Bilerico has requested some help getting the word out on a Human Rights Ordinance being considered in Indy. The above linked page has information on the ordinance. As it’s confined to Indy and I’m a little iffy on the concept of human rights ordinances generally, I guess I won’t add my feeble endorsement. But, I will say that, if you’re going to have a human rights ordinance designed to protect minorities, then including sexual orientation and gender identity protection makes sense.
Indy Star on New Laws going into effect on Friday, July 1.
Michele McNeil has an article for the Indy Star entitled Playing by new rules which recaps some of the laws going into effect on Friday, including:
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette on DST
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial entitled “East beats Central” expounding on the virtues of Eastern Daylight Time versus Central Daylight Time. I guess if I were in Fort Wayne, I’d agree. They report Daniels’ assertion that the USDOT will announce public hearings soon. I’ll believe it when I see it. The USDOT may well allow hearings, but Daniels petition seemed plainly deficient in light of the USDOT’s requirements. If one of our boards of county commissioners had submitted the same petition, it would’ve been rejected out of hand.
Bush’s speech
President Bush’s Speech About Iraq – New York Times.
Ouch:
We did not expect Mr. Bush would apologize for the misinformation that helped lead us into this war, or for the catastrophic mistakes his team made in running the military operation. But we had hoped he would resist the temptation to raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks. We had hoped that he would seize the moment to tell the nation how he will define victory, and to give Americans a specific sense of how he intends to reach that goal – beyond repeating the same wishful scenario that he has been describing since the invasion.
. . .
No one wants a disaster in Iraq, and Mr. Bush’s critics can put aside, at least temporarily, their anger at the administration for its hubris, its terrible planning and its inept conduct of the war in return for a frank discussion of where to go from here. The president, who is going to be in office for another three and a half years, cannot continue to obsess about self-justification and the need to color Iraq with the memory of 9/11. The nation does not want it and cannot afford it.
“Listen, man – What part of ‘Democracy Freedom Stay the Course Terror Terror’ don’t you understand?”
Sheila Suess Kennedy on the antics of B-Boz & Johnny Ho
Sheila Suess Kennedy has a column in the Indy Star entitled Playing by rules of law and order. She likens Speaker of the House, Brian Bosma and U.S. Representative for Indiana’s 8th District, John Hostettler to a couple of 3 year olds throwing tantrums when they don’t get their way. Their way, in this case, is the ability to use state and federal government for religious proselytization. Rep. Bosma supports the use of sectarian prayer as part of official House business while Rep. Hostettler refuses to condemn what appears to be a culture at the Air Force Academy hostile to people who aren’t born again Christians. Both deliberately miss the point about the role of the government in matters of religion and accuse their detractors as being “hostile to people of faith.”
More important, says Kennedy, is Hostettler’s attempt to defund enforcement of a court order involving the 10 Commandments.
To their credit, Gibson County officials have disavowed any intention to defy the court order. The attorney who defended the placement of the monument in court was quoted as saying, “We’re law-abiding people. Whether we like the ruling or not is irrelevant.”
That, of course, is the point. The rule of law becomes meaningless if we only have to obey laws and court decisions we like. Similarly, separation of powers — one of the fundamental elements of the American government structure — becomes meaningless if one branch can effectively control either of the others. (If the Democrats were to win control of Congress in 2006, would Hostettler agree that they could then “de-fund” the Bush administration, to keep it in line? Not likely!)
Think back to your days in Little League or sandlot baseball or whatever team game you played. What if the umpire called an out, but the player refused to abide by the call and insisted on running the bases? How long would the game have continued? We all know that every call an umpire makes isn’t correct; people can and do argue–often heatedly — with umpires and their decisions. But without an umpire, without someone whose job it is to call them as he sees them, without someone who has final authority to make the call, there can be no game at all.
The lawyer from Gibson County understands that; John Hostettler clearly doesn’t.
Which brings me to the point of this longish rehashing of matters I’ve already covered at length in this space. The umpire analogy reminds me of my Civil Procedure professor telling the class about judges. He said judges were like umpires and proceeded to recount a story of 3 umpires, a young one, a middle-aged one, and an old one. The young umpire said about calling pitches, “I calls ’em as I sees ’em.” The middle-aged one snorted scornfully, and said, “Hah. I callse ’em as they is. The old one just shook his head, and said, “Boys. They ain’t nuthin’ ’til I call ’em.”
