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What legislation has tried to achieve, the courts have accomplished… The current law was deemed to be in violation of the 6th Amendment role of a jury….
The sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to recommend a death penalty. Florida lost a similar case.
All pending capital murder trials and executions for the 14 men on death row are currently on hold….
A fellow blog (DelawarePolitics.Net) put up a piece decrying why no outrage developed over Takei’s remarks, yet Duck Dynasty and Chick-Fil-A each got pummeled for their remarks.
I thought it a good question.
It boils down to what was said by Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court…
“Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them.”
What?
Did a black man just say that?
One loses their dignity just being locked up in jail for one night.. Otherwise our jails would be full every night because no one would care. Plus we see Guantanamo photos. We see propaganda showing prisoners of ISIS. Being locked up even briefly is very damaging to ones dignity. So how is it that one can not lose their dignity or humanity over being locked up for their whole life?
Really, did a black man just say that?
To this date from Clarence Thomas there has been no clarification over this remark. It stands naked in all its glory just as you read it.
But one has to wonder…. seriously… What non-human sits on our supreme court? His statement makes as much sense as if someone said the sun never gave off radiation.
To this Takei replied:
“Justice Thomas was a clown in black face and a disgrace to America who does not belong on the Court.”
So… is there any question that Thomas is a clown? After that remark by him, there isn’t… Thomas is a clown just like Duck Dynasty was a clown (and still is (has he shaved yet?)) … Chick Fil A owner wasn’t a clown as his actions later proved. He was simply misinformed prior to his speaking from the heart… Upon being correctly informed he promptly changed his entire attitude to the question in hand…..
So Takei got the clown part right….
Is Clarence Thomas’s face black… In all the photos I’ve seen it is… He is rather dark even by most African standards
So the remark comes across as true by most people’s standards… We have a clown… with a black face … (most clowns have faces painted white)…
Therefore: there should be no outrage against Takei (there isn’t) because everything he said was true, quite unlike what was uttered by Chick Fil A’s CEO and Duck Dynasty’s errant head of household….
Case dismissed.
Actually it was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights act that brought this home… The Civil Rights Act among many other things enforced the role a Federal Government should have over the national character. Prior, if the South behaved in one way, that was acceptable. If the North behaved in another, that was acceptable…
The Civil Rights Act stated that some behaviors are indeed deemed not acceptable. It dealt with opposing local laws, opposing local enforcements of segregation, and opposing individual business practices perpetuated by the wishes of small handfuls of individual business owners who like Hobby Lobbyists, thought they could do what they liked….
The Civil Rights Act in no uncertain terms, said: No! We are a nation of principles embodied in our Constitution as well as our Declaration of Independence, and you cannot violate those principles in the name of “your” personal freedom….
Hobby Lobby sort of changes all that… The big fear is that it just opened a door so that corporations can freely do whatever they feel is best, and that any legislation voted and signed, now has no real impact upon them because they are after all: … corporations…. You have all read the slippery slope theories and so I won’t redo them. But slippery slopes have a tendency to sometimes be idle warnings…. A lot of people walk on slippery slopes; very few fall off… In part that may be due to warnings from others that they are on slippery slopes and to be be careful… Just like a road sign of a car with skid marks makes one say, “oh yeah, that’s right, it’s raining, I’d better take this curve slower.” and possibly affect the outcome of that turn….
But slippery slope or not, the Hobby Lobby decision does do this: it says that what a government says you have to do, you don’t have to do, provided you can find a reason that is valid for you not doing so…
And that is rather Libertarian.
It makes one sigh that history is a lost art. Because there were times in our history when Libertarianism indeed was the predominant philosophy…. So why was there never a Libertarian Party? After all, one would think that a dominant philosophy would have a Libertarian Party, correct?
How soon we forget….. The reason there was no libertarian party formed to compete against other parties is because during this time of Libertarianism, there was no structure of Government requiring organized parties…. Of course I am referring to the times under the Articles of Confederation…. When the idealism of throwing off the king of England, made the predominant meme that one of “not taking on a new authority to replace the role of the other”….
The reason we don’t have a Libertarian run government today, is because the reality turned out to be that it could not work. It’s own beliefs worked against its own existence… How can you have an effective government telling you what to do when your government was founded on its not being able to tell you what to do?….
So, America’s top citizens at that time scrapped the Confederation, established a Constitution, and today, we are still here…. Debating Libertarianism rampant in today’s court….
