Dear Scott Bloch,

As a fellow lawyer, I'm having a real hard time understanding how you didn't outright call for open insubordination against a direct order from the president of the United States when you testified yesterday before Congress. I'm also having a hard time arguing that you didn't just lie in your testimony to Congress.

You told the Senate yesterday, Scott, that:

If a federal manager fires, reassigns or takes some other action against an employee simply because that employee is gay, there is nothing in federal law that would permit the Office of Special Counsel to protect the worker, Bloch testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee on oversight of government management, the federal workforce and the District of Columbia.

Here's the problem, Scott. You may not have the authority under the executive order to prosecute people IN COURT for violating the president's non-discrimination executive order, but that has nothing to do with whether you CAN ENFORCE the order yourself. I.e., the executive order may not permit the gay employee to sue in court, but it most certainly permits you and the entire administration to follow your president's order to not discriminate, and it most certainly gives you the power to punish any employee who does discriminate against gays and to rehire or otherwise help a gay employee who is discriminated against in the federal workplace based on their sexual orientation.

See, the thing is, Scott, you offered the Senate up a red herring yesterday. You talked about how there was no federal law permitting gay people to sue in court, but that has nothing to do with whether federal employees, yourself included, are required to follow and execute the executive orders of your president. You don't need to go to court, Scott, to rehire a gay employee that has been wrongfully fired. You don't need to go to court, Scott, to discipline a federal employee who wrongfully discriminates in violation of the president's order.

It sounds, Scott, and I do hope I'm wrong on this, as though you're willfully disobeying a direct order from the president of the United States, and trying to find lots of cute legal reasons to disobey your president - legal reasons that have nothing to do with the case at hand. I'm just wondering why you'd do that, Scott, because it sounds like what you're doing is illegal and, one would think, grounds for you being immediately fired.

So, in order to clear this up, Scott, let me give our readers a bit more background on this executive order, then let's pose a few more questions to you to find out if you really are suggesting that you will outright disobey the president's direct order:

Clinton signed Executive Order 13087 on May 28, 1998. During House consideration of FY99 Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations (H.R. 4276, 15th Congress), Joel Hefley offered a limitation of funds amendment (I'm sure you remember -- "no funds shall be expended to....yada yada) to prevent the enforcement of the E.O. The vote on the amendment was 176 Ayes to 252 Nays. (Debate at page H7256 in the Congressional Record for the 105th Congress -- some strong statements against the amendment from very, very conservative Republicans).

So here are the questions, Scott.

1. Does the President have the management discretion to NOT fire gay people simply because they're gay?

2. Does the President have the authority to put personnel policies in place to ensure that federal managers follow his decision on that? (Given that an attempt to deny him that discretion was soundly defeated by a strong bi-partisan vote of the House, it would appear that he does.)

3. President Bush has stated that federal employees shouldn't be fired from their jobs just for being gay, and he's given you the responsibility to enforce that management decision. How do you expect the President to react to your insubordination?

Could you please answer those questions, Scott. Because it sounds an awful lot like you're just grabbing at straws in an effort to justify anti-gay bigotry, and while so doing, you're willfully and quite flagrantly disobeying an executive order and urging other federal employees to do the same.

And honestly, Scott, I don't want my tax dollars going to some unelected activist rogue federal employee who think he knows more, and has more power, than the elected president of the United States.