Constitutional Right to: ... Twitter, Facebook?

Lord help us all if it is a Constitutional right, but apparently the USSC is hearing arguments in a case that may ultimately answer that question.

Lester Packingham, who had pleaded guilty in 2002 to taking indecent liberties with a minor when he was a 21-year-old college student. He received a suspended sentence and two years’ probation and was made to register as a sex offender.

Mr. Packingham came to the attention of the authorities in 2010, when he wrote on Facebook about having a traffic ticket dismissed. “God is good,” he wrote.

 The Justices are debating the right to use these social media platforms, as an aspect of their decision in the case.

Obama Abuses the Supremes

Several years ago, Mr. Obama stood at a podium when he reported to Congress and the American people, and wagged a rhetorical finger at the Justices sitting below him to the side, and made it clear he did not approve of their ruling on a case involving political action committees.  The justices sitting on their hands could do nothing for they are not political and Obama was being very political.

More recently, Obama has made it clear to the Supreme Court that he would like to

"remind conservative commentators that, for years, what we have heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law."

We are not commenting on Republicans Mr. Obama, we are commenting on what you have done, not what some hypothetical past congress did in your revised memory.  What we are talking about is your proposed healthcare (one which few members of congress read, which some of your own party told us we had to approve to find out what was in it) that was supported by one Republican with some Democrats crossing the aisle in opposition.  THAT Mr. Obama is a clear indication that it was not supported or approved by a majority and because you will raise the issue of a majority - a vast majority of Americans do not want your healthcare system.  They want it erased.

The Supreme Court is about to render parts of the plan unconstitutional.  You strike back that it was duly constitued and approved.  So was Plessy versus Ferguson.  So were the laws that enslaved.  So were many laws we now find repulsive and unconstitutional Mr. Obama.  Using your poor logic, those duly constituted and approved laws (separate but equal and enslaved) should be left alone.  The fact you think the law is constitutional doesn't mean anything except your opinion really does not matter on these issues.  What is clear is your opinion of yourself and the Imperial Presidency.

In the first months of his administration in early 2009, he stacked the Executive Office of the President with "Czars" who were not approved by the Senate, but were responsible to congress for the departments they oversaw.  This effort was, with very little question by reasonable people, an end-run around the requirement for Senatorial Advice and Consent.

It would seem you have little respect for the Constitution you swore to uphold Mr. Obama.

Just sayin'

obama

Obama and his Choice: Kaghen for the Court

Answer the lesbian question, Ms Legal Eagle



Andrew Sullivan
From The Sunday Times May 16, 2010




The nominee to be the next justice of the Supreme Court has no opinion on anything. Well, that’s not entirely true. She did believe in providing free coffee for students when she was dean of Harvard Law School. She once publicly protested against the ban on honest homosexuals serving in the US military — but that is genuinely the only controversial statement she has ever made in public.

How do such people exist? Well, the truth is they have existed on the career ladder for the US Supreme Court since Robert Bork was crucified by the Senate when Ronald Reagan nominated him. Bork had written on everything, had opinions on everything and was a thoroughly interesting, even riveting, intellectual character. He was done in by the radicalism of his views on the limits of judicial power — and even, in some part, because of his religious agnosticism. It was a spectacle almost as ugly as Bork himself. And ever since, every judicial nominee has maintained an almost comic poker face when describing their views and opinions in front of the senators, who have the power to consent (or not) to their appointment.

But it is fair to say that nobody has been as blank a slate as Elena Kagan. Although she has been solicitor-general for more than a year, she has never been a judge, so it is impossible to examine her rulings and her reasoning. She has barely written a thing, despite being an obviously brilliant and accomplished legal mind. Liberals worry that she is another wimpy, namby-pamby Democratic nominee and no match for the firebrands of the right that the second Bush appointed. Conservatives worry that she is a stealth leftist, an almost textbook case of a left-liberal marching silently and stealthily through the institutions of American power. But the truth is: none of us outside her circles has a clue.

What we do know is that everyone in America’s legal and constitutional elite — a rarefied world that seems to include Yale, Harvard, Washington and not much else — thinks she’s the bee’s knees. Reading their quotes in the press this past week is like reading academic references for a Rhodes scholarship. Take this classic piece of blather from an icon of the liberal legal establishment, Walter Dellinger: “Her open-mindedness may disappoint some who want a sure liberal vote on almost every issue. Her pragmatism may disappoint those who believe that mechanical logic can decide all cases. And her progressive personal values will not endear her to the hard right. But that is exactly the combination the president was seeking.”

So Dellinger testifies to her “progressive personal values”. How does he know? Because he’s her friend. How are we supposed to know, when she has never articulated any such progressive values in, you know, public? Well, we just have to take Barack Obama’s word for it.

