Supreme Court

The SCOTUS is set to rule on the D.C. gun ban today. This will be a huge decision, either way it goes.

Yeah the poor oil company couldn't afford the 2.5 billion for their disasters spill of the Valdez. Instead they only have to pay $500 million.

In other SCOTUS news, no death penalty for child rapists.

Finally there is something I can agree on with the Supreme Court. They have refused to review the Justice Department's appeal on the raid of Rep. William Jefferson's office. That leaves a lower court's ruling that the raid was unconstitutional intact.

Don't get me wrong on this - I firmly believe Jefferson is corrupt and should be punished for that. I have had a problem with this raid however. It puts one branch of government above the other. The House can't force people from the administration to testify before Congress, so how can the executive branch hold such power over the legislative?

This also prevents a possible slide down a dangerous road. Imagine if one party controls the White House and the other controls Congress. If the party in the White House is corrupt enough, then they could drum up reasons on members of Congress to search their offices. With the current President, I wouldn't put it past him to try something like this. Thankfully there is a little more protection there now.

The Bush Supreme Court at work.

The Supreme Court yesterday strictly limited the ability of investors who lost money through corporate fraud to sue other businesses that may have helped facilitate the crime, a decision that could doom stockholder efforts to recover billions of dollars lost in Enron and other high-profile cases.

In a victory for business interests in a case they had identified as their most important of the year, the court ruled 5 to 3 to protect corporate partners such as vendors, consultants and others from liability if stockholders cannot show they relied on deception from such "secondary actors'' in making their investment decisions.

This will be an interesting case to watch

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will review the constitutionality of the so-called Millionaires' Amendment, which allows opponents of some self-funded congressional candidates to raise more money than federal law normally allows.

The court's decision would come in time to affect the 2008 congressional campaigns.

The law is being challenged by Democrat Jack Davis, who lost in 2004 and 2006 to Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.). In the 2006 race, Davis spent more than $2.2 million of his own money, and lost 52 percent to 48 percent.

I know a simple solution to this - public financed campaigns! It's supposed to be a democracy, not an auction.

According to the federal law, not that much - a law upheld by the Supreme Court yesterday:

The nation's home healthcare aides are not entitled to minimum wages or overtime pay under federal law, even if they work for private employers, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The 9-0 decision, which keeps in place a long-standing rule that denies minimum wages and overtime pay to those who provide "companionship services" at home, could trigger a move in Congress to amend the law.

With an estimated 1 million workers assisting the elderly and the disabled in their homes, unions and civil rights groups had urged the justices to scrap the rule; they say it deprives many of the nation's lowest-paid workers of a living wage.

They say a large percentage of these aides are women and minorities who often work all-night shifts. Yet, under federal labor law, they are viewed the same as part-time baby sitters.

So with Medicare/Medicaid getting tighter on paying for nursing homes or assisted living communities, we are expected to turn the care of our loved ones over to people making slave wages?

Yes this law needs to be changed. The companies that employ these workers get government money and that money should be used to insure their workers are treated the same as others in the nation. Also we have the fact that most of these workers are women and minorities, so this is just another blow to Women's rights in this country.

Now here is the most ironic part of this. Think of the people doing these jobs as their sole source of income. They are then having to rely on government services to survive. These come from the same funds that pay their salaries. So instead of helping to alleviate the problem, this law is in fact adding to it.

Everyone needs to call their representative and urge them to pass a law remedying this crime against our citizens. The United States of America should not be treating employees this way.

This is great decision for the entire planet. Think Progress has all the details.

From Today's Washington Post:

The Supreme Court made it harder Tuesday for whistle-blowers to share in the proceeds from fraud lawsuits against government contractors.

The court ruled 6-2 that James Stone, an 81-year-old retired engineer, may not collect a penny for his role in exposing fraud at the now-closed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver.

Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said Stone was not an original source of the information that resulted in Rockwell International, now part of aerospace giant Boeing Co., being ordered to pay the government nearly $4.2 million for fraud connected with environmental cleanup at the Rocky Flats plant.

Rockwell must pay the entire penalty anyway. The only question before the court was whether Stone would get his cut.

At first read this may appear as a bad ruling, but further analysis of it proves otherwise. Sure the people who whistle blow can't get money, but that now means whistle blowers should be taken more seriously. If they are risking their jobs and careers to expose wrong-doing, then we must consider that the facts they are laying out are truthful.

This is just to interesting to pass up:

A daughter of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was arrested Monday night in Wheaton and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and child endangerment, Wheaton Deputy Police Chief Thomas Meloni said.

Ann S. Banaszewski, 45, was stopped about 7:25 p.m. in a 1996 Ford Econoline van near Gamon Road and Longfellow Drive after a citizen reported a possible drunken driver was at the McDonald's restaurant near there, Meloni said.

Three of Banaszewski's "small children" were in the van with her at the time, leading to the child endangerment charge, Meloni said. He would not disclose their ages. Meloni would also not disclose details of her alleged intoxication, but said she submitted to a field sobriety test, though he could not disclose its outcome.

So this is family values - getting drunk and driving around with the kids? I wonder how Scalia feels about this?

Earlier toay the Texas GOP asked Justice Scalia to block the appeals court ruling that Delay had to stay on the ballot. CNN just reported that Scalia has refused to block the ruling. Will he now be branded as one of those "activist judges" by the GOP?

This is really bad for a Senator, but even worse for a lawyer:

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham may have a future as a fiction writer.

He's being accused of fabricating a Senate debate and sending it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which didn't think much of the work. The high court dismissed it.

At issue is an account of an exchange that Sens. Graham, R-S.C., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., wrote last year to be inserted into the Congressional Record.

It details what the two lawmakers purported was part of the Senate's debate over why terror detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should not be tried in civilian U.S. courts.

The actual discussion Graham and Kyl inserted in the Record never took place.

But their comments, written more than a month after the actual debate, became part of the terror case filing that went to the Supreme Court.

Noth Graham and Kyle are lawyers by trade. I won't go into the details of this, but rather direct you over to Firedoglake, where Christy gave an excellent attorney's point of view on this.

This was the big ruling everyone was waiting on and Bush suffered a big blow on it:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the Bush administration did not have the legal authority to go forward with military tribunals for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.

The 5-3 ruling means officials will either have to come up with new procedures to prosecute at least 10 so-called enemy combatants awaiting trial, or release them from U.S. military custody.

The case was a major test of President Bush's authority as commander in chief in a wartime setting. Bush has aggressively asserted the power of the government to capture, detain, and prosecute suspected terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The high court was ruling on the case of Ahmed Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni native captured in Afghanistan in 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks. He is accused of conspiracy, which his lawyers say is not an internationally approved charge.

His lawyers argued that President Bush exceeded his authority by setting up military commissions to try terrorist suspects, whom the administration terms "enemy combatants," rather than prisoners of war. The term means the suspects do not have the rights traditionally afforded prisoners of war, as outlined in the Geneva Conventions.

Three issues were before the high court: whether the planned tribunals are a proper exercise of presidential authority; whether detainees facing prosecution have the right to challenge the procedures of those tribunals and their detentions; and whether the Supreme Court even has the jurisdiction to hear such appeals.

The conservative Supreme Court even believes the President has limited powers (John Roberts didn't vote on it because he had ruled on this case in a lower court. At that time he ruled against the government). So now can we find out if the President has the power to ignore the Constitution because he is "command in chief", or do these "terrorists" get more constitutional style protections than U.S. citizens? This is a massive blow to Bush and does open the door for such questions.

The newly constructed conservative Supreme Court has made a ruling overturning the campaign finance laws of Vermont:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Vermont's limits on contributions and spending in political campaigns are too low and improperly hinder the ability of candidates to raise money and speak to voters.

