Monday, April 28, 2008: The Supreme Court upholds Indiana’s voting law.
—————————————————————————————
The Supreme Court began its new term on October 1. One of the cases on the docket is an Indiana voter identification case.
Earlier this year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (7th Circuit) upheld an Indiana state law that requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID before casting ballots in person in primary and general elections. Absentee voters and nursing home residents are exempt.
With straight faces, I presume, the plaintiffs claim the photo ID requirement is an “undue burden on the right to vote.” Before the most recent law went into effect, Indiana voters had to sign a poll book, and a copy of their signature remained on file for comparison.
The 7th Circuit wastes no time getting to the real reason the photo ID requirement was challenged. From the opinion (PDF):
No doubt most people who don’t have photo ID are low on the economic ladder and thus, if they do vote, are more likely to vote for Democratic than Republican candidates – Thus the new law injures the Democratic Party by compelling the party to devote resources to getting to the polls those of its supporters who would otherwise be discouraged by the new law from bothering to vote.
I encourage you to read the 15-page opinion (which includes a dissenting opinion). It’s pretty straight forward. The court noted that none of the plaintiffs argued or presented evidence that they don’t intend to vote because of the photo ID requirement, nor did they present citizens who made such claims. The real motivation behind the lawsuit, the court reasoned, was “simply that the law may require the Democratic Party and the other organizational plaintiffs to work harder to get every last one of their supporters to the polls.”
[click to continue…]
I wanted to bring to your attention a case that probably won’t get much play in the blogosphere. Everybody’s too busy blogging about General David Petraeus’s testimony before Congress, a fake Fred Thompson site linked to Mitt Romney, and other topics I’m thoroughly not interested in.
Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (9th Circuit) upheld a death sentence for Stevie Lamar Fields, a thug who robbed, raped, and murdered. He claimed, among other things, that because a juror quoted Bible passages mentioning capital punishment during sentencing deliberations, he prejudiced the jury, thereby violating Field’s constitutional rights, etc.
The 9th Circuit disagreed. The notoriously liberal 9th Circuit. (Source)
(Pictured: The MacArthur Study Bible, my main Bible.)
First, a little background. Fields appealed his state conviction on several grounds, including juror bias. For example, a juror’s (Hilliard) wife had been raped by a man who was never caught and one she suspected was Fields. The defendant claimed Hilliard had been dishonest during voir dire about his wife’s rape, was biased, etc. I won’t get into all that, because this post would end up 5,000 words long. It’s all in the 99-page opinion (PDF). Knock yourselves out. 
[click to continue…]
Several months ago, the D.C. Circuit ruled D.C.’s hilariously ineffective handgun ban unconstitutional. Last week, D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty said the city government will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
I hope the court refuses to hear it.
If I’m still in D.C. when the gun ban is lifted, I plan to buy one. Or two. Why should cops and thugs have all the fun?
Related posts:
Friday, June 29: Ego-related update — An attractive black reporter for Newsweek introduced himself to me last night, having recognized me from the bio page photo. It’s good to be reminded that not every black liberal hates me.
Have a restful weekend.
———————————————
6/28 & 12:39 a.m.: Just a couple of notes before I crash. Pam Spaulding and I couldn’t be more different on social issues. For example, she’s a liberal lesbian who believes in same sex “marriage.” I’m a straight conservative who wants to protect traditional marriage. And that’s just a starting point. What we disagree about could fill volumes. (But we’ve agreed to do an annual photo together and post it on our blogs to freak people out.) When meeting people you disagree with face to face, there’s only one thing you should agree on: being civil.
All the liberal bloggers I talked to tonight were civil. Dare I say nice? Yes, they were nice people. We’re worlds apart on most issues, but hey, you can’t have everything. I had a civil conversation with Oliver Willis (we talked about religion, evolution v. Intelligent Design – amazing) and I enjoyed talking to him. Go figure!
And I’m so glad I met Faye Anderson (a conservative). She’s a doll. See what other bloggers had to say about the debate at the MBA page. I met Professor Kim and Liza Sabater, who is a liberal and a feminist, but she’s “crazy,” funny, and has a great laugh. And a cool video camera. Check her site tomorrow for videos.
