03.18.07
Posted in Supreme Court at 3:29 pm by JEG
A favorite line from one of my favorite movies: Parenthood.
I know that folks have passionate views. That’s what makes this country great. So I have a hard time getting all worked up about a butthead college student who decides to hang a banner extolling the virtues of “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”
After he unfurled his 14-foot “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner on a Juneau, Alaska, street one winter morning in 2002, Mr. Frederick got a 10-day school suspension. He has a date tomorrow at the Supreme Court in what is shaping up as an important test of constitutional rights
Truth be told, Jesus is probably laughing to himself thinking, “My goodness, what a quack this kid is.” Even Jesus recognizes that college kids do stupid things. I did ‘em, and you all did too, regardless of how perfect you think you might be.
Is it offensive to Christians? Probably, but it’s not even close to some of the “art” that has been protected over the years! Here’s a perfect example:
The New York Performance Works presented twelve performances of the play “’Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.” The postcard that was sent to prospective theater-goers showed an illustration of the Virgin Mary with the Immaculate Heart. The inscription “’Tis a Pit She’s a Whore” was written across her. The New York Performance Works said the play was not about Catholicism.
Christian-bashing is nothing new, particularly in a day and age where it’s glorified by the media, academia, and the “artistic” community. Does it bother me that someone has enough hostility toward Jesus that he would hang a banner dedicating his pot-smoking habit to the Lord? Yeah, but it’s not a battle worth fighting. Ignoring this type of nonsense is the best course to take. Let’s focus instead on the big battles.
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09.08.06
Posted in Judiciary, Crime Blotter at 5:14 pm by JB
Prove this, prove who did it. Then fire up old smokey, or get the needles ready.
A children’s court prosecutor said that Milwaukee police are still trying to find all the individuals involved in the apparent gang rape of an 11-year-old girl.
A 16-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy have been charged in the assault.
Criminal complaints said that the young girl was repeatedly assaulted by up to 19 boys in a north side home on Monday night as the 16-year-old girl told her what sex acts to perform.
The complaints filed in Milwaukee County Children’s Court said that a 40-year-old relative of the 16-year-old also participated in the assault.
Assistant District Attorney Matthew Torbeson said that the victim has said 15 to 20 individuals were involved in the assault.
Torbeson said that the man is the uncle of the 16-year-old.
The prosecutor said that he will likely ask that the 15- and 16-year-olds be waived to adult court.
Anyone who can rape an 11-year-old girl doesn’t deserve to see more than one more birthday. Prove it. Then remove those guilty from the gene pool.
And if the uncle really set this up, I want him hung on the courthouse square.
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08.23.06
Posted in Politics, Judiciary at 12:21 pm by JB
From the WaPo: (all emphasis mine)
A conservative watchdog group says the judge who declared President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program unconstitutional may have a conflict of interest because she sits on the board of a foundation that has given money to the chief plaintiff in the case.
Judicial Watch, which advocates judicial accountability, said it discovered U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s monetary tie after reviewing her financial disclosure statements.
The judge is the secretary and a trustee for the nonprofit Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan. The foundation’s Web site shows it gave $45,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union to back a gay rights project. The ACLU has challenged the warrantless surveillance program.
“There has to be an appearance that justice is being fairly administered,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Tuesday. “The court’s role in awarding a grant to the ACLU and whether or not that is an issue is something that needs to be fully examined.”
Taylor declined to comment, as did the Justice Department, which is asking the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to overturn Taylor’s ruling issued Thursday.
ACLU of Michigan Executive Director Kary Moss said the group did not know about the judge’s affiliation with the nonprofit but added she did not think it is a “big story.”
“We don’t think recusal would have been necessary,” Moss said.
The foundation released a statement Tuesday saying Taylor is one of 50 volunteer members of its board of trustees, which oversees grant-making decisions.
Rules are rules for some people, laws are the laws…. but if you agree with the ACLU, it’s not a “big story”. It does, however, violate judicial ethics in about 10 different ways.