In a fractured set of opinions, justices said they were not sweeping aside 30 years of election finance precedent but rather finding only that Vermont's law — the strictest in the nation — sets limits that unconstitutionally hamstring candidates.

The majority took issue with Vermont legislators for "constraining speech" by telling candidates and voters how much campaigning was enough.

President Bush's two appointees to the court — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito — sided with the majority in overturning Vermont's law.

This of course makes it easier for the upper-echelons of society to become our leaders. This country as a whole needs serious campaign finance reform and the Supreme Court just snubbed their noses at it. Activist judges? Hell yeah there are. This is an example of it. Of course conservative judges will rule like this considering the only way the party they believe in can get elected is through a powerful money machine.

It is amazing to think that every democracy comparable to ours has some sort of publicly financed election laws. Why can't we get that? Isn't the base of democracy to allow its people from all walks of life a chance to lead? We are quickly become a theocracy as opposed to a democracy.

Big plans: DeLay's next mission is in God's hands. Disgraced congressman has a wholly holy agenda

(via The People's Republic of Seabrook)

Tom DeLay may look as though he's finished because he is quitting Congress, facing a trial on felony political corruption charges in Texas and being targeted by federal prosecutors in the Jack Abramoff scandal. But that would be dead wrong: DeLay recently told one of his pastors that God wanted him to leave Congress in part because He has bigger plans for DeLay. That pastor, the Rev. Rick Scarborough, introduced DeLay to a Christian conference just last week, saying, "This is a man, I believe, God has appointed ... to represent righteousness in government."

I was fortunate enough to have yesterday off, and I spent a good part of it writing about Tom DeLay and cleaning up dog crap in the back yard - two tasks that elicit disturbingly similar feelings of revulsion. Combine that feeling with Rick Scarborough, and I have to struggle to keep my granola down.

Why is it that the last refuge of a scoundrel is to wrap themselves in flag and faith? What is it about Tom DeLay and his ilk that make them feel as if they are justified in tarninshing the teachings of Jesus Christ with their hypocrisy and arrogance? If Tom DeLay and Rick Scarborough are "men of God", I'm the Queen of England...and I don't look good in a tiara. Shouldn't there be a special place in Hell for hypocritical, self-absorbed trolls like this?

So mark those words. DeLay may be leaving Congress, but he will be back with a vengeance, in a new and potentially more powerful role, because he is a ferociously determined man who believes he is on a politico-religious mission from God.

Apparently, DeLay's God is a vindictive, mean-spirited God willing to launder money, skirt the law, and violate common political ethics in order to achieve His desired end. Wow...God really IS a Republican, eh??

DeLay spoke with a passion about his goal to make us all into one "God-centered" nation. "Our entire system is built on the Judeo-Christian ethic, but it fell apart when we started denying God. If you stand up today and acknowledge God," he said, "they will try to destroy you." Five years later, that is also the argument DeLay is deploying to portray himself as the victim of prosecutorial persecution. He is suggesting that his legal salvation is linked to the salvation of the Republican Party, of Christianity itself.

And DeLay's crusade will not be sidetracked by the acts of mortals such as states' attorneys, crooked lobbyists and disgraced former staffers who are poised to testify against him. In DeLay's world he answers only to a higher power, and his personal Armageddon has only just begun. He will artfully squeeze a load of money from the Christian Right as he makes his thunderous argument from multiple pulpits in the weeks and months ahead. The new Tom DeLay will combine aspects of the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and Lee Atwater, the late right-wing political consultant with the legendary killer instinct.

If Tom DeLay is a shining example of Christian love and charity, then Christianity is truly a farce, a narrow, judgemental ideology designed to ensure the primacy of rich, White Republicans scared of anything that threatens their dominance over public life. When ignorance, fear, and self-interest rules the American body politic...well, this is what you get - a collection of knuckle-dragging troglodytes willing to do whatever it takes, no matter how corrupt or self-interested to protect the interest of the rich, the White, and the afraid.

