And soon all the post titles will be submerged.
"Rulings needn’t be popular, Alito says" | Associated Press February 04, 2014
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The US Supreme Court should never concern itself with popularity and must remain above the fray when there is strong public reaction to its rulings, Justice Samuel Alito said Monday in a luncheon speech.
‘‘It’s fine if we are not all that popular,’’ Alito told an audience of more than 1,100 lawyers and business people. ‘‘There is a reason why the Constitution gives federal judges life tenure. We are supposed to do our jobs without worrying whether our decisions are pleasing to anybody.’’
These are very odd comments when there is a document he swore to uphold that defines such things, popularity not withstanding.
Alito spoke to a joint meeting of the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches and the Palm Beach County Bar Association, drawing the largest audience ever for such an event, organizers said.
His staff did not permit the speech to be recorded, and Alito noted that the justices remain somewhat behind the times in terms of using such common technologies as e-mail. ‘‘We are an old-fashioned institution, and in my opinion that is a good thing,’’ he said.
And in a speech at Yale University in New Haven on Monday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who grew up poor in the Bronx, described how she navigated the new worlds of Ivy League universities and the nation’s highest court. She said she has a competitive drive to improve herself and is not afraid to ask questions.
Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the US Supreme Court, attended Princeton and Yale Law School. She joined the court in 2009.
Alito, nominated by President George W. Bush, took his seat in early 2006. He is generally considered part of the nine-member court’s conservative wing, but he cautioned his audience to beware of labels.
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Issues of public concern here:
"Justices weigh securities fraud case change" by Sam Hananel | Associated Press March 06, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed open to the possibility of making it harder for investors to join together to sue corporations for securities fraud — but maybe not as hard as companies that have to defend such lawsuits would prefer.
It's a corporate government, and it sadly applies to all three branches.
Any change in the standard for green-lighting class-action lawsuits could have a chilling effect on shareholders who bring the cases, which have generated an estimated $73 billion in settlements since 1997. Investor groups say class actions help curb corporate abuse and market fraud, while opponents contend they extort money from companies and create a windfall for plaintiff’s lawyers.
During arguments in a closely watched case against Halliburton Co., most justices appeared unwilling to completely overturn a quarter-century-old decision that has helped investors launch class-action cases based on the effect misleading statements have on a company’s stock price. But other justices suggested a middle ground that would force investors to show earlier in a case that the alleged fraud actually caused a stock’s price to drop.
Halliburton is trying to block a class-action lawsuit claiming the energy services company misrepresented revenues, understated its liability in asbestos litigation, and overstated the benefits of a merger.
The justices are expected to make a ruling before summer.
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Looking like an unpopular decision to me, and it was buried deep in the bottom of the business section.
Time to go higher:
"Court rules for airline in defamation claim" Associated Press January 28, 2014
WASHINGTON — Ruling that airlines have broad immunity from lawsuits under a post-9/11 security law, the Supreme Court on Monday threw out a $1.4 million defamation judgment awarded to a pilot who was reported by his employer as mentally unstable and potentially armed.
The court was unanimous in holding that a law aimed at encouraging reports of possible security threats to the Transportation Security Administration shields airlines from defamation claims when the reports are substantially true....
In other matters Monday:
■ The Supreme Court ruled that a dealer convicted of selling drugs to someone who dies from an overdose may not be sentenced to a mandatory 20 years in prison without proof that the death resulted from the use of the drugs.
How much proof do you need?
■ The high court said steelworkers do not have to be paid for time they spend putting on and taking off protective gear they wear on the job.
I'm sure workers were happy to $ee that.
■ The court declined to reverse the conviction of former HealthSouth chief executive Richard Scrushy on bribery and fraud charges.
Will wonders never cea$e?
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Time to get my feet back on the ground:
"Land ruling could cost US $100m" | Associated Press March 11, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday sided with a Wyoming property owner in a dispute over a bicycle trail that follows the route of an abandoned railroad. The decision could force the government to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate landowners.
You wanna $hare the burden? Start peddling?
The government, in this case, is taxpayers!
The justices ruled, 8 to 1, Monday that the trail once was the path of a railroad and is among thousands of miles of abandoned railroads that have been converted to recreational trails.
Chief Justice John Roberts said the government was wrong to assert that it owns the trail.
