Why Marriage?

Interesting discussion about Prop 8 on Hugh Hewitt's show, highlighting the unintended consequences and unprecedented attack on religion inherent in the decision. Judge Walker's decision hinged on the idea that religion and religious views are inherently irrational and no basis for law. This is offensive at least and a blatant attack on Constitutional rights at worst.

SCOTUS: Free Association Less Important than Homosexuality

That's the gist of the high court's decision in the Christian Legal Society's case against the University of California. The case pitted the idea of freedom of religion versus a school's right to allow such organizations on campus.

The court bizarrely came down on the side of the school, saying that your First Amendment right of free association is less important than someone who doesn't adhere to your beliefs joining your organization.

But the high court ruled, 5-4, that the policy is a "reasonable and viewpoint-neutral" condition placed on becoming a recognized group, which entitles organizations to certain funding and access to campus facilities. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that the religious group is free to exclude nonadherents if it forgoes recognized status. "Hastings ... is dangling the carrot of subsidy, not wielding the stick of prohibition," Ginsburg wrote. She dismissed concerns voiced by the society that the policy would encourage "hostile takeovers" of groups like theirs by nonadherents whose aim is sabotage. "This supposition strikes us as more hypothetical than real," she wrote. "Students tend to self-sort."

If this interpretation is correct, we can expect the University of California to allow skinheads to take over college black and Hispanic student groups with impunity.

SCOTUS Extends 2d Amendment Right to States

Silly, isn't it, that it takes yet another court case for individuals to have the Second Amendment right the founders intended.

The Volokh Conspiracy delves into the thorny question the dissent raises: Do gun bans prevent deaths? The short answer is no.

UPDATE: And here is the stupid, kneejerk liberal response completely void of intelligent argumentation. It almost makes your brain hurt to read stuff like this.

High Court Rejects Effort to Keep Names of Petition Signers Secret

This seems about right to me. In general, transparency is necessary to keep elections free and open. The justices held open the idea that plaintiffs might be able to win on a narrower argument, namely, that, in their case, disclosing the names and addresses would leave them subject to harassment and threats.

Remember When...

Supreme Court nominees' records mattered? Or when associations mattered?

Now, we're told that associations don't matter, and the idea that Kagan might be gay is a "smear," even as conservatives say it doesn't matter. Is this another example of democrisy?

For Those Who Didn't Vote for John McCain

As Michael Medved noted on his radio show today, I'd like to point out that had John McCain been elected president, the two Supreme Court picks Obama has made would have solidified the conservative Supreme Court.

Elections have consequences.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell If You're a Supreme Court Nominee?

The left is flipping out because Elena Kagan, a possible Supreme Court pick, might be gay. No, I'm not kidding. In fact, the White House is is in full harrumph mode over the incident, which makes it that much funnier.

The White House ripped CBS News on Thursday for publishing an online column by a blogger who made assertions about the sexual orientation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan, widely viewed as a leading candidate for the Supreme Court.

Ben Domenech, a former Bush administration aide and Republican Senate staffer, wrote that President Obama would "please" much of his base by picking the "first openly gay justice." An administration official, who asked not to be identified discussing personal matters, said Kagan is not a lesbian.

Domenech responds:

Look, it's 2010 -- no one should care if a nominee to any position is gay. The fact that conservative Senators John Cornyn and Jeff Sessions have recently expressed openness to confirming an openly gay nominee to the Court is a good thing. Senators should look at things that actually matter -- evaluating a nominee's decisions, approach to the law, their judgment and ability -- to see whether there are actually good and relevant reasons to oppose the nomination. That's all.

As Allahpundit notes, this is a stupid move on the White House's part over something that most Americans don't care about. Having a Supreme Court justice who is gay doesn't leave most people crying at night, and given the large number of Democrats who support gay rights, you'd think Teh One would be happy about it. But no, they have problems of their own with such a move:

Given the November cyclone that’s on the horizon, the last thing Obama wants to do is give some Dems an extra reason to stay home.

