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Latest Articles: U.S. Constitution
When Privacy Prevails: ACLU Lawyer Dishes on SCOTUS' Carpenter Decision
Post Date: 2018-06-29 14:45:54 by Gatlin
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Nathan Wessler, who argued 'Carpenter' before the SCOTUS, said the decision made way for courts to address protections for "highly sensitive" data held by third-party companies. The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in Carpenter v. United States marks a significant gain for privacy advocates as well as a monumental shift in how both the Fourth Amendment and the “third-party” doctrine are interpreted. Among those who made the decision possible is Nathan Wessler, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who argued on behalf of Timothy Carpenter before the court. Legaltech News recently caught up with Wessler to get his thoughts on the case’s significance, ...
Contra Ben Shapiro on Judge Kavanaugh
Post Date: 2018-06-29 13:43:42 by nolu chan
12 Comments
Contra Ben Shapiro on Judge Kavanaugh By Ed Whelan June 28, 2018 4:53 PM I have no interest in favoring one outstanding Supreme Court candidate over another, so I don’t intend to say much about any of the candidates before a nominee is selected. But I also don’t like to see unfair or mistaken charges made, so I might occasionally weigh in. Such as now. The estimable Ben Shapiro offers what is super-ambitiously titled “The Run-Down: Here’s What You Need To Know About Trump’s Top 5 Possible Nominees.” To my great surprise, he concludes that Judge Brett Kavanaugh “has the most red flags.” As it turns out, though—perhaps because he has taken on ...
Republicans see ticket to midterm election success in Kennedy's retirement
Post Date: 2018-06-28 22:13:39 by Tooconservative
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Republicans searching for that elusive issue to erase the Democrats’ critical edge in voter enthusiasm heading into the midterm elections believe they’ve found their golden ticket in the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Senior Republicans are predicting that the opportunity to replace Kennedy, a swing vote on the narrowly divided high court, with a young conservative who could tilt the court to the right and serve for decades, will galvanize the conservative base and motivate rank-and-file GOP voters to put any uneasiness with President Trump aside and stick with the party in November. “This is every Democrat candidate’s worst nightmare, as it ...
Levin: Here’s what’s REALLY at stake with the next SCOTUS justice
Post Date: 2018-06-28 12:17:14 by Tooconservative
4 Comments
On his radio show Wednesday evening, LevinTV host Mark Levin cut through the legacy media bluster and broke down the actual terms of the real debate over America’s next Supreme Court justice. The segment followed news of the long-anticipated announcement of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement earlier in the day. Levin went on to explain the importance of properly understanding the ideologies at play when discussing who will take Kennedy’s place on the bench. “This is a battle between constitutionalists and statists,” Levin said. What will happen, as always, Levin explained, is that Democratic politicians will demand that the prospective justice agree with ...
Why Janus cuts so deep: Workers must opt-in to pay union fees
Post Date: 2018-06-28 12:11:41 by Tooconservative
2 Comments
Amid the hubbub of Justice Anthony Kennedy's announcement Wednesday, you might have missed just how bitter and sad the cries of union leaders became over the Janus v. AFSCME decision. And one important aspect of the ruling may have been neglected. Janus, of course, barred public sector unions from collecting money from nonconsenting government workers who did not want to union members. But the real gut-punch comes in the last passage of the opinion, pertaining to its implementation. Justice Samuel Alito, in handing down this ruling, could have just quit after establishing that government violates workers' First Amendment rights when it forces them to contribute financially to a ...
The Run-Down: Here's What You Need To Know About Trump's Top 5 Possible Nominees
Post Date: 2018-06-28 08:35:40 by Tooconservative
14 Comments
According to Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard, the White House has narrowed down its list of potential Supreme Court nominees to a top five: Brett Kavanaugh, 53, of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; Amul Thapar, 49, of the 6th Circuit; Amy Barrett, 46, of the 7th Circuit; Thomas Hardiman, 52, of the 3rd Circuit; and Raymond Kethledge, 51, of the 6th Circuit. Here’s what we know about them. Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh is a former clerk for Justice Kennedy. He was elevated to the federal bench in 2006, after a three-year delay. His nomination was delayed thanks to Democratic upset over the fact that Kavanaugh worked for Kenneth Starr in the office of the Solicitor General, and had the ...
American Empire Demands a Caesar
Post Date: 2018-06-27 19:38:40 by Deckard
35 Comments
Trump is hardly our first emperor. The warfare state has been trampling the Constitution for a long time.The United States has adorned its president with extravagance that makes Roman emperors appear frugal by comparison. And such visible signs of the deification of our president are complemented by legal doctrines that echo Richard Nixon’s once discredited claim to David Frost: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” These extra-constitutional developments reflect the transformation of the United States from a republic, whose glory was liberty and whose rule of law was king, to an empire, whose glory is global dominion and whose president is law. The ...
Anthony Kennedy retiring [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2018-06-27 14:15:14 by Tooconservative
55 Comments
Per WaPo. Put the Dems on suicide watch right now.
