What I find interesting about all this is the fact that anyone's shocked. Politically appointed lawyers might have been fired for *gasp* political reasons? The guy that had the job in the first place was probably someone's crony too. Until someone finds for me the statute that says political appointees can't be fired for non-specific performance reasons (and there well may be one), I will read all this as the Dems trying to distract us from global warming and lobbyist reform failure.

RE: New E-Mail Gives Details on Attorney Dismissals - New York Times

Will a funnier case ever go before the Supreme Court than Morse v. Frederick? If you don't know the story already, a witty (and apparently litigious) high school student unrolled a large banner stating, simply: "Bong Hits for Jesus" in front of his school. But this was no ordinary day, rather it was the day the Olympic torch ceremony came through Juneau, Alaska, along with accompanying tv crews. So his antics could have concievably been broadcast to a wider audience- had not his incensed principle removed it. The boy sued, trial court found for the the school, the ninth circuit found for the bong-hitter, and that brings us to today, when when we get to hear Justice Scalia asking Kenneth (yes that one) Starr "this banner was interpreted as meaning smoke pot, no?"

A few other favorite moments:

JUSTICE GINSBURG: So if the sign had been "Bong Stinks for Jesus," that would be, and Morse had the same reaction, that this was demeaning to the Olympics and it was unruly conduct, that there would be a protected right under Tinker because the message was not promoting drugs?
....
JUSTICE BREYER: Suppose that this particular person had whispered to his next door neighbor, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus, heh heh heh," you know. Supposed that's what had happened?
.....
MR. MERTZ: Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court: This is a case about free speech. It is not a case about drugs.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: It's a case about money. Your client wants money from the principal personally for her actions in this case.

Damn straight its about money! Money for more bong hits! But seriously, legally this case had some value as well. These are important questions in this days of heaightened school security. How far does a school's discretion go in regulating speech? Can a kid put up a B.H.F.J. banner in home room? What about wearing black armbands? What about putting up a banner that said Democrat/ Republican for Jesus? Many groups on the left and right (usual suspects ACLU and not so usual like Liberty Legal and American Center for Law and Justice, Pat Robertson's guys) filed amicus briefs on the side of the student, who was not particularly political or religously observant, but rather wanted "to get on television".

Reading the transcript of the oral argument, it seems at first like the Justices simply weren't up on the hip-kid slang. But really, the interpretation at the banner was at the heart of the matter. Was this political speech? Probably not- that might have been more along the lines of "Legalize bong hits...for jesus". Was is religous speech? Um, no one was willing to buy that. But this ambigous kind of jackassery- ought this sort of speech be protected? Even if it vaguely promotes drug use?

The court seemed to come down on the side of Jesus... I mean, the students. This banner was outside the school, not in the classroom, and although it was pretty much meaningless nonsense, with a few words changed it could have been a political or religous expression. And the Justices didn't seem to be comfortable with the idea of a "school message" that was being contradicted. After all, were that the case schools could be republican, pro-choice, or pro-war and expression the contrary could be stricken as disruptive. All in all, I think speech rights are fairly safe for now.

Safe for when someone comes up with something more important to say than "Bong Hit for Jesus," for fuck's sake.

Whose Bong Would Jesus Hit?

k wrote:
In every field of human endeavor, we hire experts to handle things we do not have sufficient time, inclination or intelligence to learn how to handle on our own.

YES, but should we? Is it always necessary to professionalize, to make a language that the layman can't understand? Sometimes, I think law is unnecessarily complex in order to avoid violence and, perhaps, revolution.

In reality, the law is often breathtakingly arbitrary. The same case with narrow differences comes up and recieves different treatment, over and over and over again. How are the differences explained? Judicial prejudice, jury make-up, but mostly the fact that there is a theory for every argument. In th end, that may be the best system anyways (the best argument wins) but all the same, its hard to call it fair or grounded in scientific principles. (Not that you said that.)

SO- not only is the law a very different system from how it presents itself, but it seems to me to be deliberate in adding complexities to grievances that might be better served through social change and direct action. For instance, suing a grocery chain for refusing to open in poor neighborhoods would be a passive solution. Organizing community gardens would be active, and probably solve the problem more quickly. 1.5 million women suing Wal-Mart for sex- discriminination yields small individual settlements or years of litigation. 1.5 million women going on strike? Maybe immediate results. (Sometimes these courses of action could be combine, ect.)

So I guess what bothers me is that lawyers say to people: this is a legal problem that is too complicated for you to understand, let alone solve. People on all sides of the system back this contention up. Sometimes, though, this convulates issues and takes it out of the hands of those people who could be most instrumental is solving them.

And I again, I think thats bullshit. But I suppose its kind of like the weather: everybody talks about it but nobody every does anything.

RE: The People's Law Student: Why am I here?

U.S. government consultant used software programs found on the Internet to break into the FBI's computer system, where he gained access to the passwords of 38,000 employees, including that of FBI Director Robert Mueller, the Washington Post reports.

Again with the hacking into govt. computers. Can't they get some spyware or something?

Hacker Invades FBI Computers, Gains Access To Passwords Of 38,000 Employees, Including Director - CBS News

(Of course in its discussion of legislative history the Court wholly ignores the President's signing statement, which explicitly set forth his understanding that the DTA ousted jurisdiction over pending cases.)

Of everything in the opinion, concurrences and dissents, nothing is as scary as this one line from Scalia. He is assigning, at minimum, the equivalence of legislative intent to a signing statement. The executive is not the legislative and equating them is a grossly pernicious error.

HAMDAN v. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, et al.

Justices rule the Bush administration overstepped its authority in creating military war crimes trials for detainees as part of its anti-terror policies.

AMAZING, FANTASTIC NEWS!!!! There will be more as soon as they can write it all, but OMG!!!!!!!!!!

What are they gonna say now, the Supreme Court has a liberal bias? With two handpicked Bushie appointees?

G-D BLESS AMERICA!!!!!!!

Wa-Po: SC Ruling comes down against Bush in Gitmo Case

It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.
The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly. The responsibility of it weighs most heavily on us when an issue involves national security, and especially national security in times of war. I've only participated in a few such cases, but they are among the most agonizing decisions I've faced as an editor.

READ THIS

Letter From Bill Keller on The Times's Banking Records Report - New York Times

The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, probably even longer. The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."
A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that the Earth is running a fever and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." Their 155-page report said average global surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rose about 1 degree during the 20th century.

BREITBART.COM - Study Says Earth's Temp at 400-Year High

You and I may or may not agree on the war. Fine. But can we agree on this? Can we agree that when a family has given the ultimate sacrifice, the life of a son or daughter, a wife, a father, a mother, when they have to hear on the news that the light of their life has gone out, that the bodies of their sons were found mutilated, or that their daughter’s legs were blown off, or been told that “daddy is missing”…can we please agree that that demands respect, gravity, and decorum? That it should inspire genuine sympathy, empathy, regret, and even grief.

I’m not saying that the President doesn’t feel those things. How would I know what he feels? I’m saying that there is a time for levity. There is a time for so-called “towel snapping.” There is a time for comedy. A press conference about a war, about death, about young men and women giving their lives is not the place for it.

Couldn't agree more.

The Blog | Michael Seitzman: Gravity and Levity or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Let The President Buy Me A Drink | The Huffington Post

According to Internet-monitoring company Netcraft, a security flaw on PayPal's site allowed hackers to steal credit card information from PayPal users.

woah

PayPal Fixes URL Used for Fraud - Yahoo! News