Red Skinner: Obama Again Using ‘Regulation’ As A Weapon Against America

Barack Obama has become an expert at using his powers to regulate as a weapon to destroy Americans he doesn’t like. Just as he attempted to use the IRS to destroy conservatives, as he’s used the EPA to destroy our energy sector, as he used Obamacare to eliminate freedom of religion, Obama and his thuggish administration has now attempted to force a football team to stop using a name Obama doesn’t like.

On Wednesday Obama’s U.S. Patent and Trademark Office summarily eliminated the trademark protection for the Washington Redskins’ name and it was done purely for political reasons, not legal reasons.

Obama’s lackeys told the NFL team that their name was ‘disparaging” to native Americans and so the government canceled six federal trademarks for the team.

“Petitioners have shown by a preponderance of the evidence that a substantial composite of Native Americans found the term Redskins to be disparaging,” Obama’s thugs said in the decision published on June 18.

This isn’t the first time that left-wing regulators tried to un-Constitutionally remove the protection of the law from the NFL team. As the Clinton years were coming to a close, the Patent Office tried the same thing for the same political reason.

Three years later the courts vacated the Patent Office’s politically correct action.

But what we have here is a nakedly political move by Obama to use government as a weapon against Americans. Even as he releases murderous terrorists so that they can go back to launching attacks on Americans, even as he allows tens of thousands, if not millions of disease-laden, illegal immigrants into the USA, even as he abuses every aspect of the Constitution to push his leftist, anti-American agenda, we see Obama again using the power of government to force his desires on America.

This is the single most lawless President in American history.

But he isn’t alone. Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid appeared on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday to celebrate Obama’s actions and to note that the team will now be “forced” to change the team’s name because… well, because liberals say so.

Reid fully admitted to the obvious fact that this is an intimidation tactic and a violation of our private property rights. And he celebrates this destruction of the law.

We are no longer living in a representative democracy, my fellow Americans. We are living in a dictatorship.

In any case, the team released a statement reminding the nation that left-wingers have attempted to illicitly use the wheels of government as a weapon against them before.

“We’ve seen this story before. And just like last time, today’s ruling will have no effect at all on the team’s ownership of and right to use the Redskins name and logo.

‘Redskins Are Denied Trademarks’
-Washington Post, April 3, 1999

‘Redskins Can Keep Trademark, Judge Rules’
-Washington Post, October 2, 2003

We are confident we will prevail once again, and that the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s divided ruling will be overturned on appeal. This case is no different than an earlier case, where the Board cancelled the Redskins’ trademark registrations, and where a federal district court disagreed and reversed the Board.

As today’s dissenting opinion correctly states, “the same evidence previously found insufficient to support cancellation” here “remains insufficient” and does not support cancellation.

This ruling — which of course we will appeal — simply addresses the team’s federal trademark registrations, and the team will continue to own and be able to protect its marks without the registrations. The registrations will remain effective while the case is on appeal.

When the case first arose more than 20 years ago, a federal judge in the District of Columbia ruled on appeal in favor of the Washington Redskins and their trademark registrations.

Why?

As the district court’s ruling made clear in 2003, the evidence ‘is insufficient to conclude that during the relevant time periods the trademark at issue disparaged Native Americans…’ The court continued, ‘The Court concludes that the [Board’s] finding that the marks at issue ‘may disparage’ Native Americans is unsupported by substantial evidence, is logically flawed, and fails to apply the correct legal standard to its own findings of fact.’ Those aren’t my words. That was the court’s conclusion. We are confident that when a district court review’s today’s split decision, it will reach a similar conclusion.

In today’s ruling, the Board’s Marc Bergsman agreed, concluding in his dissenting opinion:

It is astounding that the petitioners did not submit any evidence regarding the Native American population during the relevant time frame, nor did they introduce any evidence or argument as to what comprises a substantial composite of that population thereby leaving it to the majority to make petitioner’s case have some semblance of meaning.

The evidence in the current claim is virtually identical to the evidence a federal judge decided was insufficient more than ten years ago. We expect the same ultimate outcome here.”

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