SCOTUS ruling on Janus is about to change the American political landscape [involuntary union dues] [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2018-06-27 11:45:13 by Tooconservative
44 Comments
Justice Alito wrote the decision and it followed along with the expectations of those who watched the case play out before the court. Also as expected, this was a 5-4 decision, split along partisan lines. At the heart of Janus was the question of whether or not unions can forcibly extract dues from workers’ paychecks without the worker proactively volunteering to contribute. In parallel to that, the court had to determine whether or not those extracted fees, being put toward lobbying efforts, constituted involuntary political speech on the part of the worker. The ruling answers both questions definitively. You can read the full decision here but I’ve extracted a couple of the ...
Citizenship Checkpoints Start to Spread Across The Constitution-Free Zone
Post Date: 2018-06-24 10:43:49 by Deckard
1 Comments
As the immigration debate continues to rage in America, the application of the Constitution-Free Zone that extends 100 miles inland around the borders of the U.S. is spreading its application into what is blatantly being referred to as “citizenship checkpoints.” This type of “fishing expedition” flies directly in the face of the 4th Amendment which guarantees that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the ...
Lawsuit Argues Honking Your Car Horn Is Protected By The First Amendment
Post Date: 2018-06-24 10:21:38 by Deckard
11 Comments
from the #LEGALIZEIT dept The First Amendment covers a whole lot of area. Since it covers "expression," it doesn't necessarily have to be anything commonly thought of as "speech." It doesn't have to be printed. It doesn't have to be said. Lighting a flag on fire requires no statement of intent. The act itself is expressive enough. Passively gathering information (like recordings or public records) is protected by the First Amendment. Taking photos is a protected act, even if the photos are never used to express anything more than a memory of an event or place. It has been argued nudity or partially-exposed bodies are expressions deserving of protection by ...
Huge Win for Everyone With a Cellphone (and for the Fourth Amendment) at the Supreme Court
Post Date: 2018-06-23 09:11:00 by Deckard
18 Comments
SCOTUS rejects warrantless cellphone location tracking in Carpenter v. United States.In a blockbuster 5-4 decision issued today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that warrantless government tracking of cellphone users via their cellphone location records violates the Fourth Amendment. "A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere," declared the majority opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts. "We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier's database of physical location information." The case is Carpenter v. United States. It arose after the after FBI obtained, without a search warrant, the ...
Supreme Court Upholds Ohio's Ballot Integrity Law
Post Date: 2018-06-11 11:00:35 by Tooconservative
9 Comments
In 2015, a guy named Larry Harmon showed up to vote on a local initiative. Harmon’s problem was the last time he cast a vote was in 2008 and he was sort of sloppy about even reading his mail. He wasn’t on the voter roll, and, as far as I can make out, was not allowed to vote. (A brief side trip here. I’m chief judge in a voting precinct. I have been for six years. In my state I would have issued Harmon a provisional ballot. He would have cast it. The Board of Elections would have examined his ballot the week after the election. They would determine that he was eligible to vote and added his ballot to the total and put him back on the voter rolls for next election. A 100% ...
Oh my: DOJ will no longer defend parts of ObamaCare in court
Post Date: 2018-06-08 17:19:51 by Tooconservative
4 Comments
Man, what a day for bad Obama precedents. First the DOJ follows O’s lead by seizing records from a reporter to find a leaker, then it announces it’ll selectively refuse to defend disfavored federal statutes in court, just like the last administration did with DOMA. Imagine how furious the left would be at these Justice Department affronts to freedom of the press and the rule of the law if they hadn’t pioneered them. Thanks, Obama! It feels strange that the executive branch has to try to tank ObamaCare in court to get it undone when Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House, but we’ve already been there, done that on legislative solutions. Time ...
Giuliani is throwing gas on fire: Napolitano
Post Date: 2018-06-04 21:59:18 by buckeroo
0 Comments
... uh oh.
The Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision Leaves Almost All the Big Questions Unresolved
Post Date: 2018-06-04 13:54:36 by tpaine
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The Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision Leaves Almost All the Big Questions Unresolved Eugene Volokh June 4, 2018 10:49 am Do bakers have a First Amendment right to refuse to bake cakes for same-sex weddings, even if there's a state law banning sexual orientation discrimination by such businesses? Do they have a First Amendment right to refuse to bake such cakes that contain text or symbolism (e.g., rainbow striping) that the bakers disapprove of? How about wedding photographers or videographers, who create products that (unlike most cakes) are traditionally seen as speech? How about calligraphers or graphic designers, who have an objection to personally writing or typing certain ...
Trump Says He Has the Absolute Right to Pardon Himself
Post Date: 2018-06-04 11:02:38 by Deckard
13 Comments
President Trump tweeted Monday morning that he has the right to pardon himself, but that he has no reason to do so, because he’s completely innocent. His bold, frightening assertion comes after a weekend in which the Trump administration’s legal argument — that the president can basically do whatever he wants with no repercussions — came into sharper focus. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Trump lawyers had sent Special Counsel Robert Mueller a letter in January arguing that their client should not be forced to sit for questioning because, as the president, he could not by definition have obstructed justice. Then, on Sunday, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani ...
