In the words of Canada’s Human Rights Commission’s senior counsel Ian Fine, the commission is necessary because "there can’t be enough laws against hate."  This during a panel on human right’s commissions in which Fine was caught twice in lies - or glaring ignorance - about the commission’s activities.  Actually, a single law against hate is too many.  But what can Canadians expect from a government agency that believes that "Freedom of speech is an American concept" and has no value as a principle in Canada?  Read it all.

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Legal scholar Jeffery Toobin thinks laws requiring voters to show a valid picture ID before voting are biased in favor of Republicans.  This argument makes sense given the affinity of poorer Americans to vote Democratic.  But is that relevant?  Two principles of free and fair elections are contradictory, that we count every vote and that every vote be from a legal voter.  A picture ID seems to be the ideal compromise.

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Glen Greenwald’s latest piece on immunity for telecom companies that helped the government in the aftermath of 9/11 is one worth reading.  Fundamentally the issue hasn’t changed - telecoms that cooperated with the Bush administration deserve protection as is currently given - but Glen’s analysis of their contributions to lobbying firms and the money’s subsequent flow to the coffers of various politicians is fascinating and sickening at the same time.

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The NY Times reports that immigration officials have been running a rapid-fire prosecution program aimed at illegal aliens who’d fraudulently used other people’s identification to gain employment with Agriprocessors Inc.  Nearly 400 people were processed through the special court.  94 were convicted on Wednesday alone.  For the math-challenged, that’s nearly 12 convictions per hour.  That doesn’t seem right.

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The New York Times says that a 3-person panel from the U.S. Appeals Court 4th Circuit has rejected the state’s partial birth abortion law, a ban modeled on the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.  Why did this happen?  Seems like it should have been a no-brainer.

In fact, it probably would have been if Virginia legislators hadn’t gone the extra mile trying to do what’s right. 

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The California Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry is an unfortunate rejection of Christian morality.  Glen Greenwald points out that it’s hardly unexpected given the state’s precedents before going on to say that the democratic process in California legitimizes the ruling, a claim of dubious accuracy, as demonstrated by his source material.  All that said, I think it’s the correct ruling for the same reason as John McCain as does.

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Here’s one more reason not to vote for Barack Obama, as any more were needed.  According to his campaign, Mr. Obama, if elected to the presidency, has every intention of seating liberal, activist judges.

“Barack Obama,” explained spokesman Tommy Vietor, “has always believed that our courts should stand up for social and economic justice, and what’s truly elitist is to appoint judges who will protect the powerful and leave ordinary Americans to fend for themselves.”

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Gov. David Paterson has until the end of today to decide whether or not he will sign a bill the New York state legislature passed - unanimously - that would give American citizens who are sued for libel abroad the right to obtain a declaration that their works are protected under American law.  Let’s hope he does the right thing.
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In 1991, Kenneth Wayne Morris, a 9th grade dropout who is now 37, killed James Moody Adams, co-founder of the Northwest Academy while while his wife, Marcene, hid in a closet.  Yesterday Morris’ attempt to have himself declared too mentally retarded to be executed was rejected by the Supreme Court.  This ruling, coupled with the court’s earlier decision that lethal injection is not cruel and unusual punishment, may finally allow justice to be done in Adams’ case.

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In New Hampshire, Concord High School principal Jean Barker turned the tables on a student arranging to sell drugs via text messages by setting up a mini-string operation that lead to the student’s arrest. 

That’s what I call excellence in education!  Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of frivolous people willing to to take the drug pusher’s side.

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In pointing out another case of legalistic lunacy, Susan Duclos writes:

The "zero tolerance" policy at some school and in some states, reaches levels of complete incompetence when a 6 years gets written up as a sexual offender for copying what another kid did and playfully smacking little Katherine DeLeon on the bottom twice.

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Kathy Shaidle reports that she and other bloggers are being sued by Richard Warman, a former member of Canada’s Human Rights Commission and frivolous lawsuit filer extraordinaire:

Canada’s busiest litigant, serial “human rights” complainant and — the guy Mark Steyn has called “Canada’s most sensitive man” — Richard Warman is now suing his most vocal critics — including me.

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Evidently we needed another inept ruling from the west coast circuit to remind us that justice is a three-ring circus out that-a-way.  The LA Times says:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Thursday that … a site called Roommates.com may be brought to trial for possibly violating anti-discrimination laws because it requires users to provide information about gender, sexual orientation and whether they have children, and then uses the information to screen people for matches.

