Why The Law Is Foreign To Ginsberg

by Selwyn Duke - April 26th, 2009 - American Thinker

Yet living-document justices are comforted in their misfeasance by rationalizations they conjure up to justify it. One that Ginsberg has used is to criticize the view that the Constitution is "stuck in time." But she has it wrong. It is not stuck in time but stuck in law. Law can be changed through legal measures -- in the case of the Constitution, the amendment process -- but until then it's supposed to be "stuck." The alternative to being stuck in law is being subject to the caprice of those with greater power. That would mean that you could appear before a judge and he could rule based on whim or that a policeman could arrest you because he believed he had just experienced an epiphany about what the law should be. In other words, this thinking is no different from the rule of kings, where a Herod could deliver John the Baptist's head on a plate to please his wife. It is why G.K. Chesterton said, "There are only two ways of governing: by a rule and by a ruler." It is why we should have "the rule of law" and not the rule of lawyers.


And this is why some of us have likened our Supreme Court to a de facto oligarchy. After all, on what basis does an oligarchy rule? Its members decide guided by nothing more than the dictates of their own consciences. So people can put as much lipstick on this pig as they want. They can wrap their living-document legal philosophy in a million pseudo-intellectual arguments. But, at the end of the day, it boils down to might makes right. When justices depart from constitutional constraints, they cannot be voted out of office or fired. The only thing constraining them then is their own consciences and the regard of their overseas peers -- just as with an oligarchy

An interesting article which clearly explains the logic by which many of us have come to have nothing but contempt for the Supreme Court... actually contempt for the entire American court system.

High Court Poised To Closely Weigh Civil Rights Laws

by Robert Barnes - April 19th, 2009 - Washington Post

The Supreme Court has an opportunity to reaffirm or reshape the nation's civil rights laws as it faces a rare confluence of cases over the next two weeks, including a high-profile challenge brought by white firefighters who claim they lost out on promotions because of the "color of their skin."

The cases also touch on the Voting Rights Act, the need to provide English classes for immigrant children and, more tangentially, discriminatory mortgage lending.

I cringe when I read articles like this, since it is my expectation the supreme tyrants of an uncontrolled court system are about to sabotage our nation with some new and more insane dictates that they pretend are "law".

Judge Shocks America’s Conscience

by Ken Blackwell - April 20th, 2009 - Townhall.com

Judge John D. Bates is a Bush appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Bates held that terrorist detainees that are held at the Bagram Air Force Base are entitled to habeas corpus, claiming that the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush demands this result.

This ruling proves the long term serious consequences of so many anti-American progressive judges deciding our cases on a basis that is against the rule of law and even against any rationality. Conservative judges who respect precedent follow the progressive rulings with equally insane rulings that adhere to the idiocy that has been established. Boumediene was insanity. Bagram is simply the logical extension of that insanity.

The inability to differentiate between war and crime will lead to American soldiers losing their lives on the battlefield. Is there anyone in our judiciary, or even among our citizens, who thinks this is insane?

Faces Of Lawsuit Abuse

I recently received an email about a website, “Faces of Lawsuit Abuse” sponsored by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. The website features a collection of video stories about small businesses and individuals across the country that have been targeted by abusive lawsuits.

Some of them are really compelling videos, including two released recently:

www.facesoflawsuitabuse.org/stories/story.asp?s=49876 – about a seven-year-old boy who was sued over a minor accident with an adult skier on a Colorado ski slope and

www.facesoflawsuitabuse.org/stories/story.asp?s=49877 – about a California fast food restaurant owner who was sued over the exact location of a bathroom mirror.

These lawsuits are simply icing on the top of a growing cake representing how corrupt our court system has become. Great web site.

Ginsburg Shares Views

... on Influence of Foreign Law on Her Court, and Vice Versa

by Adam Liptak - April 11th, 2009 - New York Times

“Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law review article written by a professor?” she asked.