Just looking over the final stats, I did see that the percentage of cases in which this Supreme Court decided things 5-4 were only 13%. Yet, its 9-0 decisions marked 65% of this year’s final tally. So it is with a grain of salt that we should dismiss the entire court… In doing so we fail to see the wisdom behind having the third branch of government… It allows for the last look.
This year the average age of the Supreme Court is 68…. it’s average composite would have been born in 1946… would have gone through grade school in the 50’s while segregation was perfectly legal, would have been a high school senior the year Kennedy was shot, college would have structured by the military-industrial complex, being too soon they would have missed out on the protests of ’68 onward, would think Jersey Boys were the ultimate musical group ever, would never try drugs, would have been disappointed in the 70’s as that decade’s media ridiculed all the structure with which they grew up and made them iconoclasts inside their own world, would always fondly remember Mom at home and Dad always working to the bone, would be in their late 30’s when Reagan came into in office, and see in his grandfather qualities the fondness of the times they grew up, would be 45 when the Soviet Union imploded, 57 when we invaded Iraq, 62 when the Global Depression hit, and now stand at the cusp of 68…
Justice Kennedy. The swing. Appointed by a someone today dead 10 years, 27 days, elected 34 years ago this November…. Thirty four years… Ironically half a lifetime of a 68 year old. In some cultures, a grandparent. Who ironically, when that president was sworn in, the number one single was “Imagine”…..
Today, people under 20 years of age make up over a quarter of the U.S. population (27.3%), and people age 65 and over make up one-eighth (12.8%)…The national median age is 36.8 years…
So to say the Supreme Court is representative of all of America is bolderdash… Nothing could be further from the truth… But perhaps that was exactly the point in how the Supreme Court came to have as much power as it does, now checking the other two branches?
Originally the Supreme Court was an appendage organ of the Constitution. It’s power was sharpened only 30 years after the Constitution was founded when changes were being made by Congress and the Executive Branch, that woke up the Supreme Court and stirred it into saying,… “Hey, no! That is not what the Constitution meant. We were there! We know…” It was kind of hard to refute that argument back then… If you walked and talked with Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, you probably had a better grasp on the Constitution than some thirty year punk still green behind their ears….
It is a global common tendency of youth to dismiss the wisdom of their elders… “You don’t know because you don’t live in our world now”, is a very common expression in most households of teenagers no matter what upbringing those old children have had. I fondly remember my frustration with my own parent’s conservatism, thinking they were incapable of thinking anything different what they had been told to think. My children made me realize otherwise. In fact, once I was seasoned I was surprised to learn that my parents thought they were the rebels dismissing the conservative attitudes their parents had bestowed, and were proud they were the cutting edge of liberal child-raising in their day… Furthermore, in candid discussions with my grandparents, I was quite surprise to hear how they threw out the patterns of THEIR parents and raised their children using the cutting liberalism of child raising in THEIR day… Bottom line, my great grandparents must have been REALLY conservative… And now, according to my children… I’m just like they were….
No one would let a child run a family. No one should let a 30 year old run a business. No one should have a 40 year old run a nation… But we do. Rarely does it work….
Point is: the Supreme Court will always play it’s role… That role is to look at fundamental changes and decide how they stack up to the Constitution… As a periphery example of what could happen without this type of check, just review what happened to our own economy since the Bush tax cuts went into effect. With a new crowd taking over our economy since 2000, dismissing the old tried and true policies, we have seen how destructive new untested fads can be… Imagine if an economic court of New Dealers had been present to say “NO, this is the 1920’s all over?” Our national debt could be zero now. The same is true in government. Were Congress to become completely bought out, and sell our votes for arbitration, and there were no check? The end of the world as we know it.
Will old geezers always be right? No.
But if they are wrong, natural forces congeal and work harder to overturn the well-intentioned but error-filled decisions. Slavery took a war. Segregation took television beatings of a proud race to show us that intimidation would not work; beatings wouldn’t stop “being right” from moving forward.
But if the geezers are right, it stops bad right then and there….
Not to absolve the Supreme Court but their primary function isn’t to distinguish between “right” or “wrong”. Their job specifically, is to see how our system of laws stacks up to our Constitution… by looking at one challenged law at a time. Sometimes when they do, it comes up right…. and sometimes when they do, it doesn’t….
