Scalia says Constitution silent on abortion, race in school Unfortunately, the Associtated Press did not run a word search on the Constitution to verify Scalia's statement. I watched part of the "debate" while flipping back and forth between CSPAN and the Chargers' demolition of the San Francisco 49ers. The video is available on the front […]
I've repeatedly bemoaned the tendency for some judges to ignore their duty to rule on the laws and the constitution passed by the people's representatives and not to act as a superlegislature, imposing their own beliefs in an autocratic fashion on the people. Last week, in an address to a conference on the judiciary at […]
Andrew McCarthy of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has an excellent article in The New Criterion ripping the Supreme Court for taking over the other two branches of government. This is why, for example, we have never—at least until Hamdan—had a one-sided treaty with an international terrorist organization, whereby jihadists get to keep killing […]
One of the names often mentioned as pundits speculated who President Bush would name to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was J. Harvie Wilkinson of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Wilkinson authored an op-ed piece in yesterday's Washington Post cautioning against efforts to amend state and the federal constitution to prohibit […]
The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that Zachery Guiles can wear a T-shirt to school that labels President Bush the "Chicken-Hawk-In-Chief" and accuses him of being a cocaine addict and drunkard. In other news, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- the one with all the liberal, free speech absolutists -- still thinks […]
Well, it turns out the judge that ruled the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program unconstitutional, immoral and high in saturated fats has a connection to one of the groups that brought the lawsuit -- the ACLU. Some legal ethicists interviewed said yesterday that while Taylor's role as a trustee at a nonprofit group supporting the ACLU […]
Early on I noted that despite their feelings on the legality of the NSA's terrorist surveillance program, legal scholars almost unanimously panned the opinion as heavy on rhetoric and light on the law. I also thought it was worth noting how two of the nation's most respected newspapers thought about the opinion. Demonstrating once again […]
It should come as little surprise that the ACLU found a district judge -- a Carter appointee -- to ignore previous rulings on Presidential commander-in-chief powers and find the NSA wiretapping program illegal. [PDF of the decision here.] Eugene Volokh over at the Volokh Conspiracy has some more analysis of the ruling, and he doesn't […]
The coverage of Colorado's redistricting pales in comparison to the attention given to the mid-decade redistricting that occurred in Texas. Unlike in the Texas case, Democrats didn't flee the state in order to deny a quorum in the legislature. Also, because Colorado is a smaller state, fewer House seats were at issue. Keeping those facts […]
A federal judge ruled yesterday that the basic statistics about sports and the players' names are not subject to copyright. Medler barred the baseball players union and MLB.com, the league's Internet arm that operates its own fantasy league, from interfering with CBC. "The undisputed facts establish that the names and playing records of (MLB) players […]