May 21, 2008
Prominent conservatives and activists are indicating they will put aside their differences with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and rally their supporters to his side because of one issue: federal judgeships.In big gatherings and small, in e-mails and one-on-one conversations, conservative opinion leaders fear a Democratic president, especially Sen. Barack Obama, will use the presidential power to appoint federal judges who will remove references to God and religious symbols from public places.
They predict the incoming president likely will fill more vacancies on the federal bench over the next four years than at any time in recent memory, giving a Democratic administration the power to shape the courts to reflect a liberal worldview.
* * * ACLU general counsel Peter J. Ferrara, a former Reagan White House aide, said, "McCain said he'd appoint people like [Supreme Court Chief Justice John] Roberts and [Justice Samuel] Alito. Obama is saying he'd name people like [Justices Ruth Bader] Ginsberg and [David] Souter."
So as you can see, there are some seriously different views out there on Supreme Court nominees. Which would you prefer – Justice Janice Rogers Brown, or this?
It's likely that the next president will face at least one Supreme Court vacancy. Obama should promise Hillary Clinton, now, that if he wins in November, the vacancy will be hers, making her first on a list of one.Obama and Clinton have wound up agreeing on nearly every major issue during the campaign; at the end of the day, they share many orthodoxies. Unless the Supreme Court were to get mired in minuscule details of what constitutes universal health care, Obama could assume that he'd be pleased with most Clinton votes, certainly on major issues such as abortion.
Obama could also appreciate Clinton's undeniably keen mind. Even Clinton detractors have noted her remarkable mental skills; she would be equal to any legal or intellectual challenge she would face as a justice. The fact that she hasn't served on a bench before would be inconsequential, considering her experience in law and in government.
If Obama were to promise Clinton the first court vacancy, her supporters would actually have a stronger incentive to support him for president than they would if she were going to be vice president. Given the Supreme Court's delicate liberal-conservative balance, she would play a major role in charting the country's future; there is no guarantee that a Clinton vice presidency would achieve such importance.
Think about it, friends – Hillary Rodham Clinton on the US Supreme Court for the next couple of decades. Doesn’t that notion leave your stomach churning? After all, she clearly has no interest in upholding precedent or exercising any interest in judicial restraint if she doesn’t like the ideological outcome of a case – and like Earl Warren, this natural-born politician would be a phenomenal arm-twister in pursuit of a majority. Would you like to bet that 5-4 decisions would peachy to all the liberals when she cobbled together a majority?
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May 19, 2008
And while some offer slippery-slope arguments about classic literature and artistic movies, the reality is that both the law and the opinions make it clear that attempts to ban non-pornographic works of artistic merit will not fly.
The Supreme Court yesterday upheld an expansive federal law that punishes people who peddle or seek child pornography, saying Congress's remedy for a growing problem on the Internet does not violate free-speech guarantees.In its 7 to 2 vote, the court also concluded that the law that criminalized "pandering" of real or purported child pornography online or through the mail is not unconstitutionally vague.
The majority dismissed what it called "fanciful hypotheticals" that the law might make movie reviewers or even unsuspecting grandparents subject to its standards.
"We hold that offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography are categorically excluded from the First Amendment," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.
He said that "child pornography harms and debases the most defenseless of our citizens," and that the law was "carefully crafted" to respond to child pornography "proliferating through the new medium of the Internet."
I don't see where most Americans with a moral compass would have any objection to this ruling, given that it simply criminalizes speech that is directed at engaging in illegal conduct. Change "child pornography" to "heroin" and see if you would find the logic of the ruling offensive.
But what I found striking in the coverage is the way in which some MSM sources were more interested in offering the pro-kiddie porn view before actually delving into the court's ruling.
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May 15, 2008
Gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry in California, the state Supreme Court said today in a historic ruling that could be repudiated by the voters in November.In a 4-3 decision, the justices said the state's ban on same-sex marriage violates the "fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship." The ruling is likely to flood county courthouses with applications from couples newly eligible to marry when the decision takes effect in 30 days.
The ruling set off a celebration at San Francisco City Hall. As the decision came down, out-of-breath staff members ran into the mayor's office where Gavin Newsom read the decision.
I find it rather shocking that, given the pending vote on a state constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriage, the justices (and I use that term loosely) didn't stay the decision until the people had the opportunity to speak on the issue in November.
But even more worrisome in my book is that there is some real slippery language in this opinion – that “fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship” could just as easily morph into the reasoning that supports overturning laws defining marriage as a monogamous institution. After all, there is no logical basis for denying such marriages if such a “fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship” exists – and given that there is significantly more precedent for it in Western society AND at least one major world religion that still practices polygamy today, there is even less of a rational basis to allow that limitation under the Constitution.
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April 28, 2008
Now Texas law allows for the presentation of the voter registration card, which lacks a picture. As per that statute, I accept it, but I always have this niggling doubt in the back of my mind -- what if this has been stolen from someone's mailbox? I believe that a sstate-issued photo ID would be preferrable.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that nothing in the US Constitution forbids a state from requiring one for voting purposes.
States can require voters to produce photo identification, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, upholding a Republican-inspired law that Democrats say will keep some poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots.Twenty-five states require some form of ID, and the court's 6-3 decision rejecting a challenge to Indiana's strict voter ID law could encourage others to adopt their own measures. Oklahoma legislators said the decision should help them get a version approved.
The ruling means the ID requirement will be in effect for next week's presidential primary in Indiana, where a significant number of new voters are expected to turn out for the Democratic contest between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.
The basis for the decision is a very straightforward one, and comes from one of the members of the more liberal bloc on the Supreme Court.
"The application of the statute to the vast majority of Indiana voters is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process," he wrote. His opinion was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is normally on the right, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is often considered a swing vote.The opinion left open the possibility that voters who had proof that they were adversely affected by such laws could petition the courts, but made it clear that it would be difficult for them to prevail.
In other words, the state has a legitimate interest in preventing voter fraud -- but the controlling opinion in this case allows for additional consideration of the question depending upon some showing of actual harm or disparate impact. By any stretch of all but the most fevered imagination, that is a reasonable standard to impose when one looks at a law that is neutral on its face and designed to safeguard something so fundamental as the integrity of elections.
Which only serves to prove that there are three members of the High Court whose hyperactive imaginations make it impossible for them to be taken seriously on this (or most other) issues.
Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer dissented. Justice Souter, in an opinion joined by Justice Ginsburg, said the Indiana law, which calls for a government-issued photo identification, like a driver’s license or passport, “threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting rights of tens of thousands of the state’s citizens.”
The so-called "nontrivial burdens" being the acquisition of a free state-issued identification card and presenting it on election day -- or within 10 days afterwards if they do not have it on election day.
Am I insensitive to the concerns of those who brought this challenge? No, I am not -- and agree with the Washington Post that the impact of such laws should be monitored to make sure that there is in practice no undue burden placed upon the exercise of the right to vote.
On the other hand, I am not at all in sympathy with the impotent attempt of the New York Times to overrule the nation's top court in today's editorial, in which it uncritically accepts all the arguments of those who challenged the law. But even those speculative claims fall victim to one of the undeniable realities of this case -- one of the plaintiffs in the case was found to be a fraudulent voter, and this law is likely to stop even more.
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April 23, 2008
The most significant decision handed down yesterday dealt with search and seizure issues.
The Supreme Court affirmed Wednesday that police have the power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even when done during an arrest that turns out to have violated state law.The unanimous decision comes in a case from Portsmouth, Va., where city detectives seized crack cocaine from a motorist after arresting him for a traffic ticket offense.
