a deep bench with no doubt lots of other terrorists ready to step up and fill Badreddine’s spot as he himself stepped in for Mughniyeh.

Indeed, Hezbollah long ago completed the process of transforming itself from a ragtag terrorist organization into a quasi-state with a quasi-conventional army and, even more importantly, a vast missile and rocket force. Hezbollah has been flexing its muscles in Syria, where it has dispatched its fighters to keep Assad in power. Meanwhile in Lebanon, it forms a shadow government that is far more powerful than the nominal state and its army. Hezbollah has grown far more threatening than it was in 2006, when it fought its last war against Israel. Ceren reported that Hezbollah now has “roughly 150,000 rockets, allowing the group to saturation bomb Israeli population centers with 1,500 rockets and missiles per day for over three months.”

By killing Badreddine and occasionally bombing Hezbollah weapons convoys, Israel is doing no more than chipping around the edges of the Hezbollah empire — which is certain to grow even more powerful now that Iran, its sponsor, will have access to the world oil markets.

No one has any easy or obvious solution for defeating Hezbollah, but if the U.S. were serious about accomplishing that goal — and it clearly is not, at least not under the Obama administration — it would train and arm a capable Syrian military force that could defeat Hezbollah’s power grab in Syria. That would of course also mean defeating its ally, Bashar Assad. Syrian Sunnis are more than happy to fight against Hezbollah and Assad, but the U.S. has not provided the necessary support, thus allowing the rebel movement to be hijacked by Islamist extremist organizations such as the al-Nusra Front and ISIS.

If Hezbollah were to suffer defeat in Syria, where it has made such a big commitment, its aura of power would be damaged at home in Lebanon as well. The U.S. could then further reduce Hezbollah’s influence by aiding its numerous Lebanese foes, including many Shiites who are by no means happy to have their interests subordinated to those of Iran.

This strategy, alas, will never be implemented as long as the main focus of American policy is detente with revolutionary Iran, a state dedicated to “Death to America.” That detente policy has been the dominant theme of the Obama administration. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes next.

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