Crossroads of Civilization
Posted in Community, Government, Law & Legislation, Man, Private, Public, Woman on Mar 25th, 2013
This week the Supreme Court will hear two cases related to the legal standing of gay marriage. One of the pivotal reasons given for having the benefits of marriage legally recognized as more broadly extended is just that – the benefits, from monetary advantages accruing simply from being married (recognizing child-specific benefits as just that) [...]
Posted in Law & Legislation on Jun 18th, 2012
The eagerly-awaited decision by the Supreme Court in the ObamaCare case is expected to come within the week, and there has been a lot of speculation about how it will turn out. But a lot of people handicapping the case don’t seem to understand either what the case is really about, or how the Supreme [...]
Posted in Law & Legislation on Mar 26th, 2012
The first of three days of oral arguments begins today in Department of Health & Human Services v. Florida, the ObamaCare mandate case. The blogging world is abuzz with talk of whether the mandate is authorized under the Interstate Commerce Clause, which is understandable because it’s an intellectually interesting issue. But, there are more issues [...]
Posted in Law & Legislation on Feb 13th, 2012
Hosanna-Tabor opinioncame out last month. I really wasn’t sure how this one would turn out, so I was surprised to see that it was a unanimous opinion in favor of the church. (The case began under George W. Bush, so it can’t be said that this is an instance of Obama’s EEOC gone wild.) At [...]
Posted in Culture on Dec 1st, 2011
George Will opens an interesting window on a practical, negative real-world unintended consequence of racial preferences in higher education that some may nevertheless find condescending – poignantly, the practical unintended consequence itself, that is, not necessarily Will’s offering.
Posted in Culture on Sep 28th, 2011
26 states appeal health care law to Supreme Court WASHINGTON (AP) — States and a business group opposed to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday for a speedy ruling that puts an end to the law aimed at extending insurance coverage to more than 30 million people. The high [...]
Posted in Nation, Politics, Siarlys Jenkins on Jul 28th, 2010
Fellow citizen Lance Christian Johnson has offered us an exposition on why he is not a conservative, in which he characterizes what he believes a conservative is, negatively. This has drawn a few responses from people who identify with the label conservative, embrace many points of principle Lance does not, and take offense at any [...]
Posted in Community, Family, Geoff Guth, Law & Legislation, Lifestyle, Sex on Jun 11th, 2010
Siarlys Jenkins posted an article addressing the question of whether gay marriage is a proper question for the federal constitution to address. He is quite correct to point out: Constitutional law is primarily about jurisdiction, delegating powers, and limiting powers. If a law is judicially found to violate the constitution, that should mean that the [...]
Posted in Community, Family, Law & Legislation, Lifestyle, Sex, Siarlys Jenkins on Jun 11th, 2010
I’m not sure whether to call on the ghost of Hugo Black, or look to one of Antonin Scalia’s better days, when I read the New York Times’s pathetic editorial on the lawsuit in federal district court challenging California’s Proposition 8. I use pathetic in the most clinical sense of the word: the editorial is [...]
Posted in Alex, Culture, Ethics, Law & Legislation, Nation, Politics on May 27th, 2010
The New York Times has given former OLC lawyer, current University of California at Berkeley professor, war criminal, torture defender, and unchecked monarchial and near dictatorial executive power evangelist John Yoo the opportunity to speak regarding an article Elena Kagan wrote back in 2001 in the Harvard Law Review: “Nonetheless, those who persevere will find [...]
Posted in Culture, Law & Legislation, Lynn Gazis-Sax, Politics, Technology, War, World on May 5th, 2010
Rod Dreher has a post on Bedside reading as guide to character, in which he asks readers to answer the question What are the books on your bedside table right now? Not what you want to be there, but what’s actually there.
Posted in Law & Legislation, Nation, Politics, Truth Excavator on Apr 12th, 2010
In reaction to Justice Stevens’ retirement, the main question many people are asking centers on the political direction of the Supreme Court. Right-wing pundits are afraid that Barack Obama will pick an ultra-liberal person, while the battered and bruised progressives worry that the moderate direction that the President took last year, with the selection of [...]
Posted in Culture, Ethics, Law & Legislation, Nation, Politics, Siarlys Jenkins on Apr 10th, 2010
I used to remark that if I had been John Kerry’s speech writer, he would have been elected president in 2004. It is probably just as well that I wasn’t. If HE couldn’t figure out for himself that he had to forthrightly speak about his prominent leadership role in Vietnam Veterans Against the War, that [...]
