Hank Skinner will not be executed today. With about an hour left before Skinner was to be taken to the death chamber, SCOTUS put an immediate halt to the process. Michael Graczyk of the Associated Press reports: The brief order grants him the delay but does not ensure he will get such [DNA] testing. Perry [...]

From tonight’s State of the Union address: “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said. “Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by [...]

By driving a stake through the heart of McCain-Feingold: WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on business efforts to influence federal campaigns. By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that [...]

I’d like to claim that I’m not one to pick nits — but I’d be lying. So here is exhibit 10,483 in the “Brad takes part of a post he agrees with and spins it way out of context.” The base post is about marriage and in support of gay marriage. But I found this [...]

Brad just asked what people are reading today.  President Obama just provided some interesting reading material indeed. Here’s the opening text from an Executive Order dated January 11, 2010: EXECUTIVE ORDER ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COUNCIL OF GOVERNORS By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States [...]

This is as succinct, and as masterful a description of the relationship between the rights of man, and the government of a free state, as I have yet seen. “I cannot, and will not, consent that the majority of any republican State may, in any way, rightfully restrict the humblest citizen of the United States [...]

From Ian Millhiser, who derides “tenthers”, the folks who actually believe the 10th Amendment was designed as a meaningful check on the federal government. More important, there is something fundamentally authoritarian about the tenther constitution. Social Security, Medicare, and health-care reform are all wildly popular, yet the tenther constitution would shackle our democracy and forbid [...]

Two Hundred Twenty Two years ago in Philadelphia, the Constitution Convention in Philadelphia completed it’s work. At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: “Well Doctor, what have we [...]

“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim [...]

Up to now I have purposely avoided this whole disorderly conduct arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. for a number of reasons. First reason being that compared to the other cases I’ve written about here and elsewhere, this is a very minor case of police misconduct. I have yet to read or hear any reports [...]

So says Fox News Channel Legal Analyst, and former Judge, Andrew Napolitano: Civil liberties attorney Harvey Silvergate agrees: Under well-established First Amendment jurisprudence, what Gates said to Crowley–even assuming the worst–is fully constitutionally protected. After all, even “offensive” speech is covered by the First Amendment’s very broad umbrella (…) Today, the law recognizes only four [...]

First a little humor in this Sprint Spoof from Reason.tv Now Dr. Ron Paul’s prescription for reforming healthcare in America

It seems that most of the time the U.S. Supreme Court is divided 5-4 on what should be very basic Constitutional principles (such was the case I wrote about in my most recent post). But once in awhile, SCOTUS does the unthinkable and actually upholds the Constitution. In Safford Unified School District #1 et. al. [...]

Last week in District Attorney’s Office for the Third Judicial District et. al. v. Osborne the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that convicts have no Constitutional right to DNA testing even if such testing would conclusively determine the guilt or innocence of the convict. In this particular case, William Osborne was willing to pay for [...]

The Sheriff whose deputies raided Berwyn Heights, MD mayor Cheye Calvo’s house predictably doesn’t think they did anything wrong. He said a lot of pretty despicable things in that article, but this one really bothers me: “I’m sorry for the loss of their family pets,” Jackson said. “But this is the unfortunate result of the [...]

Read the news story here and reason‘s coverage here. The video below is Lynch’s response: While I’m not happy that Mr. Lynch is doing time for legally dispensing marijuana under California’s compassionate use law, he certainly could have received a much harsher sentence (up to 100 years). U.S. District Judge George Wu should be commended [...]

This article in The Boston Globe about Sonia Sotomayor ought to delight “tough on crime” conservatives and cause great concern for civil libertarians of all stripes. Prosecutors and law enforcement organizations give her high marks for her “aggressiveness” both as a prosecutor and as a judge. One quote from the article stood out and seems [...]

During the 2008 presidential campaign, an organization called Citizens United produced an anti-Hillary documentary called “Hillary: the Movie.” The movie was available on pay-per-view cable channels until the FEC pulled the plug claiming that the broadcast violated campaign finance law. The case, Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, is now being considered by the Supreme [...]

In a move very surprising to this veteran of far too many southern talk radio programs where I was the one condemning torture to a hostile audience, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has just condemned torture. “I don’t agree with the belief that we should use any means necessary to extract [...]