Tag Archives: Supreme Court

PROTEST – THROW THE BUMS OUT!

Posted on October 9, 2018 at 1:36 am by John Flannery |

Judge Kavanaugh Confirmation Protest on the Hill (Photo – J. Flannery)

The Honorable William O. Douglas went to Columbia Law School, taught at Yale, and found his way to the U.S. Supreme Court as an Associate Justice, courtesy of FDR.

He was a hero of mine. I wanted to clerk for him but he said he only took on clerks from out west from whence he came. This is not to say I would have gotten the clerkship if he got his law clerks from New York, from his alma mater and the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

I wish Justice Douglas were alive today to write and speak to the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He would surely join former Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, a Nixon appointee, who objected to Kavanaugh, as unfit for service as an Associate Justice because, in large part, of Kavanaugh’s express partisan bias.

Douglas wrote “Points of Dissent” when I was young but still smart enough to get his meaning.

It was a discussion of the law and facts at the time, that is, in the 60s and early 70s.

It was about the right and scope of First Amendment “free speech” exertions.

Like then, to paraphrase Douglas’ article, we are suffering under “a climate of conformity” among the political class. It is dominated by “a narrow spectrum of social and political opinion,” almost entirely autocratic and discriminatory. It is a toxic condition sustained by slander, scapegoats, and entirely anti-intellectual. In effect, it pushes back individual rights and freedoms presumed to exist at law and in practice, but gravely endangered. Wrong-headed know-nothing politicians are dismantling and compromising historic institutions of government including our courts that the founders established in 1787.

Some are amazed that this attack on Justice Kavanaugh has prompted dissent. Really? The day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, women marched on Washington to protest Mr. Trump’s callous disrespect for women. Mr. Trump could have chosen a nominee without Kavanaugh’s shortcomings but Trump cared more that this nominee might also protect him from the ongoing Mueller investigation. Continue reading →

Black lives matter

Posted on April 12, 2016 at 5:32 am by John Flannery |

Jamycheal Mitchell

On April 22, 2015, Jamycheal Mitchell, 24, a schizophrenic, walked into a 7-11 in Portsmouth, and took a Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake.

The value of these three food items was $5.05.

He was charged with trespass, and petit larceny, misdemeanors.

What do you think his bail should have been?

Whatever you think, you likely got it wrong.

He was denied bail entirely, and held in custody at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail, according to the Portsmouth Case Information System.

Every person accused of a crime, particularly a misdemeanor, has a constitutional right to be released on bail if they are not a risk to themselves or to the community.

There is no indication that Jamycheal posed any risk when arrested.

But the Magistrate denied him bail, and kept him in custody.

Jamycheal wasn’t released from jail a month later.

Instead, Judge Morton V. Whitlow ordered Jamycheal to be transferred to the Eastern State Hospital since he was deemed incompetent to stand trial on the misdemeanor shoplifting charges, and presumably remain there until he was competent to stand trial.

If that sounds bizarre, this Dickensian nightmare for Jamycheal and his family was hardly over.

Nor would it end anything like Victor Hugo’s famously wronged fictional inmate, Jean val Jean, who stole a loaf of bread, rather than a Snickers.

There was no room at Eastern State for Jamycheal. So he remained at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail. In fact, Jamycheal was never taken to receive any treatment.

Jamycheal reportedly paced his cell naked, ate little or nothing, lost weight, and had no visitors.

On July 31, 2015, when he appeared before the court, he was visibly thinner, his face emaciated, but the Court simply reiterated his earlier direction, that Jamycheal be transferred to the Eastern State Hospital.

Having seen Jamycheal in court on July 31, 2015, a least one family member reportedly called the jail and asked that he be transferred to the emergency room. But that didn’t happen.

On about August 17, 2015, Jamycheal was dead. Continue reading →

True liberty

Posted on July 28, 2014 at 5:36 am by John Flannery |

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor asks the question

You often hear the rough definition of true liberty is every person’s right to do what you want up to the tip of someone else’s nose.

Does a corporate employer who believes in faith healing invade your rights when refusing to allow your health insurance to cover any medical procedure?

If the employer is a corporation, and closely held, and three of the five shareholders are faith healing believers, while the other two are dissenting physicians, does the corporate majority determine health care for an employee may only be faith healing?

Just imagine you were denied health insurance to cover your children because it defied his faith healing belief.

Some children have died because of the misguided religious faith healing belief of parents who refused medical procedures to save their children.

Continue reading →

Bob Marshall’s marriage meltdown

Posted on January 25, 2014 at 4:53 pm by Epluribusunum |

Bob Marshall has said some dumb things over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard him embarrass himself more than he did yesterday on the Kojo Nnamdi show.

Marshall was interviewed for a segment about Attorney General Mark Herring’s determination that Virginia’s anti-marriage amendment and statutes are unconstitutional. His remarks start out calmly enough, if poorly reasoned. Then the wheels come off. The entire segment starts at the 9:20 mark; the interview with Marshall is introduced at the 10:56 mark.

Marshall begins this rhetorical circus by asking whether Tim Kaine, governor in 2006-7 when the Marshall-Newman Amendment was enacted, “consciously signed a bill that violated the Fourteenth Amendment.” This is simply a stupid question on its face. Of course he did. How would any unconstitutional law ever become law if this didn’t happen? Every governor in every state that enacted similar amendments signed a bill that violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Does Marshall believe that it’s impossible, by definition, for anything enacted by a legislature or popular vote to be unconstitutional? Because that seems like a problem.

Continue reading →

Breaking and Entering

Posted on June 14, 2013 at 7:23 am by John Flannery |

We Dems expected President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to offend our civil liberties.

We didn’t expect President Barack Obama, the constitutional law professor, to go back on his campaign promise to make a course correction to cure the over-reaching of the Bush Administration.

We were foolish to expect better.

Without regard to partisan coloration, our public officials and our government just can’t stop poking their noses into our private papers and communications.

The Fourth Amendment, by which we are purportedly protected, guaranteed we’d be secure” in our “persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

This guarantee has been rendered almost meaningless by the actions of our government from the federal to the county level. Applications to search and seize are routinely approved by magistrates and judges. The basis for the government’s searches are often kept secret. Continue reading →