A Judge Got One Wrong

Posted on 20 October 2019 by eehines

Recall Florida’s citizens, by a 2:1 margin, voting up a State constitutional amendment restoring to convicted felons (except murderers and sex offenders) their right to vote on completion of their criminal sentences.

Recall, further, Florida’s government passing a law that required these felons to pay off their outstanding fines, fees or restitution—in other words, actually to complete their sentences, including court-imposed financial requirements. This law went further: it provided mechanisms for relief from those financial penalties so the felon could complete their sentences more quickly after release from jail:

payment of the financial obligation in full

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Threats

Posted on 15 August 2019 by eehines

Progressive-Democrats are nakedly trying to intimidate the Supreme Court to get their own way—and they’ve made their threat overt, in an Amici Curiae brief filed with the Supreme Court concerning New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc v City of New York, which is a case involving New York City’s ban on transporting “licensed, locked and unloaded handgun[s] to a home or shooting range outside city limits.”

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI), Richard Blumenthal (D, CT), Mazie Hirono (D, HI), Richard Durbin (D, IL), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D, NY) made their threat thusly:

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A Misbehaving Judge

Posted on 4 August 2019 by eehines

PG&E is in a world of hurt, still, over the California fires that its shoddy power line maintenance contributed so heavily to starting. However, the Federal district judge overseeing a related court case has overstepped his own bounds.

William Alsup, a US district judge in Northern California, ordered PG&E to respond “on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis” to the Journal article published July 10.

This is just plain wrong. Leaving aside the fact that newspaper articles, no matter how seemingly well-documented, are not evidence of anything—they’re only allegations, and they were not brought to Alsup by any parties to that case; he went and got them all by himself.

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A Misunderstanding

Posted on 3 August 2019 by eehines

In a house editorial concerning the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding President Donald Trump’s authority to reallocate some DoD funds toward building a border wall, The Wall Street Journal expressed the hope that the ruling—which lifted a nation-wide injunction issued by a Federal district [sic] judge—would send an appropriate signal to district judges regarding nation-wide injunctions. The editors also had this remark regarding such injunctions.

The proliferation of national injunctions has inserted judges into policy debates in ways they should avoid….

This is a misapprehension of the situation and a mischaracterization of what the judges are doing.

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In Which the Court Gets One Right

Posted on 23 June 2019 by eehines

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the Bladensburg Peace Cross is not an unconstitutional favoring by government of a particular religion, reversing the 4^th Circuit. Only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

This is the privately done monument that was

built in 1925 and paid for by local families, businesses, and the American Legion to honor 49 World War I veterans from Prince George’s County [in Maryland]. But the 40-foot cross sits on a now-busy highway median owned since 1961 by a state commission that pays for its maintenance and upkeep.

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“Radical-Right” and the Left

Posted on 17 June 2019 by eehines

The Washington Post ran a panic-mongering op-ed about the Supreme Court last week.

Last month, the new conservative majority—being driven by Justices Neil M Gorsuch and Brett M Kavanaugh—signaled that this change is coming. In overruling a 40-year-old precedent governing how state governments can be sued, the new court majority, all of whom pledged reverence for precedent during their Senate confirmation hearings—sang a different song: “stare decisis is ‘not an inexorable command,’ … and is ‘at its weakest’ when interpreting the Constitution.” This was the second time in less than a year that the conservative majority has tossed aside decades-old precedent.

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Appeals to Courts Vice Voters Vice….

Posted on 16 June 2019 by eehines

Wisconsin’s Progressive-Democrats failed at the polls, for all that they won the Governor’s and Attorney General’s chairs in 2018, so they tried to get the courts to impose their policies by judicial fiat. That failed, too, so now what? How can these Know Betters get their plans imposed on the unwashed citizenry?

It seems that the duly elected State legislature and duly elected State governor had passed a number of laws that limited the power of the Governor and the State Attorney General. The fact that these laws were enacted after those 2018 elections and before the new Governor and Attorney General took office was somehow supposed to delegitimize those laws. Or so the Progressive-Democrat Governor and AG insisted. The people were still speaking, but they should not be listened to.

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An Out of Control Supreme Court Justice

Posted on 28 May 2019 by eehines

I received this email from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee last Thursday [emphasis added].

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Charging Assange

Posted on 26 May 2019 by eehines

Julian Assange, of Manning and Wikileaks infamy, has been indicted on violations of the Espionage Act in addition to the existing charges pending against him.

Naturally, the NLMSM is in an uproar over this putative attack on a free press.

…reignited debate over whether pursuing Mr. Assange for publishing classified information could lead to other cases against journalists who receive government secrets.

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Yewbetcha

Posted on 25 May 2019 by eehines

Justice Clarence Thomas, on the matter of judicial precedent, as quoted by Myron Magnet in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal:

“Stare decisis is not an inexorable command,” Justice Thomas observes in [Franchise Tax Board v] Hyatt. He has said elsewhere: “I think that the Constitution itself, the written document, is the ultimate stare decisis.”

What he said.

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