[click to continue…]
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution is reminding me of what our government was conceived to be.
What law students learn as “constitutional law” is merely a series of Supreme Court (which effectively usurped power from the states and blurred the line separating powers) decisions and little or no review of English and colonial forerunners to our Constitution or the ratification debates (crucial for understanding original intent).
The original understanding has been lost, even to so-called “originalist†conservative justices. Homosexual “marriage,” abortion, state-sponsored school prayer — all of these issues and more fall within the purview of the states, not the federal government.
More later. In the meantime, check out State-Sponsored School Prayer and the Constitution.
If I wanted to get my hot little hands on a gun ASAP and stay within the law, I could always move back to South Carolina. Although I have other ways of protecting myself from would-be attackers (lethal ways, so don’t get any ideas, thugs), carrying a gun would make me feel even safer.
And I wouldn’t hesitate to use it when the time came.
But I can wait, since it looks like DC’s outrageously ineffective gun ban is destined to become an example of the most misguided and comically inept law ever written and allowed on the books, one that increased — rather than decreased — violent crime in the nation’s capital. It’s a thug’s paradise.
In March, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia declared D.C.’s ban against handguns unconstitutional. Yesterday, the full court refused to rehear the case. In essense, the court upheld the panel’s ruling. (Source)
Second Amendment opponents will try to push the case to the Supreme Court, naturally, and I’m hoping the court refuses to hear it. If that’s the case, I may become the proud owner of firearms (yes, plural) sooner than I think. 
(By the way, thank you so much for the gun recommendations!)
Links:
*** Scroll down for updates ***
Isn’t this…unconstitutional?
I mean, separating prisoners by race? Doesn’t that violate a clause about treating people equally without regard to race, or some such?
In cotton-comes-to-Harlem fashion, the California-style black-hispanic race war isn’t confined to California. It’s occurring wherever there are significant enough numbers of blacks and hispanics fighting over scraps, which, incidentally, neither group even owns.
The Washington Post found out about an internal memo at the Prince George’s County Detention Center calling for segregation of blacks and hispanics during recreation. (Play nicely, boys!) There’s also an “unofficial” policy of assigning prisoners to cells based on race.
Referring to the practice as “jailhouse law,” a supervisor at the prison said, “It’s nothing written, but you try to keep the calm.” (The article states that blacks and hispanics in the PG prison “found themselves in conflict over relatively minor issues.” That’s PC euphemism for “fighting over stupid sh**.” )
If you recall, the government once mandated separation of black and white prisoners. That, as well as separating black and white children in government schools, was declared unconstitutional. Should prison safety override the Constitution and ignore decades of blood, sweat, and tears spilled to dismantle government-mandated racial segregation? If black and hispanic prisoners are at each others throats and segregating them during recreation time eases some of the tension, what’s the harm?
[click to continue…]
Monday, March 12: A law-abiding black man with a gun. I like…
———————————————————————–
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (commonly called the D.C. Circuit) today declared D.C.’s stunningly stupid, misguided, and ineffectual 30-year-old gun ban unconstitutional. (via How Appealing and Instapundit)
Download a PDF copy of the opinion here.
One of the arguments gun ban supporters make is that since D.C. isn’t a state, the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to it. But some of those same anti-gun rights folks are pushing for D.C. to be recognized as a state so liberal, non-voting House of Representatives delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, will get to vote.
D.C.’s crime rate shot up after the gun ban went into effect, and the city has remained atop the high crime rate list. As I explained years ago, gun bans don’t stop criminals from owning and carrying guns. Breaking the law is what they do. My seven-year-old nephew has better reasoning skills than the D.C Council!
If the ban is indeed lifted, I plan to exercise my constitutional right to own a gun in the District of Columbia. I can’t wait to buy my first piece!
Recommendations?
Reactions: MM, Hot Air, Cato, Blinkered Thinker who writes: “Would-be crooks should stay clear of the District; you’ll never know if your intended victim is a gun-toting, conservative blogger…”
Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen?
On this day 150 years ago, the Supreme Court’s answer to that question was, “No.†A negro descendant of slaves could not be a citizen of the United States.
