Cooper's workload
Published May 18, 2016
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Roy Cooper[/caption]
Editorial by Greensboro News- Record, May 18, 2016.
The war of words between Gov. Pat McCrory and Attorney General Roy Cooper is typical for political opponents. But one line of attack employed by McCrory deserves a closer look.
“We haven’t had an attorney general in North Carolina in several years,” the governor said at the Republican state convention in Greensboro May 7. “I’m running against a very liberal full-time politician.”
Cooper, a Democrat who’s challenging the incumbent governor, invited the charge by refusing to defend House Bill 2 against legal challenges. The decision even prompted a May 15 article in The Washington Post headlined, “Is it legal for North Carolina’s attorney general to not defend the state’s bathroom law?”
Setting aside the answer to that question for a moment, the fact is that Cooper has been a very busy attorney general for the past several years defending the state against hail storms of lawsuits.
Those include:
• Challenges in state and federal courts to legislative and congressional redistricting maps.
• An effort by the city of Asheville to stop a state takeover of its water system.
• Actions in state and federal courts to block election law changes.
• Opposition to the effort to strip teachers of earned tenure rights.
• A suit by the North Carolina Association of Educators against a law aimed to stop the deduction of dues from members’ paychecks.
• An effort in Wake County to stop legislative changes to commissioners’ districts.
• A complaint by the N.C. NAACP about legislative building rules.
• A challenge to “The Woman’s Right to Know Act,” which required physicians to show pregnant women an ultrasound before the patients could obtain abortions.
• A breach of contract suit by state troopers contending they had been improperly denied pay raises.
• The town of Boone’s challenge to an act stripping it of extraterritorial zoning jurisdiction.
• An effort to block the state’s plan to build a toll lane on Interstate 77.
• The governor’s suit against the legislature over a separation of powers dispute.
• A suit contending that a retention election scheme the legislature created for N.C. Supreme Court justices was unconstitutional.
Most of these cases were losers from the start, but Cooper and his staff dutifully stood up for them in court. Sometimes, the legislature and governor hired their own lawyers as well, adding to the legal bill for taxpayers. In the teacher tenure case, the state lost in the trial court, at the Court of Appeals and at the N.C. Supreme Court, a clean sweep, and an expensive one for the state.
State law requires the attorney general to “defend all actions in which the state may be a party.” Cooper has not done that. Yet, he’s also required to uphold federal law and the U.S. Constitution. He declined to defend North Carolina’s marriage amendment after federal courts already had struck down similar measures in other states. Any defense put up by Cooper would have been a waste of time and money.
The same may very well be true for HB 2. But the final resolution of the federal lawsuits over HB 2 won’t occur before another verdict is delivered: on Election Day.
Voters will decide between McCrory and Cooper. And sometimes, the political judgment is just as important as what the courts say.
May 19, 2016 at 10:24 am
Norm Kelly says:
Some facts matter to libs. Most facts are a pain in the butt for libs so they are simply ignored.
Fact: Roy's job is to defend laws passed by the legislature & signed into law by the governor. Fact: Roy has refused to do his job on at least 2 occasions now. Fact: when you refuse to do the job you were hired to do, you no longer deserve to hold that job.
So, if Roy is unwilling to do his job, preferring his ideological position, should he continue to have that job? And, if Roy refuses to do his current job, why would we want to promote him to a more important job?
Is Roy defended for refusing to do his job because he's a lib? Is it the lib media allies that are defending Roy? The Duke coal ash spill was the responsibility and fault of the demon party, both governors and legislators, but their allies in the media try to convince us that it was Pat and only Pat who was at fault. Oh, forgive me, the lib media allies want to place some level of blame on the Republican-led legislature. But no matter how you slice it, the demon party allies are rallying around Roy because he's a demon and only because he's a demon. If ANY Republican refused to do their job, say a county clerk refusing to wed a queer couple, the lib media allies would scream bloody murder. How do we know this also is a FACT? Cuz they did it with the clerk but refuse to do it to Roy and even come out to defend Roy. Republican (or Christian) = roasted by media, told to resign. Demon = full support by lib media, complete defense by lib media, forgiveness by lib media sometimes cuz the rest of the time lib media refuses to even recognize the failure of a demon pol! When a demon pol fails, they are considered more qualified for promotion by their allies and leadership of their party.
First order to demon allies: refuse to recognize demon pol failure.
Second order to demon allies: when failure is obvious, defend at all costs.
Third order to demon allies: when failure is obvious, reprint party talking points memo without question or edit. talking points memo from party leaders will show how the failure was actually a Republican issue.
Fourth order to demon allies: NEVER, NEVER, NEVER question a demon pol. when known to be wrong on a particular issue, ignore the issue at all costs. when known to have been telling lies about a particular issue, either blame a vast right-wing conspiracy or totally ignore the issue. Deflecting to a Republican is always acceptable.
No matter what, demon allies are to support and defend their party representative. If media allies are caught also telling lies about the demon pol, point the finger of blame at a Republican. Any Republican. If a Republican can be blamed for ANYTHING, regardless of what the Republican has said or printed, take the Republican out of context if necessary to be able to point a finger of blame at the Republican while at the same time defend the demon, hopefully without it being obvious that your bias is showing.
Kinda like is done in the post I am replying to. Defend Roy. Blame Republicans, especially Pat. Avoid truth. Deflect from demon problems. Case closed, problem solved. Simply elect ALL demons to office.
