Supreme Court To Hear
Guantánamo Detainees’ Case
by William Glaberson - June 29th, 2007 - The New York Times
The United States Supreme Court reversed course today and agreed to hear claims of Guantanamo detainees that they have a right to challenge their detentions in American federal courts.
The decision, announced in a brief order released this morning, set the stage for a historic legal battle that appeared likely to shape debates in the Bush administration about when and how to close the detention center that has become a lightning rod for international criticism.
The exceptionally unusual order, which required votes from five of the nine justices, gave lawyers for detainees more than they had requested in a motion asking the justices to reconsider an April decision declining to review the same case. Lawyers for detainees had asked only that the court hold the case open for future consideration. Today’s order meant that the court would hear the case in its next term, perhaps by December.
Experts on the Supreme Court said the justices so rarely grant such motions for reconsideration that the order itself was significant. They said it signaled that the justices had determined they needed to resolve a new politically and legally significant Guantanamo issue, after two earlier Supreme Court decisions that have been sweeping setbacks for the administration’s detention policies.
I get a lot of emails criticizing my frequent reference to the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and the entire federal bench, as unelected judicial tyrants. If this case goes the way the New York Times is so gleefully declaring, I will challenge anyone to criticize that view again.
The Supreme Court seems to be signalling that people dedicated to the destruction of our nation will be granted jurisdiction to challenge the ability of the executive branch to conduct war against them. Each one, even if not a U.S. Citizen, or even a legal resident, can challenge the right of the military to detain them when caught on the battlefield, no matter where on earth the battlefield is. These habeus corpus challenges will be a new right just for our enemies.
Our court, so dedicated to splitting hairs, never seems to have a clue how the enemies of our nation can use their rulings to damage our country. They have long ago abandoned any pretense that their rulings about rights are for the defense of the innnocent. It is well settled law now that technical violations of the rights of CRIMINALS can allow clear criminal behavior to be ignored. It is the reason our nation has such outrageous crime statistics.
Now they are going to extend these RIGHTS (not just to criminals but) to ENEMY SOLDIERS who are seeking to destroy our nation.
There is nothing in the Constitution that gives them this right. The Consitution clearly says that the legislature can determine what cases they can try. However the Constitution means NOTHING to these unelected judicial tyrants. The law of our nation means NOTHING to these unelected judicial tyrants. Survivival of our nation means NOTHING to these unelected judicial tyrants.
Welcome to the rule of judges.
Bong Hits And Ad Runs
by Jacob Sullum - June 27th, 2007 - Townhall.com
In 2004, when Wisconsin Right to Life sponsored radio ads urging people to contact the state's senators, it was trying to stop filibusters against judicial nominees. In 2002, when Joseph Frederick, an 18-year-old high school senior, held up a "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner at an Olympic torch rally in Juneau, Alaska, he was, by his own account, only trying to get on TV.
Yet both cases, which resulted in Supreme Court decisions announced on the same day this week, illustrate the perils of carving out exceptions to the First Amendment. Rationales for censorship tend to expand and proliferate, leaving people uncertain about whether they're free to speak their minds.
The unelected tyrants of our Supreme Court continue their campaign for judicial power. The more uncertainty there is about what is legal or not, the more power the courts have to assure filing a suit against an adversary is the only process to ascertain who wins. The only people who win are of course the lawyers and judges.
Sullum expresses the opinion that this is some unintended consequence, he calls it the "perils of carving out exceptions to the First Amendment." I dispute there is anything about this that is uncertain or vague. Calling it a peril of their actions assumes the judges really were trying to do something good and the consequences were unintended. To believe that you must impute to these unelected tyrants honest motivations they do not deserve.
Jailed For Waving At My Daughter
by Jenny Johnston and Rachel Hallwell - June 25th, 2007 - Daily Mail (London)
. . . the story of what happened to the Harris family isn't just another tragic case of broken homes and estrangement. Mark, Lisa and her two younger sisters were wrenched apart by the state.
Mark was not a feckless, irresponsible father. He did not walk out of his children's lives. Rather, he was ordered out by the family courts, and when he objected - insisting it was his right to see them - he was dealt with in a scandalous way.