One hundred and fifty years ago wasn’t that long ago. But when you consider how far the descendants of slaves have progressed — the rights, privileges, and immunities they enjoy, the “preferred minority†perch they occupy, their relative wealth compared to blacks in other countries — 150 years seem light-years away.
Born a slave in 1799, Dred Scott had traveled with his master to free territory. After his master died, Scott sued for his freedom, arguing that since he was living in free territory, he should be released from slavery. A state court rejected his claim.
Dred Scott v. Sandford eventually made it to federal court, where the issue was narrowed to whether the federal court had jurisdiction over the case and whether Scott had standing to sue. As expected, the Supreme Court ruled that Scott, as a slave, had no standing; therefore, the court had no jurisdiction. The court went on to declare the Missouri Compromise of 1820 unconstitutional: Congress had no authority to restrict slavery. Slaves were property and slave owners had a right to travel anywhere in the U.S. with their property.
[click to continue…]
Tuesday, January 30: This post is closed to commenting. Continue the discussion at Has “White Guilt” Run Its Course?
Update II: Affirmative action for pastors?
Update: Commenter Michael Burrow writes:
“If we want to keep AA [t]hen it should go full circle. I want to see the rough percentages of our population on all the sports teams, both professional and college. That way nobody is left out. It’s not my fault that I was born a slow white man with no athletic talent.”
Later…In response to Proposal 2, the law that bars race and sex preferences in government hiring and admissions, the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, created the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise. It’s a way to get around the law, but it will have unintended consequences. An administrator at the Equal Opportunity Office said the designation disadvantaged could refer to any business, without regard to the color of the owner’s skin.
Writes John Rosenberg, “Imagine that! The ‘Equal Opportunity Office’ has discovered that equal opportunity can be promoted without racial discrimination!”
[click to continue…]
Update II (12/6): James Taranto on How “Integration” Became Discrimination, SCOTUS blog…
——————————————–
My latest Washington Examiner column is about the two race-based school assignment cases currently before the Supreme Court.
White parents in Seattle and Jefferson County, Kentucky, sued the school districts for assigning students to schools based on race, a policy they claimed violated their rights to equal protection of the laws.
Although these school districts say they use a number of factors as “tiebreakers” to determine where to place students, their true intent is to categorize and haul students around by race to achieve a system-wide, so-called racial balance. This practice is discriminatory on its face, and one could oppose it simply on that basis. But if the law doesn’t convince you, perhaps a personal account will help. According to columnist George Will, this is what parents have to face:
This city’s school district decided in 2000 that because the son of Jill Kurfirst and the daughter of Winnie Bachwitz are white, they should be assigned to an inferior and distant high school. If they had not left the Seattle school system, this would have required them to rise at 5 a.m. in order to leave home by 5:30 a.m., alone and in the dark, to take the first of three buses, returning home between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., with almost no time left for homework, family activities and adequate sleep.
Anyone who cares about their child would complain about this, even if race weren’t a factor. But since it is, the practice is even more egregious because we’ve been told, over and over again, how wrong racial discrimination is, yet school districts openly practice it!
[click to continue…]
Acknowledging that courts interpret law, not write it, the Court of Appeal in California voted 2-1 yesterday to uphold the state’s ban on homosexual “marriage.”
Presiding Justice William McGuiness wrote (emphasis added):
We conclude California’s historical definition of marriage does not deprive individuals of a vested fundamental right or discriminate against a suspect class…The time may come when California chooses to expand the definition of marriage to encompass same-sex unions. That change must come from democratic processes, however, not by judicial fiat.
Knowing the people of California, however liberal, won’t vote to redefine marriage to include “same sex,” homosexual advocacy groups plan to do what all such groups do: take it back to court. They’ll no doubt appeal to the California Supreme Court.
[click to continue…]
We usually don’t commemorate the 39th anniversary of an event, but today is an exception. Because of the recent proposal to amend the Constitution to ban homosexual “marriage,” which failed to gain traction, I believe it’s important to blog about Loving v. Virginia and distinguish between laws criminalizing marriage between a man and woman of different races and laws against marriage between two men.