DeLay dates his Christian rebirth to his alcohol-hazed first year in Congress, when he saw a video by James Dobson, the Christian family guru, on the dangers of putting career ahead of family. "I started crying because I had missed my daughter's whole childhood," he said. "It was me, me, me, me. It was golf or my business or politics that came first. It told me what a jerk I really was."

Was? When did this change? It's hardly to believe that this arrogant, self-absorbed, judgemental, intolerant troll was at one point in his life EVEN WORSE. Of course, now that he has accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal savior, it's OK...because Tom DeLay now truly knows that God is on his side.What a load of crap....

In the next 20 years, DeLay came to develop a single-minded vision of how America should be. DeLay's America would acknowledge that the Constitution was inspired by the Bible; it would promote prayer and worship, and would stop gun control, outlaw abortion, limit the rights of gays, curb contraception, end the constitutional separation of church and state, and adopt the Ten Commandments as guiding principles for public schools.

Yes, it seems that DeLay's world, if it were up to him, would be a place where thieves (and Democrats) would be kept in stocks in the village square. Adulterers would be required to wear a scarlet "A".  Unbelievers, heathens, and idolators would be stoned. In short, we would all be required to think and act as DeLay and his merry band of Republican Christian zealots dictated. We would believe in peace through strength and Amerika uber Alles. Worst of all, we would have no problem projecting our military might around the world, wherever and whenever Our Way of Life (and the price of oil) was threatened.

One Sunday in Sugar Land, I knelt alongside DeLay as we prayed at the First Baptist Church, then listened to the fiery preaching of DeLay's friend and minister, whose name was Rambo. I went to Bible study and the Sunday school class DeLay taught. Afterward, I told DeLay I was somewhat troubled by the idea that he essentially wanted to remold the government to meet his fundamentalist Christian worldview. I told him I thought a good many Americans would share my reaction.

Gee, what a shock; Americans troubled by waking up to the reality that they have participated in the creation of a narrow, judgemental, hate-based Republican theocracy? Of course, here in CD-22, most folks have reflexively voted for DeLay since 1984. After all, voting Republican sure is a hell of a lot easier than thinking, eh?

He looked me squarely in the eyes and shook his head sadly at the fate of us nonbelievers. "When faced with the truth, the truth hurts. It is human nature not to face that," he said. "People hate the messenger. That's why they killed Christ."

And now, DeLay says he prayed long and hard before God made clear to him that He no longer wants DeLay to represent Texas's 22nd Congressional District. Instead, DeLay says, his God wants him to be a messenger — on a much broader scale. And we will see DeLay constantly smiling as he delivers his message because in his heart he knows that we hopeless sinners will always hate the messenger.

It seems clear that DeLay has imputed to himself a higher degree of righteousness than seems warranted for someone so corrupt, craven, and thoroughly mean-spirited. Frankly, I hope DeLay moves to Virginia; they'll love his sorry, ignorant, hate-based theology. Virginia is, after all, home to troglodytes like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. They'll no doubt welcome Tom DeLay with open arms...if for no other reason than they know DeLay will raise boatloads of cash for their personal fiefdoms.

To those of you who see fit to lionize DeLay as some sort of saint-in-waiting...what have you been smoking? Or are you really that ignorant of what this man has been up to for the past 24 years?

Nice going, America; you've created this mess. Still glad you voted Republican? Don't you think WE DESERVE BETTER??

Well this is really a shocker and I don't know how to read into it yet

Alito, handling his first case, sided with inmate Michael Taylor, who had
won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening. Chief Justice John
Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported lifting
the stay, but Alito joined the remaining five members in turning down
Missouri's last-minute request to allow a midnight execution.

Complete article can be read

here.

This is very interesting. Will we hear right wing pundits bitching that they
should of voted against him now? Only time will tell. It is only his first
ruling.