Mark Harris went to prison for his girls. He was jailed for waving to them after a court order demanded he sever all contact. It was the most shameful chapter in an extraordinary ten-year custody battle.
All over the Western World feminists have waged a war to gain "women's rights" in family courts. All over the Western World they have successfully established the premise that if a woman makes an accusation during a divorce custody battle, that accusation must be presumed truth. In the process, men have had their rights destroyed. In the process, children have had their lives ruined.
Some of the abuses I witnessed first hand while I was a paralegal in family court remind me of the evil miscarriage of justice which occured to the family covered in this article. Like the abusive Title IX, men's rights have been so perverted that nothing remains of the pretense that our system provides equal justice under the law.
Want to know exactly how corrupt our court system is? There is absolutely NO RECOURSE for those whose rights have been destroyed. If you want to assure a system is corrupt, provide total protection for those who abuse the rights of others. In any such system, abuse will be constant, evil and hidden. That is what we find in our current family court system. In issues of divorce and probate of wills justice is almost non-existent.
A Tale of Two Prosecutors
by Dorothy Rabinowitz - June 22nd, 2007 - Wall Street Journal (Opinion Journal)
The story about the Duke athletes and District Attorney Nifong was not simply a riveting drama. It was in its searing way an educational event, not just about prosecutorial ambition run amok, but about a university world--reflective of many others--where faculty ideologues pursued their agendas unchecked and unabashed. Here was a nearly successful legal lynching, applauded by a significant chunk of the Duke faculty, proud to display their indifference to questions of guilt or innocence.
[snip]
For Mr. Fitzgerald, whose prosecutorial zeal and moral certitude are in no small way reminiscent of Mr. Nifong's, the victory was complete with those two final judgments: the severe sentence for Mr. Libby, and the judge's refusal, last week, to allow its postponement pending appeal. The prosecutor's argument for a heavy sentence emphasized Mr. Libby's alleged serious obstruction of justice--a complicated effort, considering that there was no underlying crime, or evidence thereof, and that this case, which had begun in alleged pursuit of the leak of a covert agent's identity was, as the prosecutor himself would finally contend, not about that leak at all.
Two trials, one of prosecutor Nifong and one by prosecutor Fitzgerald, are helping to destroy what little confidence Americans have in their corrupt court system. There will be many more articles before this is all over comparing these two prosecutors. Both hid evidence of innocence. Both show the indifference of most lawyers to what Americans view as justice.
In the Duke Case racism and the institutions of racism and sexism played the dominate role. Washington had no direct involvement in the problem. It was totally a State of North Carolina problem. A rogue prosecutor appointed by a partisan Governor ignored justice and used the courts to get re-elected. In the other case, a liberal government establishment used the courts to destroy political enemies. The common thread is the ability of prosecutors to punish those who they wish to punish for political advantage.
Our courts have become institutions of corruption.
I wonder what might have happened if George W. Bush had not announced his sanctimonious pursuit of anyone who had outed a CIA agent before the Libby trial started. It has been over a year now since it was known that Richard Armitage "outed" Valerie Plame. Since that was the CIA agent Bush was so upset about, why has he done nothing to prosecute Armitage? Why did Fitzgerald never go after Armitage? Court corruption.
Our courts are as corrupt and evil a system of extortion and blackmail as you can find in the world today. There is no justice in America because of this. These two prosecutors are perfect examples of how the system fails. One got caught and punished. The other did not. The problem is that Fitzgerald is the more common example of what happens. That is, nothing happens. Nifong is the aberration.
The Law Versus Orders
by Walter Williams - June 20th, 2007 - Townhall.com
Suppose a person is raped and we arrest the rapist. Should his status, whether he's a senator, professor or an ordinary man, play a role in the adjudication of the crime and subsequent punishment? I'm betting that the average person would answer that the law against rape is general and non-arbitrary and one's status should have nothing to do with the adjudication and punishment for the crime. That's precisely what is meant by "rule of law." Or, as English jurist A.V. Dicey put it, "Every man, whatever be his rank or condition, is subject to the ordinary law of the realm and amenable to the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals."
[snip]
Twenty-five years ago, during a dinner conversation with Nobel Laureate economist/philosopher Friedrich A. Hayek, I asked him if he could propose one law that would restore, promote and preserve liberty in our country, what would that law be? Hayek answered that the law he'd propose would read: Congress shall enact no law that does not apply equally to all Americans. Hayek's suggestion for full equality before the law was both simple and profound and would do untold wonders in fostering the liberties envisioned by our Founders.
A law such as this would find enemies in both our political parties. I wonder if we could find anyone to propose the law?
Can you really envision anyone in the black leadership of the Democrat Party tolerating a reduction in the favored status of blacks? Affirmative action is making millionaires of some blacks who get preferential treatment over poor whites who are being taxed to provide this preferential treatment. They claim it is their due.
Or how about the rich businessmen and investors in the Republican Party who demand special lowered taxes on their capital gains. If you make $100,000 from investments, how can you claim that you should get lower taxes than a plumber who works 80 hour weeks and makes $100,000. Do you not believe that free enterprise works? Do you not believe that the marketplace has rewarded each according to his contribution to the business exchanges they participated in? If you believe in free enterprise how can you believe in unequal taxes?
Both parties have become a process by which they provide unfair laws for their favored "base". I think socialism is evil so I am not concerned with how corrupt the Democrat Party has become, but it infuriates me when people like Dennis Hastert destroy the image of the Republican Party by selling republican votes for pork based on campaign contributions. Hastert's name should be forever linked to corrupt pork. I am delighted he is gone from our party. He should be in jail.
However he is not since the court system has become corrupted by the same problem. Equal protection under the law has become a joke. Like all things in our court system, free speech, eminent domain, innocent until proven guilty, jury of peers, etc, etc, etc . . . . equal protection has ceased to mean anything.
There is no "rule of law". The courts are corrupt.
Diageo, Pernod Must Face Lawsuit
Over Colombian Sales
by Patricia Hurtado - June 19th, 2007 - Bloomberg
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in New York today refused to dismiss a 2004 suit alleging Diageo, maker of Smirnoff vodka, and Pernod are part ``of a RICO enterprise composed of illegal narcotics traffickers,'' a reference to the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The Colombian government claimed the firms smuggled liquor into the country and laundered the proceeds of illegal drug sales.
The judge granted a request from the companies and dismissed a civil racketeering claim that alleged the Colombian government suffered lost taxes and other injuries. Two U.S. units named as defendants in the complaint, Diageo North America and Pernod Ricard USA, along with Seagram Export Sales Co. Inc. and United Distillers Manufacturing Inc., asked Garaufis for a dismissal.
This is just one more example of the amazing expansion of power our judicial tyrants are so eager to embrace. Foreign Countries are suing in American Courts for damages from multi-national corporations they claim they suffered in their own countries due to actions of these corporations. Like the lawsuits by states over tobacco, this is in essence, using the civil court system to extort money from deep pocket entities for supposed crimes that cannot be proven in criminal court.
It substitutes the "preponderance of the evidence" standard for the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard, but is only valid if the entity has money. It is an expansion of court power that corrupts the very concept of the "rule of law".
The primary goal is the extortion of legal fees by the community of shysters (lawyers) and tyrants (judges).
Bar Strips Nifong Of His Law License
by Joseph Neff and Anne Blythe - June 16th, 2007 - News & Observer
After 15 months of waging war in the Duke lacrosse case, Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong raised the white flag Saturday and surrendered his law license.
Nifong gave up minutes after a state panel ruled that the Durham District Attorney had intentionally and repeatedly lied and cheated as he prosecuted three former lacrosse players on rape charges.
Disbarment, the toughest penalty a lawyer can face, and nothing short of disbarment fit the magnitude of Nifong's offenses, said the Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which serves as judge and jury to lawyers charged with wrongdoing.
"It's been truly a fiasco," said chairman Lane Williamson in his ruling.
Saturday marked the first time a North Carolina prosecutor has been disbarred for courtroom cheating.
The first time? That is the problem. What is horrible is that this kind of cheating goes on all the time. Just during this case, reporters have mentioned similar problems in past cases that were not significantly different, other than that these defendents had the money to fight.