Thirty-nine years ago today, the Supreme Court declared in Loving v. Virginia that laws against interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
After the Civil War, states began to enact laws called the Black Codes in response to the emancipation of slaves. Democrats created these laws for newly-freed slaves that restricted their rights to own or rent farmland, vote, sit on juries, testify against white men, sue, enter into contracts, and intermarry with whites. Republicans opposed the laws and wanted to pass the Civil Rights Bill to protect former slaves. Democratic president Andrew Johnson refused.
Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter had known each other since childhood in Central Point, Virginia. In 1958, the two traveled to Washington, D.C., to get married since they couldn’t legally marry in Virginia. They returned to Virginia, and a few months later, both were arrested and taken to jail. They plead guilty to “unlawful cohabitation.” The court suspended their one-year sentence in prison on the condition that they leave Caroline Country, Virginia, and not return together for twenty-five years.
[click to continue…]
Update: If I had to put a label on her, I’d call Christine at Talk Wisdom a traditional marriage activist.
To dissenters looking for an explicit argument on how and why “gay marriage” is bad for society, read Protecting America’s Immune System: A Reasonable Argument Against Homosexual Marriage. Frank Turek is much more articulate and “reasonable” than I am.
In some form or another over the past 2.5 years of LBC’s existence, I’ve touched on each of Turek’s points:
1. Traditional marriage is beneficial to the public welfare.
2. Homosexual behavior is destructive to the public welfare.
3. The law is a great teacher; it encourages or discourages behavior and attitudes.
4. Legalization of homosexual marriage would encourage more homosexual behavior, which is inherently destructive. It also would weaken the perceived importance of traditional marriage and its parenting role, thereby resulting in further destruction of the family and society itself.
5. The law should endorse behaviors that are beneficial and restrain (or certainly not endorse) behaviors that are destructive.
6. Therefore, the law should endorse traditional marriage and it should restrain (or certainly not endorse) homosexual marriage.
I’d hate to reinvent the microchip, but it may be time for me to write a definitive “why I think homosexual ‘marriage’ will destroy the foundation of society” post. Some will balk, but I believe certain behaviors should be stigmatized, discouraged, and restrained, as I’ve argued many times.
[click to continue…]
Sign up for a free 30-day trial (no pun intended) with Court TV Extra and watch the Duke rape case hearing at 2:30 p.m. EST. Then again, you may be able to watch it on Court TV without signing up for anything.
Currently showing: the boring Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing for CIA chief nominee Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden. Wish I knew how to do a snoring smilie.
2:33: No Duke hearing yet.
2:42: Wrong channel. The hearing is being broadcast on Court TV, not over the web. Defense lawyer is asking for accuser’s cell phone (last 10 calls) and criminal records. Ah…the southern accents make me homesick!
Nifong says evidence isn’t processed and the phone may belong to a third party, who has privacy expectations. Judge orders that the phone be examined in confidence to find out what’s on it.
I don’t think anything important will happen during this hearing. Defense moved to have all proceedings recorded. Judge granted the motion. Defense asked for bond reduction. The lawyer seems kind of weak. He needs to sound more confident and assertive. Judge says he won’t rule on bond request today. He’ll review and get back to defense.
2:50: Boring procedural stuff. Motion to preserve written evidence and notes for trial. Judge asks, “Why?” Paraphrase: Why do you believe evidence will not be preserved? But grants motion without waiting for an answer. Defense wants permission to go to DA’s office and look through files. Judge says all that will be handled during discovery. It’s the DA’s call, and if defense thinks he’s not forthcoming, it will be dealt with at that time.
Judge says today he’s not going to order things that are usually done voluntarily. He agrees with the defense that the case is important, but so are others. Judge says he won’t allow this case to jump ahead of the others in the process.
Wish I were up there making arguments. Ho-hum. It’s over. Exciting stuff. Reade Seligmann, who got a warm welcome, doesn’t look too pleased with his lawyer. Another hearing scheduled for June 19. Surprisingly, Nifong turned over most of the discovery, according to the talking heads (I missed the first 10 minutes): 1200+ pages, CD-ROMs, etc.
Well, that was anticlimatic. Carry on.
Sources:
