Archive for the ‘Activist Courts’ Category
After Clinton appointed Judge Susan Bolton ruled Wednesday that—for all intents and purposes—Arizona does not have the right to protect itself or its citizens from invading drug cartels and the illegal foreign hordes that are bleeding it dry of its resources, it should have become apparent to even the dimmest that We-the-People no longer exist. We are now living under a tyranny developed, directed, implemented and enforced by the Marxists in power.
by Daniel Clark
"The words in the Constitution are 'cruel and unusual.' Those are the words. It doesn't talk about the death penalty. It's embodying certain values." So says Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, explaining why he thinks capital punishment might be unconstitutional.
That these remarks have not become a national scandal is a testament to the success that Breyer, his liberal colleagues and their predecessors have had in deconstructing the Constitution. Anymore, a direct contradiction of what that document actually says is simply taken to be an alternative school of constitutional theory.
In fact, the Constitution references the death penalty no fewer than three times: twice in the Fifth Amendment, and once in the Fourteenth. Each of these amendments specifically allows for the option of capital punishment when it says that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. Since the Eighth Amendment, which forbids "cruel and unusual punishments," was ratified concurrently with the Fifth, it cannot reasonably be taken to prohibit the deprivation of life when due process has been given.
I am reading Ann Coulter's, "How To Talk To Liberal If You Must" and I found her statements on how the liberal press usually present their liberal one-sided views quite startling. Especially when I see the obvious evidence of such reporting in today's news.
In today's Huntsville Times, at least they are presenting the non-liberal view in defense of Judge Roy Moore and the liberal-media attack against him by associating him to a convicted child killer.
Roy Moore, the ousted state chief justice, doesn't like his name being linked with accused child killer Kevin Andre Towles.
Instead of questioning Moore why he gave Towles probation on 1996 charges of cocaine and marijuana possession, the former Etowah County circuit judge said Thursday that the media should ask why more recent judges didn't send the 31-year-old Towles to prison when they had the chance.
"Global Warming" Debate Should Be Resolved by Congress, not the Supreme Court
WASHINGTON–On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Massachusetts v. EPA. Filed by a group of states and environmental groups, the case asks the justices to decide whether the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate American car makers' contributions to "global warming."
Cato scholars have filed two amicus briefs on the EPA's behalf, one addressing the scientific claims of global warming alarmists and the other addressing the legal questions in the case. The first, science-oriented brief, authored by Cato senior fellow Patrick J. Michaels and filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, questions the notion that global warming will exert a net negative impact on human health and welfare.
In a report in World Net Daily:
A plan that would cut off the pipeline of taxpayer money that now flows into American Civil Liberties Union coffers has been advanced by the House Judiciary Committee.
The Public Expression of Religion Act, introduced by Indiana Congressman John Hostettler, now will move to the full House for a vote, he said in his announcement this week.
In an earlier post, ACLU Accused of Profiting at Taxpayer Expense:
The veterans organization, the American Legion, is behind the push to stop taxpayers money going to the ACLU. Many of the ACLU's legal agenda includes fighting against monuments and other public displays that display any religious symbol.
This outcry against the ACLU was because of there attempt to remove the veteran's monuments, Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in California and a cross on a rock outcrop erected by veterans as a memorial to World War I veterans in 1934 in the remote Mojave Desert.
Officials noted someone would have to drive 11 miles off the highway "to be offended" by the cross in the Mojave Desert.
There had been no complaints against the memorial in 60 years, until the ACLU sued to have it removed, and then asked for and got $63,000 in "extortion" fees.
"The American Legion," said former American Legion National Commander Tom Bock, "is in full support" of the plan. He said it would take away the authority of judges to award attorney fees to the ACLU in lawsuits under the Establishment Clause.
The law, approved in 1976, originally was to help individual citizens bring lawsuits against state officials who had deprived them of their constitutional rights. However, Hostettler believes it has been abused by groups like the ACLU, who claim any public official who expresses religious beliefs or displays a memorial with religious imagery, like the crosses at Arlington National Cemetery, is promoting the "establishment of religion."
For example, in 2001 Iowa county officials removed a Ten Commandments monument from a courthouse lawn rather than face the attorney's fees threatened. And in 2004, Los Angeles removed a tiny cross from the county seal when it was threatened with those fees. (Source: World Net Daily)
As in most cases presented by the ACLU, a threat to sue usually forces the plaintiff to pay fees (usually taxpayer's money), rather then go to trial and pay higher fees in a case that the ACLU would probably lose.
By Thomas E. Brewton
Edward A. Kole emailed a request for the source of my characterization of the legal precepts of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. as "the law is no more than whatever a particular judge declares it to be in a specific case."
There is no single statement to that effect by Justice Holmes of which I am aware. That is my summation of his views.
I should add that this summation also accounts for my assessment that Holmes was our first socialist Supreme Court Justice.
Justice Holmes was a hero to liberals for one simple reason: he advocated revamping the law to facilitate the triumph of the brand of liberal-socialism then called Progressivism.
Holmes, of course, is hailed as the progenitor of the loose collection of views called legal realism. Other advocates of legal realism forthrightly declared that the law is whatever a judge rules.
My characterization of Justice Holmes's views is based on the following:
1. The common law, as Mr. Kole has noted in prior postings on this website, is judge-made law, within the confines of legal precedent and long established custom. Holmes in his 1881 "The Common Law" espoused the view that judges should abandon precedent and tradition wherever they conflicted with current social-science ideas of public benefit.