Personally, I would see such a move as tokenism and nothing more, which is to say, typicaly Democrat identity politics. I'm not particularly concerned if a gay person serves as a Justice.

William Jacobson points out that liberals don't mind outing people...if they're Republicans.

Is It Constitutional?

Interesting arguments about the legal challenges Obamacare will face.

And Here I Thought the Second Amendment Was A National Right

Justices signal they're ready to make gun ownership a national right

Rethinking Miranda

'Miranda' Dealt One-Two Punch by High Court

In decisions issued on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Court ruled that confessions should be admitted at trial even when police interviewed suspects in circumstances that lower courts viewed as Miranda violations.

The Court on Wednesday issued Maryland v. Shatzer (pdf), establishing new, more permissive rules for police who want to question a suspect for a second time after the suspect invokes Miranda's right to remain silent.

The Maryland case came down a day after the justices decided Florida v. Powell (pdf), in which a 7-2 majority Court said that Florida's alternative wording of the Miranda warning is acceptable, even though it does not explicitly state that a suspect has a right to have a lawyer present during questioning.

The idea of "once Mirandized, always Mirandized" was insane to begin with. And any expression of the Miranda warnings that gets the point across shouldn't be thrown out just because it doesn't follow Joe Friday's exact wording.

The Most Unprofessional President Ever

Obama Misrepresents the Citizens United Decision

The Supreme Court is not — and certainly should not — be above criticism. President Bush made it a point not to criticize the Court’s detainee decisions in Hamdan and Rasul — and probably missed a political opportunity. But he apparently considered it unpresidential to attack Court rulings.

By contrast, President Obama displayed an utter lack of tact in his criticism of the Court’s decision in Citizens United. Obama preened for political applause while members of the Court had to sit stoically on their hands. That Justice Alito betrayed his feelings in a minor way is understandable — and not simply because he’s from New Jersey, as my South Jersey wife said. In his preening, Obama flatly misrepresented the ruling. Citizens United is a 57-page opinion that most Americans wouldn’t have a good reason to read – and, quite frankly, I wouldn’t blame them for not reading it. Obama understands that most Americans are susceptible to misleading comments about the decision. In claiming that the Court had opened the floodgates to foreign corporations’ spending without limit in our elections, he sought to take political advantage of that susceptibility.

The man is a charlatan and has no respect for people who don't rubber-stamp his ideas.

Here's a Good Explanation of Today's SCOTUS Decision

A Great Day for Free Speech

The Supreme Court rules that you can't discriminate against speakers just cuz you don't like the political message.

“When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”

Liberals dislike free speech. But free speech is good, especially when consumers reject liberal ideas.

It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.
The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America's business. This past year has seen a "perfect storm" in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like that of the industry's long-time trade publication Radio and Records have signaled that these are very difficult and rapidly changing times.

From Hot Air:

Brown wins, ObamaCare’s on life support, McCain/Feingold gets gut-punched by SCOTUS, now this. What happens tomorrow? Does Rupert Murdoch buy the Times or something?

It's a good week to be a conservative.

Thank God We Don't Have This Problem in Texas

U.S. Supreme Court restores, for the third time, death sentence for California murderer

This is the third time the SCOTUS has overturned the lunatic 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is hellbent on preventing the execution of monsters like Fernando Belmontes, who beat a woman 15 to 20 times with a barbell so he could steal her stereo and buy drugs and beer with the cash.

I have no patience for this bullshit. As I told my husband, "Somebody needs to go into this guy's cell and shoot the M.F. and get it overwith." Except I didn't say "M.F."

The jurors knew what this guy was about and determined that his crime deserved the death penalty. But liberal lawyers and their willing accomplices on the 9th Circuit are determined to circumvent justice.