David Lee Moore was pulled over for driving on a suspended license. The violation is a minor crime in Virginia and calls for police to issue a court summons and let the driver go.
Instead, city detectives arrested Moore and prosecutors say that drugs taken from him in a subsequent search can be used against him as evidence.
"We reaffirm against a novel challenge what we have signaled for half a century," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.
Scalia said that when officers have probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime in their presence, the Fourth Amendment permits them to make an arrest and to search the suspect in order to safeguard evidence and ensure their own safety.
Now this gets into the whole issue of whether actions taken in good faith by police, even when there was an error, violate the Constitution. After all, the search was standard procedure pursuant to an arrest, and it appears from my reading o this somewhat vague wire service report that the officers did not realize that an arrest under the circumstances was a violation of the standards set by the state. A string of cases dating back to the early 1980s made this result no surprise -- after all, police officers cannot be expected to be fortune tellers regarding future appeals court decisions.
And before our friends on the left start intoning the usual rhetoric about fascist police states, please notice that even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the ACLU's mouthpiece on the Supreme Court, ruled that there was no problem with the search.
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DD, 
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, April 16, 2008
Justice Stevens, in a welcome surprise, said that he had come to the conclusion that the death penalty carries such high risks of error and discrimination, while doing so little good, that it is unconstitutional. He voted to uphold KentuckyÂ’s procedures because he believed precedent required it, but he said it is time for the court and legislatures to take a hard look at whether the death penaltyÂ’s substantial costs outweigh its benefits.WednesdayÂ’s ruling clears the way for states that had put their executions on hold to resume them. Lawyers for death-row inmates insist, however, that the legal test the Roberts decision used gives them a basis for more challenges to lethal injection. That means more fights over how much needless pain is too much.
The better course would be for the nation to undertake Justice Stevens’s hard look at capital punishment — and leave it behind.
Now I disagree with the "leave it behind" conclusion, but at least the editors are constitutionally honest here. They know that the death penalty is unambiguously constitutional, and that any decision that declared otherwise would be an abrogation of the language of the Constitution itself.
On the other hand, I've no problem with a discussion of the death penalty -- indeed, I have already made clear the preferred, relatively painless method of execution that I believe would meet the Robert's test. The Texas Moratorium Network has continued to allow its heart to bleed over the poor murderers rather than their innocent victims.
Let the discussion over capital punishment (not capital rehabilitation or capital deterrence -- capital PUNISHMENT) continue. If the democratic process leads to its repeal, then so be it. but i believe most folks recognize that there are crimes for which the ultimate penalty is the only appropriate one.
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the most common method of lethal injection executions, likely clearing the way to resume executions that have been on hold for nearly 7 months.The justices, by a 7-2 vote, turned back a constitutional challenge to the procedures in place in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze and kill inmates. Similar methods are used by roughly three dozen states.
''We ... agree that petitioners have not carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment,'' Chief Justice John Roberts said in an opinion that garnered only three votes. Four other justices, however, agreed with the outcome.
Roberts' opinion did leave open subsequent challenges to lethal injection practices if a state refused to adopt an alternative method that significantly reduced the risk of severe pain.
The reality, though, is that the opponents are likely to never meet that burden of proof. How does on determine that there is severe pain? What constitutes a significant reduction of risk? The terms are so vague as to be meaningless.
I still want states to adopt my alternative form of lethal injection – 9mm of lead to the base of the skull delivered at high velocity. Quick, efficient, and relatively painless.
And if we want to be sporting about it, give the condemned a choice of 10 pistols – one of which will be unloaded. An empty chamber results in an automatic commutation to life without parole – but only after the condemned has felt the muzzle to the head and heard the click of the trigger, giving them instant empathy with their innocent victim who was not even offered that much mercy.
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April 14, 2008
Ever since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty more than 30 years ago, justices have been finding ways to limit it.In the intervening years, they have employed their interpretations of society's "evolving standards of decency" to remove juvenile and mentally retarded killers from death row.
Before that, they excluded kidnappers who did not kill and even some accomplices to murder. In 1977 the court also concluded that a state could not execute a man who raped an adult woman.
But on Wednesday the court will consider whether a person who rapes a child is different. Louisiana prosecutors will argue that the same societal mores that have persuaded justices to spare certain categories of criminals lead in the opposite direction when it comes to child rapists, demanding an expansion of capital punishment, not a retrenchment.
And herein lies the problem with the “evolving standard of decency” argument used by the Supreme Court. If it is, in fact, based upon what society holds is acceptable, then there is no fixed standard of what is or is not constitutional in the realm of the death penalty, which produces a degree of constitutional uncertainty which is unacceptable in a society that operates based upon the dictates of law rather than men. Unless, of course, the argument is that this evolution can move in only one direction, a liberal one, then the position taken by the justices is inherently flawed and illegitimate from a constitutional perspective because there is no language in the Constitution to support such a position. Indeed, I’d argue that most of the death penalty jurisprudence of the last three decades suffers from such flaws, all of which come back to the underlying problem that the justices have been substituting personal opinion and non-constitutional sources for the Constitution itself.
As for the question of the constitutionality of executing child rapists, an originalist reading of the Constitution certainly allows for it. Indeed, it would also allow for the execution of those under 18, based upon the practices in place at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted. One can question the wisdom of the law in question – but striking a law down as unwise is not the province of the Supreme Court under our system of government.
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April 13, 2008
The study — with the unwieldy title “An Empirical Analysis of the Confirmation Hearings of the Justices of the Rehnquist Natural Court” —published in Constitutional Commentary, looked at how nine long-serving justices answered Senate questions, and how they then voted on the court. While it does not say that any nominee was intentionally misleading, it still found a wide gap.Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, for example, told the Senate that they had strong respect for Supreme Court precedents. On the court they were the justices most likely to vote to overturn those precedents. Justice David Souter deferred more to precedent than his Senate testimony suggested he would.
Here's the problem with the analysis - justices take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not the precedents of the Supreme Court. Their obligation when they find a precedent which they believe was wrongly decided is to make a decision that conforms with the Constitution, not the seemingly erroneous precedent. After all, it is the Constitution that is the highest law of the land, not the decisions of the Supreme Court.
Of course, the Warren Court also made short shrift of many earlier precedents. I don't see any objections to their work. But then again, that was a liberal court full of liberal justices, so I doubt that we will ever hear much criticism (explicit or implicit) out of the NY Times editorial board.
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March 20, 2008
A federal judge Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of a Michigan law that prohibits racial and gender preferences in government hiring and public university admissions."To impugn the motives of 58 (percent) of Michigan's electorate, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances which do not exist here, simply is not warranted on this record," U.S. District Judge David Lawson wrote.
Michigan voters approved the constitutional amendment known as Proposal 2 in November 2006.
Several groups -- including the NAACP and By Any Means Necessary -- as well as minority high school and college students challenged the measure, saying it would reduce minority enrollment in public universities.
Among the arguments in the lawsuits was that Proposal 2 violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution as well as federal statutes.
Lawson rejected the claim. "The Court believes that Michigan may limit the ability of discrete groups to secure an advantage based upon a racial classification without offending the Fourteenth Amendment," he wrote.
George Washington, an attorney for BAMN, said the group planned to immediately file an appeal. "We will take this to the U.S. Supreme Court if we have to. This is racially targeted legislation of the worst kind. To say it's protecting equal rights is outrageous."
Now what is it that these pro-discrimination morons claim is so offensive tot he US Constitution? Well, this.
(1) The University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and any other public college or university, community college, or school district shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.(2) The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.