Posted in Community, Culture, Ethics, Law & Legislation, Nation, Politics, Public, Steve S. on Mar 15th, 2010
Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy reports that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Thomas has started Liberty Central Inc., a conservative activist group. Key quotes….. Today’s L.A. Times print edition carries an article with the headline, “Challenging a judicial norm,” and the subhead, “A justice’s wife may test impartiality standards by starting a ‘tea [...]
Posted in Community, Culture, Ethics, Family, Health Care Proposals, Law & Legislation, Media, Mind, Nation, Penny, Politics, Public, War, World on Jan 28th, 2010
It’s finally happened. Only the wealthy will have the power to campaign. Oh- it’s been coming on for decades, but with the Supreme Court’s ridiculous decision last week to allow unlimited campaign spending by corporations- the elite have finally won. One-hundred years of campaign law has been thrown out the window. The lobbyists who take [...]
Posted in Community, Culture, Law & Legislation, Nation, Politics, Public, Steve S. on Jan 22nd, 2010
I am the president of our small LLC. I am also a shareholder. As such, if our corporation commits some egregious error, and assuming no criminal law is broken, only the assets of the corporation can be obtained in recompense should we lose a suit. No matter how much damage we cause, that is the [...]
Posted in Geoff Guth, Law & Legislation on Jan 22nd, 2010
Remember the big brouhaha over the Buddhist monks donating to Al Gore? Remember how Bill Clinton was selling influence to foreign interests? You ain’t seen nothing yet. As Mark Kleiman points out, foreign companies aren’t exempted from the Supreme Court’s ruling. And even if they were, all they’d have to do is either set up [...]
Posted in Culture, Geoff Guth, Law & Legislation, Politics on Jan 18th, 2010
How, you may ask, after the Supreme Court ruled against broadcast? Court TV-style reenactments based on liveblogging. After casting the trial’s main characters, filming began over the weekend. Opening day of the trial is “in the can” and likely to debut on YouTube on Tuesday, with daily updates starting on Wednesday, the Los Angeles-based filmmaker [...]
Posted in Geoff Guth, Law & Legislation, Politics, Sex on Jan 18th, 2010
A final thought on the R-71 case that the Supreme Court will be hearing in a couple of months. What are the R-71 organizers really so afraid of? This. As she was covering the Prop. 8 case, Margaret Talbot looked to see what other kinds of organizing is going on. In door-to-door canvassing, same-sex-marriage advocates [...]
Posted in Geoff Guth, Politics on Jan 17th, 2010
The Supreme Court has had plenty of cases on its plate today that have arisen from the gay marriage debate (it’s a good bet that the current case challenging Prop. 8 in California will end up there). However, there are two other cases that address issues that have much more far-ranging effects on open government.
Posted in Education, Ethics, Law & Legislation, Nation, Scott Lahti on Mar 24th, 2009
It’s not just strip clubs that draw crowds, with almost 700 comments and counting: Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy By ADAM LIPTAK The Supreme Court will consider how far school officials can go to enforce zero-tolerance drug policies. In a sworn statement submitted in the case, Safford Unified School District v. Redding, [...]
Posted in Humor, Language, Law & Legislation, Nation, Scott Lahti, War, World on Nov 13th, 2008
Supreme Cartman …”Bawdy jokes are okay, if they’re really good,” Justice Antonin Scalia cracked, to more laughter. Stevens also asked whether the word “dung” would be indecent… Yemeni Cricket, or, Give a little vessel Pirates caught redhanded by one of Her Majesty’s warships after trying to hijack a cargo ship off Somalia made the grave [...]
Posted in Law & Legislation, Nation, Scott Lahti on Oct 21st, 2008
Washington Ruling on Guns Elicits Rebuke From the Right By ADAM LIPTAK …The judges used what in conservative legal circles are the ultimate fighting words: They said the gun ruling was a right-wing version of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that identified a constitutional right to abortion. Justice Scalia has said that Roe had [...]
Posted in Culture, Media, Robert Johnson, Sex on Jul 21st, 2008
Is this — “…a nine-sixteenths of one second glimpse of a bare female breast…” — where some of that otherwise burning interest in the Electoral College ended up instead? While the battle is not quite over yet, it may mercifully be put to rest soon: In June 2007, a federal appeals court in New York invalidated [...]
Posted in Lifestyle, Nation, Politics, Tom on May 21st, 2008
I was surprised to see, in the local paper today, both an op-ed piece and editorial lamenting the “return” of gay marriage. We have big issues when it comes to the November elections, and this is a big elephant in the room (no GOP pun intended). It’s important because the longer this issue doesn’t get [...]