BluegrassBulletin.com

"Smoke 'em If You Got 'em" Obama's Pot Plan

I suspect that Obama did the right thing, but for the wrong reason.  He has apparently directed his federal authorities to avoid prosecution of marijuana users whose activities are legal under their own state law.  The right reason would be in recognition that crimes should be defined by the states, not the federal government.  His reasons however are merely a shift in "prosecutorial priorities".  In other words, he could always change his mind.

History teaches us that prior to the administration of George H.W. Bush, federal criminal laws punished truly national crimes like treason, bribery of federal officials and perjury in federal courts.  But always to be expected, the federal government's voracious appetite to control people caused a significant leap forward after the 1980's and resulted in the federalization of otherwise state defined criminal conduct.

This sparked a tremendous growth in the whole bureaucracy which built up around this shift.  More judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement agency resources were devoted to the investigation, prosecution, trial and ultimately imprisonment of those charged and convicted of federal crimes.  The bite on our budget is more stinging today.

The federal government, justified this power grab primarily under the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution.  Reasoning that crimes affect commerce, Congress stepped in where states were historically left to legislate on their own.  The Constitutional justification for federalizing crimes is based upon a fiction and in fact one day may be dissolved.  But the federal government's usurpation of the power of states to define crimes within their own borders has thus far survived for one reason only.

The federal government has been insulated by federal courts created by the Congress, populated with judges appointed by the President with the advice, consent and sometimes at the direction of members of Congress and as such the entire federal judicial system has been so far unwilling to call the federal criminal scheme for exactly what it is: utterly devoid of any real support under the Constitution.

Obama has taken a step in the right direction, but for the wrong reason.  It is highly unlikely, given his propensity to strengthen the central federal government, that his actions signal any move back to the days when the sovereignty of states was fully acknowledged, and the limitations on the federal government were generally accepted.  Odds are, he just doesn't think pot is a big deal.

Oooooo...Liberals May Have Outsmarted Themselves In Hate Crimes Bill

By now I'm sure you've heard that the Senate inserted "hate crimes" language into the defense appropriations bill.  And I'm sure you heard that some republicans insisted that the bill very clearly exempt from prosecution "hate speech", adding language to make it clear that the bill could not infringe upon First Amendment rights.

Well, in conference committee the language which protects against First Amendment violations was substantially weakened.  Now you can be prosecuted for "hate speech" if the government can show "a compelling government interest."

You see, that's why we have a constitution, because those in charge of the government, and it's department of justice can change.  For example, under one administration you might be prosecuted for denouncing gays, blacks, hispanics or Muslims.  Under another administration you might be prosecuted for denouncing homophobes, white racists, Christian conservatives or Mormons.

Yes, the bill will have to work its evil and then make its way through the appeals process until some court declares it unconstitutional, but in the mean time a lot of people could find their sense of liberty chilled, their freedom in jeopardy and their earnings devoted to legal expenses instead of the pursuit of happiness.

Oh, and just how have liberals perhaps outsmarted themselves?  Judging by the unpopularity of the current administration, calling people "racist right wing homophobes" might just end up being the prosecution de jure of a strong republican administration in a few years.

Just one more example of how our Congress is filled with a bunch of idiots.  Oooops....better watch my mouth.

Roman, Meet Jack Webb

Ky Supreme Court Does Substantial Justice

The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that a spouse is entitled to recover for "loss of consortium" resulting from the death of a husband or wife.  This decision corrects a terrible injustice which existed in Kentucky for decades.

I can attest that in some cases where one spouse is totally dependent upon the other for daily care, the loss of the caregiver causes tremendous damage to the survivor.  When that death is prematurely caused by the negligence of another person, allowing the guilty to escape without making full compensation for the loss he/she/it has caused was unjust.

The Kentucky Supreme Court corrected that yesterday.  Good for them.

OPINION HERE

Good For Jack Conway

This from KyPost:

Attorney General Jack Conway  has announced that his office plans to fight to keep the reference to "Almighty God" in Kentucky's homeland security bill by appealing the decision of a Frankfort judge.