(3) For the purposes of this section "state" includes, but is not necessarily limited to, the state itself, any city, county, any public college, university, or community college, school district, or other political subdivision or governmental instrumentality of or within the State of Michigan not included in sub-section 1.
(4) This section does not prohibit action that must be taken to establish or maintain eligibility for any federal program, if ineligibility would result in a loss of federal funds to the state.
(5) Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting bona fide qualifications based on sex that are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.
(6) The remedies available for violations of this section shall be the same, regardless of the injured party's race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin, as are otherwise available for violations of Michigan anti-discrimination law.
(7) This section shall be self-executing. If any part or parts of this section are found to be in conflict with the United States Constitution or federal law, the section shall be implemented to the maximum extent that the United States Constitution and federal law permit. Any provision held invalid shall be severable from the remaining portions of this section.
(
This section applies only to action taken after the effective date of this section.
(9) This section does not invalidate any court order or consent decree that is in force as of the effective date of this section.
On what legitimate basis can a voter initiative forbidding the use of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin to either advantage or disadvantage individuals in the provision of government services be seen as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. If anything, it constitutes a demand by the people of the state of Michigan that its government operate consistent with the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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February 26, 2008
Two years and 144 cases have passed since Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas last spoke up at oral arguments. It is a period of unbroken silence that contrasts with the rest of the court's unceasing inquiries.Hardly a case goes by, including two appeals that were argued Monday, without eight justices peppering lawyers with questions. Oral arguments offer justices the chance to resolve nagging doubts about a case, probe its weaknesses or make a point to their colleagues.
Left, right and center, the justices ask and they ask and they ask. Sometimes they debate each other, leaving the lawyer at the podium helpless to jump in. "I think you're handling these questions very well," Chief Justice John Roberts quipped to a lawyer recently in the midst of one such exchange.
Leaning back in his leather chair, often looking up at the ceiling, Thomas takes it all in, but he never joins in.
Monday was no different. Thomas said nothing.
Of course, Thomas is in great company with his style. For most of the Court's history, oral arguments did not involve questioning the advocates during oral arguments. John Marshall, generally considered to be the greatest member of the US Supreme Court, generally didn't ask questions from the bench, nor did Joseph Story and the other giants of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. That changed with the coming of the Roosevelt justices in the 1930s, as FDR made a practice of picking law professors who took their classroom methodology into the courtroom.
Is there anything wrong with asking no questions during oral arguments? Certainly not -- indeed, I'd argue that there is something better about trying to give the lawyers for the parties a respectful hearing. We might be better served by having more of the members of the High Court follow his example
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February 09, 2008
Is it a proper decision rooted in the Constitution, or judicial activism?
The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday that electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment, outlawing the electric chair in the only state that still used it as its sole means of execution.The state's death penalty remains on the books, but the court said the Legislature must approve another method to use it. The evidence shows that electrocution inflicts "intense pain and agonizing suffering," the court said.
"Condemned prisoners must not be tortured to death, regardless of their crimes," Judge William Connolly wrote in the 6-1 opinion.
"Contrary to the State's argument, there is abundant evidence that prisoners sometimes will retain enough brain functioning to consciously suffer the torture high voltage electric current inflicts on a human body," Connolly wrote.
Ordinaily, I'd argue that this is a bit of judicial activism. However, is it possible that increases in our knowledge about the human body and the effects of electrocution have led us to the point where we now know that what once seemed to be a humane form of execution is in fact excessively cruel and amounts to torture? I'm willing to reserve judgment there, given that the opinion goes to great lengths to examine the scientific evidence on the matter. i do, however, struggle with whether it is the proper role of the courts to make that decision.
There is, of course, a simple, effective, and quick method of execution out there that I believe would meet any and all objections under the Eighth Amendment.
![guillotine[1].jpg](http://rhymeswithright.mu.nu/archives/images/guillotine[1].jpg)
Properly modified, equipped with an ultra-sharp surgical steel blade and a hydraulic system designed to instantaneously separate head from body (and body from soul), it should meet any Constitutional objection to the method of execution.
There is a question as to whether or not this decision will make it into the Federal courts, because of the grounds on which the decision was made. The Nebraska Supreme Court didn't actually SAY the decision was based upon the US Constitution, but rather upon virtually identical language in the state constitution -- but then cited nothing except precedents interpreting th US Constitution. That might make taking this case into the federal courts a bit more tricky due to federalism issues.
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February 06, 2008
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals disagreed in a new ruling.
Criminals in Texas will get a break on their fines under a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that courts must assess fines concurrently, rather than adding them together.Wednesday's 5-4 ruling changes the 35-year-old practice under which Texas courts issued separate fines for separate criminal counts, with each to be paid consecutively.
Defendants will now pay the largest fine assessed by the court, and then every other fine is considered paid in full. The new practice brings fines in line with the way many prison terms are served — at the same time rather than consecutively.
The basic holding of the ruling is that the statute, drafted and adopted by Democrats back during their thirteen decade strangle-hold on political power here in Texas, requires that all aspects of sentences following multiple count trials be concurrent, not just prison terms. And as the law is written, I'd have to argue that they are correct.
The solution? New legislation, because it is not the place of the courts to repair or renovate shoddy statutory language. After all, there is no good public policy purpose in giving folks a break on their fines.
Here's hoping that Texas legislators make fixing the ill-considered statute early in the 2009 session.
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January 16, 2008
Rudy Villanueva and Tony Logan, alleged members of a Miami-Dade County street gang called the Bird Road Boys, were seen in the video brandishing a shotgun, assault rifle and handguns. Villanueva was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement late Tuesday evening, and Logan was arrested early Wednesday morning.Villanueva, who goes by the names King Bird Road and Bird Road Rudy, is the alleged leader of the gang and is seen on the video saying, "Metro Dade Gang Unit, here I am baby." Villanueva went on in the video to say "we's out here fighting a Cold War" and that "they come at us if they want to."
Logan appears in the video saying "come get it" while flashing gang signs and pulling the triggers of the two handguns he is holding.
The Fifth Amendment gives you the right to remain silent in order not to incriminate yourself. It strikes me that these fools should have acted accordingly. But fortunately, they were too stupid to do so -- and so the community will likely be a safer place.
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A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.Mark Deli Siljander, a Michigan Republican when he was in the House, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.
A 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying — money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
And the more I read about the case, the more confirmed in my opinion that Siljander was not conspiring to support terrorism so much as he was to line his own pockets. The indictment seems to confirm that
Siljander, 56, is founder and chairman of Global Strategies in Great Falls, a public relations and marketing firm, and is slated to publish a book in June focused on bridging the divide between Christians and Muslims.The charity, which was based in Columbia, Mo., allegedly paid Siljander $50,000 in March 2004 to lobby the Senate Finance Committee in an attempt to be kept off a list of terrorist organizations. Senate records indicate that Siljander has not been registered as a lobbyist since 1998.
According to the indictment, the money was stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Siljander lied to federal agents about his role.
In other words, his role seems to have been one of lobbyist, not a knowing participant in an effort to fund terrorism. Indeed, if he had not engaged in a course of action designed to shift government funds from their intended purpose to his own bank account and later lying about it, he would in all likelihood be guilty of nothing criminal. But the actions of which he is accused are clearly part of a scheme to defraud and deceive, and that is criminal in and of itself, even without the ties to a terrorist related group. But I wonder to what degree Siljander was duped by a group that was already seeking to dupe the government -- after all, there is no honor among thieves.
Debbie Schlussel has a post of note about this case. Many years ago, Siljander was not just her congressman, but also her employer. Her words on the matter seem to confirm my take -- namely that this has has less to do with supporting terrorism than it does with a desire to grab some cash. She notes that Siljander has had financial problems since leaving Congress, and that he had a consistent pro-Israel record and was outspoken against Middle Eastern terrorist groups.