Jeffrey Toobin, the brilliant legal correspondent for The New Yorker, says he’s a close friend, but has no idea what her views are on anything. The New York Times ran a 4,500-word profile last week in which — again — not a single stand of any note could be discerned. The piece was full of anecdotes — she argued with her rabbi at her bat mitzvah, she left her car engine running in her garage overnight because she was so absent-minded, she smokes cigars, she plays softball — that were so artfully constructed to make her seem wonderful without revealing anything of any substance that another of the paper’s writers noted: “She seems to be smart, impressive and honest — and in her willingness to suppress so much of her mind for the sake of her career, kind of disturbing.”

There was one other strange thing about 4,500 words of profile — no mention of any private life. She is unmarried, and apparently has no anecdotes of dates, no ex-boyfriends or girlfriends, no romantic interludes ... nothing. In 4,500 words, we do not find out even where she lives or has lived or if she lives alone. (But we do know what her brothers do for a living — teaching). The far right has already identified her as a “lesbian homosexual”; and the gay blogosphere openly discussed her alleged lesbianism weeks ago.

But there is no confirmation of that anywhere and the White House reiterated last week that questions about sexual orientation “have no place” in judging a nominee (but her gender most certainly does). Quite how you defend this argument — from a president whose own criterion for nominees is a real experience of how law can affect ordinary people — is beyond me. It is also beyond most ordinary people out there.

If you type Elena Kagan into Google, you will get “elena kagan husband” and “elena kagan personal life” among the prompts for the most likely search terms. But my own attempt to inquire in as positive a way as possible last week — I’d be thrilled to have a gay Supreme Court justice — was simply ignored by the Obama press operation and smacked down elsewhere as an outrageous and unethical question. She is not only a blank slate as an intellectual and public figure; she is also a blank slate in other respects as well.

We are left guessing. The good news is that everyone has an interest in finding out; and we may have a set of hearings in which real questions are asked. In a rare moment of opining, she did once write that she found the hearings process since Bork oddly empty — and so she has opened herself up to a more rigorous set of questions than usual. She will, after all, assume a lifelong position with immense power. It is not crazy to ask questions that would help us judge how she sees the world and the law and the core issues of public moment she will have to address in the future.

My best bet is that she is quite hardcore in her left-liberalism but, like Obama, has managed to placate so many conservatives and independents on her way up the greasy pole that she will sail through. At Harvard Law School she hired many right-of-centre scholars, just as Obama engaged many right-of-centre thinkers at the Harvard Law Review. Never showing her hand, she wooed them with universal success.

Obama is answerable every day to the voters and to Congress and to the press. Once Kagan gets on the court, she will answer to nobody for the rest of her life. Better get some answers now, then, don’t you think? Or does that too “have no place” in such a process?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
supremes

Thomas defends Supreme Court Decision

February 4, 2010


Justice Defends Ruling on Finance

By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times



WASHINGTON — In expansive remarks at a law school in Florida, Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday vigorously defended the Supreme Court’s recent campaign finance decision.

And Justice Thomas explained that he did not attend State of the Union addresses — he missed the dust-up when President Obama used the occasion last week to criticize the court’s decision — because the gatherings had turned so partisan.

Justice Thomas responded to several questions from students at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Fla., concerning the campaign finance case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. By a 5-to-4 vote, with Justice Thomas in the majority, the court ruled last month that corporations had a First Amendment right to spend money to support or oppose political candidates.

“I found it fascinating that the people who were editorializing against it were The New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company,” Justice Thomas said. “These are corporations.”

The part of the McCain-Feingold law struck down in Citizens United contained an exemption for news reports, commentaries and editorials. But Justice Thomas said that reflected a legislative choice rather than a constitutional principle.

He added that the history of Congressional regulation of corporate involvement in politics had a dark side, pointing to the Tillman Act, which banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in 1907.

“Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Senator Benjamin Tillman. “Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.”

It is thus a mistake, the justice said, to applaud the regulation of corporate speech as “some sort of beatific action.”

Justice Thomas said the First Amendment’s protections applied regardless of how people chose to assemble to participate in the political process.

“If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as a group, you’d say you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First Amendment right of association,” he said. “If you all then formed a partnership to speak, you’d say we still have that First Amendment right to speak and of association.”

“But what if you put yourself in a corporate form?” Justice Thomas asked, suggesting that the answer must be the same.

Asked about his attitude toward the two decisions overruled in Citizens United, he said, “If it’s wrong, the ultimate precedent is the Constitution.”