We have a horrible problem with incarceration of young black males for drug offenses. Though the intent of the laws was to incarcerate drug dealers, the vast majority of the men whose lives are destroyed in jail are drug users, not dealers. And what has been accomplished? Nothing. The drug culture rampages out of control in spite of all the incarcerations, or maybe even because of them. Many of these young black men are abused as egregiously as the Duke 3. They simply don't have the money to fight.
Our court system is out of control. I am frustrated because I don't think for a minute that Nifong losing his license will do anything to clean up the problems with our let's make a deal, revolving door farce of a system.
Nifong needed to lose his license, but we must make sure it does not stop there. We need many more of these out of control prosecutors to lose their license. And go to jail. That is what I want to see. This was egregious beyond belief, but truly evil things happen constantly. When are they going to disbar the SECOND North Carolina prosecutor?
That is the real problem. Anyone who thinks this is the first time this should have happened has not watched our court system recently. That no one has ever been disbarred before is the reason that Nifong almost got away with it this time.
Duke Prosecutor Says He Will Resign
By Aaron Beard - June 15th, 2007 - Breitbart (Associated Press)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Facing the loss of his law license, a tearful Mike Nifong said Friday he will resign as district attorney, more than a year after he obtained rape indictments against three Duke University lacrosse players who were later declared innocent by state prosecutors.
The only really important question is whether punishing Nifong will help to change any of the serious flaws in our corrupt legal system. As I noted in an earlier posting, my concern is that our system covers up for this kind of behavior regularly. Though a little more egregious, what Nifong did is actually fairly standard operating procedure.
Punishing Nifong is important. Fixing our legal system is more important. Right now the people who DON"T WANT the system fixed are the most enthusiastic supporters of the "get Nifong" brigade. Their reason? They want all the attention to go away so they can get back to selling justice.
Panel Presses DNA Expert
. . . with a headline like this it is hard to tell if the article is about the Nifong Trial or the Judge who is suing the cleaners.
by Anne Blythe, Benjamin Niolet and Sarah Ovaska - June 14th, 2007 - News & Observer
Brian Meehan, head of DNA Security in Burlington, got prickly when Lane Williamson, chairman of the Disciplinary Hearing Commission panel deciding Nifong's fate, suggested that he put himself in the role of a juror.
Meehan protested that the request was unfair. "I know I have to answer the question, but so ... I don't feel that I should be trying these children, these kids or these young men."
But Williamson pressed on with questions that pushed to the heart of the N.C. State Bar's most serious accusation against Nifong -- that the prosecutor knowingly withheld evidence favorable to the three Duke lacrosse players accused of sexual assault and then lied about it to judges and other court officials.
This trial is slowly losing the public, and that is a shame. Nifong must be punished, however it is not necessarily in the interest of the public that he be punished. Why do I say that? Because this kind of conduct goes on constantly and the D.A.s get away with it. The only reason the bar and the court system are going after Nifong so hard is he embarrassed them publicly.
The case is already starting to lose the public anger that resulted when the people thought that three innocent boys were being railroaded. If Nifong is punished, the courts and the bar can go back to business as usual, when D.A.s casually convicted anyone, whether guilty or innocent, through their power to crush the defendant. The public rage will completely disapate after Nifong is punished, and our court system will still be corrupt.
Pants Plaintiff: Customer Always Right
by Lubna Takruri - June 13th, 2007 - Associated Press
In the case of the Judge suing a cleaners for $67 million because he claims they lost a pair of pants!
Defense attorney Chris Manning asked Pearson [the Juge suing] repeatedly whether, if he was a merchant, he would pay any customer who asked for compensation. Pearson kept responding with convoluted legal language, and each time Judge Judith Bartnoff instructed him to answer the question. Finally, he said, "Yes."
"So does that make sense, for you instead of going down the street to another dry cleaner, to sue a business for $67 million?" Manning asked.
Pearson said it did.
"Does that make any sense at all?" Manning asked, to laughter from the courtroom.
This man Pearson, a Lawyer and a Judge, has said verbally that he is no longer seeking either the $67 million he originally sued for, or even the $54 million which his filings currently seek, but he would be SATISFIED with $2 million in ACTUAL DAMAGES and $500 thousand in legal fees. Those legal fees by the way are what Pearson says he is charging himself for representing himself!
