Obviously the Virginia legislature is not always correct. HBO will air The Loving Story on February 14, Valentine Day. The Lovings were an interracial couple from Caroline County, Virginia. They grew up, fell in love, and married in Washington, DC. They failed to realize that just living together as man and wife was also illegal.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Paul Clement was attorney general for exactly one day in the Bush Administration. However, that is not his claim to fame. He has argued more cases before the Supreme Court than any other lawyer in the past decade.
The day that it was decided the Supreme Court would hear the health care reform case, guess who was being treated to dinner by Paul Clement’s law firm, the one that would be arguing the case? Justice Anthony Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas. Do they not feel attending this dinner gives a vision of impropriety?
Obviously not.
While most people focused on the Supreme Court video game ruling, an equally important case went pretty much unnoticed. This case affects millions of families, in particular, children. Turner vs. Rogers dealt with deadbeat dads and is more commonly known as the ‘deadbeat dad case.’
According to the Washington Post :
The justices ruled in a 5 to 4 decision (PDF) to uphold the appeal of Michael Turner, a father who had been jailed for a year because he did not — he said could not — pay the nearly $6,000 in child support payments he owed. The court decided that Turner’s incarceration violated the due process clause because he had not been told that his ability to pay was crucial to the case and the court never determined whether Turner could, in fact, make his child support obligations.
The Turner case addressed one of the biggest problems in the national child support enforcement program. Though most sentient adults agree parents need to meet their child support obligations, enforcement rules often don’t recognize the reality of financial situations.
A noncustodial parent might have lost a job, as millions did in the recession, but it’s doubtful his or her payment schedule changed at all. It can be a slippery slope from provider to deadbeat.
Upon first glance (see PDF link) the original defendant, one Mr. Turner of South Carolina, is not a very sympathetic figure. I felt he deserved to be jailed. However, he was not represented by an attorney and he got caught up in a real legal catch-22. He had to be out of jail in order to make money to pay his child support. This guy was ordered to pay $52.73 per week. That might not seem like much to some people. To others, it is a fortune. Throwing a person in jail who has this few assets seems to be self defeating.
The New York Times:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday struck down on First Amendment grounds a California law that banned the sale of violent video games to children. The 7-to-2 decision was the latest in a series of rulings protecting free speech, joining ones on funeral protests, videos showing cruelty to animals and political speech by corporations.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of female employees in a decision that makes it harder to mount large-scale bias claims against the nation’s biggest companies.
The justices all agreed that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. could not proceed as a class action in its current form, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the court said there were too many women in too many jobs at Wal-Mart to wrap into one lawsuit.
The lawsuit could have involved up to 1.6 million women, with Wal-Mart facing potentially billions of dollars in damages.
So did all of them agree or was there a 5-4 vote? It can’t be both. Basically the Supreme Court tacitly approved gender discrimination with a ‘too big to sue’ statement. It might hurt business. It might hurt Walmart.
Does that mean its ok to pay women differently? Should they not be promoted the same way men who work for Walmart are promoted? Should they not be paid the same salary for the same work or get raises on the same scale men do? What is Walmart afraid of?
Walmart and other businesses need to be sent a strong message that discrimination is unacceptable. I am not sure how to do it. Some of us won’t go into a Walmart. I also won’t go inside a local Home Depot because the male workers ignore women customers. That’s the only way I know to send a message that business practices are unacceptable. It is probably wise to sent an email to corporate to tell home office why you don’t shop at the local retail stores also.
The original complainants can still pursue their claim but they cannot move forward in a massive class action lawsuit.
In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court has upheld the right of Westboro Baptist Church to demonstrate at the funerals of fallen heroes. According to CNN:
A Kansas church that attracted nationwide attention for its angry, anti-gay protests at the funerals of U.S. military members has won its appeal at the Supreme Court, an issue testing the competing constitutional limits of free speech and privacy.
The justices by a 8-1 vote on Wednesday said members of the Westboro Baptist Church had a right to promote what they call a broad-based message on public matters such as wars.
The father of a fallen Marine had sued the small church, saying those protests amounted to targeted harassment and an intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and– as it did here– inflict great pain,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.”