2. Holmes flatly rejected the concept of natural law or of any sort of higher law as a basis for judges' decisions (see his 1918 essay, "Natural Law.") He also wrote that the concept of morality should be banished from the law. Law was to be simply a method for imposing penalties upon people who acted in prohibited ways.
Natural law, before the French Revolution, was an important basis of European jurisprudence, including Hugo Grotius's seminal work on international law, a current-day liberal shibboleth. It was also a foundation block of Christian theology after Thomas Aquinas's 13th century "Summa Theologica."
Most importantly for us, natural law was the ruling paradigm for the people who settled the British North American colonies in the 17th century.
The Declaration of Independence clearly being based upon John Locke's conception of natural law as embodying inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property, and the Constitution being built upon the same foundational ethos, Holmes is simply declaring, if nothing else, that the clear understandings of those who wrote those two documents is not binding upon a judge, who is free to make up the law to suit his own sociological views.
For Holmes, truth was no more than the currently dominant public opinion (see point 6 below).
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and judicial abuse, announced today that Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who last week ruled the government’s warrantless wiretapping program unconstitutional, serves as a Secretary and Trustee for a foundation that donated funds to the ACLU of Michigan, a plaintiff in the case (ACLU et. al v. National Security Agency). Judicial Watch discovered the potential conflict of interest after reviewing Judge Diggs Taylor’s financial disclosure statements.
According to her 2003 and 2004 financial disclosure statements, Judge Diggs Taylor served as Secretary and Trustee for the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan (CFSEM). She was reelected to this position in June 2005. The official CFSEM website states that the foundation made a “recent grant” of $45,000 over two years to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, a plaintiff in the wiretapping case. Judge Diggs Taylor sided with the ACLU of Michigan in her recent decision.
According to the CFSEM website, “The Foundation’s trustees make all funding decisions at meetings held on a quarterly basis.”
“This potential conflict of interest merits serious investigation,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “If Judge Diggs Taylor failed to disclose this link to a plaintiff in a case before her court, it would certainly call into question her judgment.”
(Judge Diggs Taylor is also the presiding judge in another case where she may have a conflict of interest. The Arab Community Center for Social and Economic Services (ACCESS) is a defendant in another case now before Judge Diggs Taylor’s court [Case No. 06-10968 (Mich. E.D.)]. In 2003, the CFSEM donated $180,000 to ACCESS.)
Click here to read Judge Diggs Taylor’s financial disclosure statements.
Click here to read the CFSEM’s list of recent grants
Press Release from Family Research Council:
Washington, D.C. – Tony Perkins, President of Family Research Council released the following statement in response to Senator Ted Kennedy’s questions to Judge Samuel Alito during today’s Senate confirmation hearings:
"The height of hypocrisy is in full array as the Senate Judiciary Committee questions one of the most qualified judges ever nominated to the court.
"Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has shown us, once again, that he has no shame in his attempts to destroy the character of the good judges who have come before him and who have been nominated by a Republican president.
"As in the past, he began with his statement of total untruths to set the tone against the nomination of Judge Alito. Kennedy claimed that Judge Alito had never in his lower court rulings decided in favor of average Americans and set the stage for his audience of NARAL, NOW and the ACLU.
"No other member of the Judiciary Committee was as accusatory in their opening remarks as Kennedy. Make no mistake, the senators who have been consistently in the pocket of the liberal left organizations played to their agenda as well.
"Senator Kennedy should act more like a U.S. Senator and stop using talking points from the liberal groups with whom he routinely meets.
"Kudos to Senator Sessions who was prepared to respond to the untruths of Senator Kennedy and who recited case and point regarding each of the false charges Kennedy had leveled."
Our Federal Courts have been making law instead of ruling over the laws. At sometimes their rulings are questionable as to whose rights are they really protecting.
California passed a law in October that made it illegal to sell or rent violent or sexually explicit games to children. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the law that allowed fines of $1,000 for the illegal sales that was to take effect on January 1, 2006.
The law was passed to protect underage children from the exposure to violent or sexually explicit games. And most parents would applaud this new law. But the law was challenged by the Entertainment Software Association and the Video Software Dealers Association which represent game makers and retailers.
In yesterday’s BBC News:
Citing freedom of speech worries US district judge Ronald Whyte granted an injunction to stop the law coming into force on 1 January.
Judge Whyte also questioned whether it was possible to ban sales to minors.
The ruling comes as US politicians draft national laws to stop the sale of adult-themed games to children.
Whose rights was Judge Whyte really trying to protect? Not the children’s rights!
The Entertainment Software Association and the Video Software Dealers Association have challenged similar laws in six other states and won reversals or injunctions that allowed them sell or rent violent or sexually explicit games to anyone. No consideration was made for the rights of the young children’s rights to be protected from inappropriate violent and sexual games.
There is good news and hope of a positive resolution on the eminent domain case, Kelo v. City of New London. This case was definitely over stepping by the U.S. Courts over the Constitutional right of property ownership and protection:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. IV Amendment, U.S. Constitution
On November 3. 2005, H.R. 4128 was passed in the House Of Representatives by an overwhelming majority vote of 376-38. The Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2005 will protect home owners, churches and all property owners from losing their property in the name of commercial development, as it was in the Kelo v. City of New London court decision.
This bill provides fines and sanctions against states who do not follow the bill’s definition of what constitutes land to be taken by eminent domain. The Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2005 defines what land can be taken by eminent domain and taken can not be used for commercial purposes. Fines and sanctions can be levied at any state not following the law.
We can only hope that the federal activist courts will keep their hand off.