Delaware Republican senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is back in the news today, just two weeks out from the midterm elections, after questioning in a debate whether the Constitution calls for a separation of church and state. The debate with Democratic candidate Chris Coons, before students and professors from Widener University Law School, was aired on [...]
Archive for the ‘Law’ Category
O’Donnell: ‘Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?’
Posted in Law, Politics, tagged Chris Coons, Christine O'Donnell, Delaware Dispatch, First Amend, Fourteenth Amendment, Seventeenth Amendment, Sixteenth Amendment, WDEL on October 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The DADT Injunction: A Gift or a Curse for Obama?
Posted in Law, Politics, tagged Constitutionality, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Military on October 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Judge Virginia Phillips of the Federal District Court for the Central District of California yesterday ordered a worldwide injunction banning enforcement of the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law. The 17-year-old ban on open gays serving in the military “infringes the fundamental rights of United States servicemembers and prospective servicemembers and violates (a) the substantive [...]
Post-Mortem: Snyder v. Phelps Oral Arguments at the Supreme Court
Posted in Law, tagged First Amendment, Post-Mortem, Supreme Court, Westboro Baptist Church on October 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a controversial First Amendment case regarding protesting military funerals. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas are infamous for protesting military funerals across the nation, displaying signs that imply soldiers’ deaths are God’s punishment on the nation for things such as accepting homosexuality, laws allowing abortion and [...]
Cameras in the Courts: Allowing Access or Creating Confusion?
Posted in Law, Politics, tagged Arlen Specter, Supreme Court, Transparency, YouTube on September 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The Judicial Conference of the United States, the federal judiciary’s policy-making branch, approved a pilot project last week to bring cameras into some civil proceedings. Parties can veto cameras, and the video will never show jurors’ faces. The cameras will be operated by court personnel, not news organizations. According to a spokesman from the Administrative [...]
The French Burqa Ban and America
Posted in Law, Politics, tagged Burqas, Constitutionality, France, Islam on September 15, 2010 | 2 Comments »
France’s senate yesterday approved by 246-1 (with 100 abstentions) a ban on burqas, a traditional Muslim garment for women that completely obscures the face. The ban comes with some severe penalties: women caught wearing burqas or other obscuring veils in public face a €150 fine and a “citizenship course”; men who force women to wear [...]
The L.A. Times’ Terrible New Standard of Relevancy
Posted in Law, Media, tagged Los Angeles Times, Proposition 8, Vaughn Walker on September 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Earlier this summer, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state, violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection without furthering any state interest. By most accounts, his ruling was legally well-founded and thought out. “[N]obody can fairly accuse Judge Walker of putting together an insubstantial or [...]
Ninth Circuit Reverses Humanitarian’s Littering Conviction
Posted in Law, tagged Humanitarianism, Illegal Immigrants, Ninth Circuit, Water on September 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Leaving water in the desert for illegal immigrants is not littering, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in a 2-1 decision reversing the conviction of a member of a humanitarian group that provides emergency aid to illegal immigrants. U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers observed Daniel Millis and three other members of the organization [...]
Judge to Cuccinelli: Where’s the Beef?
Posted in Law, Politics, tagged Academia, Climate Change, Ken Cuccinelli, University of Virginia on September 1, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Ken Cuccinelli certainly is busy these days. The Virginia attorney general took office just seven months ago and has already distinguished himself as a real go-getter. So far he has: Challenged the federal health care bill in court as an unconstitutional violation of the interstate commerce clause Advised the state’s universities that they cannot legally [...]
West Point’s Hidden Gay Culture
Posted in Education, Law, Politics, tagged Don't Ask Don't Tell, Katherine Miller, West Point on August 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The New York Times has an excellent piece about the underground gay culture at West Point, where cadets are forbidden from coming out for fear of an immediate discharge under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law. Although the centerpiece of the article is Katherine Miller, who resigned this month after deciding she could no longer [...]
