It's enough to make you feel sorry for Ronnie Earle, the corrupt, partisan, rogue prostitute prosecutor in Travis County. The Texas courts have AGAIN ruled that you there has to be a law on the books before you can charge someone with violating it.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today refused to reinstate criminal conspiracy charges against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and two co-defendants.

DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and political consultants Jim Ellis and John Colyandro were accused of conspiring to violate state election laws in the 2002 elections for the Texas House. But lower courts threw out the indictment on grounds that conspiracy to violate the election code was not a crime until 2003,

A majority of the Court of Criminal Appeals agreed.

DeLay, Ellis and Colyandro were charged with plotting to funnel illegal corporate campaign contributions to several Republican House candidates in 2002, when the GOP gained its first House majority of modern times.

According to his spokesman, Ronnie Earle and his staff are "reviewing" the decision. I don't know what there is to review -- the Court of Criminal Appeals is the highest court in the state when it comes to criminal law (Texas has, effectively, two supreme courts -- one for criminal cases and the other for civil cases). There is no federal issue at work here. The bogus charge is dead -- and with it, I suspect, any chance of getting a conviction on the other charges has disappeared, given that Earle's case against Delay depended first proving that he violated the conspiracy law.

It's no wonder, given his history of unsuccessful prosecutions of political opponents and prosecutorial overreaching, that Earle is regarded as the Texas equivalent of Mike Nifong.

Posted by: Greg at 04:57 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Dismiss the suit. Fine the plaintiff. Disbar the lawyer.

A Romeo woman is suing the manufacturer of Starburst Fruit Chews in Macomb County Circuit Court in Michigan for "severe and permanent personal injuries" she received while eating the candy.

The attorney for Victoria McArthur filed the lawsuit Monday against New Jersey-based Master Foods USA asking for more than $25,000. She alleges that when she bit into a yellow Starburst fruit chew in April 2005, she began to feel pain in her jaw, and then began having difficulty opening her mouth.

This should be dismissed on the legal theory of “Shit Happens!”

And if this case is not dismissed, my mom broke a tooth on a chocolate chip in an ice cream cone from Basking Robbins. Can she recover for the pain and suffering?

Posted by: Greg at 03:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And the plaintiff, seeking tens of millions for a pair of misplaced pants, gets not a penny.

The D.C. administrative law judge who sued his neighborhood dry cleaner for $54 million over a pair of lost pants found out this morning what he's going to get for all his troubles.
Nothing.

In a verdict that surprised no one, except perhaps the plaintiff himself, a D.C. Superior Court judge denied Roy Pearson the big payday he claimed was his due.
Delivering her decision in writing, Judge Judith Bartnoff wrote 23 pages dissecting and dismissing Pearson's claim that he was defrauded by the owners of Custom Cleaners and their "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign.
"A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands or to accede to demands that the merchant has reasonable grounds to dispute," the ruling said. " . . . The plaintiff is not entitled to any relief whatsoever."

Now it is possible that Pearson will not only lose his pants, but his shirt as well.

Financially, he could soon be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees incurred by the owners of Customer Cleaners. Attorneys for the Chungs have said they will seek such payments, as well as sanctions against Pearson for bringing the lawsuit. Bartnoff said in her ruling that she would decide those issues after both sides have filed their motions, counter-motions and legal briefs.
Professionally, Pearson could find himself out of his $96,000-a-year job as an administrative law judge for the District government.

This was clearly a case of abuse of the legal system, given the Chungs made repeated offers to go above and beyond the call of duty to make him whole, even offering early on in the case to give him more than enough money to replace the entire suit – after the judge insisted that the pants the owners produced for him (complete with the original tags that match his receipt) were not his despite matching the suit jacket.

PearsonÂ’s behavior will also likely cost him his appointed judgeship, because his term is up and his conduct has shredded any credibility he might have. After all, any man who can become so emotional over a pair of pants really doesn't have teh staility to be trusted to do justice, does he?

Posted by: Greg at 05:08 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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That is the question that springs to mind in the aftermath of today’s decision in the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case. In allowing a public school to punish a student who unfurled a banner off school grounds based upon a perceived violation of the school’s policy against permitting advocacy of drug use, that is a reasonable question. Does Tinker v. DesMoines, the seminal case dealing with student First Amendment rights, survive this decision?

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that students can face limits on their rights to free speech.

Schools can rein in students' speech if it can be interpreted as promoting illegal drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court's opinion.