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Posted in Politics, Judiciary at 12:05 pm by JB
This judge is just off-the-charts liberal…. I’ll have more later, but Jonah Goldberg has a good take on it. As usual, read it all, but here’s a snippet:
Long before the concept of a living Constitution was hatched, the authors of the original version — as well as the courts interpreting it — understood that the executive branch has the authority and flexibility to conduct foreign policy and wage war. Terrorists may be criminals, but they aren’t merely criminals. They’re waging war against us and doing so in ways never imagined by the founders. They don’t want territory or treaties, and they don’t use armies and cannons. They want to make our own technology and freedoms into weapons they can use against us.
And so here is the real absurdity of the “living Constitution” school. Where the Constitution is supposed to be inert, they want it alive and mutating. But where the Constitution was intended to be flexible, complete intellectual rigor mortis has set in.
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08.18.06
Posted in Politics, Judiciary, National Security at 4:31 am by JB
And the President that picks them does too. Thank you again, Jimmy Carter, for f-ing up the country.
A judge ordered the Bush administration on Thursday to stop a domestic wiretap program it says protects Americans from terrorism but which the judge said violated their civil rights.
The administration, buoyed by polls showing Americans back its handling of security and terrorism, appealed against the federal court ruling, saying: “We couldn’t disagree more.”
U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor said the wiretaps under a five-year-old “Terrorist Surveillance Program” violated freedom of speech, protections against unreasonable searches and a constitutional check on the power of the presidency.
“There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution,” Taylor said in a 44-page ruling.
This lady was made a federal district judge in 1979. Just another way Jimmy Carter is still harming the security of this country.
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08.02.06
Posted in Politics, Judiciary at 11:15 am by JB
They keep needing them…. First William Jefferson in Louisianna, now the Dem anti-war poster children are engaged in a few court battles of their own.
First, from the “I wanna be Joe Wilson too, damnit” file, Princess Cynthia down in GA is suing the AJC for telling the truth.
A Democratic congresswoman from Georgia is suing The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for libel.
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney filed charges against the newspaper’s editor Cynthia Tucker and publisher John Mellott for an editorial column that ran in the Sunday July 30 paper about McKinney’s alleged altercation with police, according to All Headline News.
Boo hoo friggin hoo…. But here’s my favorite, related to her “other charges”:
The suit says that other facts were misstated including a reported suggestion by McKinney that President Bush had known about the September 11 terror attacks in advance, and had allowed the plot to unfold so that he and his friends could profit from the resulting wars.
Ummm… she DID SAY THAT ! I know the Dems are used to newspapers lying for them, and get a little confused when the truth actually comes out, but Jiminy Cricket !
In other news, former Marine SSG Frank D. Wuterich has filed defamation of character charges against Congressman “Big” Jack Murtha relating to his comments after the Haditha affair. You remember what the “esteemed gentleman” from PA said….
…. Murtha tarnished the Marine’s reputation by telling news organizations in May that the Marine unit cracked after a roadside bomb killed one of its members and that the troops “killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”
The Kossacks have really tarnished the image of what used to be a reasonable and valiant opposition party. I’m afraid the Dems are gonna regret jumping in this bed.
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07.28.06
Posted in Politics, Judiciary, Supreme Court at 12:43 pm by JB
Rich Lowry on National Review Online makes a good point on the remarkable self-restraint being shown by courts in New York and Washington on the issue of same-sex marriage recently, but I find a larger point very interesting.
Like every other endeavor, people don’t like to be wrong. Except for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cali, which has a staggering rate of overturns by the SCOTUS, most judges don’t like to be overturned on appeal.
With the nomination of Roberts and Alito to the SCOTUS, the balance has shifted, if ever so slightly… O’Connor always gave the lower courts the possibility that even the wackiest of rulings would be upheld, so they had more opportunity to do stupid stuff- making laws from the bench- with that in mind.
Now that the Supremes have a balance towards sanity, the lower courts have to rein themselves in a little, or get the proverbial smack-down by the 9 in the really neat robes. Just my theory. 
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