If you think the Court was wrong, and if you think it is out of touch, YOU HAVE AN OBLIGATION to vote Democratic in 2014, and to express to all others, both Republican and Democrat the importance of THEIR voting democratic as well in 2014 to send this signal, and we will see, just how wrong this court is…. If you can’t get out the vote… then gee, maybe the court was right after all.
Which… as the framers of the Constitution intended, in the end, puts us, the American people…. firmly in charge of our government….
Today, March 25th, the Supreme Court hears the Hobby Lobby case.
The question before the court is this:
If a law violates one’s religion, does one have to follow it? We have by fortuity and circumstance, brought ourselves so low to now ask of our court, to decide which of the two shall have predominance… Law or Religion.
If law wins, than religions must conform to the law; if religion wins, then to circumvent any law, one simply has to state it is against one’s religion.
There are good reasons for both sides, depending upon which predominates in your mind. If you think religion is above the government, then obviously you will think that as an individual, your government shall not make you do something your religion tells you is wrong…. Basically the law is compelling you to sin.
We’ve seen it before. Burkas: your religions dictates you wear them, and the law says you can’t for safety reasons… Withholding medical care for a child, your religion tells you to put faith into divine intervention, and when that turns out badly, the state sends you away for murder. Vaccinations. your religion tells you no, but the government says yes…..
In all those cases religion lost; here is why.
There were other people affected. Religion is a deep personal internal experience. and the law generally upholds that one has the right to adhere to doctrines if one wishes…. AS LONG AS THEY DO NOT HARM SOMEONE ELSE. The canon of law is very clear, that hurting other people, cannot be excused on the account of ones religions… The Burka ban is to protect from human bombs. The courts have said that if safety in a crowd is an issue for many other people, then the law can be changed to violate the harm-giver’s religion. The potential for harm controls the dynamics of the case.
Likewise the dead child not receiving medical care can be a very moving religious experience, but the child died. He obviously was harmed ant therefore the law trumps religion. The potential for harm controls the dynamics of the case.
Again the same is true over withholding vaccinations. Not being vaccinated creates a possible host-carrier for the disease sometime in the future… It is not just the subject at risk for failing to become vaccinated. Everyone else is susceptible to that carried organism. The potential for harm to many controls the dynamics of the case.
So we turn to birth control. One of which is abortion. Who could possibly be harmed over not insuring contraception? Is it really as cut and dried as Rush Limbaugh speaks, when he says it is all about him paying for Sandra Fluke to have sex? He’s paying and it isn’t even with him? Tant pis.
Prophylactics. Who gets harmed? That one is easy. Every person who picks up HIV for one. For two, gonorrhea and syphilis. For three, someone getting the herpes virus. Harm is endemic. And like vaccinations, harm can be unsuspectingly spread to others. Lack of free contraception could cause multiple spouses irreparable harm through no fault or wrongdoing of their own. Everyone has the right to intercourse, just as everyone has a right to their own Roth-IRA. But not everyone has an Roth-IRA now, do they? Many can’t afford it and so do without. Same with contraception. Therefore not funding free prophylactics causes irreparable harm to innocent people….
Chemicals, birth control pills and RU-486. Who gets harmed if these are unavailable? That one is easy. The future baby (def: humanness does not or will ever start until birth), the mother, the father, the grandparents, the great grandparents, the physician, society in general, future taxpayers… Quite a few harmed souls actually…. Withholding these birth control items is exactly on par with withholding antibiotics to a child dying from blood poisoning. Just as the child is suffering needlessly through no fault on its own, so is the pregnant woman suffering as is her child, though no fault of their own. Normally she would have gotten free contraception. But no, religion stepped in and now that is impossible.
Third is performed abortion. This is an emotional topic, that some equate with murder. The courts have flatly said it is not. Life begins at birth, always has, always will. Therefore performed abortions are perfectly legal, even though some people may not agree. And here the law is clear. They have the right to decide for themselves and not agree if they so choose, but they do not have any right to decide for others. No one does. That is embedded in the foundation of our founding documents…. That is the definition of freedom. One cannot say they for freedom and yet rail against choice. That is a scientific impossibility. Obviously what those well meaning people are trying to express is that they are all for freedom when it applies to them, but certainly not when it applies to others who have a different value system from them. Enforcing the right to free abortions, is like allowing burkas to be worn without restriction, fully knowing that suicide bombers are rampant in the crowds around you… Banning abortions for certain women, is the equivalent to telling the Israeli population, ” oh, sorry; no protection for you; you have to die if someone sets off a bomb, because you see, burkas are so sacred, we aren’t going to violate one of our tiny minority’s religious beliefs. If someone smuggles a bomb in under one, sigh, oh well.
If you are sharp about your wits, you picked up the clue I left you in the paragraph above. Right up there where I said..”they do not have any right to decide for others”….. Probably Conservatives will pick it up faster than contraception supporters. “Wait a minute” they will say, “see, that is exactly what you are doing to us by making us pay for contraception when we don’t want to cough up the money for it. You are deciding for us, what we have to do…”
And that is exactly right…. We are.
If you remember up at the top of this piece of writing where I stated this case was to decide the supremacy of law versus religion? Well that is the caveat. In religious circles we are deciding what one needs to do. We are saying that contraception will be available to everyone through their insurance free of charge…. In the legal realm that is the law. You can choose to follow it or not. If not, then beware of consequences. Why just today, I saw a Toyota that by my guess, chose not to follow the posted speed limit. He didn’t look too happy either…. We make decisions every day on whether to follow a law or not, and we choose to what degree we wish to comply… Some of us, unluckily, will pay a price…. But though angry, we really have no right to bring in religion…. Because it is a non-religious law….
In the religious world, we are however making a person (although admittedly in an extremely indirect and via a convoluted pathway, be associated with something he doesn’t wish… However, that is not a problem of our governmental courts. Religious issues are not in the bailiwick of the Supreme Court. It decides issues of law and order, and is forbidden on deciding on religion. Instead, religious issues need to be decided by a denominational or religious court if their denomination should happen to have them… If not, they should then be decided by that religion’s Inquisition or equivalent…. Then through whatever authority those courts have, they need to exercise their options of enforcing those religious edicts in ways that do not run up against the laws of the land…
A second issue is whether information or facts on file inside a Delaware Courthouse is also a real person. Are Corporations people too, as Romney once said? That is preposterous to even consider, but alas, so it will be one of the hinges on which this outcome depends. The sole point of this case is that a corporation (Hobby Lobby) is so sad, it’s heartbroken that it will have to pay for contraception for its employees, it cries every night and has insomnia. It can’t urinate correctly and has irregular bowel movements. As a result, this corporation is now suffering from malnutrition, and dehydration. Quite possibly, through all the duress and stress, this corporation has also suffered brain damage, causing its malignant depression. It might even have cancer….
If a corporation is not a person, then this case is simply dismissed. Corporations are subservient to human beings and therefore must confirm to the laws of the land in which they may find themselves. But if a corporation IS a person, then we have a battle over which person suffers the most, if free birth control is abandoned…. or…. no longer free…
If a corporation IS deemed to be a person… the next question for discussion, is when does that person-hood begin…. Did it start when it is born,upon the signing of its documents? Or, has it existed as a corporation ever since its idea was first conceived?
As you all know, there are several Supreme Court decisions due this term regarding the ability of corporations or personal businesses to express their religiosity in defiance of the law of the land. One is Hobby Lobby which thinks it should not be required to practice something that is against their religion. The second is today’s “stay” on whether Catholic Organizations have to dispense something their religion completely disavows; birth control.
On one hand we will hear the drums of how religion is being imposed upon by the government. On the other hand we will hear how those employed by these employers, have the right to choice just as do their bosses….
Let us look at the first plank: how religion is being imposed upon by the government. As is been oft repeated, the Constitution as originally written said rather little about the right to religion. However, it IS in the Bill of Rights, which because they were a necessary addition added to get the Constitution garnering enough votes, one can loosely say, the original Constitution deals with religion…
And as is oft repeated with every controversy, the First Amendment states as follows: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. This means that Congress cannot say: “This year’s official religion will be Pentecostal. All other religions are hereby abolished”. This may sound far fetched to us, but was a real factor in the daily lives of the colonists before the nation was forged. Quakers were ostracized by Episcopalians. Catholics were beset with punitive laws except in Maryland. If you needed to go before the state or county courthouse, you had to be of that area’s official religion, before you could get heard… True, dat.
The second part, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; is where the argument will be directed. Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor, both have similar arguments which are as follows.
“WE don’t believe sex should be had for enjoyment. Our religion is anti-sex. If we have to dispense or are required to pay for people to commit sex without the consequence of pregnancy or a viral AIDS infection, we are having our free exercise of religion being prohibited….”
More clearly put: our religion demands that we prohibit sex for enjoyment wherever it “pops” up. If you stop us from prohibiting enjoyable sex, you are interfering with our religion.
In the matter of text, they have a point. If their religion does indeed demand that they stop everyone from having enjoyable sex, then the government in stepping in to stop them from stopping some amazing sex, is depriving them of their religious rights. So we should conceive that they have a textual point….. Before the Obamacare, religion was not impinged. Now it is.
The next step is to see if that point is relevant with the norms of today’s society. As an extreme case, allowing a quirky religious sect to burn their babies alive because “it is called for by their religion” would be a case where the harm done to a citizen of the United States of America against their will, would outweigh in society’s eyes the harm being done to the religiosity of those practicing such a barbarity. Burning witches at a stake would suffice as an example as well.
There is obvious a gray area then where government must trample on religion and religion finds it must interfere with government.
We can use the extreme case above of burning witches. One could say that happened in Delaware in 2010. (lol. Our witch got burned bad.) Here we have a case where one religion (the witch burning one) interferes with the other religion (the witch one). When you have two opposite religions, the government has to look at other laws other than religion to determine policy. In this case, murder. Correct?
So the correct assessment is that since both religious issues cancel each other out, then the factor of murder by default becomes the deciding one. The witch-burning religion is in the wrong by existing laws on the books (murder) and therefore it must stop its practice. Was it’s bizarre form of religion impinged upon by government? Absolutely. And for good reason; it was murder.
So we now have precedence of government making necessary impositions upon any religious practices that harm society. Yet there is still no imposition upon ones beliefs. You can still “believe” that burning witches is your goal in life, but you just can’t carry it out. It hurts other people.
So the defense of the law by the government must not focus on the rights of these religious petitioners. but should solely focus on that harm which if allowed to go forward, that religion will impinge upon all those millions of people who are not in either sect, and who will suffer at the hands of any court decision favoring either sect’s quixotic religious preferences.
They have First Amendment rights too…. such as in having our Government abridging the freedom of speech…
The courts have long upheld that “expression” was the founding father’s meaning of “speech”. Porn doesn’t move it’s lips but is a form of expression protected by the Supreme Court. Just like that Pat Robertson of the 700 Club doesn’t move his lips, but is also considered a form of expression protected by the Supreme Court. Art is expression. Music is expression. Love is expression…
Likewise there are reasonable limits to the right to expression, again, determined by society’s norms. Going nude in a public school is not good. There are reasons that is against the law. Playing music too loud on Newark’s Main Street is not good. There are reasons that is against the law. Graffiti in the Bank of America building, not good. There are reasons that would be against the law.
So the argument made before the court will be two fold; what is harmful or non harmful to each side, and what society’s norms will dictate, whether one or another is extreme when compared to the norm of society….
Therefore this becomes a moral question, not one of logic. After all, both sides think logic is on their side. And I think all will boil down to something said by the last Pope, Pope Benedict….
He stated something along the lines, “that people have to eat; and to eat, they have to work.” If work is abundant, perhaps one can leave one employer and go to another which they prefer. But if work is scarce, they are bound to hang on to that job no matter what external factors line up to batter them. If there is one job in town, and the boss halves the wages, one has to accept it. If there is one job in town, and the boss demands sexual favors for one to keep it, one has to acquiesce because there is no other alternative.
So for every religious nun or Hobby Lobby business owner who wishes to buck the current law, there are those countless employees working for them who will get hurt if their employer gets any exception to the current law simply because their religion states “it” is against all enjoyable sex.
Those employees working for these bosses, can’t have enjoyable sex because of the religiosity of their employers…. ” I’m sorry Hon, but because I work for Hobby Lobby, we can’t do it for another 15 days… Just hold it inside, will you?”
Their expression, in the privacy of their home, is impinged… While yet…the religious owners expression in the privacy of THEIR homes, is not affected by one bit…
Since one side is negatively affected in private by the consequences of not having contraception reimbursed, and the other side is not, it seems imperative that a thoughtful, logical, non-judgmental court, would decide to protect those who are hurt, at the expense of those who are doing the hurting….
Remember: it is still the insurance companies who are paying for all these sexual items; not the employers themselves; there is no harm to the employers if this policy goes forward. They are not in anyway contributing any harm to themselves. Just like if they burned witches….
Those they are affecting, do get harmed…. Not being allowed to enjoy sex because of your luck at being hired by one employer over another, surely trumps whether that employer feels slightly “miffed” that he is required to insure his employees and that insurance will allow them to enjoy the wonders of sex without getting pregnant or getting viral AIDS.
AIDS kills, like being burned at the stake. Being allowed to stand around the fire going “tsk, tsk” should not become our nation’s definition of what “religion” is all about……
From the Allen Loudell newscast: “If Jeff Christopher wants to be an olde tyme sheriff that badly, he should move to another state.”
I’m a loser
I’m a loser
And I’m not what I appear to be
Of all the love I have won or have lost
there is one love I should never have crossed
It was a chance in a million, my friend
I should have known Court would win in the end
I’m a loser
And I lost something that’s near to me
I’m a loser
And I’m not what I appear to be
Although I laugh and I act like a clown
Beneath this badge I am wearing a frown
My tears are falling like rain from the sky
Is it for the Constitution or myself that I cry
I’m a loser
And I lost something that’s near to me
I’m a loser
And I’m not what I appear to be
What have I done to deserve such a fate
I realize I have left it too late
And so it’s true, pride comes before a fall
I’m telling you so that you won’t lose all
I’m a loser
And I lost something that’s near to me
I’m a loser
And I’m not what I appear to be
Poetic Insight Courtesy of Lennon/McCarthy
Last week Allan Loudell was waxing poetic on an live interview how the Supreme Court was Conservative on the voting rights act and liberal on the repeal of DOMA, finishing with: ” is it anyones guess what to expect?” I was busy at the time, but thought it was rather easy to figure out. You see, i know a Libertarian and so making the assessment that Justice Kennedy was also a Libertarian, didn’t require much of a leap at all.
When one thinks of Libertarians, one thinks of that tiny party in the middle of a ballot. But Libertarianism has played a dominant role in the US’s formation… It is just that when it strikes, it is not on the ballot. Below I show how Libertarianism easily explains how this court acts….
This past season the Supreme Court heard 75 cases… Of those seventy five, 30% were decided by a vote of 5-4. This is one of the most contentious courts on record. The roundabout average is 22% of its cases decided by 5-4 decisions. However, and this is surprising, almost 50% of its decisions were decided by a 9-0 margin. That is unprecedented as well.
Graph Courtesy of SCOTUS Blog
There appears to be a solid libertarian bias that leans through this court. If progressive, they are libertarian progressives, if conservative they are libertarian conservatives, and if split, then the most libertarian of them all, Justice Kennedy, is the decider.
Let me first touch on those decision made last week. a) Voting Rights Act… If there is no firm reason not to leave it to the states, then leave it to the states… Libertarianism. b) Repeal of Clause 3 of DOMA… If the government is picking favorites of one custom over another, that is not the government’s business… Government needs to butt out… Pure Libertarianism. Those inured in thinking only in terms of “left” and “right” are by their blinders.. baffled. However there is a very clear aim through out this court and that aim clearly states that the government should not be interfering with people’s rights to decide things for themselves.
Furthermore, although this court is very pro business, to call it an business court would still be an error. The human gene concept, that actual genes were not to be patented, was decided in part because doing so would benefit the company that acquired the patent, but hurt those who didn’t. There was no prevailing clause of ownership offered by the plaintiff, since the gene existed long before the company did, so therefore, everyone has a right to it. The decision was business neutral. Though one company lost, all others gained thereby making the decision a neutral one. Very Libertarian. Favorites should not be picked by the government. However if Monsanto in another landmark case, actually did invent the gene, then for a farmer to replant some of the soybeans as farmers have since civilization began, should not happen. Those beans were not his intellectual property, because they were created legally under license by Monsanto. No different than buying a CD and burning copies for one’s friends and acquaintances. Again, very Libertarian. The government should not interfere with either picking or hurting a company in its effort to make money by playing with existing rules.
Likewise the Federal Government should not limit or impose itself or it’s temporary values upon a company doing business overseas. Therefore for the Federal Government forbidding an AIDs vaccine to be used in Africa for infectees caused by prostitution, was illegal. That puritan law was stricken. Government can’t interfere.
And so after this season, federal judicial participation in guilty pleas is now subject to harmless error review; the government can’t involuntary dissolve a parent/childs bonding rights; a person who does not choose to willfully invoke their 5th amendment rights, can have their subsequent silence used against them. A sex offender in the armed services must like every other citizen who is one, register in the state where he resides. Likewise an insurance beneficiary of a previous divorce, can get paid according to original contract, and no state law can override that.
