To be uncharged by a grand jury, I mean. After what we’ve seen in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island, I fully expect that if a grand jury is empaneled to judge whether that incompetent cop who shot Tamir Rice in Cleveland should be bound over for trial …
This is appalling. It’s a blatant misuse of the criminal justice system designed to keep small towns afloat and paying their public employees. Radley Balko of the Post has done yeoman’s work outlining just how poorly governed the citizens in St. Louis County are and have been. Moreover, he’s explained the history behind it, describing …
At Talking Points Memo Peter Dreier imagines a world in which the Dems win the 2016 Presidential election and two of the eldest Supreme Court Justices (Kennedy and Scalia) retire. I admit it’s a pleasant fantasy, but while thinking about it he forgets that there’s a filibuster procedure which is still in place for judicial …
Sorry, can’t write about this today. Must file incorporation documents so I can get out of paying for my staff’s doughnuts. I have a religious objection to sugar, you see, and now the Supreme Court has said that’s good enough for them. I’ll save billions! Hey, government! Where do I send the bill for my …
I’m not in favor of the death penalty. Too many people have been proven not guilty after organizations like The Innocence Project have managed to get DNA test results into appeals processes. Better the guilty stay alive than one innocent man or woman be killed by the state. Events last night in Oklahoma just reinforced …
Click to enlarge Justice Roberts is either bought and paid for by billionaire donors to the Republican party or horribly naive. I don’t think he’s naive. Here’s Dahlia Lithwick: Really, it’s weird. The man takes the Metro to work, and yet he handily dismisses what every human American knows to be true: That if dollars …
Continue reading ‘They’re only dollars searching for good homes’ »
The Democrats finally did it. They acted to defeat Republican obstructionism by filibuster, changing the rules to allow simple majority votes to advance judicial and executive branch nominations. Many Democrats had been very hesitant to act, fearing that the move would boomerang when Republicans won back control of the Senate and the White House. But …
But we knew that, right? Today the five conservatives on the Supreme Court all refused to block a Texas law restricting abortions by requiring doctors who perform them to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The court’s conservative majority refused the plea of Planned Parenthood and several Texas abortion clinics to overturn a preliminary federal …
Continue reading ‘The courts are overloaded with Republicans’ »
Another vote on a judicial nominee, another filibuster by Senate Republicans. For the third time in just as many weeks, Republicans filibustered another one of President Obama’s nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Senate voted 53-28 today on a procedural vote on the nomination of Robert Wilkins to serve on the D.C. …
U of Co. law prof Paul Campos: But this decision is yet more outrageous. The Constitution was specifically amended in the most explicit possible terms to allow Congress to pass precisely this sort of law, for this precise purpose. The 15th Amendment was enacted to give Congress the power to stop states from discriminating against …