Only one more state needs to pass the Equal Rights Amendment to finally get it ratified
Post Date: 2018-06-01 00:51:31 by nolu chan
14 Comments
Only one more state needs to pass the Equal Rights Amendment to finally get it ratified. By AJ Willingham, CNN Updated 9:41 PM ET, Thu May 31, 2018 (CNN)This week Illinois lawmakers approved the Equal Rights Amendment, a long-proposed addition to the United States Constitution that would ensure equal rights to all Americans regardless of sex. You would think that 230 years after ratifying its Constitution, the US would have some sort of federal protection like this enshrined in its supreme law. But the ERA, which states that "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex," has been languishing in ...
nnocent Man Catches Cops Breaking Into His Car, Searching it With NO Warrant
Post Date: 2018-05-30 07:17:43 by Deckard
9 Comments
Prince George’s County, MD — An infuriating video was uploaded to Facebook this week showing police officers laying waste to the rights of an innocent man. When the innocent man, Troy Ray, confronted these officers, they proceeded to tell him they had the right to search his car with no warrant and no probable cause. As the video begins, Ray is walking up on the scene with several police officers parked in the road. Ray finds that his door to his car is wide open and police have been rummaging through his things.“Why did y’all go in my car officer?” asks Ray. “To check and see if there was any contraband in there,” replied the officer as if what he had ...
Supreme Court Rules 8-1 Against Warrantless Police Search in Important Fourth Amendment Case
Post Date: 2018-05-30 06:47:10 by Deckard
1 Comments
SCOTUS rejects warrantless search of vehicle parked in the "curtilage" of private home.Fourth Amendment advocates scored a victory today when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against a warrantless police search that involved an officer entering private property for the purpose of examining a motorcycle stored under a tarp in the driveway near a home. "In physically intruding on the curtilage of [Ryan Austin] Collins' home to search the motorcycle," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority in Collins v. Virginia, the officer "not only invaded Collins' Fourth Amendment interest in the item searched, i.e., the motorcycle, but also invaded Collins' ...
This Man Was Released From Prison and Rebuilt His Life; Two Years Later He Got Sent Back Because of an 'Error'
Post Date: 2018-05-30 06:44:04 by Deckard
0 Comments
What do Kim Kardashian, Joy Reid, and The Federalist have in common? They're all aghast at the case of Matthew Charles, a Tennessee man who was recently sent back to federal prison after two years of freedom when an appeals court ruled he had been released in error. Now criminal justice reformers and thousands of others are calling on President Donald Trump to commute Charles' sentence. Charles was released early from federal prison in 2016, having served 21 years of a 35-year sentence for selling crack to a police informant. Federal prosecutors then appealed, arguing that, because Charles had been originally been classified as a "career offender," he was ineligible for ...
Ron Paul: Republicans, Democrats Teaming Up for Federal Gun Confiscation Bill
Post Date: 2018-05-24 10:09:08 by Deckard
27 Comments
In an email Tuesday night, former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul released an ominous statement claiming that a source they have in the Senate revealed Democrats are teaming up with Republicans to push through a massive gun control bill. According to their source, as Paul explained, “Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are teaming up with Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to ram through one of the worst nationwide gun confiscation schemes ever devised.”The gun confiscation bill, according to Paul, is designed to disarm Americans without any due process. The senators are using the recent tragic shooting in Texas as the impetus behind the law—in ...
The appointment of Robert Mueller violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution... ·
Post Date: 2018-05-22 10:12:49 by tpaine
37 Comments
The appointment of Robert Mueller violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution... MARK LEVIN·MONDAY, MAY 21, 2018 The appointment of Robert Mueller violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. Mueller is not an inferior appointee, but a principal appointee as understood under our constitution. His powers are more akin to an United States attorney, not an assistant United States attorney. Moreover, his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, treats him as a principal officer -- that is, Mueller is mostly free to conduct his investigation with few limits or restraints. The parameters of his appointment were extraordinarily broad in the first instance, and ...
How Trump Can Dismantle Obamacare Without Congress
Post Date: 2018-05-21 09:27:08 by Tooconservative
4 Comments
After more than eight years of promising to end Obamacare, Republicans in Congress—despite having control of both the House and Senate—have failed to stop this disastrous health care law. But thanks to an important provision Republicans included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act when they passed the law in December 2017, the Trump administration may soon have an opportunity to end Obamacare without Congress, which might force Republican congressmen to finally get their act together and pass health care legislation that would empower states and local governments and free health care markets from costly federal government mandates. As I have previously noted in several articles on ...
New Hate Crime Bill Protecting Cops Passes House Despite Clear 10th Amendment Violation
Post Date: 2018-05-18 06:52:02 by Deckard
3 Comments
Reason – by Elizabeth Nolan Brown “Protect and Serve Act” passes House. File under bipartisan-is-just-another-word-for-both-sides-licking-the-same-boot: majorities of both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have voted in favor of new hate crime legislation that sets up cops as a protected class. Overall, just 35 House members voted against the bill (H.R. 5698), which isn’t far from making it a federal crime to resist arrest. Under the so-called “Protect and Serve Act,” anyone who injures or attempts to injure a police officer will be guilty of a federal offense—no matter how small the injury and no matter if ...
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