Roberts explanation was that the real criticism was of the government and military and not the individual. Tell that to the families who are grieving. The Roberts Court has been very disappointing.
Will Bill O’Reilly pay the father’s judgement? He did say he would.
The Washington Post is running some pretty scary stuff this morning about out Supreme Court justices. Rather than the cloistered, nearly unrecognizable justices like retired John Paul Stevens, these younger ones are acquiring an almost cult like following. For example:
At the invitation of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Scalia will be addressing new conservative members of the House of Representatives. To them, Scalia is a nothing short of a rock star. He personifies not only conservative values but a new model for the Supreme Court: the celebrity justice.
Where Scalia has ventured with crowd-pleasing rhetoric, other justices are following. They rally their bases on the right or the left with speeches, candid interviews, commencement addresses and book tours. They appear to be abandoning the principle of strict neutrality in public life, long a touchstone of service on the highest court.
Whatever happened to court neutrality? It sounds like cases are predetermined, before they are even heard. Why would Justice Scalia appear before conservative members of the House of Representatives only? When will they start accepting honoraria?
The Bachmann event takes this posturing to a new level. Scalia will be directly advising new lawmakers who came to Congress on a mission to remake government in a more conservative image. Many of them made pledges to repeal health-care reform, restrict immigration and investigate the president – pledges based on constitutional interpretations that might end up before the court.
At best, Scalia’s appearance can be viewed as a pep talk. At worst, it smacks of a political alliance.
At best, this behavior is conflict of interest. The three branches of government need to remain independent. It certainly doesn’t seem very conservative to allow this kind of cross pollination. Perhaps ‘conservative’ is just a label of convenience.
…Scalia is the first real celebrity justice. When he appears at conservative events, supporters line up to greet a man who seems more oracle than orator. They are drawn not just to his originalist views but to the sense that he is a purist on a court of relativists. And his fans are often rewarded with a zinger from the justice that would set the hair of every liberal on fire.
About 10 days ago, Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas called Anita Hill and left a rather bizarre message on her answering machine. She called at 7:30 am on a Saturday morning so it sounds like she wanted to leave a message and deliberately called when she didn’t think she would get Ms. Hill live.
Those of us who remember Anita Hill’s role in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings knew at the time that there was something going on that wasn’t quite what it should be. Word around Washington travels fast and without mercy and the word on the street wasn’t good for old Clarence. Washington, however, isn’t known for its right or wrong as much as it is for its can you prove it or not. Thomas was confirmed by a 52 to 48 vote and the rest was history, or so we thought.
In 1991, Anita Hill testified against Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during his confirmation hearing. Hill had worked for Thomas at the Department of Education and at EEOC. Under oath, she testified that Thomas had made sexual remarks to her during the time they were both at DoEd and EEOC. Thomas was confirmed 52-48 but the hearings were extremely contentious and almost everyone had an opinion on Anita Hill. The support and condemnation usually ran along party lines.
According to the New York Times:
In a voice mail left at 7:31 a.m. on Oct. 9 — the Saturday of Columbus Day weekend — Virginia Thomas asked her husband’s former aide-turned-adversary to make amends. Ms. Hill played the recording, from her voice mail at Brandeis University, for The Times.
“Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas,” it said. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometimes and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.”
Ms. Thomas went on: “So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day.”
Ms. Hill, in an interview, said she kept the message for nearly a week trying to decide whether the caller really was Ms. Thomas or a prankster. Unsure, she said, she decided to turn it over to the Brandeis campus police with a request to convey it the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“I though it was certainly inappropriate,” Ms. Hill said. “It came in at 7:30 a.m. on my office phone from somebody I didn’t know, and she is asking for an apology. It was not invited. There was no background for it.”
In a statement conveyed through a publicist, Ms. Thomas confirmed leaving the message, which she portrayed as a peacemaking gesture. She did not explain its timing.
“I did place a call to Ms. Hill at her office extending an olive branch to her after all these years, in hopes that we could ultimately get passed what happened so long ago,” she said. “That offer still stands. I would be very happy to meet and talk with her if she would be willing to do the same. Certainly no offense was ever intended.”
The olive branch seems to come with a very accusatory tone attached to it. Ms. Hill feels she told the truth which she was required to so and she owes no one an apology.
What is Virginia Thomas thinking? Why dredge up the past after nearly 20 years. To call someones office at that hour of the morning, on a weekend when the likelihood of the person being there is fairly remote, is nothing short of harassment. Mrs. Thomas is already under fire for being too much of an activist with her husband sitting on the Supreme Court. Most spouses of Justices keep a very low profile politically, much like a General’s spouse must do.
It now seems that Anita Hill is the one who should receive an apology. I hope she gets it.
There is a fascinating interview with newly retired Justice Stevens on the NPR site. Stevens is an active 90 year old who plays tennis several times a week and who spent 35 years on the Supreme Court. Today was the official first day of retirement since the current Supreme Court recess was over. Stevens was appointed by President Gerald Ford.
The interview includes the scope of Steven’s life experiences, where he sits watching Babe Ruth hit a homer during the 1932 World Series against the Cubs to his throwing out the first pitch of a Cubs game when he was 85 years old.
From the NPR interview:
A Fundamental Dispute
Stevens and Scalia have gone at each other on many subjects, but their core disagreement is over Scalia’s espousal of originalism — the idea that the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to mean only what it meant at the time of enactment, no more and no less. Or, as Scalia puts it, “the Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead.”
Stevens disagrees. “To suggest that the law is static is quite wrong,” he says. Stevens argues that “the whole purpose was to form a more perfect union, not something that’s perfect when we started. We designed a system of government that would contemplate a change and progress.”
This clash of views is exemplified in a 1990 opinion Stevens wrote, which invalidated the Illinois patronage system as a violation of employees’ First Amendment rights to freedom of association.
Stevens notes that when he first encountered the question, he thought the claim had no merit. After all, as Justice Scalia would subsequently observe, patronage existed at the time the republic was founded. But Stevens, upon examining the question, reached a conclusion exactly opposite of what he originally thought.
“Moral disapproval is an improper basis for denying rights to gay men and lesbians and that the evidence shows consclusively Prop 8 enacts without reason a private moral view that same sex couples are inferior.”
Vaughn Walker, Chief Judge,
U.S. District Court
Northern District of CA
As with a stroke of a pen….the opposition to gay marriage in California was kaput.
Judge Walkerwas appointed to the Court by Ronald Reagan. His confirmation was difficult because he was seen as being too conservative. This case has had some very strange twists and turns. The Prop 8 winning attorneys are 2 old enemies who suited up and joined forces: David Boies and Ted Olson. Boies was the Gore lawyer and Olson was the Bush lawyer back in 2000. Politics does make very strange bedfellows indeed!
I tried watching the Senate confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan. I dind’t catch it all. Not even close. I heard some pretty outrageous comments from both Democrats and Republicans and I sure heard some rudeness out of both sides also.
Perhaps the most amazing part of the entire 3 days was getting a bird’s eye view of how really uncomfortable some of these good old boys are with any ethnicity different from them. Jon Stewart noticed the same thing:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Release the Kagan | ||||
|
||||
Is Stewart being overly sensitive, especially to her ethnicity?
Jon Stewart examines what is known about Elena Kagan. He then moves on to look at the conundrum that Republicans have found themselves creating. It seems that what Bush did while in office now belongs to Obama which takes them back to the point of having to admit there was some bad policy. Like all conundrums, it is hard to spit out, so you will just have to let Jon Stewart say it best.
We are moving from let’s blame Bush to let’s blame Obama. Seamlessly.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Release the Kagan | ||||
|
||||
Doesn’t that mean a judge who does something you don’t approve of? Really now, be honest. The buzz words ‘interpret the Constitution’ is another one of those tricky little expressions. If all a justice had to do was to sit down and read the Constitution, then there would be no need for the Supreme Court. All interpretations and opinions not only come from reading the Constitution but also from studying other cases and what has been said about them.
Now the attack is on Justice Thurgood Marshall. People didn’t like his decisions. Therefore, he became an ‘activist judge.’ When I was a kid, all over the south there were signs that said ‘Impeach Earl Warren.’ He was probably an activist judge.