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January 06, 2008
The Supreme Court, in a case being watched around the world, on Monday hears arguments about whether to ban the lethal three-drug cocktail used in most U.S. executions because it inflicts excruciating pain.The hour-long session marks the first time in more than a century the court has examined a specific method of capital punishment. It comes at a time when the death penalty itself appears to be in retreat in one of the few democracies that still practices it.
Arguments will focus on whether the commonly used lethal injection method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, but the case has also prompted a wider debate about capital punishment.
* * * The court's ruling, expected by the end of June, could decide if the current lethal drug combination is constitutional or whether states have to come up with alternatives that pose less risk of pain and suffering.
Now it is beyond question that the death penalty is constitutional, as I pointed out the other day in the context of a different case.
And since the Fifth Amendment clearly contemplates and authorizes the use of the death penalty in its provisions related to capital crimes, putting persons in jeopardy of life and requiring due process for the deprivation of life, any ban on executions for non-homicides would be on tenuous constitutional grounds.
The issue, then, is how much pain the criminal is permitted to feel as justice is rendered. And at least two of our major newspapers have made it quite clear that they want the court to impose a standard so high that it would amount to a de facto declaration of unconstitutionality for ANY method of execution.
The New York Times, of course, admits that the clear language of the Constitution authorizing executions does not interfere with its judgment on the issue of the death penalty's constitutionality.
We believe that the death penalty, no matter how it is administered, is unconstitutional and wrong. If a state does execute anyone, it must do so in a way that is humane and does not impose needless suffering. KentuckyÂ’s method does not meet that standard.
The problem, of course, is that this ignores the fact that lethal injection is humane, and that the Constitution does not mandate that criminals not feel any anguish or experience any pain or suffering while justice is delivered. That is true whether or not we are talking about a stint in the county jail or the imposition of the ultimate sanction. the requirement is that the penalty not be "cruel AND unusual" -- and the Supreme Court has said that this means that the method of executions hould not shock the conscience. Frankly, I don't think that your average American (2/3 of whom support the death penalty) is shocked by the notion of a criminal feeling some pain or anguish during execution -- indeed, that they feel some small measure of what they inflicted upon their victims appears to be an appropriate part of the sentence..
But another major newspaper goes even farther in its position on this case. Here are the words of the editorial staff of the Washington Post.
But if capital punishment is to be carried out, it should be done as humanely as possible by a method that causes no pain. Evidence submitted in the Supreme Court case suggests that the current protocol for administering lethal injection cannot meet this standard.
That is, of course, a standard that cannot be met. The inserting of the IV needle itself would constitute cruel and unusual punishment under standard the Washington Post seeks -- never mind that it is performed tens of thousands of times daily in medical facilities around the country.
Now one can argue the efficacy and the desirability of the death penalty. That is, however, a policy question, and one properly left to the states and to Congress. But to cloak abolition of the death penalty in the guise of making it more humane is a constitutional parlour trick that the Supreme Court should reject.
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January 04, 2008
The U.S. Supreme Court Friday added another dramatic death-penalty case to its docket, agreeing to decide whether a Louisiana man can be put to death for raping his young daughter.The case joins an appeal set for argument Monday where the Supreme Court will decide whether lethal-injection procedures used in many criminal executions violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The lethal injection appeal, in Baze v. Rees, spurred what has become a de facto nationwide halt on death penalty executions until the appeal is decided.
In contrast, the Louisiana rape case for now may affect the fate of just one man -- Patrick Kennedy. His attorneys say he is the only person set to be put to death for rape in the last 40 years.
Nevertheless, the appeal gives the Supreme Court the chance to revisit whether the death penalty can be used for crimes that don't involve someone's death. In recent years, five states have enacted laws allowing the death penalty for child rape and nine additional states and the federal government have seldom-used laws that allow death penalty convictions in certain instances that don't involve murder.
There is certainly nothing in the Constitution that requires the death penalty to be limited to cases of murder. Indeed, any attempt by the courts to so limit the imposition of capital punishment to those involving a fatality would be a gross act of judicial arrogance that would be the best of all possible cases for the impeachment for judges for official misconduct while in office. After all, the Eighth Amendment specifically only bars "cruel and unusual punishment". And since the Fifth Amendment clearly contemplates and authorizes the use of the death penalty in its provisions related to capital crimes, putting persons in jeopardy of life and requiring due process for the deprivation of life, any ban on executions for non-homicides would be on tenuous constitutional grounds.
Besides – can you think of a more fitting punishment for raping a child ?
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December 26, 2007
That leads to decisions like this one.
The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that privately owned shopping malls cannot stop protesters from demonstrating there to urge a boycott of one of the tenants.In a 4-to-3 decision, the court said a San Diego mall violated California law protecting free speech when its owners barred protesters from distributing leaflets in front of one of the mallÂ’s stores, asking shoppers not to give the store their business.
“A shopping mall is a public forum in which persons may reasonably exercise their right to free speech,” Justice Carlos R. Moreno wrote in the majority opinion.
Justice Moreno said shopping malls were entitled to enact and enforce “reasonable regulations of the time, place and manner of such free expression,” to avoid a disruption of business.
“But they may not prohibit certain types of speech based upon its content,” he wrote, like speech urging a boycott of stores.
Thre are, of course, two points in this article that leap rapidly to mind.
1) Why the heck can't private property owners prohibit any or all speech -- including based upon content -- as a proper and legitimate exercise of their property rights?
2) Why has this case taken nearly a decade to percolate through the courts? After all, this is based upon a protest that took place in 1998!
But the bigger issue in my book is that a shopping mall is not a public forum -- it is a place of business to which the public is invited for the limited purpose of shopping. To the degree that groups are invited in for other purposes -- such as carolers in the central plaza or antique car shows or other such events -- that is done to facilitate the primary purpose of the shopping mall, which is the sale of tenant merchandise. And to require that the mall permit speech explicitly intended to disrupt that the primary purpose of the mall seems to be an outrageous infringement upon the property rights of the owners and the rights of their tenants.
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November 29, 2007
Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer is blocking the nomination of former GOP Rep. James E. Rogan to the federal bench, citing his lead role in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton as one of her concerns.Her stance is angering Rogan allies who contend that Boxer is reneging on her support for a bipartisan commission set up in California that recommends judicial nominees to the White House. Boxer disputes that.
"U.S. Rep. Rogan was one of the most enthusiastic backers of impeachment — he thought President Clinton had committed high crimes and misdemeanors. The Senate certainly disagreed with that conclusion, as did Sen. Boxer," said Boxer's spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.
Boxer also believes that Rogan's strongly conservative positions on gun control, abortion and other issues make him "out of step with California," Ravitz said.
Now just a minute -- since when are federal judges supposed to be "in step" with the politics of a certain state. I thought the expectation was for them to be "in step" with the Constitution of the United States. Is its Boxer's contention that we must impose a political litmus test on federal judges -- and, in the event that a Democrat wins the White House in 2008, that only conservative jurists "in step" with Texas be appointed to the bench in this very red state?
But more disturbing is her attempt to rehash the impeachment issue. I'd like to like Senator Hillary Clinton to speak out publicly on this issue.
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, November 24, 2007
In recent decades, the Supreme Court has discovered any number of new rights not in the explicit text of the Constitution. Now it has the opportunity to validate a right that resides in plain sight--"the right of the people to keep and bear arms" in the Second Amendment.This week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. In March, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declared unconstitutional the District's near-total ban on handgun possession. That 2-1 ruling, written by Judge Laurence Silberman, found that when the Second Amendment spoke of the "right of the people," it meant the right of "individuals," and not some "collective right" held only by state governments or the National Guard.