The case illustrates the continuing dispute over the death penalty between state prosecutors and federal judges in California. The state has 685 inmates on death row, by far the most in the nation. Yet, executions are rare. Since capital punishment was restored in 1977, the state has carried out 13 executions. Many of the cases have remained tied up in federal litigation for decades.

By comparison, Texas has executed 444 monsters since the death penalty was reinstated, and 21 this year alone. We save our sympathy for the victims and their families.

Judge-Shopping or Necessary Clarification?

Congress Set to Take Aim at Judicial Recusals

Congress is preparing to wade into one of the most sensitive of issues for the federal judiciary: when a judge should step aside in a case and who should make that decision.

The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is planning a hearing on federal recusal guidelines amid controversies that have swept through state court systems in recent years, culminating in a U.S. Supreme Court decision five months ago that tightened the recusal requirements for elected state judges.

The Judiciary Committee's interest marks the first time Congress has flirted with recusal guidelines since a high-profile scrap in 2004 between congressional Democrats and Justice Antonin Scalia. In a debate that broke along partisan lines, Democrats said that Scalia should have recused in a case involving then-Vice President Dick Cheney because he and Cheney were part of a group that went duck hunting in Louisiana while the case was pending. Nonprofits seeking records from Cheney's energy task force eventually lost, 7-2.

The gist of the argument is that belonging to an organization and attending the events where you might be socializing with potential plaintiffs is grounds for recusal. You have to wonder how far this sort of argument could be taken and how Republicans could best use it to eliminate liberal judges from cases.

No Judicial Nominee Transparency? Thank Ted Kennedy

Senators want changes in judicial confirmation hearings

Two Democratic senators said Tuesday they're not happy with how the Senate Judiciary Committee conducts confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees.

As the committee prepared to vote on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., bemoaned what he called a "familiar pattern" in confirmation hearings. Nominees, he said, take the "path of least resistance" when they refuse to answer almost all of senators' questions about the substance of law...

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said the process fails to educate either the public or the Senate about a nominee. It makes no sense, he said, that the only person in the United States who cannot express an opinion on recent Supreme Court rulings "is the person from whom the public most needs to hear it."

"These hearings have become little more than theater," Feingold said, "where senators try to ask clever questions and nominees try to come up with clever answers."

These senators could ask Robert Bork why judicial nominees are unwilling to answer questions the committee asks. Here's what Ted Kennedy said at the time:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is -- and is often the only -- protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."

Now Vice President Joe Biden so misrepresented Bork's writing as to define the word lying. The behavior of Democrats during the Bork nomination was so outrageous that no nominee should ever again give an honest answer about their judicial philosophy. Why should they when it is the surest path to disqualification?

A Tale of Two (Hispanic) Judges

Oh, the difference political affiliation makes:

In many ways, Mr. Estrada and Judge Sotomayor have similar backgrounds, but Mr. Estrada might have better "street cred." He was 17 and spoke little English when he and his mother came to the United States from Honduras. By contrast, Judge Sotomayor, whose family hails from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, had the advantage of growing up in New York City. As a result, Mr. Estrada speaks both Spanish and English fluently while Judge Sotomayor is merely conversant in Spanish, according to the Hispanic Leadership Fund. They both went on to graduate from Ivy League universities and law schools.

What sets them apart is how they were treated by Democratic senators. In 2003, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said: "The White House continues to obstruct any progress toward resolving this matter by its unprecedented refusal to turn over documents requested to determine whether or not Miguel Estrada should sit on the second highest court in the land, for life. Mr. Estrada's nomination is apparently being sacrificed by the administration for its own partisan, political purposes."

The Democrats were requesting confidential memorandums drafted by Mr. Estrada while at the Office of the Solicitor General. This request was unprecedented. All seven living former solicitors general, Republican and Democrat alike, agreed with Mr. Estrada.

And before some Democrat screams that only Republicans oppose nominees based on race:

Democrats were forthright in their opposition to Mr. Estrada precisely because he is Hispanic. A staff memo to Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin on Nov. 7, 2001, referred to liberal concern that Mr. Estrada was "especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment."

