In a case decided Monday, the Supreme Court ruled, 7-2, that some citizens (mostly women and children) don’t have a right to expect the police to enforce state laws.
In Castle Rock v. Gonzales, Justices Scalia, (writing for the Court), Rehnquist, O’Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, and Breyer ruled that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police enforcement of the restraining order against her husband. Gonzales alleged that the Castle Rock police department did nothing to enforce that order, depsite her repeated calls to the police to inform them that her estranged husband had abducted their three daughters, in violation of the order. Later that day, her husband showed up at the police station with the dead bodies of the three girls in his car, initiated a shootout with the police, and was killed.
In the opinion, Scalia wrote that (quoting from a Washington Post article):
But “Colorado law has not created a personal entitlement to enforcement of restraining orders,” he said. Indeed, “it does not appear that state law truly made such enforcement mandatory” but rather gave police a considerable level of discretion in such matters.
Continue reading Discretionary Law Enforcement
Cross -posted from a TPMCafe Misc. Politics Table discussion post
The Supreme Court ruled today in favor of wealthy commercial interests, and against working class citizens. That’s not the upside-down part. What seems to be upside-down is who voted for which side: In the "wealthy commercial interests" corner? The "liberals" – Souter, Stevens, Beyer, Bader-Ginsburg, joined by one "centrist" – Kennedy. Who voted for the poor working class schlubs who are losing their homes? The "conservatives" – Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas, joined by the other "centrist," O’Connor, who opined in what an AP report (read in the New York Times) called "a stinging dissent" that:
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” O’Connor wrote. ”The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
She (along with Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas, who signed on to the dissent) appears to think this is a bad thing.
What?
Continue reading Has The World Turned Upside Down?
The primary “competition” in the Senate to the Intelligence Committee’s bill reauthorizing (and expanding) the sunsetting provisions of the PATRIOT Act (see below) is the “Security and Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act.” The ACLU has an excellent description and analysis of this bill on their site here, although it still references the bill numbers for the old (2003) version. The new bill numbers are S. 737 and H.R.2715.
Continue reading SAFE Act
Inspired by Kevin Drum’s question “PRESS SOFT ON CLINTON?….IN WHICH UNIVERSE? which was, in turn inspired by this column from Howard Kurtz on the failings of the national press corps: he suggested that when liberals complain that the press has been less than stellar in holding Bush to account, they should remember that conservatives used to complain that the press was soft on Clinton too – thereby setting up one of those “false equivalence” apologias that the press seems to be so fond of these days.
Continue reading The ‘You’re Just Whining” Defense
Good question. It’s not like I actually expect anyone to even find this blog (although I occasionally mention it on other blogs), let alone actually read most of the entries here. I don’t even have commenting enabled for most of the entries, since the only comments I’ve ever gotten are related to free online gambling or disreputable pharmacuticals.
Originally, my intent was to simply get back into the habit of writing something every day. But my momentum on that was broken when my computer broke down, and I haven’t gotten it back yet (Spring and yardwork played a (more positive) role too). Lately, most of my entries are simply a way to keep track of my thoughts and information I’ve discovered in the course of responding to posts or comments on other blogs. Given that, I suppose it’s time for me to figure out how to use the “track back” function so that anyone who *does* stumble on this site can enjoy the discussion that prompted an entry.
Continue reading Why Do I Blog?
Everybody talks about how crappy the economy is, how much of a danger our twin deficits are, how this can’t go on much longer… but, the stock market hasn’t crashed… yet. Perhaps the answer lies in these graphs, copied from the book Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips (who obtained the information from separately published charts in Barron’s national financial weekly) with corresponding time frames outlined in red:
Continue reading What’s up with the stock market?
