The California Supreme Court has defeated the will of the citizens of the Golden State by ruling that the proposition-approved law stating that marriage is defined as a bond between one man and one woman is unconstitutional.
An effort is under way to amend the state constitution to re-instate the law approved by a majority of California voters banning same sex marriages.
A few weeks ago, House Resolution 5800 was introduced on the House floor by its sole sponsor Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa). The bill would amend the tax code by inserting a tax on windfall profits on oil and natural gas companies. What constitutes windfall profits? Well, that would be decided by the newly formed Reasonable Profits Board - a board of three persons, appointed by the president, whose job it would be to determine when a company has surpassed a reasonable level of profits and has entered windfall territory.
For the legions of Conservative Donnybrook readers in Pennsylvania, we would simply remind you that Paul Kanjorski is up for reelection this year. Don’t send this guy back to Washington.
The United States Spreme Court upheld an Indiana law that required voters to present state identification when voting. Writing for a 6-3 majority Justice John Paul Stevens concluded that the burden on individuals to acquire state ids and produce them at the polling place did not outweigh the litigtimate state interest of preventing voter fraud. The ACLU had argued that the id requirement would “inhibit voting.” It sure does inhibit voting. It inhibits the voting of individuals who cannot prove they are indeed citizens (and who coincendentally tend to vote Deomcrat). This law seems reasonable but when left to fest in the minds of liberals (like most issues) it has been manipulated into a “violation of civil rights.” Thank goodness the Supreme Court didn’t buy the argument.
Perhaps I have grown overly cynical, but I saw this Fox News report and my first thought was, “Well, sure, lower the drinking age, and you’ll increase the tax base.” Especially if, as awb writes, states increase the alcohol tax significantly.
Apparently, seven states are considering lowering the drinking age to 18. Kentucky, Wisconsin, and South Carolina would lower the drinking age for persons in the military. I really have no problem with this idea, especially if the drinking is confined to military installations. If we can ask these young men and women to fight and possibly die for their country, they should be able to purchase a beer. If you have an M-16, you should be able to have a Budweiser. Nonetheless, they would probably have a bit of a legal battle on their hands if they were to pass legislation, which on its face, discriminates against others in the same age group based upon their military service. South Dakota, Missouri, Vermont and Minnesota, sidestep this problem by lowering the drinking age for all children.
I suppose its a sign that I’m too old (you can’t trust me; I’m over thirty), but I hate to think of what would happen to the music at my favorite watering holes if youngsters were allowed to control the jukebox. For that reason, I oppose extending drinking privileges to children.
I know that many people will take this as a good sign, but as several of the contributors to Conservative Donnybrook are well aware, the legal job market is tough right now. The old saw is that it’s not what you know, but who you know. If you know the right person, you will find a job. If you don’t, you won’t. But, apparently, it is also true that if you know the wrong person, you will find it difficult to obtain gainful employment. Ask Alberto Gonzales. At least he went to a first tier law school.
Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has announced that she will be boycotting the 2008 Summer Olympics. As we all know the games are being held in Bejing this year. China has grown into a world superpower, and legitimate threat to the United States, on the blood and torture of her citizens. Between the countless human rights abuses and the persecution of the Catholic Church in China, just to name a few, China should not be given the international stage of the Olympics as if it were any other peace abiding democracy that respects individual human dignity. It may too much to ask for that an entire country boycott the games (although I certainly hope someone has the stones) but I can hope that more world leader choose not to attend the event.
It is California after all.
Now, thanks to Justice Walter Croskey and two of his fellow appellate judges, California has made a serious bid to be recognized as the King of the Regulatory States (although such an appellation may be too patriarchal to be politically correct - perhaps Monarch of the Regulatory States would be better and less sexist). Last February 28, the California Court of Appeals ruled that it is illegal to instruct children without a certification from the state, effectively outlawing home schooling. According to Justice Croskey, “parents do not have the constitutional right to home school their children.” In fact, “[b]ecause parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling within the provisions of these laws, parents who fail to do so may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.”
Apparently the Court has been itching to placate the teachers’ union for some time, because the justification for this sweeping ruling, affecting 166,000 families, was a single incidence of child abuse of a homeschooled child. Repeatedly throughout the decision, the Court states that parents have no constitutional basis for opting out of the public school morass and that these cases do not present a federal question (at least in the Ninth Circuit). I know quite a few people who home school their children and generally they do it out of religious conviction. In fact, the family under California’s boot did assert their First Amendment right about which the Court stated:
The parents in the instant case have asserted in a declaration that it is because of their “sincerely held religious beliefs” that they home school their children and those religious beliefs “are based on Biblical teachings and principles.” Even if the parents’ declaration had been signed under penalty of perjury, which it was not, those assertions are not the quality of evidence that permits us to say that application of California’s compulsory public school education law to them violates their First Amendment rights. Their statements are conclusional, not factually specific. Moreover, such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to home school his or her child.