The government says it faces compensation claims involving 10,000 properties in 30 states, possibly topping $100 million.
These decisions surely are unpopular, and I'm $tarting to wonder if they are tainted by unconstitutionality.
In a separate matter Monday, the justices declined to wade into a dispute between the Episcopal Church and a conservative congregation that left the denomination in a rift over homosexuality and other issues....
No one wants to get in the middle of that.
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I'm having trouble breathing:
"Court to hear case on using permits to cut emissions; Industry, states challenge EPA right to set rules" by Mark Sherman | Associated Press February 24, 2014
WASHINGTON — Industry groups and Republican-led states are heading an attack at the Supreme Court against the Obama administration’s sole means of trying to limit emissions of gases blamed for global warming.
Related: Rain soaks streets, floods tunnel ramp
And they just closed the hospital.
As President Obama pledges to act on environmental and other matters when Congress does not, or will not, opponents of regulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases cast the rule as a power grab of historic proportions.
It's a ca$h grab.
The court will hear arguments Monday, but a court ruling against the EPA almost undoubtedly would be used to challenge every step of the agency’s effort to deal with climate change, said Jacob Hollinger, a partner with the McDermott Will and Emery law firm in New York and a former EPA lawyer....
Then like Obummercare, the court will support.
Republicans have objected strenuously to the administration’s decision to push ahead with the regulations after Congress failed to pass climate legislation, and after the administration of President George W. Bush resisted such steps. Both sides agree that it would have been better to deal with climate change through legislation than regulation....
Monday’s case, for which the court has expanded argument time to 90 minutes from the usual 60, stems from the high court’s 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, which said the agency has the authority under the Clean Air Act to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from vehicles.
Two years later, with Obama in office, the EPA concluded that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases endangered human health and welfare.
The administration used that finding to extend its regulatory reach beyond automobiles and develop standards for large stationary sources. Of those, electric plants are the largest source of emissions.
The administration has proposed first-time national standards for new power plants and expects to propose regulations for existing plants this summer. It will then move on to other large stationary sources such as factories.
In the meantime, the only way the EPA can compel companies to address global warming pollution is through a permitting program that requires them to analyze the best available technologies to reduce carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas.
The utility industry, the US Chamber of Commerce, and 13 states led by Texas are asking the court to rule that the EPA overstepped its authority by trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the permitting program.
The EPA’s actions ‘‘represent one of the boldest seizures of legislative authority by an executive agency in history,’’ Peter Keisler, representing the American Chemistry Council among two dozen manufacturing and industry groups that want the court to throw out the rule, said in court papers.
When the Supreme Court considered the appeals in October, the justices declined requests to consider overruling the court’s 2007 decision, review the EPA’s conclusion about the health effects of emissions, or question limits on vehicle emissions.
Instead, the court focused on the permitting program, which the EPA has said it would apply for the time being only to the largest emitters of greenhouse gases.
The more narrow question framed by the court has led environmental advocates to minimize the case’s significance....
I was told above ‘‘It would be an important victory in a political sense and, potentially, a practical sense.’’
In addition to environmental groups, New York, California, Illinois, and a dozen other states are supporting the administration.
Also in support of the regulation is Calpine Corp., which operates natural gas and geothermal power plants around the nation....
Looking at the same program, the US Chamber of Commerce said it ‘‘may be the costliest, most intrusive regulatory program the nation has yet seen.’’
Not the IRS?
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Related: Supreme Court tangles over EPA authority
It takes two to tangle:
"‘Revenge porn’ victims pursue new laws, but ACLU urges caution" by Anne Flaherty | Associated Press November 16, 2013
WASHINGTON — Annmarie Chiarini’s long-distance boyfriend was goading her to pose nude. The pictures would be for his eyes only, Chiarini recalls him saying, because she was so beautiful and because he missed her so much. He promised, she said, they would be stored on a compact disc and hidden in his drawer.
Chiarini believed him — until they broke up and the CD was auctioned on eBay with a link e-mailed to her friends and family. Copies were later mailed to her son’s Catholic school kindergarten teacher and the department head at the college where Chiarini taught English. The images eventually wound up on a pornographic video-sharing site, earning 4,000 views in less than two weeks.