She added that the failure to engage foreign decisions had resulted in diminished influence for the United States Supreme Court.

The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is “probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.” There is one reason for that, she said: “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.”

Nothing more dramatically emphasizes the problem with law in America today than this arrogant claim by Justice Ginsburg that she is proud to violate her oath to preserve the Constitution. Her feelings are hurt that she is not as admired by the intellectuals abroad as the Canadian Supreme Court is admired. This is a confession of treason against the American people. Yet she thinks that it is a rational defense of her belief that intellectuals from abroad are more important than the people of America.

How can anyone who loves America defend this insane logic?

She actually argues that denying the use of torture to save American citizens is important, because she does not care about American citizens. Their lives are as unimportant to her as fleas. Our entire law has become riddled with examples where trivial technical issues are deemed more important than justice, even life, for anyone who has the misfortune to depend on this arrogant elitist for unbiased law. The law has beocome overwhelmingly biased in favor of those who are most disrespectful of law.

Torture? Ginsburg is above it and perfectly happy to muse about its place in the world even as people are killed, maimed, extorted, beheaded and enslaved. Not her problem. She can sit in her ivory tower and pontificate about perfect justice.

No greater example exists of the reason the world is speeding towards anarchy and choas than this blithering idiot's indenfensible hypocrisy.

Imperial Judiciary Goes Global

Editorial - April 3rd, 2009 - National Review Online

In response to Rasul’s implausible claim that the federal habeas-corpus statute gave federal courts jurisdiction over Guantanamo Bay, lawmakers amended the statute to make clear that this was not the case. Not to be denied, the Court simply swept that legislation aside. In Boumediene, the justices claimed it was not just a statute but the Constitution — the compact between the American people and their government — that somehow vested alien enemies of the American people with a right to challenge, in the American people’s own courts, their detention by the American people’s military, during a war approved by the American people’s representatives.

Predictably, Judge Bates has taken the next step. He reasoned that if the font of federal court jurisdiction is not U.S. sovereignty but de facto U.S. control, the Bagram military base in Afghanistan, which we firmly control, is no different from Gitmo. There was, however, a major difference: Bagram is in an active zone of combat. This was a circumstance even the Boumediene majority suggested was entitled to special consideration. Bates gave it none. And if Boumediene commands that everyone within U.S. court jurisdiction is vested with U.S. constitutional rights, why shouldn’t a prisoner in Afghanistan have the same privileges as a prisoner in Gitmo? Or, by Bates’s logic, as a prisoner in Pittsburgh?

The result? Battlefields are now crime scenes, and the U.S. military will be forced to behave like a team of police investigators. If they want to capture enemy agents rather than kill them, our troops had better carefully rope off the crime scene, meticulously gather the physical evidence, record witness statements, administer Miranda warnings, and make certain a contingent of defense attorneys is available for interrogation purposes. That isn’t how wars are fought.

There was a time when the courts were thought to be a branch of the American people’s government, and when the United States went to war, the courts were part of the national war effort. Today the courts exist not within but above the government. Their goal is not American victory, but global due process.

The blatantly obvious indication is that our courts just became enemies of the people. If such, why should we not send our troops to detain (not arrest - just detain as enemies) all judges and send them to Gitmo? Or better yet Bagram? We certainly need to stop treating judges with deference or the respect accorded to a branch of the American government. No miranda warnings. No lawyers to defend them. If they want to be enemies, let them be enemies.

Felonious Advocacy

Felonious Advocacy - Fancy words for the end of free speech.

by Jacob Sullum - April 1st, 2009 - Reason Online

"I'm a little disoriented here," Justice Antonin Scalia said during last week's oral arguments in a case involving legal restrictions on movies that criticize politicians. "We are dealing with a constitutional provision, are we not, the one that I remember, which says Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press?"

Scalia's discombobulation was understandable, given that Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart had just claimed the First Amendment does not bar the government from telling interest groups what videos they may post online or what books they may publish.