The case stemmed from an incident in January 2002 in which a crowd of students, townspeople and teachers gathered on a public street in Alaska across from a high school to watch the Olympic torch relay pass in front of them as part of a parade in support of the upcoming Winter Olympic Games.

Student Joseph Frederick wanted to make a statement about his First Amendment rights in front of the television crews covering the event. As the crowd thickened, he unfurled a banner with the message "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

Frederick had been bothered in his senior year by the lack of attention to the issue of freedom of speech in the United States, and at his school in particular.

In briefs, Frederick argued that he was only trying to assert his rights and that the message was not an attempt to "spread any idea."

Now the opinion in the case is not yet up on the SCOTUS website, so I have not had a chance to read it yet. However, it might be that last little admission that made the difference. I wonder if a banner reading “Legalize Pot” and displaying the logo of NORML (National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws) might not have resulted in a different decision, given that it would have clearly been express advocacy on a public policy issue.

On the other hand, we have repeatedly seen a trend in recent years towards allowing public schools to ban even serious speech of a political and religious nature on the grounds of “offensiveness”. In practice, this has meant that schools have repeatedly been permitted to censor speech opposing legal abortion and questioning the morality of homosexuality, not to mention objecting to affirmative action programs. The basis for such bans have been policies against racial, sexual, and sexual orientation harassment and the desire of the school to promote an unambiguous message of inclusion (of everybody except those who dissent from the officials position on these contentious public policy issues).

As a result, this case leaves me very worried. Tinker held that students do not surrender their civil liberties at the schoolhouse gate. Could it be that we are reaching the point that students do, in fact, require that students surrender those liberties? Rather than recognizing (as in West Virginia v. Barnette in 1943) that no public official, high or petty, shall define what the orthodox and acceptable opinions shall be held and expressed, we are going to permit school boards and their employees to determine what speech on matters of public importance shall be considered acceptable?

Perhaps most importantly, this decision leaves me a very basic question – how does one prepare students to exercise their full rights as citizens of a free society in an educational setting where their civil liberties are regularly suppressed and their exercise punished? Are we instead educating them to be serfs or subjects rather than free men and women?

UPDATE: No sooner do I post this than the slip opinion in Morse v. Frederick appears on the SCOTUS site.

UPDATE II: Having read the opinion, it is clear that the holding of the court is that the War on Drugs overrides the First Amendment -- at least if you are a student at school. -- because Congress has declared anti-drug education to be a compelling government interest. This is not good.

UPDATE III: Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion, indicates that he would overturn Tinker completely because it is not grounded in the Constitution. I guess he doesn't believe in the word "no law" in the First Amendment. This is particularly troubling due to the requirement that students attend school -- therefore resulting in the government mandating that the spend a part of the day in a setting in which their constitutional rights would be suspended.

UPDATE IV: Alito and Kennedy concur together in order to specifically affirm the central holding in Tinker.

JUSTICE ALITO, with whom JUSTICE KENNEDY joins, concurring.

I join the opinion of the Court on the understanding that (a) it goes no further than to hold that a public school may restrict speech that a reasonable observer would interpret as advocating illegal drug use and (b) it provides no support for any restriction of speech that can plausibly be interpreted as commenting on any political or social issue, including speech on issues such as “the wisdom of the war on drugs or of legalizing marijuana for medicinal use.” See post, at 13 (STEVENS, J., dissenting).

They support Tinker, but still support what Justice Thomas calls an "ad hoc exception" to that case's central holding.

UPDATE V: Justice Breyer would have avoided the First Amendment question entirely and instead held for "qualified immunity" imposing a prohibition on the suit.

UPDATE VI: Fantastic dissent by Justice Stevens (joined by Justices Ginsburg and Souter) defends Tinker and points out that this case establishes a First Amendment exception previously rejected in American jurisprudence -- namely that mere advocacy of illegal behavior, absent an actual threat of imminent lawlessness, can be suppressed and punished.

Having read the opinions, I expect that the holding in this case will be used to justify the continued suppression of speech by religious and conservative students on issues like abortion, gay rights, and affirmative action, with schools arguing that the student speech on those matters undermines the mission of the school by contradicting the school policy on the matter. This will effectively further the notion that schools are indoctrination centers, not educational institutions.

MORE AT A Blog For All, Phi Beta Cons, Betsy's Page, Hot Air, Volokh Conspiracy, Stop the ACLU (Twice), Reason's Hit & Run, ProfsBlawg, Althouse, SCOTUS Blog (Twice)

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Posted by: Greg at 03:41 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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This is standard end-of-term fare -- but there doesn't seem to be any realistic possibility of a justice retiring as the current term ends. Still, some want to speculate about what would happen if a justice did step down.

