Calling Bullshit on Ted Olson

In defending the recent ruling that apparently gay marriage is in the Fourteenth Amendment, and no one apparently discovered that for the first 142 years of its existance, former Solicitor General Ted Olson made the idiot comparison between freedom of speech and gay marriage:

Well, would you like your right to free speech, would you like Fox’s right to free press put up to a vote and say well, if five states approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do?  These are fundament constitutional rights.  The Bill of Rights guarantees Fox News and you, Chris Wallace, the right to speak.  It’s in the constitution. And the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the denial of our citizens of the equal rights to equal access to justice under the law, is a violation of our fundamental rights. Yes, it’s encouraging that many states are moving towards equality on the basis of sexual orientation, and I’m very, very pleased about that. … We can’t wait for the voters to decide that that immeasurable harm, that is unconstitutional, must be eliminated.

First, every time someone says that it’s a throw-something-at-the-screen moment.  I am sick and tired of morons like Olson equating what is not reasonably in the constitution with what is obviously in the constitution.  Olson has made a great argument for amending the constitution, not making crap up in it.  The reason why the first amendment is not up for a simple majority vote is because someone has put it in the constitution. The claim that excluding gay people from marriage is unconstitutional doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Second, its funny you should stay that, Teddy boy, because do you remember a little case called McConnell v. the FEC?  In that case they made a facial challenge to McCain-Feingold on the theory that it suppresses freedom of expression.  A few years later the Supreme Court said the same law was unconstitutional precisely because it had that effect.  And guess who was on the side of the FEC and greater restrictions of expression in McConnel?  Then Solicitor General Theodore Olson.  As in you, dickhead.  You personally argued that congress could vote away our freedom of expression.  Indeed, if your arguments were accepted, Fox News, and indeed every news corporation would have been subject to direct federal regulation if congress only decided to do it.

So basically he tried to justify a ruling not supported by the constitution by citing a principle actually written in the constitution that he personally worked to subvert.

What a complete pile of bullshit.

(Source for quote, with slight correction.)