That stirring conclusion was enough to prompt the D.C. government to declare Judge Silberman outside "the mainstream of American jurisprudence" in its petition to the Supreme Court. We've certainly come to an interesting legal place if asserting principles that appear nowhere in the Constitution is considered normal, but it's beyond the pale to interpret the words that are in the Constitution to mean what they say.
Perhaps the problem here is not one of judicial philosophy or textual interpretation. Maybe it is simply an issue of bad lighting. With all the stringent efforts to find liberal ideology hidden in constitutional shadows, penumbras, and the emanations thereof, perhaps the actual text of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights have become obscured by the tripods, power lines, and lighting apparatus needed to discern putative rights, like those to an abortion or sodomy, that not even the framers of these masterpieces of liberty knew they were protecting when they wrote and adopted the documents over two centuries ago.
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November 21, 2007
The justices chose their own wording for what they want to decide in the new case, District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290. The question they posed is whether the provisions of the statute “violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes.”
Now this could be a very significant in a couple of ways. On the one hand, it appears to be a very broad approach to the issue of how far the Second Amendment goes in protecting an individual right to keep and bear arms. However, it could also be provide a cloak for limiting the case to the specific status of Washington, DC only as a federal enclave not a part of any state. I'm inclined to believe that the court will examine and decide based upon the former, not the latter, but there is always the possibility of again "sidestepping" the bigger issue until a similar suit comes out of a state.
Secondly, I'm disturbed by this quote from the city's mayor, which potentially shows a contempt for the Constitution virtually unknown in American history.
"It's the will of the people of the District of Columbia that has to be respected," Fenty said at a news conference with D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer and several D.C. Council members. "We should have the right to make our own decisions."
Were the District of Columbia a state, I'd have to call that a states rights argument. Indeed, it is rather similar to those arguments made by defenders of racial segregation, in that it appears to put majority rule above rights guaranteed by the Constitution. That argument was wrong in Mississippi in 1957, and it is wrong in the nation's capital in 2007. What's more, I'm sure Mayor Fenty knows that in his heart of hearts -- after all, he would not make that argument, for example, with regard to any of the rest of the Bill of Rights because he would be laughed out of court.
And then there is this original rationale for the law, one that is so absurd on its face that I cannot believe that it met the laugh test at the time it was adopted.
Washington banned handguns in 1976, saying it was designed to reduce violent crime in the nation's capital.The City Council that adopted the ban said it was justified because "handguns have no legitimate use in the purely urban environment of the District of Columbia."
Excuse me? Self-defense is not a legitimate use of a handgun? Heck, last time I visited the city every cop was carrying a handgun -- proof positive that the city itself does not believe the stated rationale for the handgun ban.
Of course, as I noted in my earlier post, the best course of action would be for the Supreme Court to construe the phrase "the right of the people" in precisely the way it does in cases involving other provisions of the Bill of Rights where it is used.
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November 20, 2007
The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether the District of Columbia can ban handguns, a case that could produce the most in-depth examination of the constitutional right to "keep and bear arms" in nearly 70 years.The justices' decision to hear the case could make the divisive debate over guns an issue in the 2008 presidential and congressional elections.
The government of Washington, D.C., is asking the court to uphold its 31-year ban on handgun ownership in the face of a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the ban as incompatible with the Second Amendment. Tuesday's announcement was widely expected, especially after both the District and the man who challenged the handgun ban asked for the high court review.
The clear historical context of the Second Amendment says that it does. So do the words of those who adopted it. And given the construction of the amendment, the right must be seen as an individual one, just like the similarly constructed "right of the people to peaceably assemble" and the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" clearly protect individual rights. The parallel structure makes this conclusion unavoidable – and even if there is room for reasonable limitations upon the exercise of these rights, the DC law goes far beyond it.
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November 19, 2007
We know from their past decisions how all of the current justices interpret Roe v. Wade, yet they are not precluded from sitting on future cases involving abortion. Why shouldn't we also learn how Supreme Court nominees view that decision and other important cases? If all nominees were expected to answer these questions, the White House would no longer seek out "stealth" nominees whose views are largely unknown.To protect the independence and autonomy of the courts, questions addressed to specific pending or future cases should be avoided. But there is no good reason for nominees to refuse to state how they would have voted in cases the Supreme Court has already decided. The facts, briefs, and oral arguments from those cases are all a matter of public record. Questions about decided cases should be at the heart of confirmation hearings, because they provide the most concrete information available about what kind of justice the nominee will be. Judges decide real cases. To be able to evaluate nominees in a meaningful way, the Senate and the public need to know how a nominee is likely to decide them.
Of course, in Kennedy's eyes, refusal to adhere to a liberal interpretation would render one unfit to serve on the Supreme Court, thereby negating the outcome of presidential elections that produce winners of a differing political philosophy. And it also guarantees "respect" for decisions that are wrongly decided -- for just as surely as support for Roe would be a litmus test today, I have no doubt that in 1950 we would have seen support for Plessy v. Ferguson -- by that time a precedent that was a full half-century old -- as mandatory for confirmation in the eyes of the Democrat majority in the US Senate. While that certainly would have avoided the myriad disruptions of American life caused by the overturning of that decision in Brown v. Board of Education, it also would have continued a manifestly unjust system of racial segregation.
Of course, Kennedy also wants to overturn long-standing principles of executive privilege, attorney-client confidentiality and the like in his effort to pack the Court with liberal ideologues. In his contempt for the Constitution, he would overturn two centuries of confirmation practices and seek to elevate ideology over competence as the standard for confirmation. Rather than remove partisanship and the politics of destruction from the confirmation process, Kennedy would make them permanent features, so that his actions in the Bork and Thomas confirmation processes would become the standard by which all future confirmations would be carried out.
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November 11, 2007
The federal court employee at the center of a sexual misconduct complaint against U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent first went to her boss about the judge allegedly touching her inappropriately in 2003 — four years before the March incident that led to his reprimand by the 5th Circuit judicial council.In mid-2003, case manager Cathy McBroom told her supervisor that the judge lured her into an office used as an exercise room and groped her, according to interviews with McBroom's friends, her mother and other sources.
But her female supervisor advised that McBroom could lose her job if she made a formal complaint, and no further action apparently was taken.
The alleged assault in March prompted McBroom to request an immediate transfer and file a judicial misconduct complaint. It resulted in a rare reprimand of the judge for sexual harassment and "inappropriate behavior" toward other employees.
* * * This is McBroom's account of what happened in March as told to friends and her mother in conversation and in written notes:
McBroom was summoned to the judge's chambers on Friday, March 23, at about 3 p.m.
Her hands were full of legal papers when the judge — a former high school athlete who is more than 6 inches taller and at least 100 pounds heavier — asked for a hug.
She told him she didn't think that was appropriate, but reluctantly approached.
The judge grabbed McBroom, pulled up her blouse and her bra and put his mouth on her breast. Then, Kent forced her head down toward his crotch.
As McBroom struggled, Kent kept telling the married mother of three what he wanted to do to her in words too graphic to publish. The papers fell to the floor. The pet bulldog Kent kept in his chambers began to bark.
The incident was interrupted by the sound of footsteps from another staff member in the corridor, and the judge loosened his grip. As she left, the judge said McBroom was a good case manager and then made suggestions about engaging in a sexual act.
McBroom ran out crying.
Terrible stuff. As one local columnist writes, this is not sexual harassment -- it is sexual assault.
Some folks are calling for impeachment.
I regret that I cannot, despite my disgust with the conduct in question.
