Saturday, September 10, 2011
Bill Clinton Delivers Wonderful 9-11 Speech At Flight 93 Memorial Dedication Ten Years After The Attacks
Here are the highlights from the ceremony:
Tweet
Friday, September 9, 2011
4th Circuit Court Of Appeals Overrules District Court Ruling Against Obamacare Saying State Of Virginia Had No Right To Bring The Lawsuit
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports:The Fourth Circuit today rejected a pair of challenges to last year’s federal health-care overhaul, providing a boost to the Obama administration.
Tweet
Here’s a report from WSJ’s Brent Kendall.
In one ruling, the Fourth Circuit threw out a December 2010 trial-court decision that struck down the health law’s requirement that individuals carry health insurance or pay a penalty. That case involved a challenge brought by Virginia Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. The Fourth Circuit ruled that Cuccinelli didn’t have a legal right to bring his lawsuit, WSJ reports. (Click here to read the opinion.)
In a second case, the Fourth Circuit ruled that the insurance-mandate penalties amounted to taxes, which meant the court had no jurisdiction over the case. The appeals court said it wasn’t permitted to consider a legal challenge that sought to restrain the government’s assessment of taxes, according to WSJ.
The court’s ruling on that issue deepens a disagreement in the federal courts over how to interpret the health law. Other courts have ruled that the insurance-mandate penalties aren’t taxes. The 11th Circuit ruled Aug. 12 that the insurance mandate was unconstitutional. The Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, however, has upheld the law.
It is a near-certainty that the Supreme Court will eventually resolve the dispute, WSJ reports.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
11th Circuit Court Of Appeals Rules That Life Without Parole Allowed For Juveniles
The Associated Press reports:A federal appeals court on Wednesday held that juveniles convicted of murder can be sentenced to life in prison without parole, seeking to settle a lingering debate over how the courts punish minors who commit serious offenses.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that juveniles cannot be sentenced to death and that they also can't be sentenced to life in prison without parole for rape and other non-homicide offenses. The ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, though, upheld life sentences for juveniles convicted of murder.
The decision came in the case against Kenneth Loggins, who was convicted in Alabama of killing a hitchhiker in 1994 and originally sentenced to die. He was 17 at the time of the killing, so his punishment was reduced to life without parole because the Supreme Court banned such executions in 2005.
His attorneys had urged the three-judge panel to broaden a 2010 Supreme Court by including murders as an offense that can't carry a life sentence. That 5-4 ruling held that juveniles cannot be sentenced to life in prison without parole if they haven't killed anyone, and ordered the courts to allow them a "meaningful opportunity to obtain release."
But prosecutors argued that the high court took pains to specify the ruling only applied in non-homicide cases, and the 11th Circuit said it found no reason to toss out Loggins' prison sentence.
The decision, written by Circuit Judge Ed Carnes, said "there's nothing in law or logic" to support the argument that a state shouldn't be allowed to impose the next most severe punishment if a death penalty sentence is banned.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
The 11th Circuit has jurisdiction over federal cases in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, but lawyers in other areas will likely use the opinion to back up their own arguments.
The Supreme Court only declared that the death penalty for juveniles was a violation of the Eight Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" in 2010. It's not a surprise then that a Court of Appeals would find life without parole still Constitutionally viable even just under current Supreme Court precedent. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented in the juvenile death penalty case and his opinion explaining why the Constitution does not forbid even the death penalty for a juvenile can and should be read here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-7412.ZD.html
Tweet
Princeton Professor Robert George On Abortion With Glenn Beck
This interview with Professor George is from the presidential campaign of 2008, but is still worth listening to today:
Tweet
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Federal Court Rules You Have The Right To Record The Police
Glenn Reynolds in the Examiner.
TweetAll over America, police have been arresting people for taking video or making sound recordings of them, even though such arrests are pretty clearly illegal. Usually, the charges are dropped once the case becomes public, and usually that’s the end of it.
But sometimes things go farther, and in two recent cases, they’ve gone far enough to bite back at the police and prosecutors involved. We need more such biting.
