Huge Roadside Crosses Will Not Be Going Back Up in Utah

The Supreme Court refused to hear a case involving 12-foot metal crosses on Utah public land, essentially affirming a lower court decision that declared them an unconstitutional state endorsement of Christianity. I wrote about this case previously here and here. Justice Clarence Thomas wanted to hear the case and wrote a strong dissent,

chastising it for missing an opportunity to provide better guidance to lower courts on the complicated issue of public religious displays."Today the Court rejects an opportunity to provide clarity to an Establishment Clause jurisprudence in shambles," Thomas wrote.

I often agree with Thomas but not this time. I think the lower court ruling was reasonable, and that further time on this case would be a waste of the Supreme Court's time. Far from offering "clarity," Supreme Court involvement could just as easily create more confusion.

The Troy Davis Execution

I was going to write something about this execution, but John Hawkins of Right Wing News did it for me in his post at Huffington Post called, "Why Do Liberals Have Such a Soft Spot for Cop Killers Like Troy Davis?" Here are some of the key points.

We have a justice system that is already ridiculously slanted against the death penalty. It usually takes decades of appeals and retrials to put anyone to death, no matter how ironclad the evidence is against him. Despite farfetched claims that large numbers of innocent men have been put to death, there's actually no solid evidence that an innocent man has been executed in this country in the last fifty years. ... Liberals don't like the death penalty; so they are desperate to find proof that innocent men have been executed and there are people who are willing to make money providing that evidence, no matter how far they have to stretch to deliver it.

And the weight of evidence for Troy Davis' guilt is so great that despite all those years of appeals and efforts to overturn the verdict, or lessen the penalty, not a single court was willing to do so.

despite the incredibly slanted accounts you may have read, Troy Davis is not one of these mistakes. More than a dozen courts looked at the trial and came to that conclusion -- and no wonder. Davis shot a cop to death in public. There were 34 witnesses at the trial. Some of them were strangers. Some of them were friends of Davis. To this day, there are several people, some strangers and some former friends, who said they saw Davis shoot Officer Mark MacPhail and haven't recanted. How many eyewitnesses to a murder should you need to convict someone?

There's one other thing that Hawkins doesn't mention regarding the Supreme Court's refusal to stay the execution. There are outspoken liberals on that court, who have not been shy in expressing opposition to other executions.

In late June, for example, the court cleared the way for a Mexican national to be executed in Texas over the objections of the State Department, but the decision came on a 5-4 vote. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan disagreed.

No dissents were recorded in the Davis case. About 10:20 p.m., the court released a one-line order saying that the “application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the court is denied.”

Despite all the pro-Davis propaganda, it apparently didn't even convince the liberal members of the Supreme Court. The overwhelming weight of the evidence is that Troy Davis was a murderer and was justly executed.

UPDATE

For those who might think I'm a reflexive, ideological defender of the death penalty in every case, I should point out that back in 2009 I wrote a post arguing that the Troy Davis case was a bad use of the death penalty. But, that's because I was uninformed about many details. As is sometimes the case in blogging, I was offering a quick take based on my reading of one op-ed which presented a skewed picture. A commenter pointed that out, which eventually led to me reversing my opinion.

Terrible Supreme Court Decision

If you hadn't noticed, the Supreme Court just gave police wide-latitude to break into homes without search warrants. Why? In the service of the drug war, of course. And this wasn't just a conservative reflexive pro-police decision, it was an 8-1 majority.

Ruling in a Kentucky case Monday, the justices said that officers who smell marijuana and loudly knock on the door may break in if they hear sounds that suggest the residents are scurrying to hide the drugs.

Yeah, there's no possibility for abuse there is there? Smell and hearing are extremely subjective. If the police want to go in badly enough, what's to stop them from saying they thought they smelled drugs, or they believed they heard someone doing something to destroy evidence? The Supreme Court has given them a ready excuse for violating the Fourth Amendment. Only one justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg of all people, seems to understand that.

she feared the ruling gave police an easy way to ignore 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. She said the amendment's "core requirement" is that officers have probable cause and a search warrant before they break into a house.

"How 'secure' do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and …forcibly enter?" Ginsburg asked.

Regardless of the merits of the original case in question, this decision sets a really bad precedent.

