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Quote of the Day

The public has a right to know and sunshine is the best disinfectant.
 – Christy Mihos

The Radical Fringe

Associated Press

Dems call White House out on subpoenas

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jun 29, 7:14 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Democrats took the first steps Friday in what could be a long march to court in a tug-of-war between the White House and Congress over subpoenas and executive and legislative branch powers.

In a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding, the heads of the Senate and House Judiciary committees demanded an explanation in 10 days of why the White House claimed executive privilege on subpoenaed documents and vowed to invoke “the full force of law.”…

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Reuters

Seventh official quits Justice Department

Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:29PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An assistant attorney general at the Justice Department announced her resignation on Friday, becoming the seventh official to quit the department since the Democratic-led Congress launched an investigation in March into the firing of nine federal prosecutors.

Rachel Brand, assistant attorney general for legal policy, said she would step down on July 9. No reason was given…

She was responsible for preparing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito for their confirmation hearings and helped in the reauthorization in 2006 of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law that Congress approved after the September 11 attacks…

McClatchy Newspapers

Bush loses on immigration; his presidency fading fast too

By Ron Hutcheson | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thu, June 28, 2007

WASHINGTON — The Senate’s rejection Thursday of President Bush’s immigration plan was the latest in a series of embarrassments that have exposed Bush’s political weakness and shaken his hold on power…

In the space of a single short week, Bush was hit with more Republican defections on Iraq, more bad news from the battlefield, more subpoenas from a hostile Congress, a new assault on his signature education plan and embarrassing disclosures about his vice president.

He also found himself in a fight over executive privilege that begs comparisons to Richard Nixon’s legal battles during the Watergate scandal…

The Heretik

Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire

June 29, 2007

Support for Democrats Wavers, But Few Want GOP Back

The Democratic leadership in Congress “has lost some support among Americans — but not so much that the public wants Republicans back in charge,” according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Poll.

While 49% say they “disapproved of what Democratic leaders in Congress have done since taking over in January,” some 57% “said they believe Democratic control of Congress is good for the country.”

Associated Press

Published - June, 28, 2007

Running start at fighting illegals

Melissa Nelson
Associated Press

PANAMA CITY BEACH - The Bay County Sheriff’s Office has developed a remarkably effective - and controversial - way of catching illegal immigrants: Deputies in patrol cars pull up to a construction site in force, and watch and see who runs.

Those who take off are chased down and arrested on charges such as trespassing, for cutting through someone else’s property; loitering, for hiding out in someone’s yard; or reckless driving, for speeding off in a car.

U.S. immigration authorities are then given the names of those believed to be in this country illegally…

[Why don’t they go to a construction site and, if any of the laborers runs, arrest the contractor?  That’s what will fix the problem.—Caro]

American Constitution Society

Roberts, Alito and the Rule of Law

by Geoffrey R. Stone

For the Supreme Court of the United States, this will be remembered as the year of intellectual dishonesty. In their Senate confirmation hearings, John Roberts and Samuel Alito cast themselves as first-rate lawyers, as masters of legal craftsmanship who are committed to the principle of stare decisis…

John Roberts’s and Samuel Alito’s actions on the Court now speak much louder than their words to Congress. During the past year, Roberts and Alito have repeatedly abandoned the principle of stare decisis, and they have done so in a particularly insidious manner. In a series of very important decisions, they have cynically pretended to honor precedent while actually jettisoning those precedents one after another.

The tactic, in short, is to purport to respect a precedent while in fact interpreting it into oblivion…

Humor Ink

American Constitution Society

June 29, 2007 10:58 AM

In Unusual Order, Supreme Court Vacates Own Denial of Gitmo Cases

For the first time in almost 40 years, the Supreme Court has vacated its own denial of cert in a case, and has agreed to hear a series of appeals by Guantanamo Bay detainees challenging their detention.  Lyle Denniston explains the unusual posture of this grant:

Under the Court’s Rules and precedents, it would have taken the votes of five Justices to grant rehearing, compared with the requirement of four votes to initially grant an appeal. When the Court denied review in April, only three Justices voted to hear the cases. But two of the other six, Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony M. Kennedy, indicated they wanted the detainees to first attempt to get legal relief in the D.C. Circuit. Under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, the Circuit Court has the authority to provide limited review of military decisions to continue holding Guantanamo prisoners as “enemy combatants.”

Friday’s order was an indication that those two Justices had decided that the Court needed to change its approach, and so provided the votes needed to grant rehearing…

If Denniston is correct, than the five Justices who agreed to hear this case are also the same five Justices who voted against the Bush Administration in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

Washington Post

Justice Stevens Calls On History He Lived
‘Bong Hits’ Dissent Points to Prohibition

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 27, 2007; Page A17

Justice John Paul Stevens, the third-oldest person ever to sit on the Supreme Court, turned 87 on April 20. If he’s still on the court 142 days from now, he’ll overtake Roger B. Taney, who died as chief justice in 1864 at the age of 87 years 209 days…

On Monday, Stevens dissented in the case of the Alaska teenager who was suspended for displaying a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner at a school event. While a majority of the court said the Constitution does not protect pro-drug student speech, Stevens took the historic view.

Harking back to Prohibition, which began three months before Stevens’s birth and ended a month before he turned 13 in 1933, Stevens compared the current marijuana ban to the abandoned alcohol ban and urged a respectful hearing for those who suggest “however inarticulately” that the ban is “futile” and that marijuana should be legalized, taxed and regulated instead of prohibited…

Dan Wasserman, Boston Globe

Simply Left Behind

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Decay

A couple of items popped up on the radar this morning that made me wonder about just how strong America is right now:

1) New York City blackout…

This is now five consecutive summers in and around New York City where a blackout has hit a significant number of people, and it’s not even July yet…

2) US Lags In Internet…

We used to be the bastion of advanced technology, in research and development, in pure science for science sake. Now we can’t even keep the lights on.

Particularly since the turn of the decade, it seems as though America doesn’t do anything anymore. We don’t innovate. We don’t lead. We don’t implement. We don’t discover.

This is far deadlier to our society than one might think: without the competitive advantage we’ve taken in the 20th Century, America would be a second rate agrarian society. Think the Soviet Union, only without the cool uniforms and national health care…

BTC News

Health care in America is un-American

People in countries with universal health care live longer and healthier lives than people in the United States. Their infant mortality rates are lower. No one goes bankrupt or loses their home because of unpaid medical bills. No one has to make a choice between food and medicine or between rent and health insurance payments. No one has to put off going to the doctor because it’s too expensive. Changing jobs doesn’t mean losing or changing medical coverage. Losing a job doesn’t mean losing medical coverage.

Universal health care even mitigates the costs of malpractice insurance: a big chunk of many malpractice awards goes toward future medical costs, and with universal health care, those costs are already covered…

Polls consistently show that a large majority of Americans support the idea of taxpayer-supported universal health care even if it means higher taxes — anywhere from 60%-80%, depending upon how the question is phrased. So why don’t we have it?

We don’t have it because a very small minority of people pay our elected officials a very large amount of money to kill any attempt at implementing a sane national health care policy…

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007