‘‘I was horrified,’’ said the 42-year-old single mom living in Towson, Md. ‘‘The night he said he was going to do it, I called the police in an absolute panic and tried to explain what was going on. I said, ‘He’s threatening to put these pictures of me on an eBay auction,’ and they [said], ‘So?’ ’’
It’s called ‘‘revenge porn,’’ and it is legal in every state but California and New Jersey. A person shares a sexually explicit photo or video with a partner, only to see those images pop up online months or even years later, typically after a bad breakup. The images are often tied to the person’s name, address, and phone number. And in a particularly disturbing twist, some of the sites appear to be running side businesses offering ‘‘reputation protection services’’: Dump $500 into a PayPal account, and maybe they will take down your photo.
Hmmm! Who benefits?
Good thing all I have time for is this shitty blog.
An increasing number of states, including Maryland, Wisconsin, and New York, are considering whether to make it illegal to post any sexually explicit image online without that person’s permission. But groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation say they worry such proposals run afoul of the First Amendment.
‘‘We generally don’t think that finding more ways to put people in prison for speech is a good thing,’’ said Adi Kamdar, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. ‘‘A lot of times, these laws — if they aren’t narrowly focused enough — they can be interpreted too broadly.’’
Maryland Delegate Jon Cardin, who is running for the Democratic nomination to become state attorney general, is among the latest of several state legislators to propose a new revenge porn law. His proposal would make it a felony to intentionally distribute sexually explicit digital images of another person without consent, punishable by up to five years in jail and a $25,000 fine.
The bill would exclude images deemed to have ‘‘public importance’’ — an exemption carved out in response to critics who say such laws would criminalize the publishing of explicit photos by journalists. The legislation also wouldn’t hold liable anyone who links to a revenge posting.
See: Propagandists to be Protected
Still absent from Cardin’s list of vocal supporters is the ACLU. Its California office worked this fall to dilute similar legislation. That bill, signed last month by Governor Jerry Brown, makes revenge porn a misdemeanor but contains a big loophole: It applies only to images captured by the partner, exempting self-portraits.
Holly Jacobs, a Florida woman who founded EndRevengePorn.com after her own self-shots wound up online — along with her name, where she worked, and details on her doctoral program — says attempts to exempt ‘‘selfies’’ from the law shows that most people still ‘‘blame the victim.’’ She estimates that 80 percent of the 1,000 victims of revenge porn who have contacted her in the past year took the images themselves.
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I don't want to look anymore:
"Court weighs child porn restitution" by Mark Sherman | Associated Press January 23, 2014
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices expressed compassion for a woman raped as a child as they struggled with how much money should be paid to her by one man convicted of possessing pornographic images of the abuse that have spread among thousands of online viewers.
Do I even have to type my comment?
The woman known as ‘‘Amy’’ was in the courtroom, her legal team said, for arguments in which the justices talked frankly about the abuse she and other victims of child pornography suffer from those who look at the pictures.
‘‘The woman has undergone serious psychiatric harm because of her knowledge that there are thousands of people out there viewing her rape,’’ Justice Antonin Scalia said early in the hourlong arguments.
Yet the court seemed to wrestle with determining how much restitution for counseling, lost income, and legal fees any single defendant should be asked to pay....
See: Supreme Court to consider rape victim restitution
‘‘He’s guilty of the crime, but to sock him with all of her psychiatric costs and everything else because he had two pictures of her. Congress couldn’t have intended that,’’ Scalia said in an exchange with Amy’s lawyer, Paul Cassell.
Several other justices also said they were troubled by the apparent lack of a link between the crime and the restitution order....
When Congress wrote the 1994 law giving victims of child pornography and other sexual crimes the right to collect restitution from people convicted of the crimes, it meant to make it easy for the victim to collect, Cassell said.
The idea, he said, is that courts could hold everyone responsible for the total amount. Most people, including Paroline, could afford only a small portion, but a few wealthier defendants might be able to pay the bulk of the judgment.
‘‘We’re not asking for double recovery. Amy simply wants to be made whole. She wants to recover her psychological counseling costs and her losses,’’ Cassell said.
She has so far received more than $1.75 million, Cassell said.
That would make me whole for the rest of my life.
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Also see: Child pornography trader pays restitution to victim
Sorry, I had enough sex yesterday and as for restitution, the lover is not listening, and maybe it is their IQ that should be questioned as well as their heart.
Unfortunately, politics is no longer a hobby with me.
See you this summer!