Karl Marx Strategy Wins In Kentucky Court

Karl Marx said it was his goal in life to "dethrone God and destroy capitalism."  Of course to dethrone God is a tacit admission that God occupies a throne to begin with. lest there would be no way to "de-thone" him.

Now a Kentucky judge has helped move the Marxist strategy one step further by declaring that the Kentucky legislature has no authority to recognize the existence of God in legislation or in any way use words that would, despite our national motto "In God We Trust", say essentially the same thing for Kentucky.

A Franklin circuit judge on Wednesday declared unconstitutional a reference to God in a 2006 law creating the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security.

In an 18-page order, Judge Thomas Wingate said the General Assembly created an official government position on God when it passed a law requiring the office to acknowledge "the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

Wingate said it is clear that the purpose of the language wasn't to celebrate the historical reasons for "our great nation's survival in the face of terror and war," but instead declared publicly that the position of the state was that an "Almighty God exists and that the function of that God is to protect us from our enemies." [Stephanie Steitzer]

The order is surely going to be appealed and may end up in another test of our nation's right to publicly acknowledge the role God plays in guiding and protecting us.

In the meantime the judge's order is a win for the late Karl Marx.

So Sonia, Now We Know

This from National Review Online:

Justice Sotomayor’s first vote on the Supreme Court yesterday was to stay the execution of an unquestionably guilty hitman that even Ohio’s Democratic governor wanted to go forward. (It did; she and the liberal activist bloc lost the vote.)

 

Who's surprised?

 

Sotomayor boosters tried to paint her as a tough-on-crime former prosecutor to counteract her radical-left, anti-death-penalty activism during her days with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

 

Remember Joe Biden assuring law enforcement she "has your back"?

 

Remember the White House continually highlighting her work for New York City DA Robert Morgenthau?

 

Remember her supporters touting that she had allowed "the first prosecution in the Southern District of New York of a death-penalty case in over 40 years"?

 

Ever catch the Alliance for Justice's report, which said: 

Exhibiting a modest and restrained approach to trial process, she frequently concludes that procedural defects resulted in harmless rather than structural error. Her cautious style reveals the temperament of a former prosecutor who understands the real-world demands of prosecuting crime and fundamentally respects the rule of law, while remaining alert to the rights of criminal defendants.

All these little attempts to mislead and distract were transparently absurd, but it's worth noting, just for the record.

And this from the same source:

So guess who was among the guests that the White House invited to attend last week’s party celebrating Justice Sotomayor’s appointment to the Court?  New Haven mayor John DeStefano Jr., the named defendant in Ricci v. DeStefano (the New Haven firefighters case) and, as Justice Alito’s concurrence documents, the driving force—in collusion with a local racebaiter who is his longtime ally—behind the racial discrimination against the firefighters.

 

Just wondering:  How many other mayors did the White House invite to the party?  And why did it invite DeStefano? 

Hat-tip Powerline Blog

Fabrication Of Evidence: Scientists Prove DNA Can Be Constructed

This from the New York Times:

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person. “You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”

The planting of fabricated DNA evidence at a crime scene is only one implication of the findings. A potential invasion of personal privacy is another.

So much for making criminal convictions 'fool-proof'.  Now the question will become, who is fooling who?

Breach Of Trust: Lawyers Sentenced In Fen-Phen Case To 20 and 25 Years

What was it that drove two successful lawyers to handle a class action lawsuit in such a way as to end up in prison for 20 and 25 years?  Some will say sheer greed, others will say it was a criminal intent, while others will come to their defense and say that it was all a misunderstanding which caught them unaware.

No matter which approach you take one thing is undeniable.  These men took an oath and in the end they were sentenced because they breached the trust that oath guaranteed.

It is without doubt that in today's world many people take oaths.  They pledge their loyalty to each other, until death do them part.  They place a hand on the Bible and pledge to follow the Constitution.  They raise their hand in court and then promise to be truthful.  Everyday we see people treat these oaths as mere formalities.  Taking an oath has become meaningless to many.

And so it was with President Bill Clinton, accused of perjury by the House, acquitted by the Senate, but in the eyes of the public, a liar under oath. You might ask, "Why bring up Bill Clinton?"  The answer is this.

