A senator gives thanks

There is an individual right to bear arms

Thus rules the Supreme Court in a less than unexpected 5/4 decision.  You can read the text here.

Heads I win, tails you lose

An excellent, must read opinion piece in the New York Times looks at the alleged “compromise” on FISA currently being debated in the halls of Congre$$.

The bill is not a compromise. The final details are being worked out, but all indications are that many of its provisions are both unnecessary and a threat to the Bill of Rights. The White House and the Congressional Republicans who support the bill have two real aims. They want to undermine the power of the courts to review the legality of domestic spying programs. And they want to give a legal shield to the telecommunications companies that broke the law by helping Mr. Bush carry out his warrantless wiretapping operation.

… Under the so-called compromise, the question of immunity would be decided by a federal district court — a concession by Mr. Bond, who originally wanted the FISA court, which meets in secret and is unsuited to the task, to decide. What is unacceptable, though, is that the district court would be instructed to decide based solely on whether the Bush administration certifies that the companies were told the spying was legal. If the aim is to allow a court hearing on the president’s spying, the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed — and the courts should be able to resolve them the way they resolve every other case. Republicans, who complain about judges making laws from the bench, should not be making judicial decisions from Capitol Hill.

Read it in full.

As usual, Greenwald leads a good fight.

Justice dispenced at the Supreme Court

Once in a while, even in the Bush era, the Supreme Court gets it right.

Suspected terrorists and foreign fighters held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to challenge their detention in federal court, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The decision marks another legal blow to the Bush administration’s war on terrorism policies.

The 5-4 vote reflects the divide over how much legal autonomy the U.S. military should have to prosecute about 270 prisoners, some of whom have been held for more than six years without charges. Fourteen of them are alleged to be top al Qaeda figures.

 

Less bad than expected

Interesting piece at Obsidian Wings that analyzes some recent Supreme Court decisions, and determines Alito and Roberts, for their flaws, might be better than Scalia and Thomas.

Read it in full.

Constant vigilence on FISA

Here we go again.  Courtesy of Daily Kos:

Before decamping again for recess last week, the Republicans gave notice that, after vacation, they’re going to hold their breath until they turn blue over FISA:

Republicans unveiled their latest compromise offer Thursday to rewrite electronic surveillance rules, saying they can make no more concessions to Democrats.

Here’s our first problem, and one the Democrats would do well to remember: the Republicans aren’t in charge. The Dems don’t need their concessions, and need to stop acting as if they do. This issue is not going to be the one that turns around the disastrous election year that Republicans from Tom Davis to Tom Coburn are predicting. Rather than bending over backwards to negotiate with these people while they’re down, Dems would do better to give them a well-placed kick where their AT&T-padded wallets reside.

No retroactive immunity.  Period.  End of discussion.

It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

A different tone at the Supreme Court

Interesting piece in the NYT by Linda Greenhouse:

A year ago at this time, the Supreme Court had decided 13 cases by votes of 5 to 4, out of 41 total decisions. That proved to be an accurate snapshot of a highly polarized term. By the time the court wrapped up its work five weeks later, a third of the cases — the highest proportion in years — had been decided by margins of a single vote.

But so far this term, with 35 cases decided with full opinions, there has been only a single 5-to-4 decision. It came in a low-visibility statutory case, not in a hot-button constitutional one. And the justices did not break along the ideological divisions that shaped the last term. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was in the majority in all 24 of last term’s 5-to-4 decisions, voted in dissent.

Justice Kennedy’s dominance last term was so complete that, of 68 decisions, he cast only two dissenting votes. He has already dissented five times this term. So have Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Stephen G. Breyer and John Paul Stevens. In other words, no longer the essential justice, Anthony Kennedy now looks like just one of the pack.

The issue for the courts

I’ve discussed this before, but today the Carpetbagger does as well, so I repeat:

Stevens is 88 years old, and McCain wants to appoint his replacement!

Truth about judicial activism

Who is it that is really the judicial activist?  This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s informed (or reads this blog, for that matter) but it’s an interesting new analysis.

Moving backwards on FISA

They can’t be serious:

Telecom companies have presented congressional Democrats with a set of proposals on how to provide immunity to the businesses that participated in a controversial government electronic surveillance program, a House Democratic aide said Wednesday….

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday a FISA deal is “still in flux” but he described the latest developments as “promising” and said he hoped to have a solution soon.

House officials declined to discuss the specifics of the proposed immunity language by the telecoms.

Although it remains to be seen if congressional Democrats will accept the telecom companies’ proposal, the communication between the two sides signifies that progress is being made.

As McJoan at Kos observes:

Have Dem leaders really moved in the discussions from whether to provide amnesty to how to provide it? Beyond that, why in the hell do the telcos have a seat at the negotiating table on this issue at all?

I doubt Congress invited the Mafia to the table when it wrote the RICO  Act. Seems pretty unlikely that there were any drug kingpins at the table when Congress wrote the Continuing Criminal Enterprise statute. But AT&T gets to write this one?

Damn straight.  No immunity.  Period.  Contact your congressmen NOW.

Hanging by a thread

Great piece at Firedoglake which starts with an evaluation of our worst justice, Scalia, but then looks at the greater issue:

We are hanging by a thread. It has a name – Justice Kennedy. Justice Kennedy is what remains of the center on the Court. Even with Justice O’Connor there were many troubling 5-4 decisions, especially in the areas of federalism, criminal justice, and corporate power. Justice Kennedy votes with the more liberal members of the Court now and again, and has done so in a few extremely important cases. If Justice Scalia gets one more fully reliable ally, the course of American history will change.

Yet the American people seem unaware of – or not to care about – the danger. Of course – at least from a progressive point of view – the Supreme Court has never been a particularly salient issue, at least not since the 1930s. Conservatives seem more successful in making a politics out of what they call “activist” judges (never mind that it was a conservative Court that overturned a long list of federal statutes in the 1990s). Those who would uphold individual rights and liberties and curb untrammeled Presidential power are on the whole ineffective in stirring public concern.

Read it in full.

Oops

Yes fish tanks can stink, but isn’t this a bit excessive?

“Ohmigod,” Adams said as she recalled police breaking down her door and flashing the search warrant. “I just kept saying to them, ‘you’ve got the wrong house.’ “

Police soon realized that themselves.

“From a cursory view, it doesn’t look like our officers did anything wrong,” said Capt. Greg Roehl.

Yes indeed, nothing wrong at all.  Except break down the door of a sleeping couple who hadn’t done anything wrong to begin with.

Our idiot laws and the moronic “war” on drugs.   And through it all there’s really nothing available to them to hold the police accountable for their behavior here.

Hat tip:  John Cole

More evidence that Scalia is a complete and utter moron

Consequences of the court

They’re still hitting Norm over his judicial endorsements.  As they should.

GOP official innocent of rape

You know things are ugly when the noteworthy headline involves a Republican NOT guilty of something sex realted?

Of course there are always footnotes:

Obligatory snark provided by Dan Savage:

Forget about playing baseball with straight guys and beating pillows with tennis rackets—wanna turn gay people straight? Make us watch the Barclay tapes.