Archive for the ‘Supreme Court’ Category

Does Jindal need a civics class?

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

Bobby Jindal is outraged over the Supreme Court decision that deemed Louisiana’s law allowing the death penalty for child rape unconstitutional.

He states:

We will evaluate ways to amend our statute to maintain death as a penalty for this horrific crime.

The Supreme Court said that death is not an appropriate penalty for child rape under the Constitution of the United States. The only change that could be made to alter this is a change to the Constitution. No state level action would be good enough because the ruling would still stand. So does Jindal need to back to school and learn about civics? I’ll get back to that in a second.

Now, Jindal did say this:

The most repugnant crimes deserve the harshest penalties, and nothing is more repugnant than the brutal rape of an eight-year-old child.

I agree. I also agree that the death penalty should be used to punish child rapists. So there you have it, another thing I agree with Jindal on.

However, Jindal needs to understand that there actually are things that the Federal Government gets to trump the State Government on and one of those things is deciding if punishment is cruel and unusual.

So regardless of how much we may disagree with the Supreme Court on the issue, there is nothing that can be done at the state level to allow for the death penalty in child rape cases… period.

I would be tempted to say that Jindal is ignorant of Constitutional law but that probably is not the case. He probably knows full well that no state action will be able to override a ruling by the supreme court. What I think is more likely is that he is playing up to the conservative base who may not realize that Jindal’s disgrace is just a ploy to either distract those conservatives who are angry at him over the pay raise issue or to get more conservative voters behind his possible nomination for V-P.

Posted in Bobby Jindal, Supreme Court | 5 Comments »

Right winged activist court on the loose!

Monday, June 25th, 2007

So far today, there have been three rulings that protect the right winged idealism that speech should be stifled when it comes to drugs (but not when it comes to pro-life advocacy groups) and that people can’t sue when the government wants to give your tax dollars to “faith based” groups.

In the first ruling, the court (in a 5-4 decision) ruled that a school can prohibit a student from posting a banner when that banner is not on school grounds. The students where attending a “school sponsored event” (even though the event was just on a public street). So what does that mean? As long as an event is “school sponsored”, students lose their rights even if they are not actually in school and are on public property? That is absurd.

 

The sign, “Bong hits for Jesus”, would have no business being displayed in school. However, if the student is on public property then the school should not have the right to take action. What is next, will schools be able to punish students for having webpages?

 

In the second ruling, the court (in a 5-4 decision) ruled that a Wisconsin “right to life” group should have been able to air an add that suggested voters contact the offices of Harry Reid and request that he not filibuster judicial nominees. Current campaign finance law prohibits groups from running anti-candidate ads in the last 2 months prior to the election. The previous court had ruled that this applied to “express advocacy” (campaign speech) and “issue advocacy” where a candidate was mentioned. Our court, with Sam “I believe in Stare Decisis except for when I don’t” Alito and John “right wing” Roberts as the new kids on the block have decided to once again go against Stare Decisis and determine that issue advocacy is “AOK” and that the WRTL group should have been allowed to air there ad requesting that people contact Feingold (who was up for election at the time) and urge him to not filibuster nominees.

 

So let me get this straight, if this group said “Don’t vote for Feingold because he filibusters nominees” then it would have been against the law. However, since the group says “Urge Feingold to not filibuster nominees” then the ad becomes ok? The purpose of the ad is to inform voters that Feingold plans to filibuster nominees and therefore he is a “bad choice” for Senator. The INTENT of the ad is clear. I guess intent doesn’t matter to the “New Kids”.

 

The court, in ruling that the law was unconstitutional as applied to the issue ads, has basically created a loophole in the law. People can now carefully craft their ads in order to circumvent the intent of the law.

 

In the final ruling, taxpayers where prevented from brining suit against the Executive branch for faith based initiatives. This is just a complete load of bunk. The people who tried to sue the government where claiming that the funds would be banned because of the establishment clause. The court claimed that since it was the Executive Branch and not the Legislative Branch that came up with the program that the establishment clause of the 1st amendment does not apply! They claim that since Congress gave the funding as part of the “day to day operation” of the white house, that the establishment clause is not violated. How can anyone with an ounce of common sense in their head believe that the founding fathers felt that as long as the executive branch establishes religion, then it is “ok”?

 

I don’t ever want to hear a Conservative use the term “activist” judge again when referring to a liberal judge. It is plain to see that “conservative” justices are capable of judicial activism.

Posted in Civil Rights, Supreme Court, National Issues | 1 Comment »

Impeach Thomas too!

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Is there something in the water of the Supreme Court? This is getting ridiculous. Keith Bowles was convicted of murder and is currently serving 15 years to life sentence for the crime. As is the right of every person convicted of a crime, he sought an appeal. The judge was asked when the deadline was to file an appeal. The judge told him a specific date (which wound up being the incorrect date and Bowles wound up filing his appeal too late).

 

Anybody want to guess how the court ruled? That’s right, Mr. Bowles was too late and it is his fault, even though it was the judge that provided the incorrect date!

 

Anyone want to guess what the vote was? That’s right, 5-4.

 

Do I really need to tell you who the 5 are? No, I didn’t think so.

 

What is even worse is that the court used to go against the letter of the law using the unique circumstances doctrine. However, Clarence Thomas said that doctrine is now illegitimate. Again, so much for Stare Decisis!

Posted in Supreme Court, National Issues | No Comments »

Impeach Alito

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

There are many people in the Democratic Party who are pushing for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. I can definitely see the appeal in doing that, since they seem to use the Constitution as toilet paper and fail to view those important rights that we have as being important to uphold in a time of war.  The problem is that we only have to deal with them for a year and a half. Justice Alito has a lifelong appointment on the bench.

One of the checks on the power of the judiciary is the ability of the legislative branch to remove a justice from the bench. It is time that the legislative branch uses that power.

I have already written about him and his lies about supporting the concept of Stare Decisis. What is now even more disturbing is his vote on the recent discrimination case which now provides that a person who feels discriminated against has to file suit 180 days after the discrimination starts! Many of the issues covered by Title VII are reportable immediately. However, a discrepancy in pay would be near impossible to find out within 180 days of it first happening. And from what this court has now ruled, once the 180 days pass, it is ok to keep on discriminating against the person with that wage because they can no longer file a lawsuit to seek damages from being discriminated against.

Alito’s illogical argument, on which the rest of the “right wing” of the court agreed, is that the act of setting one persons pay is the discriminatory act. What Alito ignores is the fact that each time a paycheck is issued (with a discrepancy of wages between genders) it is another act of discrimination. Paycheck writing is a “discrete act”, just as is “pay setting”. Why Alito and the rest of the conservative hacks on the court cannot see it is beyond me.

Justice Alito swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. His rulings so far seem to place him in direct contradiction of that document. He should be protecting people from discrimination and not allowing employers to get through loopholes and hope that people don’t find out about their discriminatory decisions until after their time runs out. That is the basis on which he should be removed from the bench.

Of course, the Republicans in the House and Senate will probably have enough votes to prevent him from being removed from the bench. However, such an impeachment trial would highlight those Republicans who are supportive of such rulings (like this abhorrent one) and that could be very costly to them in the 2008 elections. So either, the Republicans in Congress will have to decide to vote with the will of the American People, or vote against them and keep Judicial Activist Alito on the bench.

To read the opinion of the Court, click here.

Posted in Civil Rights, Supreme Court | 1 Comment »