He is arguing that the offer of $1000 which the cleaners made early on in this lawsuit was inadequate and did not meet the "satisfaction guaranteed" standard he feels should apply.
Statement after statement made by Judge Pearson (not the judge in the case, but the person suing) are typical of the absurd demands that are the standard in these types of frivolous lawsuits. However nothing is absurd enough to get these cases thrown out. The judge in this case, Judge Judith Bartnoff, is giving him the ability to keep right on wasting the plaintiff's money by forcing the plantiff to pay attorneys to defend themselves. The case has long been an outrage and an insult. However it is typical of the abusive blackmail condoned (and even encouraged) by the tyrants in our courts.
We do not have a system based on the "rule of law". We have a system based on the "rule of judges".
L.A. Judge Dismisses Charge
In Ashcraft Case
by Joshua Sharp - June 13th, 2007 - USC Daily Trojan
A second Los Angeles judge threw out the murder charge against a suspended USC student accused of killing her newborn child on Tuesday.
Holly Ashcraft, a 22-year-old architecture major who has stood trial for two years, still faces a June 27 hearing for one charge of child abuse.
Ashcraft was arrested in October 2005 after a newborn was found in a Dumpster behind the 29th Street Cafe. DNA evidence proved it was her son.
Prosecuting Deputy District Attorney Franco Barrata had cited a coroner's conclusion that the baby was born alive, but defense attorney Mark Geragos had repeatedly challenged that assertion in court.
What is ignored in this case is that this girl had already had another baby disappear under similar circumstances the year before this case. It seems typical of our courts that the unlikely probability of one girl having two children die under these exact same bizarre circumstances cannot be mentioned. It is not, according to our liberal judges, evidence of murder. It is just "bad luck". Poor girl. Send her home and lets see if she kills a third baby. After all. It is just a baby, not a real person. Look at her grin in the picture above.
Our courts are sick!
Judge Suing D.C. Dry Cleaner
Chokes Up In Court
While Recalling Lost Trousers
by Lubna Takruri - June 12th, 2007 - CBC
WASHINGTON (AP) - A judge had to leave the courtroom with tears running down his face Tuesday after recalling the lost pair of trousers that led to his $54 million US lawsuit against a dry cleaner.
Administrative law judge Roy Pearson had argued earlier in his opening statement that he is acting in the interest of all city residents against poor business practices. Defence lawyers called his claim "outlandish."
He originally sued Custom Cleaners for about $65 million under the District of Columbia consumer protection act and almost $2 million in common law claims. He is no longer seeking damages related to the pants, instead focusing his claims on two signs in the shop that have since been removed.
"He is no longer seeking damages related to the pants . . . ." That is why his lawsuit has been reduced from $65 million to ONLY $54 million. An argument that the cleaners first misplaced and then gave him the wrong pants is considered to be actual losses to him of $54 million. $54 million!!!!!!
THE JUDGE CRIED IN COURT ABOUT THE LOSS OF A PAIR OF PANTS. Not his child, or a wife, or a parent, or a sibling, or a grandchild, or even a business partner . . but a PAIR OF PANTS!
Does anyone else besides me think this clown should be called a drama queen? Does anyone else besides me think allowing such a travesty of justice is indicative of a court system that has lost its sanity?
Tug-of-war Over Hilton
Raises Larger Questions
by Tami Abdollah and Megan Garvey - June 9, 2007 - Los Angeles Times
A sobbing Paris Hilton was shipped back to jail Friday, culminating a high-stakes legal showdown between a judge and Sheriff Lee Baca over who controls how long and where inmates serve their jail sentences.
The questions have loomed large over the Los Angeles County justice system for years as judges watched in frustration as the sheriff slashed the sentences they handed down, often by 90%, to alleviate chronic overcrowding in his jails.
Baca on Thursday allowed Hilton — who he had promised would serve 23 days in jail — to go home to West Hollywood to finish her time under house arrest after serving just three days behind bars for repeatedly violating probation.