Then-Rep. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who now represents the Garden State as a cigar-chomping U.S. senator, said he did not consider Mr. Estrada to be the right kind of Latino. "Being Hispanic for us means much more than having a surname," Mr. Menendez said in February 2003. It means being a predictable liberal.

We've been told repeatedly (see Jeromy Brown's comments) that opposition to Sotomayor will be seen as racism by Hispanics, alienating them and preventing them from voting for Republicans. Why then, was the blatant racism of Democratic opposition to Miguel Estrada not a hindrance for Hispanics?

Patrick Leahy lies about Estrada here.

The Sotomayor Hearings...

start today.

E.J. Dionne admits that there's no chance Sotomayor will not be confirmed, but then launches into a temper tantrum that the "real radicals" are from the Right. Really, E.J.? Really?

After the excesses of the Warren and Burger courts, it seems at least hypocritical for any liberal to argue that moving the court back from the left is "activist." Cries that this or that precedent has been around for 20 years and is therefore sacrosanct--after watching the SCOTUS "discover" rights never before seen--is truly stage craft. What are these people thinking? When Roe v. Wade spawned the modern pro-life movement, it was clear that the judiciary had overstepped its boundaries. When Miranda altered the entire framework of police investigation (and I'm not saying for the worse, btw), that could properly be called "activism." Finding rights that have never before been seen in the Constitution should be classified as activism. Narrowing those outlandish decisions is not.

More Sotomayor roundup:

What Sotomayor should be asked, as opposed to what she will be asked.

Swooning and fawning over the brave, wise Latina who thinks her skin color is more important than brain power.

Jeff Sessions notes that men and women should be able to reach the same legal decisions regardless of sex organs. What an antiquated concept! Must be racism to think one's race shouldn't be a consideration in legal cases.

Thanks to Memeorandum.

Sotomayor Supporters Urge Reporters to Investigate Fire Fighter

In a case of attacking the wrong person--not exactly a bystander, but certainly not the proper person--supporters of Sonia Sotomayor are attacking the the Connecticut fire fighter whose case has raised new questions about Obama's SCOTUS pick's qualifications for the highest court in the land.

On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci...

On Friday, citing in an e-mail "Frank Ricci's troubled and litigious work history," the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters' attention to Ricci's past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.

Specifically, the advocates have zeroed in on an earlier 1995 lawsuit Ricci filed claiming the city of New Haven discriminated against him because he's dyslexic. The advocates cite other Hartford Courant stories from the same era recounting how Ricci was fired by a fire department in Middletown, Conn., allegedly, Ricci said at the time, because of safety concerns he raised.

What the hell is wrong with these people? Sotomayor gets overturned by the Supreme Court and the smear merchants want to blame the plaintiff? Liberals argued that Anita Hill was crucified for her controversial testimony that then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas was a sexual harasser. Of course, liberals don't care about sexual harassment anymore, at least, when a Democrat is involved. Now, a dyslexic guy who manages to succeed in his career is the object. What a morally bankrupt position. And remember: Frank Ricci is no Anita Hill.

The Supreme Court Recgonizes Discrimination Happens...

to white people, too.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities...

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Using her typical lack of logic and, dare I say, compassion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her dissent,

the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

No vested right in a promotion? Unlike, I suppose, the black and Hispanic firefighters who didn't pass the test? The idea that one is denied a promotion for which one is qualified simply because enough jelly beans of the right color didn't pass should shock the conscience of the court. It certainly goes against the rules of fair play that we are told we're supposed to follow.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air has analysis here.

Don Surber says it bluntly: Sotomayor was wrong.

People for the American Way complains that Sotomayor had no choice but to make a lousy ruling. Tell that to Justice Ginsburg.

Liberal pouting here, and here. Liberal excuse making for Sotomayor here