Better in their words…

I don’t think the name should be changed, but I grant some logic for the dislike.
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Updated June 18, 2014 7:12 p.m. ET

From J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI to Lois Lerner’s IRS, we thought we’d seen everything in the politicization-of-government file. But now even the lowly patent clerks are following liberal orders and deputizing themselves as George Custers to drive the Washington Redskins out of America.

On Wednesday the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office stripped the pro football team of six name and image registrations, which supposedly expose Native Americans to “contempt, ridicule and disrepute.” The Boston Braves were made over as the Redskins in 1933 to honor a head coach who belonged to the Sioux tribe, but an administrative panel concluded the name never should have been protected in 1967 and took it back.

The 2-to-1 decision came in response to a lawsuit by Native American activists who want to devalue the Washington football brand. If it stands, any third party could sell Redskins jerseys, banners or rosters. But how does pumping more supposedly offensive merchandise into circulation at lower prices remedy the alleged insult?

We’re agnostic in the Indian symbol debate, though we’ve never understood why the critics think fans and athletes want their team names to represent something other than strength, courage or pride. If names were meant to convey dislike—of, say, Vikings, Yankees or the Irish—then Redskins owner Dan Snyder would have converted to the Washington Harry Reids years ago.

For months, the Majority Leader and 49 other Democratic Senators have been tending to the urgent national priority of forcing a major sports franchise to submit to their social conscience. In a May letter, they—including noted Cherokee elder Elizabeth Warren —all but ordered National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell to intervene, as if Mr. Snyder is Donald Sterling. Absenting the miracle of the First Amendment, they might have simply bypassed the middle man and banned the word themselves.

President Obama couldn’t resist chiming in either, as he never can. “If I were the owner of the team and I knew that there was a name of my team, even if it had a storied history, that was offending a sizable group of people, I’d think about changing it,” he declaimed in October.

In this Administration that was a political signal to act, and all the President’s patent officers apparently knew to add the Redskins to the target list—at least judging by the majority’s legal reasoning. The ruling is nearly word-for-word identical to a 1990s trademark decision that was later overturned by a federal appeals court. This panel, with new plaintiffs, dusted off the same logic and procedural abuses of the narrow rules of patent evidence to please Washington’s party in power and the perpetually aggrieved. We trust the Redskins will prevail again on appeal.

The Redskins even invited Mr. Reid to join fans at a hometown game this fall, though certainly less for the company than the politics. This week he refused, replying that he “will not stand idly by while a professional sports team promotes a racial slur as a team name and disparages the American people.”

So there you have it: The Obama Democrats now think government should dictate team mascots. As for the American people, an Associated Press poll earlier this year found 83% of the public favors keeping the name

Patent Office Comanches – WSJ.