The New York Times wrote a hit piece on Laurence Tribe, based on the idea that he must be wrong and corrupt because he uses arguments the New York Times doesn’t like.
WASHINGTON — Laurence H. Tribe, the highly regarded liberal scholar of constitutional law, still speaks of President Obama as a proud teacher would of a star student. “He was one of the most amazing research assistants I’ve ever had,” Mr. Tribe said in a recent interview. Mr. Obama worked for him at Harvard Law School, where Mr. Tribe has taught for four decades.
Mr. Tribe went on to serve in the Justice Department during Mr. Obama’s first term and has argued in favor of the legal standing of Mr. Obama’s signature health care law and executive orders on immigration.
Which is why so many in the Obama administration and at Harvard are bewildered and angry that Mr. Tribe, who argued on behalf of Al Gore in the 2000 Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case, has emerged as the leading legal opponent of Mr. Obama’s ambitious efforts to fight global warming.
The Obama administration is always angry at anyone who disagrees with them, because they are trying to run a autocracy, not a democracy. Tribe is arguing that Obama’s activities are illegal.
Mr. Tribe, 73, has been retained to represent Peabody Energy, the nation’s largest coal company, in its legal quest to block an Environmental Protection Agency regulation that would cut carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s coal-fired power plants — the heart of Mr. Obama’s climate change agenda.
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“I feel very comfortable with my relationship with Peabody,” he added. “Somebody wanted my help and it happened to coincide with what I believe.”
But a number of legal scholars and current and former members of the Obama administration say that Mr. Tribe has eroded his credibility by using his platform as a scholar to promote a corporate agenda — specifically, the mining and burning of coal.
In addition to the brief, Mr. Tribe wrote a lengthy public comment on the climate rules that Peabody submitted to the E.P.A. Mr. Tribe’s critics note that his comment, which he echoed in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal in December, includes several references to the virtues of coal, calling it “a bedrock component of our economy.”
The comment also has phrases frequently used by the coal industry. The use of such language, Ms. Freeman and Mr. Lazarus suggested, is typical of paid industry advocates but not of impartial scholars.
Anyone who disagrees with the White House is necessarily corrupt
“The best way to evaluate his claims is to treat them as advocacy and not scholarship,” Ms. Freeman and Mr. Lazarus wrote.
Any arguments which disagree with the White House must be thrown out.
Anger from within the Obama administration about Mr. Tribe’s actions is particularly fierce, although officials declined to comment on the record for fear of escalating the situation.
“Whether he intended it or not, Tribe has been weaponized by the Republican Party in an orchestrated takedown of the president’s climate plan,” said one former administration official.
The White House views democracy, Congress and the US Constitution as a weapon against their regime.
Laurence Tribe Fights Climate Case Against Star Pupil From Harvard, President Obama – NYTimes.com
The New York Times doesn’t present any evidence that Tribe’s viewpoint or arguments are incorrect. Their claim is that because he represents someone they don’t like and goes up against the White House, he must be corrupt and evil. The whole point of the Constitution is to protect the rights of those who are unpopular or in the minority.
Power companies should shut down electricity to the New York Times, and let them find out for themselves if Tribe’s argument is correct. Here is my comment, which of course was censored.
The author’s argument boils down to – “any argument made by the opposition is automatically null, void and evil”
This authors’ mentality is straight out of the darkest periods of human history.
Here are a few good ones they let slip through though.
I find it telling the number of people arguing the destructiveness of coal–as if this has anything to do with whether the EPA regulation is constitutional.
Anyone who fights administrative overreach on the basis of the Constitution deserves our admiration and support. Go, Laurence!
It is not surprising that he is attacked personally, since this seems to be the way things are done now but a more specifically responsive discussion of his opinion would have been a lot more interesting and might have been convincing. The attacks limited to personal attacks tend to suggest he may be right.
This will get laughs amongst left winger sheep, “He’s about to be banned from a lot of cocktail parties.” It does not amuse me. I’d prefer the rebel at my parties, much better conversation when there is challenge and controversy.
I’m a left winger, too. But I treasure honest interpretation of the rule of law more than I treasure all the goals of the left if they have to be met by running over that law. This story, you will notice, does not present Mr Tribe’s case, it plays social politics instead. This is laughable, because a simple statement of how Mr Tribe has it wrong would be more powerful than all the outrage over loyalty shifts and innuendo re who he agrees with. That’s the beauty of an ironclad legal argument; it stands above the clamor.
Lacking the specifics I suspect Mr Tribe is probably correct, based on integrity and the social cowing used here as storyline.
This article is a perfect example of how far liberals in this country have gone off the tracks. And, I’m not talking about the intellectually honest liberal law professor who actually has the integrity and courage to challenge the massive liberal power block in control of the executive branch, most government bureaucracies, academia and the media. America is starving for intellectually honest liberals like Professor Tribe.