Thoughts on the Elena Kagan Nomination

It's hard to get too worked up about this Supreme Court nomination. First off, since we are replacing John Paul Stevens, it's not likely that we are going be stuck with someone much worse. Second, with Obama doing the nominating, we know that we are going to get someone either bad, or really bad. The question is, which category does Kagan fall into?

As many are now pointing out, there isn't a huge amount to go on when evaluating Kagan as a potential Supreme Court justice. I've been skimming through the left-wing blogosphere, and I don't see anyone cheering. Some are outright disappointed. That's a good sign. Unless new information comes out, I view this nomination much as I did that of Justice Sotomayor. We are replacing one liberal justice with another. Unless there is some way for the GOP to block the nomination and force the president to send a more moderate nominee -- and I don't think there is -- there's no point of a major Republican fight against Kagan.

Replacing Justice Stevens

Now that Justice Stevens has finally decided to retire, I can only say: good riddance. Unfortunately, with Obama in the White House, it is a virtual certainty that he will be replaced by someone as bad or worse. I've seen some talk about a big fight over the nomination. I think that would be a mistake, unless the GOP can manage to delay confirmation until November. If that's possible, and Republicans regain the Senate, they may be in position to force Obama to come up with a compromise candidate. If not, the fight isn't worth it. At worst we'll be swapping one liberal justice for another.

Protecting Second Amendment Rights

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Supreme Court could hand down another pro-gun ruling as it considers whether or not Chicago's handgun ban violates the second amendment.

The Supreme Court seemed ready to rule that gun possession is fundamental to American freedom, a move that for the first time would give federal judges power to strike down state and local weapons laws for infringing Second Amendment rights.

I was listening an NPR recap of today's arguments, and they agreed that the court seemed to be leaning in favor of gun rights. The anti-gun New York Times emphasizes that the court is divided, but even its report concedes that the arguments

suggested that the five-justice majority in the 2008 decision that first identified an individual right to keep and bear arms was prepared to take another major step in subjecting gun control laws to constitutional scrutiny.

The main argument of the gun banners seems to be that guns are different because they can be used to harm or kill people. Therefore states can freely ignore the second amendment and regulate guns however they wish. There's an obvious problem with this argument -- it's completely illogical. What is the point of having a right specifically stated in the Bill of Rights, if it can be utterly negated by state action? A right that supposedly only protects individuals against federal government action is no right at all. 

The Chicago handgun ban is a clear violation of the second amendment and should be overturned by the Supreme Court. We already accept that constitutional rights are subject to certain regulations. For example, free assembly doesn't mean you are free to assemble 50,000 people and block traffic in the middle of a major city -- without getting permits and permission. Likewise, even most gun rights advocates recognize that government can regulate aspects of firearms possession. But the key is whether or not regulation is reasonable and justifiable, rather than an attempt to remove the right entirely. A complete ban on handguns, an entire category of the most popular & handy firearm used for self-defense, is not reasonable regulation. It is a sweeping attack on the right to bear arms itself. Hopefully the articles above are correct, and the court will move to protect and expand individual freedom, by striking down Chicago's unconstitutional gun ban.

Supreme Court Rejects Retroactive Terrorist Rights

Terrorist rights supporters suffered another loss yesterday when the Supreme Court refused to review the dismissal of a case brought by former Guantanamo detainees. According to one of the leading terrorist rights groups, the court ruled that

the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that applies by its terms to all “persons” did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.

And they shouldn't be. Foreign terror suspects should not be entitled to U.S. Constitutional rights.

the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the Constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any Constitutional rights.

That should be obvious. After 9/11, the idea that foreign terrorist suspects had Constitutional rights would have been rightly ridiculed as preposterous. Unfortunately, after the immediate impact of the terror attack faded, terrorist rights supporters conducted an effective campaign that led the courts to grant some rights, in violation of longstanding interpretations of the constitution and general practice. But the court shot down this attempt by former detainees to pretend that such "rights" were always present, and had been violated. Here's their attorney.

“It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when the Supreme Court lets stand such an inhuman decision.

It's a good day for the rule of law, when the law isn't distorted to give foreign terror suspects rights they never had. And common decency was upheld by not allowing a baseless case against those trying to defend the country under difficult circumstances.

The final word on whether these men had a right not to be tortured or a right to practice their religion free from abuse is that they did not.

Correct. They had no rights, and should have had none.

Future prospective torturers can now draw comfort from this decision.