Right now, I am trying to sort out why Thurgood Marshall was an activist judge and Anthony Scalia isn’t. I think it has something to do with who likes his decisions. Just a hunch.
Elena Kagan worked for Thurgood Marshall. Perhaps she knew him better than the average bear. If his family is any indication, I can certainly understand why. Lovely people. I had the pleasure of knowing them through my employment about 15 years ago. They live locally, or at least they used to. Too bad Ms. Kagan had to hear her old boss trashed by that bunch of loser senators.
AG Ken Cuccinelli loves to file law suits and briefs. He has several lawsuits against our country. Please someone tell me why he didn’t jump on the band wagon against the funeral protesters, Westboro Baptist Church, 48 states filed an amicus brief. 2 states did not: Virginia and Maine. WHAT? If there was ever a reason to file an amicus brief, WBC is it!
According to Huffington Post:
WASHINGTON — Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have submitted a brief to the Supreme Court in support of a father who sued anti-gay protesters over their demonstration at the 2006 funeral of his son, a Marine killed in Iraq.
Only Virginia and Maine declined to sign the brief by the Kansas attorney general.
Albert Snyder sued over protests by the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church at his son’s funeral in Maryland. The church pickets funerals because they believe war deaths are punishment for U.S. tolerance of homosexuality.
The Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether the protesters’ message is protected by the First Amendment.
In the brief filed Tuesday, the states argued they have a compelling interest in protecting the sanctity of funerals.
Mr. Snyder now owes WBC over $16,ooo because of a counter lawsuit. Americans are outraged that the father of a fallen hero would ever have to pay this horrible group a penny. Where is Virginia? Once again, Ken Cuccinelli shames us all. However, he now as one ally, according the the Richmond Times Dispatch–the ACLU.
Cuccinelli’s office announced that it is not joining 48 other states in filing a supporting legal brief on behalf of Albert Snyder, the father of a soldier killed in Iraq whose funeral in Maryland was picketed by Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, a hate group.
Among other things, the church pickets funerals of American soldiers, claiming God has killed them for defending a nation of “sodomite hypocrites.”
Snyder is suing Westboro and its pastor, the Rev. Fred W. Phelps, for what he alleges was a disruption of the funeral for his son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006. Church members have become nationally known for heckling at military funerals and hoisting signs that berate mourners with slogans such as “You’re in hell” and “God hates you.”
After Snyder won a $5 million verdict in district court, an appeals court reversed the decision, saying the Westboro protestors were exercising their First Amendment right to free speech. The case is now moving to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yesterday was the deadline for filing a “friend of the court” brief in support of Snyder’s case. Every state but Maine and Virginia lined up behind Snyder.
“The attorney general’s office deplores the absolutely vile and despicable acts of Fred Phelps and his followers,” spokesman Brian Gottstein said in a statement. “We also greatly sympathize with the Snyder family and all families who have experienced the hatefulness of these people.”
The statement said Cuccinelli’s office chose not to file a brief “because the case could set a precedent that could severely curtail certain valid exercises of free speech.”
Gottstein said Virginia has a law that balances free-speech rights but also protects people like the Snyder family by making it a crime to “willfully disrupt a funeral or memorial service to the point of preventing or interfering with the orderly conduct of the event.”
Albert Snyder said Cuccinelli will pay a price politically for not joining other attorneys general.
But the attorney general found an ally on the First Amendment issue from a frequent critic — the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“We completely agree with the attorney general,” said ACLU Executive Director Kent Willis, who called the issue a “fundamental gut check” of the First Amendment.
“This kind of deplorable free speech must be protected in order to make sure all speech is protected.”
The speech of WBC far exceeds any speech deemed tolerable by a civilized society. Their speech should be treated like yelling fire in a crowded theater or using the F word during prime time TV. The behavior of Westboro Baptist Church (sic) is totally unacceptable to conservatives, liberals, and moderates. What is Cuccinelli thinking? He should pay the political price, as father Albert Snyder states. Who ever thought the Cooch would be cozied up with the ACLU? I suppose politics makes real strange bedfellows in this case. Or…perhaps the Cooch agrees with WBC.
