The case I mentioned last week regarding a judge unilaterally changing California's procedures for administering the death penalty has borne fruit -- now the state can't execute convicted rapist and murderer Michael Morales [PDF Format]. California officials postponed indefinitely the execution of convicted killer Michael Morales on Tuesday after notifying a federal court they could […]
Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel apparently didn't like the idea of invalidating California's death penalty -- and possibly that of 36 other states, so he did a little legislating to get the result he was looking for. A federal judge ruled Tuesday that California must change its lethal injection method for the execution of Michael Morales […]
It appears that a Washington Post article that portrays two of the top judges of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act Court as standing athwart the Bush administration's "illegal" NSA surveillance program may backfire. The piece describes how Judges Royce Lamberth and his successor, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, barred the use of evidence gained by the NSA program […]
Or maybe Ted "I left my car in the drink ... along with my date" Kennedy just gets his demagoguery wrong. The day after his elevation to the high court, Justice Samuel Alito sided with the court's liberal block to block the execution of a convicted murderer. For those of you wary of Souter Part […]
I didn't catch this piece yesterday by The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin, but I just picture this scene in my mind and laugh. At times, Alito followed the lead of the other three justices who sat with him in the front row. When Bush said "We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep […]
Judge Samuel Alito is now Justice Samuel Alito. What does this mean? First it means that Justice Stephen Breyer no longer has to get drinks for the rest of the justices or get up and answer the door. Of course, what it really means is that we've got four solid votes for originalism and against […]
The New York Times report today on yesterday's 72-25 cloture vote on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court contains the term: "filibuster." We have the Times filibuster definition courtesy of editorial page editor Gail Collins. When a cloture motion was made to move the nomination to a vote, Senator Frist voted […]
David Broder had an interesting article in Sunday's Washington Post that recounted Tip O'Neill's visit to Ronald Reagan's hospital room after he was shot by John Hinckley. When I reached [Max] Friedersdorf [, Reagan White House congressional liaison,] last week at his retirement home in Florida, I asked him how it happened that Reagan's first […]
Massachusetts' junior senator, John Kerry, has come out urging a filibuster of Judge Samuel Alito. It's going to be interesting to see how the New York Times editorial page characterizes Kerry's move, since by their definition a filibuster is occuring right now. And if the Times changes their definition to fit the political calculus of […]
The Senate isn't really debating the qualifications of Sam Alito to sit on the Supreme Court so much as they are speechifying. I watched a couple hours of the Senate yesterday and have C-SPAN2 on now and I think everything that can be said about Alito has been said -- it's just that everyone hasn't […]