There is no such thing as freedom of speech when government can punish you for saying something they think is improper. Freedom of speech is also non existent on college campuses when the right of someone to say something is subservient to the rights of those who create a disturbance so they cannot speak.

What we have currently is idiocy and will lead to more and more violence. Our judges will not stop liberal hooligans from creating riots to stop conservative speech and, at least recently, has not been willing to allow conservatives to speak during political campaigns. If government officials in public positions of authority side with one political view and allow the other side to be suppressed, what choice do we have but to revolt? Our rights have already been taken and we are slaves.

Prosecutors Gone Wild

by John Farmer - April 2nd, 2009 - New York Times

There is both good news and bad in the Justice Department’s decision to move to dismiss all charges against former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who had been convicted on seven felony counts of ethics violations. The good news is that Attorney General Eric Holder has done the right thing, acknowledging that his department’s Public Integrity Section, which handles corruption cases, committed egregious misconduct. The bad news is that the broader problem of prosecutorial excess remains unaddressed.

And at least one part of the problem is that there is no attempt by the press to get involved except when the press itself has a political motivation. There were people who complained about the sexual relationship between prosecutor and witness in the Stevens case, but no one except conservative blogs would even mention it. That was because the misconduct was by career DEMOCRAT prosecutors.

That refusal to cover the issue includes the bigots of the New York Times, who are publishing this issue without noting that all but one of the abuses they list in the article were committed by Democrats. During the campaign, while it was still possible to destroy a Republican Senator, they had no interest in publicizing the prosecutorial abuse in the Stevens case. They made note of the one Republican listed in this article though, leaving the impression that this was a problem created by George W. Bush. What hypocrisy.

Our courts are out of control and the Judges who should be stopping this abuse are part of the problem, not part of the solution. The press (that could help to publicize the abuse if they wanted to) are generally in favor of protecting the Democrats who are the prime abusers because they share a liberal agenda.

The Ted Stevens Scandal

Editorial - April 2nd, 2009 - Wall Street Journal

The Justice Department yesterday moved to set aside an October conviction on ethics charges and forgo any future trials for Senator Stevens. He walks free, in other words, an innocent man. In the motion, Justice said it "recently discovered" that prosecutors withheld from the defense notes about an interview last April with the state's star witness, Bill Allen, that contradicted his subsequent testimony. Under the Brady Rule for evidence, Justice was obliged to share that with Senator Stevens's lawyers.

This was one of many prosecutorial missteps that came to light after Mr. Stevens was found guilty less than two weeks before Election Day. The Republican narrowly lost his bid for a seventh term. Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday promised a "thorough" probe into the conduct of prosecutors, which is the least the Department owes Mr. Stevens. The Obama Administration made the political calculation here to walk away from the original mistake made by Bush Justice rather than further embarrass the Department in post-trial hearings.

Actually, the Democrat (never mentioned that did they) career prosecutors had already accomplished what the Democrat Party and Barack Obama had wanted, so why continue? They did not care about what happened to Ted Stevens after he was defeated. They simply wanted the Senate Seat in Democrat hands. They have that. So they won no matter what happens to Stevens now.

Of course they wanted to stop any further publicity. Of course they wanted to avoid a constant reminder that the entire prosecution was a political witch hunt. Further prosecution of Stevens would have done nothing else but help the cause of reminding everyone how corrupt Democrats are.

Republicans, who are too stupid to fight this kind of corrupt dirty war, are focused on getting justice for Stevens. They ought to be focused on the evil corruption of our court system as practiced by liberal-progressive-socialist judges and prosecutors.

Not since the so-called "rogue" prosecutor Mike Nifong was purged from the system have we had such a perfect example of how our court system really works. Rarely do these abuses get prosecuted. Even more rarely do the judges who normally cover them up suffer any consequences at all. What most people just do not seem to get is that outrageous court corruption is actually business as usual.