Just “thinking like a Libertarian” has for the most part made one able to predict the outcome of this court with amazing accuracy. It is really contrary to Allan Loudell’s statement, not a mystery after all….. One just has to think outside the Red and Blue Box…
Today Governor Scott, Florida Tea Party who rode into the statehouse itself upon the promise he was going to abolish the abomination of Obamacare in the state of Florida.
He threw in the towel and now supports it. His state is joining the Federal exchange. His reason? He saw with his mother that it was a really super great plan full or wonderfulness, and that not buying in, would be very bad for Florida.
Go figure.
Republican Governors have thrown in the towels one by one. It is such a great plan, they can’t refuse… Without it, balancing a state budget is impossible. Ironically Republicans who supposedly hate bigger government, are all lining up for the Federal exchange.
It is the best and will be the closest best thing to single payer.
Furthermore, more great Obama care news.
Because of Obamacare, the Medicare expense projected for the rest of this decade, has just in this past year alone, fallen half a trillion dollars. $511 billion dollars to be exact! Obamacare is cutting the deficit right in the entitlement belt….
Half a trillion dollars.
This is not new news. It was out there when the bill first got passed. It has been out there ever since. But for some reason the American media chose to focus on those who were against it, long before they understood it… Once understanding, everybody is coming aboard.
Where was the communication breakdown? Why wasn’t this positive news rolled out int he beginning? Just think, it could have save a lot of drama had these facts been picked up and extolled by the media, and had the right wing been excoriated for their stupidity.
Good things win out in the end, and Obamacare, as one can see by the Republican Governors coming aboard one by one, is a good thing.
Just think how horrible it would have been if on day one, Romney had signed a bill to abolish Obamacare?
Fortunately for all of us, America always knows best.
We’re going somewhere with this.
Republicans legislators in Ohio, Virginia, and Florida have put forth bills to take urine from welfare recipients to test for drugs.
Seriously. Some well known Republicans brag among themselves that they even want to hold the cup….
Ohio had this bill squashed last spring by their Governor. It is back again in the form of a three county trial.
Virginia, tried passing it last year but it was shelved because it would cost the state $1.2 million to implement while saving $ 229,000….
Florida did pass it and too, found out that so few tested positive, that the cost of the testing far outweighed any savings. Plus, they are still being assessed for legal fees from the action being declared unconstitutional.…
One would think Republicans would remember what doesn’t work. But no.. Now Kansas and Ohio and Virginia have new legislation to redo the same problem….
I’m just curious,…. with only paltry savings on the indigent, why wasn’t this procedure proscribed when we lent big banks an open line of credit to put themselves back on their feet?
Did we make AIG pee in a cup? Did we make Bank of America pee in a cup? Did we make Citibank pee in a cup? And why not?
I wonder how much cocaine those $4o million in bonuses bought? Poor people don’t do coke. They don’t have that kind of money.
Just imagine if testing positive could have save us $440 billion?
Since Democrats don’t legislate pee, it can only mean Republican do other things like fantasize with pee when they are behind closed doors. For if you didn’t love pee so much…. ugh, why would you even bring it up?
The court will hear 2 hours of testimony on the constitutionally of people paying for health insurance or otherwise paying a fine.
They will then spend 90 minutes on whether the rest of the law can remain, if the mandatory payment method gets illegalized, and they will spend an additional hour on the constitutionality of the expansion of the Medicaid program.
In what bodes ill for those wishing to overturn Obamacare, the Supreme Court now set aside an additional 30 minutes, 90 overall, to discuss the effect that overturning the health care would have on every single tax law that requires people to pay first, then challenge the IRS for reimbursement….
In all, 6 hours have been allocated…. a time allotment unprecedented in modern court…..
Historically, since 1970 the oral arguments have been limited to 30 min for each side.
Brown vrs Board of Education I lasted 6.5/8.5 hours. And Brown vrs Board of Education II lasted, a record 13.5 hours…
South Carolina vrs Katzenbach (Upheld Voting Rights Act) = 7 hrs
Mirandi vrs Arizona = 6 hours.
Since 1970 the only two which have come close, are The 1976 case Buckley v. Valeo which upheld post-Watergate reforms, and FEC v. McConnell — a precursor to the 2010 Citizens United which lasted 4 hours….
Simply put, the 6 hour time slot, means that a major shift in Constitutionality is about to be undertaken.
A “definition” that will last for generations is about to be made.
kavips 
