The Heller Decision

One of the most anticipated Supreme Court decisions of the year is in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. This decision involves the critical question of whether or not the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms.

In a ruling handed down only moments ago, the justices affirmed the decision of a lower court holding that the Second Amendment does confer an individual right to keep and bar arms, striking down a Washington, DC law that virtually forbade the legal ownership of firearms -- and which required that those which were permitted be stored disassembled.

The decision, which was 5-4, was written by Justice Scalia. The usual liberal foursome (Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer) dissented against the clear language of the Constitution -- and actually argue that there is no Constitutional right to possess (much less use) a weapon to defend oneself.

Some interesting notes:

1. How Appealing notes that Scalia cites no fewer than THREE law review articles written by noted legal blogger Professor Eugene Volokh. Congratulations, sir! Lot's of great analysis from Volokh and his co-bloggers at his blawg, too.

2. AP notes that the decision goes even further in protecting Second Amendment rights than proposed by the Bush Administration.

3. This quote from the majority is troubling:

On the question of the Second Amendment’s application to the States: “23 With respect to Cruikshank’s continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 265 (1886) and Miller v. Texas, 153 U. S. 535, 538 (1894), reaffirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.”

Hmmm... a selective incorporation question. Could it be that the decision would have gone the other way if the law had been enacted by a state rather than the District of Columbia government, which is merely a creation of Congress? Eugene Volokh suggests that is not the case, noting that Cruikshank was later partially overturned as taking too restrictive a view on selective incorporation (with regard to the First Amendment) and that the other nineteenth century cases may therefore be similarly flawed as precedent because of their reliance on Cruikshank, which is seen by many as a monumentally bad decision.

4. Hube notes that at least one news source declared this to be "a narrow, 5-4 ruling". Oddly enough, "narrow" was not used by the same paper to describe yesterday's 5-4 ruling in favor of child rapists.

5. Confederate Yankee notes that there is already a call to assassinate Justice Scalia in a comment by lefty gay blogger David Eherenstein over at Crooks and Liars.

As of 10:46 am Central time, no other commenter has objected. I've emailed the FBI and Secret Service about the matter -- hope David has fun in federal prison.

6. John McCain notes that Barack Obama refused to sign on to a bipartisan amicus brief supporting the Second Amendment. That makes Obama's efforts to distance himself from last year's campaign statement on the issue a bit hard to believe -- unless you are an Obama true believer to begin with.

OTHERS BLOGGING: Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Ace (twice), Urban Grounds, Dirt From Texas, Big Lizards, Hillbilly White Trash, Megan McArdle, JoshuaPundit, Wold Howling

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Impeach Anthony Kennedy

For the second time this month, US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has written an opinion which says it doesn't matter what the political branches of government or the US Constitution have to say on a matter -- the Supreme Court knows better and will impose its will on the people of the United States.

The first time was in granting habeas corpus rights to terrorist detainees, despite Congress having acted under its authority in Article III of the Constitution to strip the Supreme Court of any jurisdiction is such cases.

This time it is in a decision that decrees that the sense of the Supreme Court will be the basis for determining when the death penalty may be imposed, not the laws of the states or the US Constitution -- and that the "evolving standard" on the death penalty can only move towards greater restrictions on capital punishment, not the other direction -- and that the rape of an eight-year old is not a sufficiently serious crime to merit the ultimate sanction.

The U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal to execute persons convicted of child-rape in a 5-4 decision Wednesday.

"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the majority opinion. The ruling broke on party lines, the liberal Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer siding with Kennedy.

In their decision, the liberal justices ruled that a Louisiana law that sent 43 year-old man named Patrick Kennedy to death row in 2003 for raping his 8-year old stepdaughter was “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The utter constitutional, legal, and moral depravity of Justice Kennedy in this ruling is clear to see for anyone who reads the majority opinion and the dissent. Indeed, Kennedy expresses more concern with the dignity of the child-raping scumbag than he does for the innocent eight-year-old victim in this case.

In his dissent, Justice Alito shreds Kennedy's arguments, ending his analysis of the flaws of the majority opinion with this conclusion.

In summary, the Court holds that the Eighth Amendment categorically rules out the death penalty in even the most extreme cases of child rape even though: (1) This holding is not supported by the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment; (2) neither Coker nor any other prior precedent commands this result; (3) there are no reliable"objective indicia" of a "national consensus" in support of the CourtÂ’s position; (4) sustaining the constitutionality of the state law before us would not "extend" or "expand" the death penalty; (5) this Court has previously rejected the proposition that the Eighth Amendment is a one-way ratchet that prohibits legislatures from adopting new capital punishment statutes to meet new problems; (6) the worst child rapists exhibit the epitome of moral depravity; and (7) child rape inflicts grievous injury on victims and on society in general.

Indeed, as in the recent case granting terrorists outside the United States access to federal courts, Kennedy again twists precedent, law, and fact to fit a pre-determined conclusion at odds with all three. This must stop -- and it must stop now.

The American people are really quite outragedabout this. National Review Online analyzes this decision's wrongness. Rush notes the same attitude on Kennedy's part that I did above.

[W]e just have the court deciding, "We're going to decide these political issues. We're going to decide these things." We don't even need a Congress, anymore. We don't even need a president. We'll just take you all of our controversial issues, submit them to the lawyers [and] the Supreme Court decides, and that's it because that's what it has become.

In the United States,Congress has rarely exercised its power to impeach and remove a sitting federal judge. Furthermore, it has been over two centuries since Congress impeached a Supreme Court justice, and in that case the Senate refused to remove him. Even more importantly, mere disagreement with Supreme Court rulings has not been held to be an appropriate cause for impeachment.

