Obama Justice Department Jumps into Washington Redskins Trademark Fight
By Donn Marten, January 10, 2015.
One thing that has not changed in the new year is the Obama regime’s ongoing exploitation of identity group based politics. The assault by the political correctness police on the Washington Redskins NFL football team over an “offensive” nickname continues with the feds now jumping into the fray. This is one of the most stupid and ridiculous wastes of time and energy in recent memory as well as a prime example of big government squandering taxpayer money. Hell, it’s not like the team just rolled out with a new nickname just for the sake of fanning the flames of bigotry. The Redskins have been the Redskins since before the team even relocated to the nation’s capital city way back in 1937. They were previously the Boston Redskins from the day of the team’s inception in 1932. But that matters nothing to the legal eagles at the Obama-Holder Justice Department.
According to a story from Bloomberg News entitled “Redskins Must Now Fight U.S. in Battle Over Team’s Name”:
The Washington Redskins, in a legal fight to retain trademark protection for the football team’s name, must now go head-to-head with the U.S. government, which filed court papers seeking to defend the constitutionality of a law the squad is challenging.
The Justice Department today intervened in a lawsuit between the Redskins and a federal trademark board that ruled the team’s name disparages American Indians and is no longer entitled to trademark protection. The U.S. filing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, doesn’t take a position on the appropriateness of the name and seeks only a ruling upholding an underlying law.
The Redskins’s challenge to the law “unconditionally allows” the U.S. to intervene in the case, the government said in a two-page filing. It will file a full brief later.
The Justice Department’s entry into the case is the latest twist in a dispute stretching back more than 22 years over a brand estimated by Forbes to be worth $145 million. The Redskins ranked 10th in merchandise sales of the National Football League’s 32 teams as of October 2013, according to the league. Merchandise revenue is shared equally among NFL squads.
The U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, in a June ruling that trademark protection should be canceled because the Redskins’s name is derogatory, relied on a 1946 statute that prohibits registration of marks that disparage people, institutions, beliefs or national symbols. Its decision, if left intact, would make it harder for the team to enforce rights to the name and protect revenue linked to it.
You have to hand it to the Obama administration when it comes to mining the books for arcane laws that can be used to go after enemies. The feds are relying on a 1946 code to contest the Redskins’ team name. This is the same rancid administration that has frequently abused the 1917 Espionage Act to squash journalism and punish whistleblowers so it’s par for the course and a sign of these troubling times. The Democrats may have gotten the hell kicked out of them in the midterms a few months back but you can be damned sure that they will get all of the minorities back on the reservation – including the Indians – in time for 2016.
Like there aren’t any more important issues to deal with considering the wise and proper allocation of resources that should be observed when allocating taxpayer dollars. Securing the borders, getting the hell out of costly and endless overseas conflicts, discontinuing the backstopping of the stock market and rebuilding a decaying and obsolete infrastructure to name just a few on what is a huge list. But none of those serious problems will do much to get out the vote in 2016 with the Democrat base which is what all of this nickname hogwash is really about.
http://downtrend.com/donn-marten/obama-justice-department-jumps-into-washington-redskins-trademark-fight/
