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Entries Tagged as 'Supreme Court'

Court: Sexually dangerous can be kept in prison

May 17th, 2010 · Accountability, National Security, Supreme Court

By JESSE J. HOLLAND – The Associated Press
Monday, May 17, 2010; 10:34 AM

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal officials can indefinitely hold inmates considered “sexually dangerous” after their prison terms are complete.

The high court reversed a lower court decision that said Congress overstepped its authority in allowing indefinite detentions of considered “sexually dangerous.”

“The statute is a ‘necessary and proper’ means of exercising the federal authority that permits Congress to create federal criminal laws, to punish their violation, to imprison violators, to provide appropriately for those imprisoned and to maintain the security of those who are not imprisoned by who may be affected by the federal imprisonment of others,” said Justice Stephen Breyer, writing the majority opinion.

President George W. Bush in 2006 signed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which authorized the civil commitment of sexually dangerous federal inmates.

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The Influence Industry: Disclose Act could deter involvement in elections

May 15th, 2010 · Accountability, Congress, Corruption, Deception, Economy, Non-Transparency, Politics, Supreme Court

By T.W. Farnam Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2010

Next week, a House committee is expected to mark up legislation responding to the Supreme Court’s decision to loosen restrictions on political spending by corporations. But lawmakers have something else on their minds these days: elections — and the anti-Washington mood swirling through the country.

If the legislation, called the Disclose Act, lived up to its name, it might be uncontroversial. People across the ideological spectrum tend to say that forcing corporations and others to disclose their contributions is a good response to the pernicious influence of money on politics.

In the landmark Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, eight members of the Supreme Court agreed on the need to maintain disclosure of corporate spending. Last week, during oral arguments on another case, some justices seemed skeptical of a request to keep signatures supporting a ballot initiative from the public. Even one of the court’s most conservative members, Justice Antonin Scalia, said that “running a democracy requires a certain amount of civic courage.”

One of the most ardent opponents of campaign finance regulation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), once praised disclosure as an alternative to regulation. During the last major fight over regulating money in politics, he asked, “Why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?”

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Supreme Court nominee Kagan: No Judcial Experience and perhaps an Obama “rubber stamp”

May 12th, 2010 · Congress, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Fraud Alert, Government Control, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Politics, Selling Out the US, Supreme Court

Senators query Supreme Court nominee Kagan

By Perry Bacon Jr. Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 12, 2010; 4:40 PM

Senate Republicans pressed Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan Wednesday on her lack of judicial experience and her support for a policy that once banned military recruiters from some college campuses in her first appearance on Capitol Hill since her nomination earlier this week.

Following in the tradition of past Supreme Court nominees, Kagan visited the offices of key senators for private meetings lasting about 30 minutes each. Kagan, the U.S. solicitor general, said almost nothing publicly, ignoring questions shouted at her by reporters as she walked through the halls of Congress with four White House officials in tow.

Most of the five members she has met with so far — three Democrats and two Republicans — have said little in detail about their sessions. But Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, which will hold Kagan’s nomination hearings, said he aired GOP concerns about her lack of judicial experience.

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Budget office estimates health-care law could cost more than $1 trillion

May 12th, 2010 · Congress, Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Economy, Ethics, Federal Spending, Government, Government Control, Greed, Healthcare, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Politics, Selling Out the US, Supreme Court, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Terrorist Attack, Treason

By Associated Press – Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Reference:

President Obama‘s new health-care law could potentially add at least $115 billion more to government health care spending over the next 10 years, if Congress approves all the additional spending called for in the legislation, congressional budget referees said Tuesday.

That would push the 10-year cost of the overhaul above $1 trillion — an unofficial limit the Obama administration set early on.

The Congressional Budget Office said the added spending includes $10 billion to $20 billion in administrative costs to federal agencies carrying out the law, as well as $34 billion for community health centers and $39 billion for Native American health care.

The costs were not in earlier estimates by the budget office, although Republican lawmakers argued that they should have been. Part of the reason is technical: The additional spending is not mandatory, leaving Congress with discretion about whether to provide the funds in follow-on legislation.

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Surprise: White House Defending another Obama Nominee.

May 12th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Government Control, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Politics, Selling Out the US, Supreme Court

White House seeks to defend Kagan’s diversity record.

By Krissah Thompson and Hamil R. HarrisWashington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The White House rushed Tuesday to allay concerns raised by some civil rights groups about Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and the hiring record of Harvard Law School when she was dean.

Some black activists were already dismayed that no African American woman has reached President Obama‘s short list in two searches. The selection of Kagan, the U.S. solicitor general, served to irritate them further, as they described her tenure at Harvard — which administration officials highlight as evidence of her practicality and her ability to work across ideological lines — as one lacking in racial inclusion.

Leaders of the NAACP and legal groups discussed their concerns Tuesday with White House officials, including senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

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For Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, a history of pragmatism over partisanship

May 11th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Government Control, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Politics, Selling Out the US, Supreme Court

By Amy Goldstein, Carol D. Leonnig and Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Just after Election Day the fall of her senior year at Princeton, Elena Kagan published an opinion piece in the campus newspaper recounting how she had wept and gotten drunk on vodka at a campaign gathering for a liberal Brooklyn congresswoman who had unexpectedly lost a race for the Senate.