Retirement speculation focuses on Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both liberals. Stevens is 87 years old; and although Ginsburg is 13 years younger, her frail appearance has often prompted conjecture of poor health.

These justices have also taken to reading their dissents from the bench in recent months, a practice that Curt Levey, general counsel for the Judicial Confirmation Network, believes may signify their displeasure with being in the minority on several important cases.

Justice David Souter, 67, who was appointed by President George H. W. Bush, also is rumored to be considering retirement.

Jan Crawford Greenburg, author of the recent book, "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court," has written that the Bush administration has prepared a "short list" of possible nominees should a justice step down.

According to Greenburg, possible nominees include Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; Priscilla Owen and Edith Brown Clement, both of the Fifth Circuit; Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit; Loretta Preska, a New York Federal District judge; and Raoul Cantero of the Florida State Supreme Court.

While all six are considered conservatives who would fit the president's judicial restraint criterion, Preska and Cantero are more junior than nominees over the past 20 years. All justices since Scalia's nomination in 1986 have been elevated from the Federal Court of Appeals.

Quin Hillyer, senior editor for the American Spectator and a regular contributor for the conservative blog ConfirmThem, told Cybercast News Service that he knows of "nobody who really believes there will be a new Supreme Court vacancy" at this time.

Levey agreed with Hillyer to a point. Though there are no rumors of an imminent retirement floating around Washington, he told Cybercast News Service Friday: "I'm not sure you can take that as an indication one way or the other. These upcoming vacancies are such a closely held secret, so rumors often have no correlation to the truth. When [former Justice Sandra Day] O'Connor retired, the conventional wisdom was that [former Chief Justice William] Rehnquist was to retire, not O'Connor."

If any of the three justices mentioned were to retire, the replacement would certainly be more conservative. And each of the potential replacements mentioned is well-respected -- and it is interesting to note the presence of a Hispanic and a black woman on the list.

More likely, in my eyes, is a death between now and the 2008 election -- and every day closer to that election contributes to the difficulty of getting ANT nomination through the Senate. The precedent? Lyndon Johnson's unsuccessful attempt to elevate Justice Abe Fortas to the center chair in 1968 -- although I doubt that any potential nominee would be as scandal-ridden as that Johnson crony.

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Yes, this is a British story -- but one has to wonder how often something like this happens in the United States, with fathers presumed to be dangerous and unfit and mothers presumed to have the best interests of their children at heart.

Every day there is some reminder of what Mark Harris calls 'the lost years'.

It could be his daughter's reference to a particular birthday party or a family holiday. It could be talk of exams sat, dentists visited or pop stars worshipped.

Each time it happens, he feels a stab of regret. 'I missed so much,' he reveals, with understandable bitterness. 'They took my daughter's childhood, her formative years, from me. Lisa is 20 now. I didn't see her between the ages of ten and 16. An awful lot happens in a child's life in that time, and I missed it all.'

Lisa missed a lot, too. She sits by Mark's side as he talks, a beautiful and assured young woman, but one still coming to terms with the fact that her father simply wasn't there when she needed him - and for an entire decade she did not know why.

'There were times when I needed a father figure - for reassurance and advice,' she says, with quiet restraint. 'There just wasn't one there.'

But the story of what happened to the Harris family isn't just another tragic case of broken homes and estrangement. Mark, Lisa and her two younger sisters were wrenched apart by the state.

Mark was not a feckless, irresponsible father. He did not walk out of his children's lives. Rather, he was ordered out by the family courts, and when he objected - insisting it was his right to see them - he was dealt with in a scandalous way.

Mark Harris went to prison for his girls. He was jailed for waving to them after a court order demanded he sever all contact. It was the most shameful chapter in an extraordinary ten-year custody battle.

He has now 'won' - today, two of his daughters live with him - only because they shared their father's determination to re-establish their relationship.

Sadly, even today, all it takes is a single accusation by a mother to get a father thrown out of the lives of their children. Even though the laws that created it are gone, the presumption of maternal custody is still strong, even in states where the law allows for joint custody. Even a hint of "abuse" (defined at a low level -- and often without any evidence to back the accusation) will be sufficient to deny custody to a father and impose strict limits on his visitation rights. I've seen it in too many cases.