He cited an undisclosed medical condition as the reason to allow the hotel heiress to switch from a tiny cell to home detention and electronic monitoring, noting that she had served the 10% of her sentence currently being served by most female inmates in the county.
But Friday, an irritated Judge Michael T. Sauer ordered Hilton back to court and said he alone had the power to decide how her sentence was served. Sauer criticized the Sheriff's Department for letting Hilton out without his permission and remanded the 26-year-old multimillionaire — who cried throughout the hearing — back to jail.
The title tries to imply this farce is based on an important legal question. The only real question is how much power does anyone have to fix a system that is a revolving door joke of arbitrary and capricious power plays by tyrants and bufoons?
We are not talking about murderers here. We are talking about Paris Hilton. In the article they talk about murderers that Baca has released who have killed again while they were supposed to be in jail. Why did that not justify this article? What is so important about Paris Hilton that she gets this article but the people who died were not important enough to make the front page?
That tells you much about the stupid choices of the press in our country. It tells you much about the judges too. Why did the judges not incarcerate Baca as an accessory to murder when it happened? Is no one in our corrupt court system of extortion and blackmail ever held accountable for anything?
Informed Consent And Malformed Consent
by Seth Cooper - June 8th, 2007 - The Ameircan Thinker
For most of us, it's self-evident that medical professionals must obtain the informed consent of persons before their organs or other physical body parts may be removed for transplant or experimentation. Individual humans have rights and responsibilities vested in their own respective bodies. Only where human liberty prevails do we have the space to make the moral choice of giving up part of our own bodies for the well being of others.
Contrast the human liberty to donate one's physical body for beneficent medical purposes with the notion of an affirmative obligation or "duty to donate" one's body. Of course, the very idea of a "duty to donate" is incoherent. No human can ever act freely while under coercion. If humans were to have an affirmative obligation to furnish their own physical bodies to others, we could hardly claim to call our individual bodies our own.
Once again judges are starting to impose their own view of morality on defendants in their courts. This is not about any law. It is about a group of liberal activist judges throwing out the "rule of law" and choosing to determine the outcome of cases based on the "rule of judges".
The notion of an affirmative obligation or "duty to donate" one's body is not just incoherent. It is in fact the first step in an affirmative obligation or "duty to die" when your body is needed by someone else who can provide greater benefit to society by using your body or some part of it. This obligation is the clear rational next step to the Kelo decision that "taking" your property for public use can mean giving your property to someone else to use if they provide greater "benefit to society". According to Kelo, no matter how vague the benefit to "public use", government officials are better able to determine this than you. At least according to the judges. The judges see no need to limit the power of government officials to determine the best use of your land. The next step is clearly the ability to determine the best use of your body. Someone really important needs your liver? Voila, a "duty to die" becomes law.
Such arrogance has led us to the current situation where our courts are a farce and tyranny is the standard of justice.
Liberate Libby
Editorial - June 5th, 2007 - Investor's Business Daily
By now, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff no doubt regrets not taking extensive notes on every conversation he had over the past six years. If he had, he might not be facing the undeserved ruin of his public career.
Sadly, that is why Libby is looking at nearly three years in prison and a fine of $250,000 (on top of the hundreds of thousands of dollars he's been forced to spend for his defense). He committed no crime — at least not one the government could get close to proving.
Though prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald initially said he would show it was Libby who revealed the identity of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, he failed to do so. Not wanting to fail completely, Fitzgerald did the next best thing — he found inconsistencies in Libby's testimony, the kind commonly found when asking people to recall events more than three years old, and pursued a conviction on charges of obstruction and lying .
A technical case was made to the jury — though the jurors later said they felt Libby was a fall guy and shouldn't have to do time. As Libby's lawyers accurately noted, "There is no evidence in the record here to support a finding that an underlying offense was actually committed by Mr. Libby or anyone else."
This article accurately sums up the Judges corrupt sentencing decision. The Judge sentenced Libby punitively saying, "People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of the nation in their hands, have a special obligation not to do anything that might create a problem."
Yes. That is right. The judge ackowledges that Libby did not commit a crime but sentences him for doing something that created a problem.
Welcome to "the rule of judges".