Those things noted, I return to the ultimate authority in this case -- the United States Constitution. Article II, Section 4 speaks to the matter as follows.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High crimes and misdemeanors.

Furthermore, Article III states that judges (including Supreme Court Justices) shall hold their office during good behavior.

This brings me back to the point at hand -- in these two rulings, Justice Kennedy has demonstrated bad behavior. In both cases, he has placed himself and the Supreme Court above previous court precedent, the laws duly enacted by the elected representatives of the people, and the Constitution itself. As such, he has exceeded his authority in office and promulgated lawless decisions and attempted to make them binding upon the people of the United States and their elected representatives. This is malfeasance in office, pure and simple, engaged in under color of law and authority.

I'd like to urge one or more members of the House of Representatives to file motions for impeachment against Anthony Kennedy. Put each and every Congressman on record right now, four and one-half months before the next election -- do they support allowing the Supreme Court to impose their own extra-constitutional standard rather than that set by the Constitution and the laws enacted by the United States and the several states.

Now some may challenge me, raising the spectre of billboards from decades past urging Congress to "Impeach Earl Warren". The difference here is that while many of the opinions of the Warren Court were controversial and unpopular, it was difficult to argue that they were not grounded in the Constitution -- indeed, the roots of those decisions were buried in the fertile loam that is the text of that guiding document. The same cannot be said of these two most recent judicial monstrosities brought forth by Anthony Kennedy.

I sincerely doubt that the Senate would vote to remove Anthony Kennedy if the House adopted articles of impeachment against the him, but the precedent would serve as a powerful warning against such naked judicial activism.

And in addition, there is a course of action which should be followed by in every state as a result of this ruling. Every state legislature should pass, and every governor should sign, legislation imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child. If even half manage to accomplish this task, it would establish a strong national consensus in favor of the view that "the evolving standards of decency" hold that child rape is viewed by our society as meriting death. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has already vowed to resist this decision.

Oh, and for those of you curious, here is what Justice Kennedy argues does not merit capital punishment in today's ruling. more...

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After Boumediene

I still stand by my assessment from last week, that the majority in the Boumediene case screwed the pooch in holding that detained illegal combatants have habeas corpus rights in American civilian courts. National Review's Andrew McCarthy, in an article that must be read by everyone who wonders where we go from here (impeachment of the five justice majority not being practical), also makes a pointed observation as to why the decision is fundamentally nonsensical.

Now the Court has decided that the combatants have constitutional habeas rights. If you can follow this, the bloc of liberal justices reasons that the framers designed our fundamental law to empower enemies of the American people to use the American peopleÂ’s courts as a weapon to compel the American peopleÂ’s commander-in-chief to justify his actions during a war overwhelmingly authorized by the American peopleÂ’s elected representatives . . . even as those enemies continue killing Americans.

In other words, despite the clear establishment of a Constitutional framework in which Congress authorizes military action and the President is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, the judicial branch (delegated no role in the war-making function of government) is now somehow on top of the heap when it comes to such matters AND a powerful weapon in the hands of America's enemies, giving that enemy the power to manipulate the constitutional system of checks-and-balances to its own military and political advantage.

I heartily endorse the suggestions made by Andrew McCarthy in the article -- and add to it the suggestion that Congress exercise its authority under Article III Section 2 of the Constitution to strip the Supreme Court of its appellate jurisdiction in any and all cases related to the war powers and detention of enemy combatants.

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Scumbag Escapes Justice

This murdering punk doesn't like the lethal injection protocol? Fine -- let's go for the single-bullet-to-the-base-of-the-skull protocol.

Condemned double-murderer Derrick Juan Sonnier received a reprieve about two hours before he was to walk into Texas' death house Tuesday, the second time he has escaped execution.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution after the Texas Defender Service, a watchdog capital punishment group, filed two last-minute appeals in the 40-year-old man's case.

Sonnier was sentenced to die for the 1991 stabbing deaths of Melody Flowers, 27, and her 2-year-old son Patrick.

Authorities said he had stalked the single mother of five for months before the murders.

* * *

In its appeals, the Texas Defender Service argued that the state made changes May 30 to its lethal injection protocol that have not been reviewed by any court.

Its second appeal argues that the lethal injection protocol violates Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, an issue raised in two other cases pending before the state court.

I'm sorry -- the "cruel and unusual punishment" argument doesn't was for me. While one can argue that any sentence of death is cruel, it is not unusual under the laws of this country to sentence someone to death for murder. Nor does it somehow shock the conscience that murdering scumbags might feel some fraction of the pain and suffering that their victims experienced -- indeed, most people with any sense of morality would argue that it is not unreasonable for those receiving capital PUNISHMENT to actually experience a some discomfort as a part of their punishment.

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Don't Name That Party -- Louisiana Edition

What's missing here?

SHREVEPORT, La. - Two judges were convicted Saturday of taking bribes to set low bonds or remove court holds on defendants.

A federal jury convicted state District Judge Michael Walker and Caddo Parish Juvenile Court Judge Vernon Claville on one count each of racketeering. The charge carries up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Claville was accused of taking bribes to remove court holds from juveniles so they could get bond.

Walker oversaw the drug section of his court and was accused of taking bribes to quickly set bonds, reduce them, recall arrest warrants or remove probation holds.

Defense attorneys argued the case was based on inconclusive recordings and testimony.

Where's the party affiliation of these public officials? Oh, that's right, it doesn't matter -- because the correct answer is DEMOCRAT!

I guess that it must now be a part of the AP stylebook that party affiliation for convicted public officials shall be disclosed only if they are Republicans

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