After all, precedent indicates that the conduct alleged to have been committed is not an offense for which an individual should be removed by impeachment.
You disagree? Let me toss out some names.
Paula Jones.
Juanita Broderick.
Kathleen Willey.
Monica Lewinski.
The accusations related to these women included sex with a subordinate, unwanted sexual conduct, unwanted sexual suggestions, and sexual assault. Impeachment proceedings were brought against the perpetrator of those acts. The US Senate determined that the offenses, which were clearly proven, did not merit removal from office as high crimes or misdemeanors. And thus Bill Clinton was permitted to remain in office, on the basis that the charges were just about sex.
So tell me, how does the case of Judge Kent really differ in substance? It doesn't. To remove him from office would be to commit a grave injustice against him, by applying a different standard to him than is applied to officers of the executive branch.
Either that, or it would require the United States Senate to admit that it was wrong when it refused to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency less than a decade ago.
Although on the other hand, from a purely partisan perspective it could be quite fun to watch this impeachment proceeding play out in the US Senate. After all, it would require several Democrats currently seeking the White House to take a stand on whether the sexual abuse of subordinates is morally and legally wrong, and merits removal from office. Having defended her husband to the hilt, wouldn't you love to see how Senator Hillary Clinton handled a Kent impeachment trial, and how she would vote?
Democrats set the standard for impeachment on sexual misconduct. Now they need to live with it -- or concede that they were wrong to put politics before principle in 1999, and that they are therefore unfit to govern America.
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November 07, 2007
The wife of executed killer Michael Richard filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday accusing Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller of causing the inmate's Sept. 25 lethal injection.Marsha Richard of Houston claims Keller had no authority to prevent what would have been a successful appeal to stay her husband's execution.
The lawsuit says Keller violated Michael Richard's due process rights when she ordered the court clerk's office to close promptly at 5 p.m. on Sept. 25 before his lawyers could file an appeal. Houston attorney David Dow had asked for more time after having computer problems.
The suit names Keller in her individual and official capacity, as well as other unnamed defendants in their individual and official capacities.
Excuse me -- Michael Richard was a scum-sucking murdering bastard who caused his own death by his life of crime, having been duly convicted by a jury of his peers and had every appeal rejected. There was no chance of his death sentence being overturned. The only question was when, not if, justice was going to be served -- and even if the appeal had been successful, in the end the only question would be one of HOW the sentence would have been carried out.
Besides, Keller acted appropriately under the law and the procedures in place at the time -- as was shown by the Supreme Court's unwillingness to take up the issue and stop the execution. Interestingly enough, Mrs. Richard didn't see fit to include the justices of the US Supreme Court who refused to grant a stay of execution after Judge Keller properly rejected the appeal when Michael's Richard's lawyers didn't meet the filing deadline.
Dismiss this suit, assess Marsha Richard for all court costs and legal fees for those she sued, and sanction the lawyers for this frivolous suit.
And I'm sure I speak for most Americans when I say that I don't give a rat's ass if murderers suffer a bit while being executed, given the lack of regard they showed for the lives and sufferings of their victims. But if lethal injection of a drug cocktail is a constitutional no-no based upon speculation of suffering, I'm all for the lethal injection of lead at high velocity -- or public hanging in the county where the crime took place. Especially since any reading of the original intent of the Eighth Amendment will show that the founders did not consider the latter to be cruel and unusual punishment, as it was the preferred form of execution in their day.
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November 01, 2007
It doesnÂ’t matter if she is a prostitute by trade.
Why doesnÂ’t this idiot judge understand that?
A judge in Philadelphia has come under fire for a controversial ruling in which she reduced charges so that a man accused of raping a prostitute at gunpoint faced only robbery charges for "theft of services."Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni earlier this month dismissed rape and sexual assault charges against Dominique Gindraw, who is accused of forcing a prostitute at gunpoint to have sex with him and several other men. Deni left intact charges of armed robbery for theft of services against Gindraw.
Prosecuting Gindraw for rape, the judge said in a subsequent newspaper interview "minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped."
The decision — and Deni's subsequent comments to a local newspaper — prompted about 40 complaints from around the country to the local bar association, said executive director Ken Shear, as well as a campaign by women's groups to encourage people to vote against Deni when she is up for reelection Tuesday
By the way – theft of service is what you get charged with if you have an illegal cable hook-up. Forced sex at gunpoint is no more serious than stealing HBO and Showtime?
How can one argue that forced sex at gunpoint isnÂ’t rape? Especially since it meets the definition of rape under Pennsylvania law? That the judge cannot understand that is an indication not only of her unfitness for the bench, but of her fundamental lack of decency as a human being.
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October 31, 2007
The straight-and-narrow proceedings of federal court took a striking political detour yesterday during a hearing in Camden for six men accused in a terror plot against Fort Dix.The U.S. district judge presiding over a pretrial hearing for the group known as the "Fort Dix Six" threw sharp words from the bench when shown a campaign flyer being circulated by Republicans vying for state legislative seats in Burlington County.
The flyer, which was entered into evidence because of its potential impact on jurors, implies that Democratic Assembly hopeful Tracy Riley is a terrorist sympathizer.
The reason? Her husband, Michael Riley, is defending one of the men accused in the alleged plot to gun down soldiers at Fort Dix, the Army base in Burlington County. One of the men is expected to enter a guilty plea today.
Judge Robert B. Kugler, who examined the flyer for its impact on potential jurors, did little to conceal his shock.
"Wow," Kugler said, inspecting the mailer that Riley had handed him. "I had heard this was going on. . . . It's pretty despicable stuff, honestly."
When I was a seminarian, the brother of my moral theology professor was representing Jeff Dahmer, and Fr. Pat pointedly reminded us that ensuring that a clientÂ’s rights and interests are protected is appropriate to the degree that one neither lies to undercut justice nor acts to become enmeshed in the clientÂ’s crimes (like Lynn Stewart did). After all, no sane person would have argued that my professorÂ’s brother was condoning or supporting murder or cannibalism by representing his client.
Now I’m not going to get into the propriety of the ad – after all, if we are going to continue to follow the misguided policy of treating terrorists as criminals rather than enemies of the state, we are going to have to afford them the right to an attorney. It is a part of our system, and an attorney for a terrorist is no more responsible for his client’s crimes than is the attorney for a murderer or a child molester. Based upon this belief, I know that as a candidate I would not have signed off on this campaign flyer for that very reason.
That said, I don’t believe that the issue of the flyer should have been dealt with in the manner it was, especially not in open court. The attorney in question, the husband of the candidate opposed in the flyer, expressed concern about contamination of the jury pool. It was his job to raise the issue. But for the judge to make the comments that he did from the bench – in particular, the attack from the bench on one of the candidates supported by this campaign literature – seems to me to have crossed a line into inappropriate political involvement by a judge. By making said criticism from the bench, he implicitly endorsed the defense attorney’s wife. Such criticism should not have been made at all. As such, Judge Kugler ought to be sanctioned for unethical conduct.
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October 15, 2007
Two co-defendants in the O.J. Simpson armed robbery case in Las Vegas, Nevada, have agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges and testify against the former football star, officials said Monday.Walter Alexander and Charles H. Cashmore said they will testify against Simpson and three other co-defendants, and will include in their testimony that guns were used in the alleged robbery.
In return for Alexander's cooperation, Clark County District Attorney David Roger promised to seek a suspended sentence on a charge of conspiracy to commit robbery, according to Clark County Court spokesman Michael Sommermeyer.
Earlier Monday, Cashmore appeared before Judge Joe M. Bonaventure and said he would plead guilty to an accessory to robbery charge, court information officer Michael Sommermeyer said.