Let's hope so. It's quite possible we may face another situation where torture is necessary, or something that's called "torture," given its increasingly broad and nearly meaningless definition. If measures later deemed to be "torture" are authorized, those who carry them out shouldn't face legal action based on rule changes after the fact.

Supreme Court Gets One Right

The Supreme Court today threw out the ill-advised appeals court decision that would have required disclosure of detainee abuse photos. The administration was actually on the right side of this issue, arguing that "they could whip up anti-American sentiment overseas and endanger U.S. troops." You might think that would be so obvious that it wouldn't be necessary to take such a case all the way to the Supreme Court. After all, even the Obama administration recognizes that it would be a really bad idea.

But terrorist rights supporters have demonstrated repeatedly that they don't particularly care about much other than advancing their radical interpretation of "rights." It's nice to see the Supreme Court hand them a defeat, while at the same time preventing a bonanza of free enemy propaganda.

School Strip-Search Illegal

Back in March I wrote about the case of a thirteen-year old girl who was stripped searched because the school thought she had ibuprofen, of all things. The case reached the Supreme Court, and the court ruled that the search was illegal in an 8-1 decision.  In writing for the majority, Justice Souter wrote,

school officials must have a reasonable suspicion of the presence of dangerous contraband or information that contraband is hidden in a student's underwear before "a search can reasonably make the quantum leap from outer clothes and backpacks to exposure of intimate parts."

That shouldn't be too much to ask. Resorting to a strip-search based on nothing more than an unsubstantiated allegation was way over the line. 

What's the Point?

Karl Rove has an editorial up at the Wall Street Journal regarding the Sotomayor pick.  Although he admits that she'll probably be confirmed, Rove says that Republicans can "win the argument by making a clear case against the judicial activism she represents." I find that highly unlikely. Everyone already knows that Republicans are against "judicial activism." It's far more likely that the weak Republican leadership we have in Congress will just  manage to look bad if they attack Sotomayor. I'm not sure why Rove thinks the current GOP has the skill and ability to turn a defeat into some sort of victory. This appears to be a no win situation for the Republican party.

No doubt political operatives are busy poring over every word she wrote, and searching for dirt that could derail the nomination. But in my opinion the whole thing is pointless from a Republican perspective. Why start a fight you can't win? President Obama is a liberal Democrat with a Democratic majority in Congress. He's going to nominate liberals to the court. That's a consequence of the election. There is very little the GOP can do about it, especially since he picked an obviously qualified candidate. Even if something comes up that disqualifies Sotomayor, we are just going to get another liberal nominee, possibly someone even worse.

Right now the GOP should be working relentlessly to build alliances with moderate and conservative Democrats to generate effective opposition to the president's domestic agenda. Picking a losing fight against a Supreme Court nominee -- who is replacing a liberal member of the court anyway -- is useless and possibly counterproductive.

The Sotomayer Supreme Court Pick

Obviously since President Obama was doing the picking, almost anyone he appointed to the Supreme Court was going to be very liberal. The main question was just how bad the pick would be. CNN has a factsheet up on Judge Sotomayer, so you can see for yourself.

In my opinion the GOP should not fight this nomination, bad as it is. They can't stop it, unless some damaging information about Sotomayer emerges, and just it isn't worth the effort. Sotomayer is obviously qualified, and she's replacing another liberal justice. Republicans should just grimace and accept that she's going to be on the Supreme Court. The GOP needs to pick fights it has a chance to win.

Souter-inspired Thoughts

I wasn't going to write anything about Justice Souter retiring. From a right-wing perspective, I don't see all that much to say. With Obama as president, we are going to get a replacement who is just as bad or worse. Republicans aren't really in a position to do much about it. Our best hope is that Obama nominates someone who is just a mainstream liberal, as opposed to a radical leftist. But whoever we get is likely to have the liberal judicial philosophy that the Constitution means whatever they think it should mean. And that brought something to mind.

The left in general, along with some allies, have been screaming and howling about the legal interpretations of the Bush administration. The Bush legal team came up with creative legal reasoning to justify waterboarding and other borderline coercive interrogation measures. The left is shocked and horrified, to the point that many of them actually favor prosecuting the lawyers for their legal advice. How dare lawyers come up with some sort of legal reasoning that enabled a Republican administration to do what it wanted to do? But when the judicial branch does the same thing, in a far more extreme way in support of liberal causes, they are completely fine with it. As long as it is done in the service of the "correct" cause, the Constitution is just a tool that can be twisted to justify anything they desire. Think I'm exaggerating? Look at abortion.

