Is anyone paying attention to these?
Also, I just caught Tunch trying to escape again. Apparently he jumps up on a laundry hamper in my bedroom, and then pushes a screen open and jumps out the window. Devil.
by John Cole| 76 Comments
This post is in: Activist Judges!
Is anyone paying attention to these?
Also, I just caught Tunch trying to escape again. Apparently he jumps up on a laundry hamper in my bedroom, and then pushes a screen open and jumps out the window. Devil.
by John Cole| 28 Comments
This post is in: Activist Judges!
This is interesting:
The US Supreme Court has ruled to vacate the a ruling by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, who was convicted of bribery charges in 2006 in a case that was widely seen as politically motivated.
The ruling was vacated in light of another recent ruling which revised the court’s opinion of an “honest services” fraud statute, a ruling that has helped former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling. Siegelman’s case will now be remanded to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for a second consideration.
It doesn’t mean, however, that Siegelman is out of the woods. In March 2009, the Eleventh Circuit upheld bribery, conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges against Siegelman and refused a request for a new trial. They could easily do so again.
We’ll see if Rove and company still push this.
by John Cole| 55 Comments
This post is in: Activist Judges!
Of course, with one more “originalist” judge just calling balls and strikes, there might have been a different outcome:
A public law school did not violate the First Amendment by withdrawing recognition from a Christian student group that excluded gay and lesbian students, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.
The case, involving a clash between religious freedom and anti-discrimination principles, divided along familiar ideological lines, with the court’s four more liberal members and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in the majority.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said that it was constitutionally permissible for public institutions of higher education to require recognized student groups to accept all students who wished to participate in them.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the four dissenters, said the decision represented a triumph for the principle that there is “no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country’s institutions of higher learning.”
What this basically boils down to is Alito thinks it is a strike against religious freedom if a public school decides it doesn’t want to fund student groups that exclude or attack other students. Political correctness run amok, I know!
But that’s originalism for you- as we all know, Washington and Jefferson and the rest of the founding fathers were big on state funding of school groups that had “God hates fags” as their mission statement (and that isn’t what the CLS was doing, as they actually just wanted special rights that allowed them to ignore the rules everyone else has to follow in order to receive funding. Alito, however, would be fine with either, it appears).
Edited for clarity.
Good News From the Supreme Court- BarelyPost + Comments (55)
by John Cole| 30 Comments
This post is in: Activist Judges!, Flash Mob of Hate, hoocoodanode
Still, Republicans have settled on a strategy of painting Kagan, who has never been a judge, as a politically driven ideologue. They insist they haven’t ruled out a filibuster, though that seems highly unlikely.
I’m sure you are shocked by this.
by John Cole| 90 Comments
This post is in: Activist Judges!, Free Markets Solve Everything
Otherwise he’d be an activist judge:
A New Orleans federal judge lifted the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed by President Barack Obama following the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Shares of drilling services companies jumped on the news.
Obama temporarily halted all drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet on May 27 to give a presidential commission time to study improvements in the safety of offshore operations. More than a dozen Louisiana offshore service and supply companies sued U.S. regulators to lift the ban.
U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman today granted a preliminary injunction, halting the moratorium. Government lawyers told Feldman that ban was based on findings in a U.S. report following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast in April.
“The court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium,” Feldman said in his 22-page decision. “The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.”
I love that last paragraph, which appears to be legalese for “Drill, baby, drill!” Let’s re-write it so it accurately reflects the current state of affairs:
“The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, assumes that because all the parties involved have demonstrated they not only don’t know what caused or these disasters or how to prevent these disasters, they don’t know how to stop them, so it is in the interest of everyone involved that we recognize that all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet universally present an imminent danger.”
Because that is the real situation. I have no idea how it can be considered illegal for our regulatory regime to ban behavior that could lead to catastrophes until those being regulated can assure us the activity is safe. Stating the government must prove that each individual well is unsafe before banning it turns the whole concept of regulation on its head.
*** Update ***
Isn’t this precisely the situation in which recusals are required:
The federal judge who overturned Barack Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium appears to own stock in numerous companies involved in the offshore oil industry—including Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to BP prior to its April 20 explosion in the Gulf of Mexico—according to 2008 financial disclosure reports.
U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman issued a preliminary injunction today barring the enforcement of Barack Obama’s proposed six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, arguing that the ban is too broad.
However, Michael Moore is fat, so we aren’t really an oligarchy.
*** Update #2 ***
From the comments:
imagine if this logic were applied to the war on drugs…you can’t declare a drug addictive, because people have gotten addicted. you have to show that everyone who uses the drug in question, becomes addicted….
Exactly.
by John Cole| 44 Comments
This post is in: Activist Judges!
All Franken is in the American Constitution Society’s base and killing their doodz.
The speech is here, and can not be embedded.
Note to absolute morons- this is how you move the Overton window. Full-throated attacks on conservative nonsense from the left.
(via)
This post is in: Activist Judges!, Our Failed Media Experiment
Another small step towards getting rid of Miranda all together:
A Michigan man will continue serving a life sentence for murder after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that he gave up his rights against self-incrimination because he did not explicitly tell police he wanted to remain silent after his arrest.
***Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, said Thompkins could have ended the questioning by telling the police he wanted to invoke his right to remain silent.
In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision “turns Miranda upside down.” It’s counterintuitive, she said, to require a suspect to speak in order to exercise the right to remain silent.
When I read this, one of the very first things that came to mind was whether or not Elena Kagan is a lesbian.