The first case comes from Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago.
Tiawanda Moore had made a sexual harassment complaint against a Chicago patrolman. When she was visited by police Internal Affairs officers who tried to persuade her to drop the charge, she recorded the audio using her Blackberry. Though the audio reflected rather poorly on the Internal Affairs officers, the response of the Chicago state’s attorney was to act not against the offending officers, but against Ms. Moore, charging her with “wiretapping.”
After the tape was played, the jury took less than an hour to return a verdict of not guilty. “When we heard that, everyone (on the jury) just shook their head,” said one juror interviewed afterward. “If what those two investigators were doing wasn’t criminal, we felt it bordered on criminal, and she had the right to record it.”...
The U.S. Court of Appeals held that the right to record police officers in public is a “clearly established” part of the First Amendment's protections, and held the officers were thus not entitled to qualified immunity, meaning that they could be sued for their actions.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Palmetto Freedom Forum Debate Among GOP Candidates On The Constitution
The Palmetto Freedom Forum was devoted to a discussion, with the candidates that showed up which unfortunately did not include Rick Perry, of the United States Constitution. Te full Palmetto Freedom Forum debate can be seen by clicking on the following links:
Michelle Bachmann Rightly Says That Department Of Education Is Unconstitutional
TweetPainting herself as a “constitutional conservative” Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann told Sen. Jim DeMint’s forum Monday that if elected president she would look to get rid of the Department of Education, among other things.
“Because the Constitution does not specifically enumerate nor does it give to the federal government the role and duty to superintend over education that historically has been held by the parents and by local communities and by state governments,” she said, responding to a question by DeMint, a popular figure among the tea party movement.
Senior Al-Qaeda Leader Arrested in Pakistan: Planning Strike Against US Targets
A senior al Qaeda leader has been arrested from Quetta along with two other high-ranking operatives for the global terror network, the army announced on Monday. Younis al Mauritani, who was involved in planning and carrying out international operations, was picked up in the suburbs of Quetta, the military said in a statement. Two other senior al Qaeda operatives, Abdul Ghaffar al Shami (Bachar Chama) and Messara al Shami (Mujahid Amino) were also arrested along with al Mauritani.
Tweet
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Debating Domestic Surveillance: "Better More Domestic Surveillance Than Another 9/11?"
The debate participants on the side of domestic surveillance defending the Bush administration was former Bush speechwriter and columnist David Frum, former federal terrorism prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, and former Deputy Attorney General and current Berkeley law professor John Yoo. Against the domestic surveillance was former Congressman Bob Barr, George Washington University law school professor Jeffrey Rosen, and former President of the ACLU Nadine Strassen:
Tweet
Jesse Jackson Says Tea Partiers Are All Neo-Confederates, Like "Jeff Davis," Wanting Limited Federal Government Is A "Civil War Struggle"
Anyone that knows the history of the Constitution understands that the Tenth Amendment was never meant to be overturned by any later amendment. Jesse Jackson needs a history lesson. Everyone involved in the Civil War understood and respected the idea embodied by the Tenth Amendment. The Civil War had more specifically to do with the right of a State to secession, largely in that case over slavery, not just "State's rights" as a general matter. The Tenth Amendment stands for the proposition that the federal government is one of enumerated and defined powers with the rest being reserved to the people and the States. That has never been abandoned, and understanding and calling for adherence to this most basic of Constitutional principles does not make one a neo-Confederate follower of Jefferson Davis. Jesse Jackson represents nothing more than the utterly and completely inaccurate absurdities of a historical ignoramus.
"[T]hat the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is in the States, and not in the Federal Government. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country." - Rep. John Bingham, primary draftsman of the 14th Amendment, 1866
"That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend." - Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 1861
Tweet
Mark Steyn: "A Tale Of Two Declines: Even If The Economy Were To Fix Itself Overnight, We'd Still Face Sincere Cultural Challenges"
Visit http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/276197/tale-two-declines-mark-steyn to read this important and interesting article.
Tweet
RSS Feed (xml)