I personally support abortion rights, but the right to an abortion has nothing to do with the Constitution. Abortion is a right today because of government fiat. The Supreme Court declared it a right, and the government treats it as one. If you disagree, go look at a copy of the Constitution and find the right to an abortion. Most of those who support abortion rights have no problem with the ridiculous legal reasoning behind it. Why? Because it serves the purpose -- legalizing abortion. A significant portion of the left, which strongly supports abortion rights found nowhere in the Constitution, is apparently blind to the right to bear arms, which is plainly spelled out there in black and white. This is why, among other reasons, I find the hysterical outrage at Bush administration lawyers so laughable.

Oh, and back to Souter's replacement... Wouldn't it be nice if we could get an Obama nominee who appeared liberal but turned out to be much more conservative once on the court? That would be a fitting successor to David Souter.

Strip-searching Students

We regularly read horror stories caused by various public school policies, often so-called "zero tolerance" rules that produce incidents of incredible stupidity, as administrators put aside all common sense in favor of blind obedience.  The New York Times reports on one incident that has reached the Supreme Court. A thirteen-year old girl was subjected to a strip-search because school officials "suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school." The appeals court ruled in her favor.

I'm not sure why the school is even appealing this to the Supreme Court. It seems like a pretty clear-cut case. As one of the appeals judges wrote:

“It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights.”

Apparently the school had no evidence that she had any pills; they didn't even question her before subjecting her to a strip search, and she had no prior disciplinary problems. It sounds like they did a strip search as a first resort, rather than last. They didn't bother to contact the student's parents and get permission for the search, and just proceeded as if they had full authority to strip-search anyone at the school on mere suspicion. Hopefully the Supreme Court will uphold the verdict. It sounds like some school administrators need to be replaced.

The Death Penalty Makes Itself Unconstitutional?

The Supreme Court denied the appeal of a convicted murderer who argued that the 32 year delay in his execution constituted cruel and unusual punishment. According to the Christian Science Monitor, liberal justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer have been pushing this theory. Here's Stevens:

"Today, condemned inmates await execution for an average of nearly 13 years," Stevens said in his written statement on the Thompson case. "This figure underscores the fundamental inhumanity and unworkability of the death penalty as it is administered in the United States."

So let me see if I've got this straight. Because our legal system allows so many appeals, and those appeals take a huge amount of time, therefore the punishment itself becomes inhumane. Yeah, that's makes a lot of sense. Fortunately the majority of the court had the sense to reject such illogic.  Here's Justice Thomas:

"It makes a mockery of our system of justice ... for a convicted murderer, who, through his own interminable efforts of delay ... has secured the almost indefinite postponement of his sentence, to then claim that the almost-indefinite postponement renders his sentence unconstitutional," Thomas wrote. "It is incongruous to arm capital defendants with an arsenal of 'constitutional' claims with which they may delay their executions, and simultaneously to complain when executions are inevitably delayed."

It's pretty sad that he has to state the obvious to people who are too clueless to recognize it.  And what about the criminal who brought this appeal?

Thompson and another man, Rocco Surace, beat, sexually abused, and tortured a young woman to death in a Miami motel room in 1976. They did it in front of a witness.

Thompson and his accomplice should be dead. They should have been executed long ago. The reason they weren't is because of people like Stevens and Breyer, who have done everything possible to protect criminals and delay executions. Now they have the unbelievable nerve to maintain that the very types of delays which they support render the death penalty unworkable and inhumane. 

More Smoker Lawsuits

The Supreme Court rendered another bad 5-4 decision, opening the way for more lawsuits against tobacco companies based on "deceptive business practices" involving the marketing of light and low tar cigarettes.  The usual suspects, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsberg & Breyer were in the majoirty.

Most tobacco lawsuits are little more than schemes to extort money from the unpopular tobacco companies -- particularly the cases filed by state attornies general.  Many individual cases rely on someone claiming to be such a moron that he/she didn't realize smoking was bad for health, and was tricked by the deceptive advertising of smoking companies.  Amazingly enough, this tactic has paid-off incredibly well.

I'm thinking of buying a Cadillac CTS and then suing GM for deceptive business practices if it doesn't turn me on.  They can pay me out of their bailout money.