Justice Thomas would not directly address the controversy over Mr. Obama’s criticism of the Citizens United ruling or Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s mouthed “not true” in response. But he did say he had stopped attending the addresses.

“I don’t go because it has become so partisan and it’s very uncomfortable for a judge to sit there,” he said, adding that “there’s a lot that you don’t hear on TV — the catcalls, the whooping and hollering and under-the-breath comments.”

“One of the consequences,” he added in an apparent reference to last week’s address, “is now the court becomes part of the conversation, if you want to call it that, in the speeches. It’s just an example of why I don’t go.”





 
 
 
 
 
 
politics

Ginsburg: Abortion is a population control tool for unwanted groups

CNSNews.com

Justice Ginsburg Says She Originally Thought Roe v. Wade Was Designed to Limit 'Populations That We Don’t Want to Have Too Many Of'

Friday, July 10, 2009
By Christopher Neefus


(CNSNews.com) – In an interview to be published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she thought the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion was predicated on the Supreme Court majority's desire to diminish “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

In the 90-minute interview in Ginsburg’s temporary chambers, Ginsburg gave the Times her perspective on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s first high court nomination. She also discussed her views on abortion.

Her comment about her belief that the court had wanted to limit certain populations through abortion came after the interviewer asked Ginsburg: “If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist agenda?”

“Reproductive choice has to be straightened out,” Ginsburg said. “There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe (to make abortion legal) are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.”

Ginsburg discussed her surprise at the outcome of Harris v. McRae, a 1980 decision that upheld the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited the use of Medicaid and other federal funds for abortions.

Here’s a transcript of that portion of the Times' interview:

Q. Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

Justice Ginsburg: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the Court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.”

The comment suggested Ginsburg eventually changed her mind and concluded that Roe was not decided with the idea that abortion could be used to limit "growth in populations we don't want to have too many of." But she did not qualify her position that the policy enacted under the case put an unacceptable burden on poor women.

During the interview, the justice also affirmed a position she took on abortion during her Clinton-era confirmation hearing, suggesting the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was a better grounds for justifying abortion on demand than the "right to privacy."

“The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman,” Ginsburg told the Times. In 1993, she told the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing: “(Y)ou asked me about my thinking on equal protection versus individual autonomy. My answer is that both are implicated. The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices.”

The Court legalized abortion under Roe v. Wade based on a “right to privacy” that it found in the 14th Amendment---and not the Equal Protection Clause. In doing so, it said the state had an interest in protecting the unborn child that increased as pregnancy progresses. Gindburg's position that women have an equal right to abortion as a result of their gender would appear to allow for no state restrictions on abortion.









abortion

Obama - Bush's argument about executive authority to hold enemies without trial - OK.

What a difference a year makes. A year ago - He was attacking Bush and the position held by the Bush administration on holding enemy combatants and suspected terrorists.

Now, the Obama administration is quite happy the Court left the issue alone.

Nice to know Bush's position has been upheld.



Supreme Court dismisses case of suspected Al Qaeda agent
Justices vacate an appeals court ruling that said the president has the power to imprison people in the U.S. indefinitely without a trial. The White House did not want a showdown over Bush policies.

Associated Press
March 7, 2009

Washington -- The Supreme Court on Friday bowed out of deciding whether the president has the power to imprison people in the U.S. indefinitely without a trial -- avoiding a showdown the Obama administration did not want.The court granted the administration's request to dismiss the challenge to the president's authority from suspected Al Qaeda sleeper agent Ali Saleh Kahlah Marri, who was detained by the military for 5 1/2 years without charges.

But the court's order also vacates the federal appeals court ruling Marri was challenging, which had affirmed the president's power to detain people in the United States without trial.


[To read the rest of the article, click on the title link]







Obama

Supreme Court: Base Decisions on the Constitution? Not if you are an Obama supporter.

Supreme Court Update
60% of Voters Say Supreme Court Should Base Rulings on Constitution

Friday, September 05, 2008


Thirty-two percent (32%) of likely voters say the Supreme Court is doing a good or excellent job. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% give the Honorables poor ratings.

These approval ratings for the Supreme Court are essentially identical to those found in the last survey conducted in mid-August.


Earlier this year, perceptions of the court improved after it issued a popular opinion upholding the Second Amendment while striking down a Washington, DC law banning handguns in the city.
During his acceptance speech last night at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, John McCain told the audience, “We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench.” Most American voters (60%) agrees and says the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice. The number who agree with McCain is up from 55% in August.

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

In terms of how the Supreme Court currently makes decisions, just 42% of voters think the justices rule from what is in the Constitution. Thirty-percent (30%) say they are guided by a sense of fairness and justice.Democrats are more likely than Republicans and unaffiliated voters to believe the justices base rulings on the Constitution.