Apparently, before a person’s religious rights may be recognized in California, the burden is on the person asserting them to prove their genuineness. This Court is telling parents that the regulatory power of the State is sufficiently powerful to countermand their right to their exercise of religion and the rearing of their children in that religion. Especially if one simply asserts their right without justifying why the State should allow you to exercise it.
Let us hope that transfer is granted and this terrible decision is rectified at the California Supreme Court soon. If not through the courts, then the legislature. But, it would be nice to think that a court of law can still exercise some self-restraint.
It seems to be cropping up more often lately. Either that, or I am just noticing it more often. People seem to be shocked by things that should not even surprise them. On my buddy Mike’s blog, he quotes from Wilhelm Röpke. Herr Röpke wrote the following: “… surely, noone who is at all honest with himself can fail to be struck by the shocking dechristianization and secularization of our culture.”
Am I overreacting when I note that not only am I not shocked by the dechristianization or secularization of our culture, but it would be truly shocking if such a process were not in progress. Perhaps I am too cynical. For me, I suppose, I see the work of living a Christian life to be much harder than to be a pagan, perhaps especially, in our increasingly dechristianized, increasingly secularized culture.
Conservatism is much like Christianity in that it is the harder road. Liberals fall into two camps, both of which are easy: the first type simply inflate their own self-satisfaction through the mechanism of pretending they care more. After much practice in pretending to care more than one’s neighbors, they then make the small step to arrogate power to themselves in order to provide for the objects of “their” bounty. By making promises to give others the things they want, they consolidate their own power over other people. The second type of liberals are the co-conspirators of the power through caring crowd - those who consume the confiscated bounty that is offered. Conservatism, by contrast, is a mental exercise requiring discipline. It is a hard sell to tell one’s ruler that he rules best when he does least - when he arrogates to himself a minimal amount of power. Conservatism is the politics of restraint. We have never been good at restraint since we were children and therefore, it is always a bit of a shock to me when the harder road, conservatism, makes gains.
Does one indeed need to be dishonest with oneself to fail to be shocked by the dechristianization and secularization of our culture as Röpke claims? I am forced to answer, No. It is hardly shocking that the hard thing is in decline and the easy thing is in the ascendancy. Perhaps a better response, instead of shock, would be recognition of that which is expected and a renewal of one’s commitment to reform one’s culture.
The modern reality of telecommunications is that a phone call which originates in Poland and terminates in Indonesia may very well pass through switches in the United States. The special intelligence court which is in charge of authorizing domestic wiretaps ruled last year that communications which were routed through these U.S. switches were domestic communications and subject to the warrant requirements set out in FISA regardless of where they originated or terminated. In response, Congress quickly authorized the attorney general to initiate wiretaps where the government reasonably believed that at least one of the parties was outside of the United States and that the target of the wiretap was not the domestic party. This was called the Protect America Act and it expired on February 17, 2008. Congress has failed to renew this act.
George W. Bush has been stamping his feet, blustering and pleading for Congress to renew the act and threatening to veto anything less than a permanent reauthorization of the act. The question though is whether the act is truly necessary. Victor Comras frames the question pretty well in his post on the counterterrorism blog:
Few pieces of legislation before Congress carry such gravity and importance when it comes to the twin goals of protecting our national security and preserving our civil liberties. Such matters should be considered with gravity and thorough deliberation. And there is much in this act which deserves further deliberation. Many of its current provisions were adopted previously under an atmosphere of high tension and great pressure from the White House. The only pressure now is that President Bush threatens to veto any further temporary extension of the current act. A temporary extension would certainly have kept in place sufficient authority to keep tabs on the potential terrorists within our midst as Congress worked through the act thoroughly.
Why is it troublesome to obtain a warrant if the government wants to listen to somebody’s phone calls? If they are foreigners, such a warrant will be only a matter of asking. If the person is within the United States, there must be probable cause to believe they are involved in terrorist activity. But, this standard is appropriate. Persons in the United States are by right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effect to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
To allow the government to tap a person’s phone simply because he is making an international call would be to amend the Constitution by legislation or by executive fiat. If he is calling a person who is suspected of terrorist activities, it is no hardship for the government to have obtained a warrant allowing calls to this person (including the call originating in the U.S.) to be monitored. Likewise, if the person in the United States is a suspected terrorist, a warrant is obtainable. If neither are suspected of any wrongdoing, then the government has no business eavesdropping on their conversation.
My short answer is: If the special intelligence court is relatively lenient in its standard for suspicion, there is no need to renew the Protect America Act.
Mr. Cubbedge has been (very) subtly goading us into taking up this story. For instance, he has posted on his website that “Conservative Donnybrook picks up the story” and has posted comments on this website about the story in unrelated topics. We only wish he’d come out and say that he thinks we should write about this issue instead of beating around the bush so
much. In the face of all this indirect pressure, what can I do?
Let me say a few words about the sudden rash of “conservatives” advocating for Obama.
Just to catch everyone up on the story:
Doug Kmiec wrote the following piece for Slate.
Deal Hudson found it less than impressive.
Kmiec shot back with this retort. (Notice the insinuation that bloggers are not regular, butts-in-the-pews churchgoers who pray on a regular basis).