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KHOU in Houston reports that over 1% of the adults in America are in prison - more than China and, tellingly, more than Iran.  America is supposed to be the land of the free.  So why are so many of our citizens in the pokey?

Drugs, in a word.

KHOU says:

“After 15 years in the justice system, I can tell you undoubtedly what’s driving the train in our incarceration rates are drug offenders — and a lot of that is low-level drug offenders,” [District] Judge [Caprice] Cosper said.

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The Wall Street Journal took on apologists for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) today, saying:

These are not ordinary crimes. "For sure, I’m American enemies," said KSM in his broken English. "When we made any war against America we are jackals fighting in the nights. . . . the language of the war are killing." The proper venue to address his mass crimes against humanity is not some civilian jurisdiction. Terror cases committed as acts of war, by their very nature, require a separate judicial process.

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Another intrusive government attempt to legislate “decency” was shot down in Texas today.

From the Austin American Statesman

Court strikes down Texas ban on sex toys

A federal appeals court has struck down a Texas law that makes it a crime to promote or sell sex toys.

“Whatever one might think or believe about the use of these devices,” said an opinion written by Justice Thomas M. Reavley of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, “government interference with their personal and private use violates the Constitution.”

Under Texas law it is illegal to sell, advertise, give or lend obscene devices, defined as a device used primarily for sexual stimulation. Anyone in possession of six or more sexual devices is considered to be promoting them. (more…)

From the Houston Chronicle:

A mandatory moment of silence for Texas schoolchildren has a secular purpose of encouraging thoughtful contemplation and does not advance or inhibit religion, a federal judge said this week in a ruling upholding the 2003 state law. (more…)

At the National Review, Stanley Kurtz has a great post about the Muslim law students who are suing Maclean’s over Mark Steyn’s article “The future belongs to Islam”.  An excerpt:

They claim to be believers in the marketplace of ideas, merely seeking a chance to respond to Mark Steyn. What they don’t say is that they have demanded the right to a cover story in Maclean’s, with full editorial control over content and art.

Imagine NR, after publishing, say, a cover story critical of Al Gore’s movie, being forced by a government body to allow Gore to write a cover story in rebuttal, with full editorial control.

Patently ridiculous, of course.  According to Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar, "Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."  Um, if this is your preferred line of thinking, Mullah, I would have to disagree.  The way of the bludgeon can be dominant for a time, but not for long.

Anyway, read the NRO article - it concludes with a lengthy and cleverly cutting response to the issue written by Ali Eteraz that has to be read in its entirety to be properly savored.

h/t memeorandum

The question of when or if deadly force can be used is an open one in the minds of many Americans. Not so in the case of Joe Horn. (more…)

It aren’t just Democrats who are hypocrites on this issue: the US government as a whole is.

From the WaPo: “[I]n 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.”

He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. Something those who argue that waterboarding isn’t torture and should be allowed should keep in mind. H/t reader Chris.

The case against the Holy Land Foundation was an open-and-shut one - the nominal charity was almost certainly guilty of funneling money to Hamas, an organization that most Americans recognize as a sponsor of terrorism in Israel and beyond.

So how did the U.S. government lose the case? The Investigative Project on Terrorism’s new report sheds a bit of light on how some jurors were bullied into voting against their consciences by their peers.

The three jurors interviewed by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) showed the Neal-created perception as skewed. All three jurors say they disagree with his views of the evidence and the prosecution’s case. To them, it seems clear that Neal made up his mind going into the jury room and refused to consider any argument in favor of guilt. He preferred to read the court’s instructions rather than look at exhibits in evidence, they said. And his often snide manner intimidated and bullied those who disagreed with him.

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that judges do have the discretion to override federal sentencing guidelines in their courtrooms:

By a 7-2 vote, the court said that a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to receive 19 to 22 years.

“In making that determination, the judge may consider the disparity between the guidelines’ treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her majority opinion. (more…)

Here’s an example of the sort of ideological boondoggles that today’s polarized, us-against-them power struggles produce on a regular basis here in the old U.S. of A:

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that government support for the InnerChange Freedom Initiative at Newton Correctional Facility – a program operated by Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries — advances religious indoctrination at state expense.  Americans United brought the litigation against InnerChange on behalf of inmates, their families and taxpayers.

This is a fascinating ruling from the perspective of self-destructive domestic policy.

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