Filing fees
I got a memo from our county clerk today concerning filing fees to file civil actions in the state courts. I’m still reeling from the sticker shock on the small claims actions, so I haven’t even registered what it’s going to cost to file plenary actions. A small claims action will increase from $46 to $70 PLUS $10 for each additional defendant including garnishee-defendants.
So, to take an extreme example, if you’re a landlord with four tenants you want to evict, get a judgment for back rent and property damage, and garnish their wages, it’s going to cost you:
$70 base filing fee, PLUS
$30 for the 3 additional defendants, PLUS
$40 for the 4 garnishee-defendants.
—–
$140 to do what used to cost you $46. That’s more than a 300% increase.
Call it what you want, it sure feels like an increased tax to me.
S. Ct. on 42 USC 1983 Due Process
The S.Ct. released an opinion in the case of Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales concerning a case where a mother had a restraining order against a father. The father kidnapped the kids and later murdered them. The facts are reasonably horrible. The kids disappeared from the yard between 5 and 5:30. Mom noticed the kids were gone, suspected the husband had them, and called the police at about 7:30 and, when the officers arrived at her home, showed them a copy of the restraining order and requested it be enforced. The officers said they couldn’t do anything and told her to call back if the kids were still gone at 10. At 8:30 mom talked to dad on the cell phone. Dad said he had the kids at an amusement park in Denver. Mom called the police and requested that the police check out the amusement park and get the kids back for her. They told her to call back at 10. At 10 she called back. They said call back at midnight. At midnight she called, and eventually got an officer dispatched to her home at 12:50 a.m. The investigating officer took the report and but didn’t try to enforce the order, instead he went to dinner. At 3:20 a.m. dad showed up at the police station and opened fire on the police. They returned fire, killing him. In the cab of dad’s pickup truck were the bodies of the 3 children.
Mom sued the city on her own behalf and on behalf of her dead children under 42 USC 1983 under a theory that their due process rights had been violated both procedurally and substantively. The 10th Circuit denied her substantive due process claim but upheld the procedural due process claim, holding “protected property interestin the enforcement of the terms of her restraining order†and that the town had deprived her of due process because “the police never ‘heard’ nor seriously entertained her request to enforce and protect her interests in the restraining order.â€
The Supreme Court overturned the 10th Circuit decision in an opinion written by Justice Scalia joined by Rehnquist, O’Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas and Breyer. Justices Stevens and Ginsburg dissented. Justice Scalia mentioned that this question had been left opened by the 1989 case of DeShaney v. Winnebago County (The “Poor Joshua” case for those of you who remember Justice Steven’s dissent.) Scalia described the question in DeShaney:
As the Court of Appeals recognized, we left a similar question unanswered in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Servs., 489 U. S. 189 (1989), another case with “undeniably tragic†facts: Local child-protection officials had failed to protect a young boy from beatings by his father that left him severely brain damaged. Id., at 191–193. We held that the so-called “substantive†component of the Due Process Clause does not “requir[e] the State to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors.†Id., at 195. We noted, however, that the petitioner had not properly preservedthe argument that—and we thus “decline[d] to consider†whether—state “child protection statutes gave [him] an ‘entitlement’ to receive protective services in accordance with the terms of the statute, an entitlement which would enjoy due process protection.â€
The 10th Circuit’s decision turned on a Colorado statute which provided, among other things, “A peace officer shall enforce a valid restraining order whether or not there is a record of the restraining order in the registry.†The 10th Circuit held that this statute demonstrated the state of Colorado’s clear intent “to alter the fact that the police were not enforcing domestic abuse retraining orders,†and thus its intent “that the recipient of a domestic abuse restraining order have an entitlement to its enforcement.†Any other result, it said, “would render domestic abuse restraining orders utterly valueless.†If the recipient of the restraining order had an entitlement to its enforcement, the argument goes, then a failure to enforce the restraining order deprives the recipient of its value and, therefore, constitutes deprivation of property without due process in violation of the 5th and 14th Amendments.
The Supreme Court regarded the 10th Circuit’s language as hyperbole.
Whether or not respondent had a right to enforce the restraining order, it rendered certain otherwise lawful conduct by her husband both criminal and in contempt of court. The creation of grounds on which he could be arrested, criminally prosecuted, and held in contempt was hardly “valuelessâ€â€”even if the prospect of those sanctions ultimately failed to prevent him from committing
three murders and a suicide.We do not believe that these provisions of Colorado law truly made enforcement of restraining orders mandatory. A well established tradition of police discretion has longcoexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes.