Clark County District Attorney David Roger announced in court that Cashmore would testify against Simpson and four others. Cashmore is scheduled for arraignment on October 23.
Imagine if they had managed to turn Al Cowlings against OJ before the murder case -- he'd have long since had a needle in his arm or a life sentence.
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October 07, 2007
They were both children more than 25 years ago when Sona Gandhi and her neighbor had the encounters that she would later call sexual abuse. They were certainly adults the day Gandhi confronted the man in a Rockville courtroom last winter.But the man, now 40, was charged as a juvenile because of his age at the time of the alleged offenses, in a type of case that is becoming more common as women increasingly report being molested as children.
"I deal with this every day of my life," Gandhi, 33, told the man in court, according to a copy of her prepared remarks. "I hope that's something you think about every day of yours."
Cases such as the one prompted by Gandhi's report to police last year have ignited a legal debate about whether adults can and should be tried in juvenile court and whether labeling adults as sex offenders for things they did as teenagers is fair and necessary.
I wonder about this. And I don't have an answer. Should we be going back a quarter century and charging folks with acting out sexually? And if we do, what is the appropriate forum to handle these charges? For that matter, does sexual acting out by teens merit the same treatment as adult sex offenses?
I especially wonder about these questions given the claims of a colleague of mine. A 13-year-old neighbor touched him inappropriately when he was 8. Now, a quarter century later, the neighbor is a respected professional in the community. No hint of improper conduct has been associated with him in the years since. Should he be charged with a crime for something that happened in 1984? And does it belong in adult court, when the boy who actd out has grown into a very different man?
These questions especially matter when you consider these facts.
Research on juvenile sex offenders shows they are more likely than adults to respond to treatment. And experts say many juveniles who commit sex offenses don't do so as adults.
Again, I do not know the answer -- but would love to hear some reactions from others.
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October 06, 2007
Not the sort of person I’d like to tailgate with, listen to Marvin Gaye with, share Ripple or a Scotch and Drambuie or a blackberry brandy with — if I were still drinking.
and
I know it wasnÂ’t what my hero Atticus Finch would have done. But having the power to carjack the presidency and control the fate of the country did give me that old X-rated tingle.
Because after all, black men are just carjackers who hang out drinking Ripple in their spare time. Right, Ms. Dowd?
What's more, Maureen Dowd explicitly accuses Justice Thomas of subverting justice. It is time for her to put up or shut up. Prove the accusations or resign in disgrace.
H/T Reformed Chicks Babbling, The Revolutionary Political/Sports Blog, Narcissistic Views
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October 02, 2007
Crystal Gail Mangum.
Anita Hill.
Each used false accusations of sexual improprieties to attack and destroy men. Each has been shown to be a liar.
But since she is a liberal icon, Anita Hill has gotten space in the New York Times to continue to spread her lies about Justice Clarence Thomas. Her claims were not credible in 1991 -- they remain beyond belief in 2007.
ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of Clarence ThomasÂ’s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.I stand by my testimony.
Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” He may even be entitled to feel abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the Supreme Court.
But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.
Anita Hill claims that "[a] number of independent authors" have supported her. The problem is that none of those authors can be particularly viewed as unbiased or non-partisan. The witnesses on her behalf were decidedly unpersuasive -- indeed, I remember watching the hearings with an anti-Thomas Democrat whose response to their testimony was to turn to me and admit that he was convinced following their testimony that Clarence Thomas was innocent.
The sort of false charges that Anita Hill made were sensational enough in 1991 that the media was more than willing to be complicit in them. But since them, we have heard Tawna Brawley recant her charges of sexual abuse against powerful men, and watched as Crysta Gail Mangum used sexually loaded charges to falsely smear young men at Duke. Anita Hill, sadly, is cut from the same cloth. But in each case, liberals have been willing to take the word of an accuser, even when the evidence is against them.
The time has come for Anita Hill to realize that her 15 minutes are up -- and that it is morally wrong for her to seek to revictimize the man whose reputation she sullied in order to gain another quarter hour.
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September 25, 2007
With the 2008 presidential and Congressional elections on the horizon, the Supreme Court agreed today to consider whether voter-identification laws unfairly keep poor people and members of minority groups from going to the polls.The justices will hear arguments from an Indiana case, in which a federal district judge and a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in January upheld a state law requiring, with certain exceptions, that someone wanting to vote in person in a primary or general election present a government-issued photo identification. Presumably, the court would rule on the case by June.
I think the rulings of the appellate court judges in this case are interesting because they are both correct. Especially this point by the Democrat judge who wrote the dissent in the case.
“Let’s not beat around the bush,” [Judge Terence T. Evans] wrote. “The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.”
Quite true. Having grown up outside of Chicago, I readily affirm that my support for such laws is based upon my explicit and conscious desire to disenfranchise certain key Democrat constituencies.
Dead-Americans.
Fantasy-Americans.
Felon-Americans.
"Not American Citizen"-Americans.
After all, those groups have been key to influencing elections and preventing GOP victories for years. And I believe that keeping members of these groups from voting violates nobody's rights under the Fourteenth Amendment -- especially when the necessary identification documents are available free to American citizens under the voter ID laws.
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Such a course of action would clearly undo the ponderous jurisprudence of the Supreme Court on the death penalty, and what methods of execution are permissible.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country.The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates on death row in Kentucky — Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. — who sued Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
Baze has been scheduled for execution Tuesday night, but the Kentucky Supreme Court halted the proceedings earlier this month.
The U.S. Supreme Court has previously made it easier for death row inmates to contest the lethal injections used across the country for executions.
But until Tuesday, the justices had never agreed to consider the fundamental question of whether the mix of drugs used in Kentucky and elsewhere violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
All 37 states that perform lethal injections use the same three-drug cocktail, but at least 11 states suspended its use after opponents alleged it was ineffective and cruel. The three drugs consist of an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer, and a substance to stop the heart. Death penalty foes have argued that if the condemned prisoner is not given enough anesthetic, he can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.
Personally, though, I have to note that the entire debate over the constitutionality of any given form of the death penalty seems to be absurd to me. Look at the terms. Capital Punishment. Death Penalty. The goal is not to rehabilitate or show mercy – it is to exact retribution for the misdeeds of the condemned. The time has come, quite frankly, to get over the misguided notion that these folks have a right to experience no pain or suffering as they are executed. Maybe a little pain and suffering would even be good for their souls – or perhaps a foretaste of what they will experience for all eternity.
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September 23, 2007
But I'm struck by this story.
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago in 1941, Stevens enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 6, 1941, hours before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He later won a bronze star for his service as a cryptographer, after he helped break the code that informed American officials that Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese Navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, was about to travel to the front. Based on the code-breaking of Stevens and others, U.S. pilots, on Roosevelt’s orders, shot down Yamamoto’s plane in April 1943.Stevens told me he was troubled by the fact that Yamamoto, a highly intelligent officer who had lived in the United States and become friends with American officers, was shot down with so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration. The experience, he said, raised questions in his mind about the fairness of the death penalty. “I was on the desk, on watch, when I got word that they had shot down Yamamoto in the Solomon Islands, and I remember thinking: This is a particular individual they went out to intercept,” he said. “There is a very different notion when you’re thinking about killing an individual, as opposed to killing a soldier in the line of fire.” Stevens said that, partly as a result of his World War II experience, he has tried on the court to narrow the category of offenders who are eligible for the death penalty and to ensure that it is imposed fairly and accurately. He has been the most outspoken critic of the death penalty on the current court.