We must demand that our leaders, and all others who we place in positions of trust, will honor their oaths.  The judge who sentenced two Kentucky lawyers yesterday said that their fraud damaged the entire legal system in Kentucky.  What they really damaged was the public's ability to trust the judicial branch of our system.  Judge Danny Reeves set about to fix that.

Americans are fed up with those in whom we are asked to place our trust, ignoring the importance of their oaths.

As Congressman Henry Hyde said in his remarks during the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton:

When Ben Franklin, on September 18, 1787 told a Mrs. Powel that the Founders and Framers had given us a Republic "if you can keep it", perhaps he anticipated a future time when bed-rock principles of our democracy would be mortally threatened - as the Rule of Law stands in the line of fire today.

Nothing I can think of more clearly illustrates that America is a continuing experiment - never finished - that our democracy is always a work in progress than this debate today - for we sit here with the power to shape and reconfigure the charter of our freedom, just as the Founders and Framers did. We can strengthen our Constitution by giving it content and meaning, or weaken and wound it by tolerating (and thus encouraging) lies under oath and evasions and breaches of trust on the part of our Chief Executive.

Let us be clear: The vote that all of us are asked to cast is, in the final analysis, a vote about the rule of law.

The rule of law is one of the great achievements of our civilization. For the alternative to the rule of law is the rule of raw power. We here today, are the heirs of three thousand years of history in which humanity slowly, and at great cost, evolved a form of politics in which law, not brute force, is the arbiter of our public destinies.

We are the heirs of the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic law: a moral code for a free people who, having been liberated from cruel bondage, saw in law a means to avoid falling back into the habits of slaves.

We are the heirs of Roman law: the first legal system by which peoples of different cultures, languages, races, and religions came to live together in a form of political community.

We are the heirs of Magna Carta, by which the freemen of England began to break the arbitrary and unchecked power of royal absolutism.

We are the heirs of a long tradition of parliamentary development, in which the rule of law gradually came to replace the royal prerogative as the means for governing a society of free men and women.

We are the heirs of 1776, and of an epic moment in human affairs when the Founders of this Republic pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor - sacred honor - to the defense of the rule of law.

We are the heirs of a hard-fought civil war, which vindicated the rule of law over the appetites of some for owning others.

We are the heirs of the 20th century's great struggles against totalitarianism, in which the rule of law was defended at immense cost against the worst tyrannies in human history. The "rule of law" is no pious phrase from a civics textbook. The rule of law is what stands between all of us and the arbitrary exercise of power by the state. The rule of law is the safeguard of our liberties. The rule of law is what allows us to live our freedom in ways that honor the freedom of others while strengthening the common good. The rule of law is like a three-legged stool: one leg is an honest judge, the second leg is an ethical bar, and the third is an enforceable oath. All three are indispensable to avoid political collapse.

My sympathies to the families who suffered because of this case.  My congratulations to those who stood up for the rule of law and restoring the public trust. 

Bunning Nails It: Sotomayor "Unsuitable"

Two term incumbent United States Senator Jim Bunning rose to address the United States Senate for the purpose of explaining his intentions to vote against the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court.  Here are his remarks:

Mister President, today I rise to speak on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be a Justice on the United States Supreme Court.  After much consideration, I cannot support this nomination.

I have been following this process closely.  I have been reading her rulings and her speeches.  I have been watching her hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee.  I met with her one-on-one and was able to ask her questions.  Unfortunately, I find her to be unsuitable to be a member of the United States Supreme Court.

The first problem I would like to discuss is her lack of direct answers to direct questions.  I had this problem in my meeting with her and it appears from watching the Judiciary Committee hearings that other members have had that problem too.  My biggest concern in this area is that she answered the questions from the perspective of the job she has, not the job she has been nominated for.  As a member of the district or circuit court, she must rely heavily on precedent.  However, as a Justice of the Supreme Court, she is in the position to set precedent.  When I asked her simple questions about how she would treat certain subjects, she retreated to saying that she would use precedent to decide how to proceed.  I found this unsatisfactory because she would be setting precedent as a member of the Supreme Court.  In fact, throughout her nomination process I have seen her sidestep direct questions time and time again.  We have seen this happen numerous times during her hearing before the Judiciary Committee.  I think we deserve answers to these questions and we have not gotten them.