Ronald Reagan was heading to the White House, and Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman — a champion for women’s causes for whom Kagan had toiled 14-hour days as a campaign press assistant — was leaving Capitol Hill. Kagan, then 20 and imbued with the liberal principles on which she had been raised, said she was flirting with despair that “there was no longer any place for the ideals we held. . . . I wonder how all this could possibly have happened and where on earth I’ll be able to get a job next year.”

Her piece for the Daily Princetonian on Holtzman’s 1980 defeat was a rare moment, then and since, in which Kagan publicly described her emotions and politics in such strikingly personal tones. In the elite spheres of academia and government in which she has learned and worked, Kagan, 50, has more typically exhibited an analytical style, a knack for forging consensus, a pragmatism rather than a passion for her own ideas.

Her life experiences and intellectual style leave open the question of whether President Obama‘s choice for the Supreme Court would, if confirmed by the Senate, prove the counterweight liberals seek to the overt conservatism of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

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Will Obama succeed? Democrat Executive, Legislation & Judicial Branch.

May 11th, 2010 · Accountability, Democrats, Ethics, Government Control, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Politics, Selling Out the US, Supreme Court

Kagan would emphasize Supreme Court moving in new direction

By Anne E. Kornblut and Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 11, 2010

With his second Supreme Court nomination in as many years, President Obama has laid down clear markers of his vision for the court, one that could prove to be among his most enduring legacies.

Together with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan‘s confirmation would represent a shift toward a younger, changing court, one that values experiences outside the courtroom and emphasizes personal interactions as much as deep knowledge of the law.

Kagan, 50, the solicitor general named to replace outgoing liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, would not immediately alter the ideological balance of the bench. But her addition would almost certainly provide a lasting, liberal presence, and administration officials hope she would, in the words of one, “start to move the court into a different posture and profile.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was quick to highlight her “lack of judicial experience and short time as solicitor general,” while other conservatives pointed to her long list of Democratic connections.

Rep. Lamar Smith, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said Kagan will have to show “that she was not chosen by the president as a political ally who will rubber-stamp his agenda — but as an impartial jurist who will uphold the Constitution’s limits on the proper role of the federal government and defend the liberties of everyday Americans.”

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Elena Kagan never let lack of experience hold her back

May 10th, 2010 · Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Supreme Court

By Robert Barnes – Monday, May 10, 2010

The woman President Obama has chosen to be the 112th justice of the Supreme Court has never been a judge — not that it was of her own choosing.

Elena Kagan was 39 when President Bill Clinton nominated her for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, sometimes referred to as the second most important court in the land. The Republican-controlled Senate never brought her nomination for a vote before Clinton’s presidency expired.

Kagan, now 50, went on to become the dean of Harvard Law School, and despite the lack of judicial experience, her name has appeared on every list of people a Democratic president should consider for the high court.

The expectation only grew when Obama made Kagan, a native New Yorker, the first woman to be named as solicitor general, the government’s top appellate lawyer and representative at the Supreme Court.

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Supreme Court overturns objection to cross on public land – ‘In God We Trust’

April 29th, 2010 · Government, Supreme Court

By Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 29, 2010

A splintered Supreme Court displayed its deep divisions over the separation of church and state Wednesday, with the court’s prevailing conservatives signaling a broader openness to the idea that the Constitution does not require the removal of religious symbols from public land.

A 5 to 4 decision by the court overturns a federal judge’s objection to a white cross erected more than 75 years ago on a stretch of the Mojave Desert to honor the dead of World War I.

Six justices explained their reasoning in writing, often using stirring rhetoric or emotional images of sacrifice and faith to describe how religion can both honor the nation’s dead and divide a pluralistic nation.

The bottom line, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote, is that “the Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion’s role in society.” Although joined in full only by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Kennedy’s opinion will be closely parsed as courts across the country consider challenges to religious displays in public settings.

But it is a narrow ruling, offering less guidance for the future than a stark acknowledgment of the fundamental differences between the court’s most consistent conservatives and its liberals in drawing the line between government accommodation of religion versus an endorsement of religion.

To Kennedy, the cross “is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs” but a symbol “often used to honor and respect” heroism.

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Supreme Court to enter fight over violent video games. Could Porn and ‘R’ rated movies be next?

April 27th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Ethics, Government, Government Control, States, Supreme Court

By Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Fresh from deciding one major free-speech challenge last week, the Supreme Court said Monday that it will take up another: whether states may forbid the sale of violent video games to minors.

California says the court’s 1968 decision that states may restrict the sale of sexually explicit materials to minors should be extended to the violent images in video games such as Grand Theft Auto. Other states have passed similar laws, but all have been shot down by federal courts that say the Supreme Court has never authorized such an expansion.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said the same thing about California’s law. The state “is asking us to boldly go where no court has gone before,” Judge Consuelo M. Callahan wrote for a unanimous three-member panel. “We decline the state’s entreaty” to “redefine the concept of obscenity under the First Amendment,” it added.

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