The survey also found that 65% of voters think the Supreme Court justices have their own political agendas. That number has changed little over the past month. Just 18% believe the judges remain impartial when making decisions.

Nearly all voters believe the selection of Supreme Court justices by the president is important. The majority (63%) believe it is very important. Just 8% think the selection process by the president is not important.








Obama

Property Seizures

Justices Affirm Property Seizures by 5-4 vote

And guess what? It was not the conservatives who made it possible to take your property from you!!

Be VERY CONCERNED.




Justices Affirm Property Seizures5-4 Ruling
Backs Forced Sales for Private Development
By Charles LaneWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 24, 2005; A01

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that local governments may force property owners to sell out and make way for private economic development when officials decide it would benefit the public, even if the property is not blighted and the new project's success is not guaranteed.

The 5 to 4 ruling provided the strong affirmation that state and local governments had sought for their increasing use of eminent domain for urban revitalization, especially in the Northeast, where many city centers have decayed and the suburban land supply is dwindling.

Opponents, including property-rights activists and advocates for elderly and low-income urban residents, argued that forcibly shifting land from one private owner to another, even with fair compensation, violates the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the taking of property by government except for "public use."

But Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, cited cases in which the court has interpreted "public use" to include not only such traditional projects as bridges or highways but also slum clearance and land redistribution. He concluded that a "public purpose" such as creating jobs in a depressed city can also satisfy the Fifth Amendment.

The court should not "second-guess" local governments, Stevens added, noting that "[p]romoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government."

Stevens's opinion provoked a strongly worded dissent from Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote that the ruling favors the most powerful and influential in society and leaves small property owners little recourse. Now, she wrote, the "specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams, who serves as president of the National League of Cities, issued a statement praising the court for upholding "one of the most powerful tools city officials have to rejuvenate their neighborhoods."

In addition to its national repercussions, the court's decision removed a possible obstacle to the District's plans to build a baseball stadium along the Anacostia River waterfront and to redevelop the Skyland Shopping Center in Southeast -- a project Williams said could generate 300 jobs and $3.3 million in tax revenue.

A number of property owners in those areas had hoped the court ruling would help them resist the city's exercise of eminent domain. But David A. Fuss, an attorney for several of them, acknowledged that the court's ruling "is going to have a major impact."

The redevelopment program at issue in yesterday's case -- the plan of the Connecticut city of New London to turn 90 acres of waterfront land into office buildings, upscale housing, a marina and other facilities near a $300 million research center being built by pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer -- was also expected to generate hundreds of jobs and, city officials say, $680,000 in property tax revenue.

New London, with a population of about 24,000, is reeling from the 1996 closing of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, which had employed more than 1,500 people.

But owners of 15 homes on 1.54 acres of the proposed site had refused to go. One of them, Susette Kelo, had extensively remodeled her home and wanted to stay for its view of the water. Another, Wilhelmina Dery, was born in her house in 1918 and has lived there her entire life.

The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the city's plan, so the homeowners, represented by lawyers from the libertarian Institute for Justice, appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

According to the institute, the New London plan, which the City Council approved in 2000, is typical of "eminent domain abuse," which has spawned more than 10,000 threatened or filed condemnations involving a transfer of property from one private party to another in 41 states between 1998 and 2002.

Scott Bullock, a lawyer for the institute, said that the only recourse for property owners facing condemnation under eminent domain would be to sue in state court based on the property rights provisions of each state's constitution.

New London City Manager Richard M. Brown said he was "very pleased" by the court's decision. He said the city hopes to restart its redevelopment plan, which has lost money so far, partly because of the litigation.

In the disputed neighborhood, known as Fort Trumbull, most residents sold out and their homes were demolished. The site is now a flat expanse of dusty, rock-strewn soil dotted by the few remaining houses. Signs advertising the development site are withered and torn; builders who once considered projects have moved on, deterred by the controversy.

Stevens was joined in the majority by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Kennedy's vote was something of a surprise because he had expressed strong sympathy for property-rights claims in past cases. But in a brief concurring opinion he explained that the New London plan showed no sign of improper favoritism toward any one private developer.

O'Connor was joined in her dissent by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They wrote that the majority had tilted in favor of those with "disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

And in a separate dissent, Thomas sounded a rare note of agreement with liberal groups such as the NAACP, which had sided with the property owners in the case.

He protested that urban renewal has historically resulted in displacement of minorities, the elderly and the poor.

"Regrettably, the predictable consequence of the Court's decision will be to exacerbate these effects," he wrote.

The case is Kelo v. City of New London , No. 04-108.

Staff writer Kirstin Downey contributed to this report.