Posts Tagged ‘the courts’

When you can’t win at the ballot box or in the legislature

Posted: March 18, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news
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…run to the courts:

Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi issued a temporary restraining order Friday, barring the publication of a controversial new law that would sharply curtail collective bargaining for public employees.

Sumi’s order will prevent Secretary of State Doug La Follette from publishing the law until she can rule on the merits of the case. Dane County Ismael Ozanne is seeking to block the law because he says a legislative committee violated the state’s open meetings law.

Sumi said Ozanne was likely to succeed on the merits.

This is now going to be appealed and appealed to death.

Quick question. Now that the democrats are back, why not just bring up the first bill? Let them run away again, I’m sure that will go over well, and as Ed Morrissey said:

However, this is strictly a ruling on the process used to enact the law. If it came down to it, the Wisconsin legislature could simply pass it again, and it could do so rather quickly. The TRO is not based on any defect in the legislation itself.

I’d expect the legislature to take that up very quickly. I’d also expect some of the protesters to return in anticipation of that effort, although most of them probably won’t get away with taking more sick time to do so. Walker and the GOP could render this issue moot by Monday or Tuesday of next week, if need be, although they’d be wise not to tip their hand until Monday.

I wouldn’t be popping the corks if I was the left, but expect that to a big topic this weekend.

There is a distinction

Posted: March 3, 2011 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, opinion/news
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The Anchoress being a wholly more holy person than me talks about the death penalty and Kermet Gosnell and finds herself opposing it:

If you remain unaware of what investigators (who were actually looking for evidence related to drug trafficking) found when they entered Gosnell’s abattoir-for-humans, read the Grand Jury’s Report, if you can take it.

Nevertheless, I would defend this man’s right to live his life out in prison, rather than watch the state take his life. His life is not anyone else’s to take. For pro-lifers, this is a no-brainer.

And he may need many years and much time, in order to understand the enormity of what he has done, and allow his heart to be turned. He may need time for conversion and salvation.

I would have to disagree here, this is not a “no-brainer” for pro-life people.

Unlike the elderly who have committed no offense other than being old, the sick who have committed no offense other than being sick or the unborn who have committed no offense other than being conceived Kermet Gosnell has committed acts that under our laws can bring the death penalty.

She is absolutely right that his may need time for conversion, repentance and salvation and we are OBLIGATED as Christians to pray for this, but even if he is convicted, loses all appeals and the sentence carried out there will likely be many years of time to avail himself of the opportunity. As long as the process takes place before death it will be achieved, remember Timothy McVeigh a lapsed Catholic in fact received confession and absolution mere hours before his execution, saving his soul if not his life.

But there is a huge difference between protecting innocent life and life taken under due process in a free society. Even Ed is ambivalent.

I am totally indifferent in this matter. I have absolutely no problem with him (if convicted) being given life in jail and I also have no problem if he gets the death penalty. Neither Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI nor has any pope proclaimed ex cathedra the death penalty sinful or an intrinsic evil. Until and unless he does so then I submit that it is not a “no brainer” that we oppose the death penalty in this or any case and there is no obligation for us to think otherwise.

Once again a court discovers new obligations that never existed before…

Posted: August 4, 2010 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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…that is if Drudge is correct. Update: he is

Remember when civil unions came up and the claim was nobody was talking about gay marriage? I do.

Remember when the defense of marriage act was passed and people were claiming that a constitutional amendment was not necessary? I do.

The argument for gay marriage has been a study in prevarication during its pursuit. From the initial rulings in Vt. to the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling to apparently today, the courts have created and imposed upon the people non-existent rights among a populace that has strongly objected.

The advocates of Gay Marriage continue their fear of the people. When they can they have kept them from voting (re Massachusetts) and when they can’t get have used to courts to legislate what they can’t win at the ballot box all with the loving support of a media completely out of touch with the public.

So once again we will go to the higher courts until we reach the supreme court.

Again we have done this to ourselves, by voting in people who ignore our will, by electing people who appoint judges who legislate from the bench.

From healthcare to illegal immigration to this, our elected officials have continually ignored the people will. As long as the people allow them to get away with it, they will continue to do so.

memeorandum thread here.

Update: from the hotair post

the EP ruling is that there’s no rational basis for limiting marriage to straights.

If that is true I await the rational basis to deny polygamy from the court.

Update 2: Brian Brown on the ruling at the corner:

Q: What’s next for marriage in California?

A: This will go to the Supreme Court, where we expect to win. Remember that originally, the gay legal establishment opposed this case, because they fear what we anticipate: that they don’t yet have five votes for a constitutional right to gay marriage. Two lawyers with very big egos (Olson and Boies) pushed this case over more sober heads, and I think in the end gay-marriage advocates will regret that they did.

Time will tell.

A tale of two Sentences

Posted: July 16, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: , , , ,

Two sentences are in the news today that are worth note.

First of all in NY we have justice for the victims of Islamic terror:

A judge had resentenced a 70-year-old civil rights lawyer to 10 years in prison for letting a jailed Egyptian sheik communicate with his radical followers.

Federal Judge John Koeltl sentenced Lynne Stewart in Manhattan after she pleaded with him to reimpose the two-year, four-month sentence he had originally given her in 2006. She said she has been diminished since her November imprisonment.

An appeals court had ordered a new sentencing, saying the judge needed to consider whether she committed perjury. Koeltl says she did and he says she lacked remorse after her first sentencing.

I suspect she will not be invited to many ethics conferences in the near future but expect to see “Free Lynne Stewart” signs at protests, for as Jules Crittenden snarks:

Dangerous trend. When they start expecting lawyers to not only uphold the law and behave morally, but to avoid actively aiding and abetting terrorists, there’s no telling where this could end. Pols who have sought to abandon entire nations to genocidal chaos, who would shrug and let mad mullahs have nukes, who would seek to put a figleaf on the religious motivation of mass killers, be afraid.

More at memeorandum but have no fear Jules, there is always Canada where an Islamic Mother’s right to kill her daughter under Sharia law is respected!

The judge rejected an argument by Crown prosecutors Mac Vomberg and Sarah Bhola for a 12-year prison term, instead accepting the position of defence lawyer Alain Hepner, saying a suspended sentence can still meet the demands of justice.

“At first blush (a suspended sentence) may sound like a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is not,” said LoVecchio.

“The court has said the act in question does not merit a period of incarceration.

And to those who cry accident lets hear from Barbara Kay of the National Post for a moment:

In 2007 Aset Magomadova, at the end of her tether in dealing with a troubled and by her account troublesome 14-year old daughter, strangled the girl to death with a scarf.

Let it be noted, before going any further into this story, that to kill a healthy human being by strangulation, you have to cut off their air supply for 2.5 to 3 minutes. They lose consciousness and go limp long before they are at risk of dying. So you really can’t argue that you have strangled someone in self-defence or by accident or in a moment’s confusion or loss of control. If a person dies after you have had your way with a scarf around her neck, you can be sure the intention behind the attack was not benign.

If you want to see what dhimmitude looks like people, this is it.

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