The Most Lawless Administration In History?

Katie Pavlich has a sobering (I hope) article in The Hill asking, “Will The Next Attorney General Stand For the Rule of Law?” It provides chapter and verse of a number of ways in which the current attorney general and his boss do not.

Alas, her article could have been even longer. It did not mention what John Fund asked National Review readers several months ago: “Did you know the Obama administration’s position has been defeated in at least 13 – thirteen — cases before the Supreme Court since January 2012 that were unanimous decisions?” Historically, he points out, the Justice Department usually wins about 70% of its cases before the Supreme Court, “But in each of the last three terms, the Court has ruled against the administration a majority of the time.” Fund quotes George Mason law professor Ilya Somin, who told the Washington Times: “When the administration loses significant cases in unanimous decisions and cannot even hold the votes of its own appointees . . . it is an indication that they adopted such an extreme position on the scope of federal power that even generally sympathetic judges could not even support it.”

No “executive actions” or multiple Obamacare rewrites were discussed. And then there’s the matter of unprofessional conduct, and worse, by federal prosecutors. As Reason Magazine has reported:

USA Today published the results of a six-month investigation into misconduct by America’s federal prosecutors. The investigation turned up what Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman called a pattern of “serious, glaring misconduct.” Reporters Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy documented 201 cases in which federal prosecutors were chastised by federal judges for serious ethical breaches, ranging from withholding important exculpatory evidence to lying in court to making incriminating but improper remarks in front of juries.

The Reason article congratulated the USA Today reporters but pointed out that the latter’s list of 201 examples barely scratched the surface since it did not include, for example, a number of cases Reason mentioned that it had written about.

Oh, the USA Today and Reason articles were published in 2010, not even two years into the Obama administration.

Is the Obama administration the most lawless in history? I suppose it’s too soon to say, since unfortunately it’s not history yet.

Say What?