Nancy Pelosi is a mean girl

Nancy Pelosi is in a spiteful mood these days. 

As you will recall, the Department of Justice recently decided not to defend the “Defense of Marriage Act” because the Law Review Editor in Chief and his Attorney General seem to think it’s unconstitutional.  Which, of course,  is their right.  They can kvetch all they want about it at cocktail parties, and send tweets back and forth between the White House and Justice.

To do this, it’s forced to expend money which it would not have needed to waste in lawyer’s fees had its ‘in house’ team (namely, the prosecutorial arm of the US government, namely, the DOJ and the Solicitor General) done their job and not cowered in front of the powerful LGBT lobby.

Because it can’t depend on its own lawyers, Congress has had to hire the services of the appellate experts at King and Spaulding and, in particular, of Paul Clement.  Clement is a former Solicitor General, and he doesn’t come cheap.  According to a recently-released report, the House has agreed to pay King and Spaulding an hourly rate of $520.00 to defend DOMA against the many challenges that have been cropping up across the country.

But the worst part about all of this is, as I was saying, Pelosi.  Going behind Speaker Boehner’s back and complaining about wasting taxpayer money, the woman who had her own private jet shuttling her from nail salons in D.C. to dress shops in San Francisco (with a few constituent meetings in between) leaked information about the contract to the public. And while she’s trying to make it seem as if this was simply a move to promote transparency in government, anyone who’s been watching the former Speaker for the past few years knows that she really did it to sink those well-manicured nails into the man who stole her job.

Hypocrisy is actually a very good word to use.  And you can throw in ‘chutzpah’ too.  Or, as Nancy and I remember from our Italian classes, ‘corraggio’ which essentially translates into ‘balls.’  Because as Boehner’s office noted, “this whole thing would be unnecessary if the White House and the Justice Department would do their job and defend a law that was passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the President of the United States – a Democratic President, at that.”

Some people seem to think that when Justice dropped the ball, the government should have just rolled over and let DOMA die a quick death.  But that’s not the way we do business in this constitutional democracy.  There’s a process to be followed, even if Barack Obama and Eric Holder don’t like it.