Showing posts with label Supreme Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Supreme Court. Show all posts
Monday, October 13, 2014
Monday, September 29, 2014
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Citizens United 2.0: It Gets Worse
That’s where the new case comes in. Current federal law
allows individual donors to give up to two thousand six hundred dollars
to any one candidate during a single election. In addition, they can
give only an aggregate hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars to
candidates, political action committees, and parties over a two-year
period. Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama Republican, wants to give more
money to the candidates he supports, so he has sued to invalidate the
rules limiting the over-all amounts he can give. (Indeed, the
patriotically minded McCutcheon wanted to give “$1,776” to enough
candidates to exceed the current limits on direct contributions.) The Supreme Court will hear his case in the fall, and he has a good chance of winning.
To see why McCutcheon may win, one must examine the strange reasoning
that governs the Supreme Court’s decisions on campaign finance. In his
brief to the Justices, McCutcheon makes an argument that is breathtaking
for its candor. He says that when Congress first upheld limits on
contributions, in the 1976 case of Buckley v. Valeo,
the limits on aggregate giving served a useful purpose. Without the
ceiling, the Court explained, a person could legally “contribute massive
amounts of money to a particular candidate through the use of
unearmarked contributions to political committees likely to contribute
to that candidate, or [make] huge contributions to the candidate’s
political party.”
But that, McCutcheon points out, was before the days of Citizens
United. Now, he implies, Citizens United has undermined so many of the
old rules that they are kind of irrelevant at this point. Indeed, the
lower-court judge who considered the McCutcheon case upheld the existing
rules but raised the “possibility that Citizens United undermined the
entire contribution limits scheme.”
Monday, October 7, 2013
Supreme Court Thwarts Ken Cuccinelli
This morning, the Supreme Court has sent Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli packing. The justices have refused to hear his appeal of a Fourth Circuit Court ruling
which held Virginia’s arcane sodomy law is unconstitutional. While most
court watchers are not surprised by the decision, it must come as a
bitter disappointment to Cuccinelli who has been scheming for more than a
decade to get the issue of sodomy back in front of the Supreme Court.
Cuccinelli wanted this! He is running for governor at the moment, and
political wisdom dictates that an attorney general should step down
from his office so he can campaign full-time without the baggage of the
state’s controversial litigation, but Cuccinelli stayed on. He was so
close to reopening Lawrence V Texas, the case that said laws
prohibiting sodomy were unconstitutional, that he could taste it.
Campaign or not, he didn’t trust anyone else to take over as the
battlefield commander in the Holy War for Missionary Position Only in America!
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Friday, July 5, 2013
Surveillance Program Will Be Challenged in Court
From Think Progress:
Amie Stepanovich, Director of the Domestic Surveillance Project at Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), announced that her organization is submitting a petition asking the Supreme Court to vacate Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court (FISC) ruling that authorized the National Security Agency’s (NSA) to siphon up metadata on all domestic phone calls on Monday.
The announcement was made Thursday at a Restore the Fourth rally in Washington, DC — one of many public events around the country organized to protest the various surveillance programs revealed in recent NSA leaks. In an exclusive comment to ThinkProgress after the announcement, Stepanovich said “EPIC truly believes that this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court exceeded it’s authority, is not acting in accordance with the law and needs to be overturned — and cannot be allowed to continue conducting this surveillance. ”Well, this was only a matter of time.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
SCOTUS Marriage Rulings Are In Line With Americans
USA Today performed a poll that, among other things, states that the Supreme Court's rulings on California's Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) are largely in line with the sentiments of America. Here are the highlights:- 55% of Americans support the legal recognition of marriage equality (an all-time high) compared to 40% against.
- Opposition to marriage equality in the South has fallen below 50%.
- The only demographic groups who don't have majority support are Republicans (68% opposed) and seniors (51% opposed).
- 48% agree with the court's ruling on DoMA compared to 43% who disagree.
The poll also addressed other Supreme Court Rulings which you can see HERE.
States Are Already Moving to Restrict Voting Rights
From the Los Angeles Times: ...With Republicans adding the governor's mansion last fall to their control, on top of the North Carolina Legislature, [Allison] Riggs [a voting rights lawyer] and other civil rights activists have counted on protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to prevent GOP geographical empire-building through redistricting. Nine states and parts of six others, including 40 of North Carolina's 100 counties, were covered by a provision of the legislation that required federal approval of any changes in election laws.
But a U.S. Supreme Court decision Tuesday gutted the law, striking down the so-called pre-clearance provisions, and Republican leaders here already are revving up to push through voting procedure changes.
The GOP chairman of the state Senate rules committee, Sen. Tom Apodaca, said he would move quickly to pass a voter ID law that Republicans say would bolster the integrity of the balloting process. GOP leaders also began engineering an end to the state's early voting, Sunday voting and same-day registration provisions, all popular with black voters. Civil rights groups say the moves are designed to restrict poll access by blacks, who vote reliably Democratic.
The moves are only the first indication that the ruling will have "a demonstrably negative impact on voters of color," said Riggs, staff attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. The group already has a 2-year-old lawsuit pending that alleges racial discrimination in the 1st District and three dozen other North Carolina districts redrawn by Republicans...
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Why Do Some People Hate Love?
Last night I was watching a YouTube video of two men in New York City: Billy and Pat. They were celebrating their fourth year of being a couple. It just so happened that their anniversary fell on the same day that the Supreme Court struck down the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act." This ruling was extra special for them as they are engaged to be married this December. As you can imagine, they were quite elated (champagne was involved). As I was watching the video I definitely felt the joy they expressed...as evidenced by the stupid grin that was plastered on my face. I was happy for them.
Then, a rather sad thought struck me. I thought that even as this couple is deliriously happy, as are many others across the nation because of the Supreme Court's rulings in the two marriage equality cases, there are other people who are lamenting this spread of freedom. Instead of celebrating and rejoicing in the joy of others, they predict the fall of western civilization. No, I am not being hyperbolic, some of them are literally saying that marriage equality will cause society's collapse...because people of the same gender sometimes love each other and they are not being ostracized enough by the law.
I look at this couple and not only am I happy for them, but I see the kind of relationship that I want in the future (oh who am I kidding, I want it now). It is a beautiful thing. I find it difficult to fathom what goes through the mind of someone who sees two people who are genuinely in love and all they see is something bad, ugly, icky, and evil. What does it say about someone when they actively seek to discriminate against their fellow man? What does it say about someone who so adamantly and unapologetically hates love like this?
While there is a lot of good in this world, there is also a lot of bad and it would be easy to let that get you down. If you find someone that makes the bad parts bearable and makes the good parts even better, you hold on to them and never let go no matter what the haters say. Congrats to all the Billies and Pats of America. Hopefully one day soon I will find Mr. Right and we can get hitched too (maybe even here in Virginia). Stay happy!
You can follow Billy and Pat on their journey to their December nuptials YouTube and Twitter:
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