[JURIST] The US Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in Beard v. Kindler that a state procedural rule is not automatically "inadequate" to bar federal habeas review under the adequate state ground doctrine. The case arose when the Pennsylvania courts applied the state's fugitive forfeiture rule and concluded that defendant Joseph Kindler waived his right to seek appellate review, dismissing his...
The election for Ted Kennedy's seat is tomorrow (12/8/09) and Martha Coakley is raking in the liberal and feminist endorsements. Bill Clinton's endorsement is especially heartening after Nancy Pelosi came out for the male candidate, again. Speaker Pelosi is fast becoming the woman's version of Clarence Thomas. Listen to Bill Clinton's robo call here and read more over at Women for Coakley . via Taylor...
One additional observation on New York Times blogger Linda Greenhouse’s misguided critique of two recent Supreme Court cases. Greenhouse writes (italics added): Justice Samuel A. Alito added a concurring paragraph [in Bobby v. Van Hook ] to observe that the A.B.A. “is, after all, a private group with limited membership,” and its views should not be given “special relevance”...
I have written a good deal throughout Barack Obama's tenure in office about the need to focus more on the judiciary, both in absolute numbers (with President Obama nominating 60 percent fewer federal judges than his predecessor, George W. Bush) and in terms of the attributes of his nominees (with President Obama's nominees tending to be much older than the nominees put forward by Republican Presidents)....
Dick Morris talked about this the other night. What infuriates the liberals most about Palin is not that she is a conservative woman dominating the political stage at the moment. It's that she is a woman dominating the political stage and it is not THEIR woman. These. . . or. . . Human Events : The Rise of the Conservative Woman by Doug Patton One of the most revealing things about liberals is their...
Matthew Berry . Not the ESPN guy: the former Clarence Thomas clerk /DoJ/FCC guy. He’s running on a fiscal conservatism/national security/ethics platform; and opposing the infamous Jim Moran, believer in Israeli conspiracies . His statement about Moran’s blathering* on the NYC show trials works for me : “It is wrong for Congressman Moran to question the patriotism of the millions...
This afternoon I was able to participate in a progressive blogger conference call with Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, the (relatively) newly minted member of the Democratic caucus in the chamber. I wasn't able to catch all of the call, but I did manage to get into a bit of a conversation with the Senator about filibusters and the judiciary. To stark, I asked which Specter we would see if reelected...
More than eighteen years ago, a Congresswomen from the San Francisco Bay area led a group of her Democratic female House colleagues in marching across Capitol Hill to demand a delay in the confirmation hearings of then-Judge Clarence Thomas. That woman, a Ma’am Barbara Boxer, was upset because that good man had, in a conversation [...]
Rush Limbaugh's race obsession. Jonathan Chait November 2, 2009 TNR The saga of Rush Limbaugh and his failed attempt to acquire a piece of the St. Louis Rams may be the quintessential postmodern American racial incident. When word first leaked of Limbaugh's potential ownership, a couple of sportswriters, joined by a handful of cable news talking heads, repeated what turned out to be totally unsubstantiated...
Stop the presses: "So why do you beat up on people if you already know? I don't know, because I don't beat up on 'em. I refuse to participate. I don't like it, so I don't do it," Thomas said during an appearance before law students at the University of Alabama. Not to reveal too much of my real life, but there is a tendency to pick on attorneys on occasion or for appellate judges to ask questions...
My column today is on "civility." Here's the open: There is much gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth these days about the death of civility. Apparently, like Cupid with his arrow or a pixie with fairy dust, some magical sprite used to enchant America’s political combatants, ensuring that all public discourse was full of beg-your-pardons and please-and-thank-yous. But we have offended...
T here is much gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth these days about the death of civility. Apparently, like Cupid with his arrow or a pixie with fairy dust, some magical sprite used to enchant America’s political combatants, ensuring that all public discourse was full of beg-your-pardons and please-and-thank-yous. But we have offended our little leprechaun. He’s taken his Lucky Charms...
Saturday's “Weekend Edition” of the Wall Street Journal will feature an op-ed from Rush Limbaugh, that went online earlier tonight, in which Limbaugh, echoing his on-air observations , outlines how “this spectacle is bigger” than just being about left-wingers trying to keep him out of the NFL. After noting the leading roles of race-hustlers Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in...
How Do You LIke It Now? by digby Limbaugh has a supporter at the Washington Post : I am no Limbaugh fan. Not only is he infamous for ugly remarks, but he is a practitioner in the politics of hate. But -- and here I write as someone with a special interest in the First Amendment -- Limbaugh is being banished for essentially exercising his right to speak. Why do educated people continuously write this...
Today I've been browsing some left of left blogs--they are very angry at Obama. Are people calling them racists or realists? You know the answer. Progressives and Socialists never call themselves racists. (But conservatives do.) So here's a piece from City Journal by Harry Stein about the Boys who cry racism . "That conversation is long overdue, so let’s have at it. Let’s talk, for...
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