With respect to police discretion, the Court noted:
It is hard to imagine that a Colorado peace officer would not have some discretion to determine that—despite probable cause to believe a restraining order has been violated—the circumstances of the violation or the competing duties of that officer or his agency counsel decisively against enforcement in a particular instance. The practical necessity for discretion is particularly apparent in a case such as this one, where the suspected violator is not actually present and his whereabouts are unknown.
With respect to the entitledment, the Court noted:
Respondent does not specify the precise means of enforcement that the Colorado restraining-order statute assertedly mandated—whether her interest lay in having police arrest her husband, having them seek a warrant for his arrest, or having them “use every reasonable means, up to and including arrest, to enforce the order’s terms,†Such indeterminacy is not the hallmark of a duty that is mandatory. Nor can someone be safely deemed “entitled†to something when the identity of the alleged entitlement is vague.
Even if the obligation to enforce the warrant was mandatory on the police, the Court argues, that wouldn’t necessarily mean that the mandate constituted an entitlement for the benefit of the Respondent (in this case, the mother).
The Court concludes with a summary of the law of which I approve, as someone who frequently defends government entities against claims under 42 U.S.C. 1983:
In light of today’s decision and that in DeShaney, the benefit that a third party may receive from having someone else arrested for a crime generally does not trigger protections under the Due Process Clause, neither in itsprocedural nor in its “substantive†manifestations. This result reflects our continuing reluctance to treat the Fourteenth Amendment as ‘a font of tort law,’ but it does not mean States are powerless to provide victims with personally enforceable remedies. Although the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 17 Stat. 13 (the original source of §1983), did not create a system by which police departments are generally held financially accountable for crimes that better policing might have prevented, the people of Colorado are free to craft such a system understate law.
Because the police have discretion over enforcement, their failure to enforce the restraining order did not constitute a violation of mom’s Constitutional rights.
Washington Post: S.Ct. prohibits religious Ten Commandments Display in KY courthouses
The Washington Post has an article entitled, Ten Commandments Disallowed in Courthouses
Sort of the usual suspects. Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter and O’Connor as the swing vote held that a Kentucky court house display of the Ten Commandments was impermissible because “”When the government acts with the ostensible and predominant purpose of advancing religion, it violates that central Establishment clause value of official religious neutrality.” Justice Souter wrote for the majority. Opposed were Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy. Oddly, the article felt it necessary to point out that O’Connor was a Reagan appointee. If they’re going that route, they should say Ten Commandments ruled impermissible by Ford-appointee Stevens, Reagan-appointee O’Connor, Bush I-appointee Souter, and Clinton appointees Breyer and Ginsburg.
I haven’t read the opinion yet, but it is available in PDF form here.
—————–
The Supreme Court decided another case here wherein it held that a public display of the Ten Commandments was permissible. That display was at the Texas State House where it was among 17 monuments and 21 historical markers, and the Court felt that the display in that case was more secular in nature.
I Get Letters
From time to time, I get letters. By way of full disclosure, this wasn’t directly in response to one of my blog entries but rather this was an e-mail sent to me in response to one of my comments to a post at the blog, In The Agora:
You’re a fucking idiot. What makes you so fucking smart? I hope someone
murders you.
I’ve said some inflammatory things in my time, but I tend to keep my discourse civil at In the Agora since it’s a forum that leans pretty well to the right, but is generally a good place for more or less rational discussions. So, I have absolutely no idea what sent this yahoo off his rocker.
Guess Hostettler is gutless too
WTHR has a story entitled Hostettler not backing down from his words.
From the story:
Washington D.C., June 23 – “Democrats can’t help themselves when it
comes to demonizing and denigrating Christians.” John Hostettler
retracted those words on the House floor, but he nonetheless believes
they are true.
. . .
Hostettler says procedural threats forced him to strike his words on the House floor, but won’t silence him elsewhere. “I’ll continue to voice my concerns about this bigoted approach to Christians and especially evangelical Christians until folks on their side decide to drop it.”
Not only is he nuts. He’s spineless. If he honestly believes Democrats simply can’t help themselves from demonizing Christians, he should’ve stuck by his guns. (Well, figuratively. I’m not sure the conditions of Hostettler’s probation allow him to possess firearms.)
See my previous entry for details. And see Taking Down Words for more about the procedure that turned Hostettler yellow.