Posted by: Greg at 12:13 AM | Comments (274) | Add Comment
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Imagine you are the passenger in an automobile pulled over by the cops. You open the door to get out of the car. What do you think will happen? We all know the answer to that question -- either via the speaker in the squad car, or at the point of a gun, you will be ordered to remain in the vehicle. It is standard police procedure.

So why on earth did the state of California think that the Supreme Court would hold any differently than they did in this case?

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled yesterday that passengers in vehicles pulled over by the police have the same rights as drivers to challenge the legality of the traffic stop when it results in an arrest.

The court said that passengers, like the driver, are "seized" by police when the vehicle they are traveling in is stopped and are thus covered by the Fourth Amendment and allowed to challenge unreasonable searches and seizures.

In the specific case before the court, a California passenger named Bruce Brendlin was charged with drug possession because of drug paraphernalia found in the car in which he was traveling. He argued that the discovery of the evidence was the result of an unconstitutional seizure because police lacked probable cause to make the traffic stop.

But the California Supreme Court said Brendlin had no grounds to make such a challenge because he had not been seized by the police and had given tacit approval to the search by staying in the car rather than leaving the scene.

The Supreme Court said that made no sense.

"We think that in these circumstances any reasonable passenger would have understood the police officers to be exercising control to the point that no one in the car was free to depart without police permission," Justice David H. Souter wrote for the court. During the case's oral arguments, several justices expressed that opinion.

Now California was one of only three states to have a court precedent that held passengers were not seized in such a situation -- proving that most state and federal judges have, at one time or another, been involved in a traffic stop and are able to recognize from experience what the evidence presented to them shows. That the decision would be unanimous was hinted at back in oral arguments, as several justices hammered the lawyer for the state of California.

Not that Mr. Brendlin will walk away from this case a free man -- the Supreme Court remanded the case back to the lower court in California to determine if there might be some other basis for allowing the evidence to be used -- such as the fact that as a felon on parole he had a more limited right against warrantless searches.

Posted by: Greg at 11:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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What next? Court-ordered divorces? Court-ordered abortions?

A judge has ruled that a 24-year-old man is not allowed to have a girlfriend for the next three years.

The ruling came after Steven Cranley pleaded guilty on Tuesday to several charges stemming from an assault on an ex-girlfriend.

His lawyer says the no-girlfriend order is the first of its kind that he has encountered.

Cranley is probably a scumbag, based upon the charges he pled guilty to – and no woman with a lick of sense should go near him. But at what point do we say “WHOA!” to a judge’s power to impose unusual conditions in a sentence – especially when they impact intimate personal relationships?

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Non-union members may be protected from compelled political speech at the hands of the organization of which they do not wish to be a member. Unfortunately, Washington state has already stripped these workers of their protection by changing the law in question.

States may force public sector labor unions to get consent from workers before using their fees for political activities, the Supreme Court said Thursday.

The court unanimously upheld a Washington state law that applied to public employees who choose not to join the union that represents them in contract talks with state and local governments. The workers are compelled to pay the equivalent of union dues, a portion of which the union uses for political activities.

ustice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said the law does not violate the union's First Amendment rights.

But the state's Democratic governor and Democratic-controlled legislature recently changed the law to eliminate the provision that was upheld Thursday, blunting the impact of the court ruling.

The narrow issue before the justices was whether, as the law formerly prescribed, employees must opt in, or affirmatively consent, to having some of their money used in election campaigns.

The justices said that a state could indeed require such consent. But there also is nothing to bar the state from putting the onus on nonmember workers to opt out, or seek a refund of a portion of their fees.

That, in effect, is what Washington law now requires after the recent change.

Shame on the Washington politicians who stripped workers of the right not to be forced to give money for political causes they reject. For that matter, shame on any politician who does not support giving workers freedom from compulsory unionism.

Posted by: Greg at 03:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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If this speech is any indicator, it is likely that the Supreme Court's newest justice will be a great advocate for freedom of speech -- especially on the internet.

"I'm a very strong believer in the First Amendment and the right of people to speak and to write," Alito said in response to a question of "where's the line" on what can be posted on the Internet. "I would be reluctant to support restrictions on what people could say."

The newest justice, who was protective of speech rights as an appellate judge, added that "some restrictions have been held to be consistent with the First Amendment, but it's very dangerous for the government to restrict speech."

If his statement here is any indication, then expect him to support those seeking protection for their speech in the Court's two remaining First Amendment cases -- and for him to look askance at any government attempt to regulate internet political speech.

Posted by: Greg at 02:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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