And then the piling on began…
Cubbedge…
Ramesh…
Kmiec answered Ramesh, but not Cubbedge (What’s up with that, Will?). Continue Reading »
I was sort of waiting for Bill to take up this story over on Will Cubbedge’s website, Fish in a Barrel. However, Will was forced to comment off-topic and I thought I would simply promote his comment to a full-fledged post:
This is off topic, but of interest to lawyer types:
The former dean of my Law School, a prominent pro-lifer and Catholic apologist for Romney, has written favorably of Obama, and Deal Hudson has taken him to task:
This allows me to clean up the off-topic comment and allows you a chance to go check out FIB’s new look.
First, there is the (spurious) claim that New York-style pizza is the best in the world. This is demonstrably false as New Yorkers’ excuse for pizza is barely discernible from a cardboard cut-out of pizza. Luckily, there are those with a much clearer vision when it comes to the paradisaical pie.
Now, New Yorkers propose this. Hot dogs in a vending
machine? Are you kidding me? Probably served with little ketchup packets. News flash, New Yorkers: Ketchup does not belong on hot dogs! Get a clue.
I will say this: Nathan’s makes a decent dog, but it is nowhere even close to the king of all dogs, the Vienna Beef Dog. If they put these little Red Hots in vending machines, they might be on to something, but a flabby little Nathan’s dog is not going to get anyone with a modicum of taste excited.
Good rule of thumb: When a New Yorker starts talking about food, he has no clue what he is talking about. I would check the orifice out of which he is talking.
For those of you who I went to law school with, imagine Professor Murphy with the following statute:
Section 1.
. . . .
(2) Any food establishment to which this section applies shall not be allowed to serve food to any person who is obese, based on criteria which is prescribed by the State Department of Health after consultation with the Mississippi Council on Obesity Prevention established under Section 41-101-1 or its successor. . . .
For those who have not been subjected to the special form of torture called law school, a law professor’s job is to locate the greyness in a law and exploit that for all its worth to make you look stupid in front of your peers. Professor Murphy is the best at this practice. (Of course she does it out of love for her students).
This is an actual bill before the Mississippi legislature. Where exactly is the borderline between obese and not obese? Would you be required to submit to a weigh in before being served?
For those of you who went to other schools, you probably have your own version of Professor Murphy…imagine that professor with this statute on her mind and you in her crosshairs. It would be a bloodbath.
Following up to Bill’s earlier post where Dr. Rowan scandalously urged Britain to legitimize Sharia law, it turns out they already have. There are neighborhoods in Britain where the government courts have been effectively supplanted by Sharia courts, even handling criminal matters as serious as attempted murder. It might have been scandalous of Dr. Rowen to suggest that the British court system cede part of its jurisdiction to Islam, but it is even more scandalous that he is simply on the leading edge of what is already coming to pass. Britain had better assert its authority soon, or it will find that it no longer possesses any.
Inmates are suing the Missouri Department of Correction, seeking the disclosure of the members of execution teams. It seems that some prior executions were conducted with members of the execution team having been accused of stalking or, in another case, on probation.
Are death row inmates afraid that they will be stalked after their deaths? This seems to be a lot of hoo-ha over a non-issue. What possible difference could it make to death row inmates who is going to push the plunger?
The complaint raises the issue of “temperament and suitability.” All that really seems to matter is competence. It would be bad if a doctor were to measure out the wrong dose and botch an execution. However, the fact that a nurse in the room once stalked an ex after a bad breakup matters not at all as it has nothing to do with his competence to swab the incision site.
The ACLU filed a brief on behald of Senator Larry Craig (R-Id) with the Supreme Court of Minnesota which argues that people who have sex in public bathrooms have a reasonable expectation of privacy and therefore cannot be charged with any crime. Once again the ACLU has overstepped the bounds of reason.
I assume, although the brief itself does not address the Fourth Amendment, that the ACLU was referring to the reasonable expectation of privacy standard incorporated into the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure. The argument would go as such. Because Senator Craig had a privacy interest in the public restroom stall, his arrest by an undercover police officer is in violation of the Fourth Amendment because the officer did not have a warrant and no exigent circumstances existed.
Once again the ACLU has manipulated Fourth Amendment law to read as they would have it read. In order to have a reasonable expectation of privacy and thus have standing to sue under the Fourth Amendment the individual must either 1) own or have right to possession of place searched 2) the place searched was in fact his home or 3) he was an overnight guest of the owner whose home was searched. Case law goes even further noting that when one drives his car on public roads that individual does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Therefore, it would logically follow that one who uses a public toilet has no reasonable expectation of privacy, except for the limited purpose the toilet was provided for. It would be the same as saying that since I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public gym lockerroom I can have sex there.
I just found this over on the Drudge Report. This article details some rather scumbag tactics used by a handful of police departments. It makes me wonder, at what point do operations cross the line from exercising police power in furtherance of public health, welfare and safety to raising revenue for the municipality?
See here for proof.
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