Update: Per the suggestion at Taking Down Words, I went to the Congressional record for the transcript of Rep. Hostettler backing down on the House of Representatives. Some of the discussion follows:
Mr. HOSTETTLER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the last sentence I spoke.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Indiana?
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I think the House needs to understand why I objected to the language of the gentleman.
As I understand it, the language that the gentleman is saying he will withdraw is the following: “Like moth to a flame, Democrats can’t help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians.”
What I would have asked the gentleman, since he referred earlier in his remarks to me and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel), I would have asked him if he really believed that the gentleman from New York’s (Mr. Israel) efforts to attach similar language in the Committee on Armed Services, the language that the gentleman referred to earlier in his discussion, whether he really thought that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel) was engaging in an anti-Christian act. I would have asked him whether he really thought that the language that I was trying to offer to protect people of all religions at the Air Force Academy, whether he really thought I was being anti-Christian. I would have asked him if he thought that the chaplain at the Air Force Academy who laid her career on the line in order to protect the religious freedom of those cadets who she felt were being intimidated, whether her actions were anti-Christian.
[Time: 16:30]
I would have asked whether he thinks that the kind of conduct which the superintendent of the Academy has already admitted occurred, which among other things had one cadet calling another a “filthy Jew,” or when they had cadets who did not subscribe to a specific kind of Christianity being told that they were going to, “burn in hell,” I would have asked him whether or not the Chaplain’s objection to that kind of conduct was antiChristian?
I would have suggested that when Mr. Whitaker, the official spokesman for the Academy indicated that he thought the problem at the Academy was one of “insensitivity and ignorance,” I would have asked whether or not, unfortunately, we did not often see those same qualities displayed elsewhere, including on the floor of this House?
And I would have suggested that I think his outburst, and the specific language he used, is perhaps a perfect example of why we need to pass the language in my amendment, which states, “coercive and abusive religious proselytizing at the United States Air Force Academy by officers assigned to duty at the Academy and others in the chain of command at the Academy, as has been reported, is inconsistent with the professionalism and standards required of those who serve at the Academy.
And I would add, also, of those who serve in this House and speak on this floor. So those are the questions I would have asked. If the gentleman is withdrawing those words, fine, I think it is constructive that he do so.
But, before I do that, I would, under my reservation, yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel).
Mr. ISRAEL. Mr. Chairman, the words that we heard, as unfortunate and as hurtful as they were, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) says, testimony for the passage of our amendment.
I have never heard it suggested that by somehow saying that with a personal expression of religious observance and freedom, as the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) wrote in his amendment, as I included in my amendment, could somehow be characterized in the way it just was.
And, Mr. Chairman, I will just state for the record, with respect to the Air Force Academy, by one estimate, of the 117 Academy cadets, staff members and faculty members who complained about religious intimidation and proselytizing, eight happened to be Jewish, one happens to be atheist, 10 happen to be Catholic, and all of the rest happen to be Protestants.
So this is not being for or against any one faith, I would say to the gentleman. This is about respect for all faiths. And that is why we offer this amendment, and that is why we believe now more than ever that it is critical that it be passed, and that the American people know that we embrace religious viewpoints in our military, but we also want respect for the spiritual values of all people.
Mr. OBEY. Continuing my reservation, Mr. Chairman. I would simply say that perhaps the speech of my good friend from Florida (Mr. Young) urging that we stop talking on this amendment and get to the vote, perhaps his speech came 5 minutes too late. It is too bad, not too late, because if we had voted before the last speaker, the House would not have seen this unfortunate event present itself.
So, Mr. Chairman, I would simply say that I think perhaps the best thing to do in the interests of restoring a decent amount of civility and comity to the House this afternoon is for the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler) as he has suggested, to withdraw his words and for us to get onto a vote and pass this amendment to make quite clear that every Member of this House, save perhaps a few, recognize that we have an obligation to each and every cadet at the Air Force Academy, to see that they can practice their religion without fear of ridicule, without fear of condemnation, without fear of intimidation by anyone else, be they Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, or any other religion that anyone of us can think of.
This language in the committee bill, the language which we are restoring by my amendment, is an effort to protect all religions, all religions. I would ask for an aye vote when the amendment comes.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.
The CHAIRMAN. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Indiana?
There was no objection.
The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, the words designated by the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Hostettler) are withdrawn.
There was no objection.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 628
- 629
- 630
- 631
- 632
- …
- 687
- Next Page »