One can look at the death penalty from many different points of view, and this is one upon which I differ with Stevens -- particularly because the death penalty is clearly authorized in the Eighth Amendment, and therefore unambiguously constitutional. But his view on the intentional, targeted killing of Yamamoto strikes me as misplaced.
Yes, killing a random soldier or sailor is in some ways different from making a particular officer a target, with the intent of ending his life. But for all his Stevens' moral qualms, I think it is important to remember that military commanders, not just the man in the trenches, are legitimate targets. There really is no moral distinction between the two. And I wonder -- would he feel the same had he instead helped locate Hitler and therefore brought about the demise of that evil man (and likely the end of the war)?
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O’Connor was clearly Toobin’s most important source. She’s also — readers can decide if it’s coincidental — his hero: the justice, he argues, who through her pragmatic, seat-of-the-pants jurisprudence single-handedly kept the court close to the American mainstream, particularly on matters like reproductive freedom and affirmative action.
Excuse me -- court decisions, especially Supreme Court decisions, are not supposed to be based upon considerations like the political opinions of the majority of Americans or a judge's views of the same. They are supposed to be rooted in precedent, law, and the Constitution. If the picture painted by Jeffrey Toobin (and characterized above by reviewer David Margolick) is correct, Sandra Day O'Connor was unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court and performed her duties in an unfit manner for nearly a quarter of a century. It explains what I have long pointed out in my college level American government classes -- the lack of a clearly consistent jurisprudence on O'Connor's part. She is too busy trying to shape policy based upon some majoritarian impulse more appropriate to the Legislative or Executive branches.
As one of my students noted in a paper some years ago, an O'Connor opinion (especially when compared to those of her fellow justices) often seemed to be a conclusion in search of reasoning to support it. Now we know why.
Oh, one other comment on a Toobin tidbit discussed in the review.
Why were OÂ’Connor and Stevens the only colleagues the dying Rehnquist allowed into his home? And who most regularly persuades whom (if, on such a factionalized court, thereÂ’s any persuasion going on at all)?
Simple -- O'Connor and Rehnquist had known each other since their days at Stanford Law School (it is even suggested that there might have been a few dates). Stevens and Rehnquist had become fast friends in the latter's early days on the Court and worked together for some 30 years. The rest of the justices were at least a decade younger and had a decade less service on the Court -- and had all come aboard AFTER (or in Scalia's case, concurrent with) Rehnquist's move to the center chair on the bench. Their relationships were therefore different from the rest.
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September 17, 2007
An interesting question arises, though. To what degree can the 1994 murders be taken into account at sentencing -- OJ was found not guilty in the criminal trial, but legally culpable in the civil trial. Can the latter be used as evidence of a history of criminal activity (especially when paired with is abuse of Nicole) to move his sentence to the higher end of the range?
Well, I got an answer today over at the Volokh Conspiracy, courtesy of Eugene Volokh himself.
The gist of the answer? Yes -- and so can the criminal case itself, despite the acquittal.
Simpson has been found guilty by a civil jury of killing his ex-wife and Ron Goldman. (If I'm not mistaken, the jury's award of punitive damages involved a finding of guilt by clear and convincing evidence, though I don't think this is necessary to my analysis.) It's possible -- I'm not sure -- that a judge could simply rely on this past finding; but a judge could certainly enter such a finding himself based on his own review of the evidence.And given this finding about Simpson's past conduct and therefore his moral character, the judge would be legally allowed to impose a higher sentence than he would on a typical robber, burglar, or what have you. I'm not sure whether a judge would indeed act this way; but the federal Constitution would let him act this way if he so chose.
In other words, we may be seeing OJailed getting the entire 30 years if he is convicted on all counts. And since he is 60 now, that would pretty well constitute a life sentence. Ron and Nicole may get some justice after all.
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September 04, 2007
Unfortunately, friends persuaded David Souter to stay on the Supreme Court.
According to Jeffrey Toobin's new book on the Supreme Court, Justice David Souter nearly resigned in the wake of Bush v. Gore, so distraught was he over the decision that effectively ended the Florida recount and installed George W. Bush as president.In "The Nine," which goes on sale Sept. 18, Toobin writes that while the other justices tried to put the case behind them, "David Souter alone was shattered," at times weeping when he thought of the case. "For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice," Toobin continues. "That the Court met in a city he loathed made the decision even harder. At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the Court was never the same."
Sadly, what we see here is that we have an emotionally unstable individual on the Supreme Court. Would that there were some way to remove him for the good of America.
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September 01, 2007
Embattled former district attorney Mike Nifong was held in criminal contempt of court and sentenced to one day in jail Friday for his actions in the flawed Duke lacrosse team rape case.Nifong must report to jail September 7, Superior Court Judge W. Osmond Smith III said.
The judge said Nifong's withholding of DNA evidence from defense attorneys was an affront to the integrity of the judicial system.
The evidence potentially would have cleared the three lacrosse players of sexual assault charges months before North Carolina's attorney general dropped them in April.
The players initially were accused of raping an exotic dancer during a party last year.
The specific evidence Nifong was accused of withholding was that DNA profiles found on the alleged rape victim were from unidentified males, but did not match any of the 46 lacrosse team members.
He also was accused of telling the court in a September 22 hearing that a lab report contained complete information on DNA test results, when it omitted that information.
Given that the entire investigation and prosecution was a travesty, designed to boost Nifong's election campaign rather than achieve justice, a one-day sentence is absurdly short.
Instead, Nifong needs to be imprisoned for the exact length of time each of these young men was forced to bear these false accusations -- with the time to be served consecutively.
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August 21, 2007
Let's give a little background. Two men were arrested on drug charges and accepted plea deals. This subjected them to certain federal rules while on probation and parole.
When they were released, both were subject to Standard Condition No. 9 of federal probation, which says that a convicted felon on probation "shall not associate with any person convicted of a felony, unless granted permission to do so by the probation officer." Mangini's and Roberts' probation officers did not give them permission to associate with each other.This is when the conviction of two drug dealers was converted into an opportunity to change the legal status of the traditional family.
Assisted by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, Roberts and Mangini brought a case in federal court.
The rules for enforcing Standard Condition No. 9, it turns out, include a blanket exception that allows a convicted felon on probation to associate with another convicted felon if they are spouses or blood relatives. Mangini and Roberts claimed this unfairly discriminated against them, violating their rights to "due process" and equal protection of the law under the Fifth Amendment.
"They considered, and still consider, themselves to be spouses," Judge Katz explained in his July 31 opinion. "Defendants were in every way a family."
The judge pointed out that the two men took in Roberts' niece as a foster child; and at one point in his opinion, he called them the niece's "two fathers."
After some legal wrangling, a federal judge has ruled that, under Lawrence v. Texas, any people who claim an "intimate association" must be given the same rights as a married couple or a family. Forget homosexual marriage -- this opens the door for any many of relationship being magically transformed into a legally recognized "family".
Dude -- who stole my country?
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August 18, 2007
For that reason, and because of his relatively pinched approach to judging, Judge Southwick wouldn't have been our first choice for this vacancy. Nor do we like the results in the custody and racial slur cases. But we cannot find fault with Judge Southwick's narrow but ultimately legitimate interpretation of the law in those cases, and we do not find in his record the anti-gay, anti-worker caricature his opponents have drawn. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the lone Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote in favor of his confirmation, got it right when she concluded that if senators were to examine Judge Southwick's entire career, including his stint as a judge advocate in Iraq, they would find a "qualified, circumspect person."
So one of America's most liberal senators and the capital's most liberal newspaper have come out behind Judge Southwick. It is time for the Democrat leadership in Congress to allow a vote -- and, if they are honest, support his nomination.
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