For those of you that haven't had a chance to view the video that sits in the right column of this webpage (on the date of this post) or those of you that have watched it but are confused, the best analysis I've seen of Barack Obama's 2001 comments on the Warren Court and civil rights is from Bill Whittle over at Eject! Eject! Eject! Here's a taste:

Labels: Barack Obama, Cultural Marxism, Race Relations, SCOTUS

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment allows for individual gun ownership. Justice Scalia wrote the opinion of the court. While there are plenty shades of grey in the opinion, it's an overall victory for lovers of Liberty. However, I find it hard to rejoice due to the scary nature of the high court. 5-4. We were one vote away from the court wiping away over 200 years of history and George Washington rolling over in his grave. It's really scary how much power this single body of the Federal Government has.

MORE: Adding to the scariness of it all, this line from the Reuters story written by James Vicini:

Although an individual now has a constitutional right to own guns, that new right is not unlimited, wrote Scalia, a hunter.

No idiot, we've always had the constitutional right to own guns! It wasn't just bestowed on the people today, it's always been there.

EVEN MORE: Hats off to Eugene Volokh who had three law review articles cited by Scalia. His site, Volokh Conspiracy, is currently offline no doubt due to a server overload.

STILL MORE: Rick Moran poses this interesting point:

Now that the Court has identified gun rights as a personal right, the ACLU ought to begin defending individual rights. If they were honestly devoted to protecting the Bill of Rights.

Don Surber: "Make Heller the litmus test."

Labels: Guns, SCOTUS

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also dissented, saying the court was engaging in "lawmaking" by concluding that punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses."The new law made by the court should have been left to Congress," wrote Ginsburg.

Uh, since when Ruth?

Labels: SCOTUS

The clock is ticking on the final week of the Supreme Court's summer term. We're anxiously awaiting the ruling on the D.C. guns case, a.k.a. the Heller case. According to SCOTUSblog, it won't be coming down today, but will before the end of the week. This one is gonna be big.

Labels: Gun Rights, SCOTUS

Fred Thompson, once considered the last great hope of conservatives in this presidential election cycle until it became clear his heart wasn't in it, has gone back to writing columns and making occasional commentaries. Today, he takes the United States Supreme Court to task for it's decision to grant inmates at Club Gitmo Constitutional Rights.

Labels: Boumediene Decision, Fred Thompson, John McCain, SCOTUS

There you have it. In a 5-4 vote with swing-man Anthony Kennedy leading the majority, the Supreme Court has granted detainees at Club Gitmo constitutional rights. I don't need to list the five in the majority and the four dissenters, you know who they are.

I'm inclined to say this is another reason to vote for McCain, however, I'm sure he agrees with this decision despite the fact he says he would appoint conservative judges. It's a crap-shoot, but with Obama, we know for certain how it would go.

UPDATE: Mark Levin and I are thinking the same thing:

It has been the objective of the left-wing bar to fight aspects of this war in our courtrooms, where it knew it would have a decent chance at victory. So complete is the Court's disregard for the Constitution and even its own precedent now that anything is possible. And what was once considered inconceivable is now compelled by the Constitution, or so five justices have ruled. I fear for my country. I really do. And AP, among others, reports this story as a defeat for "the Bush administration." Really? I see it as a defeat for the nation.UPDATE: The 5-4 GITMO decision brings to the front, yet again, John McCain's position on judges versus his own policies.
McCain undoubtedly supports the 5-4 decision, yet the justices who voted against it, and argued strenuously against it, are of the kind McCain claims to want on the bench. We have seen the same issue arise respecting campaign finance. This is not to say that McCain won't nominate originalists to the bench. But if he does, he will be nominating to the Court individuals who are better adherents to the Constitution than he is.

Labels: Barack Obama, Club Gitmo, Constitution, Iraq, John McCain, Politics, SCOTUS

The man who should have been president had some harsh words for the Democrat Nominee and his woeful ignorance on the American legal system. This is a really scary election.

Labels: Barack Obama, Politics, Rudy Giuliani, SCOTUS

It was 6-3 with John Paul Stevens writing the majority opinion. This is a big, big victory for the electoral process and a defeat for the Democrats as it makes voter fraud that much harder. Thank G-d for the conservatives on the court.

Labels: SCOTUS

The Supreme Court upheld the state of Kentucky's lethal injections, thus for the unforeseeable future, the death penalty is here to stay in the United States.

Labels: SCOTUS

I'm a libertarian, but being libertarian doesn't involve entering suicide pacts with people that want to kill you. The domestic spying program is one of those elements of democratic society that we wish wasn't necessary, but it is. Can this power be abused? Absolutely, that's why the burden is on us to elect men and woman of character to our government.

I'd love to ask a Hillary supporter who's against the eavesdropping on Americans who speak with terrorists how they can vote for someone who confiscated dozens of FBI files for her own political use.

Labels: ACLU, Domestic Spying, Libertarianism, SCOTUS

Just breaking on Drudge:

(AP) - The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether the District of Columbia can ban handguns, a case that could produce the most in-depth examination of the constitutional right to "keep and bear arms" in nearly 70 years.

The justices' decision to hear the case could make the divisive debate over guns an issue in the 2008 presidential and congressional elections.

Scary stuff. It's all in Justice Kennedy's hands.

MORE: There are a lot of ways to look at this. Some say we shouldn't worry because the court always endeavours to make very narrow rulings so it might turn out to be much ado about nothing. I'm not so sure...I think this is pretty serious stuff with huge ramifications. The court decides which cases to hear by the Rule of Four, i.e. it takes just four justices to decide if a case will be heard by the court. My question is, which four? Was it the four liberals who are hoping Kennedy joins them, or was it a ideological combination of judges? Also, did Chief Justice Roberts vote to hear the case? If so, that would lead me to believe he thinks they have the votes to protect the Second Amendment. I think the Rule of Four voting is secret, so we could only know through a leak.

Also, look for fawning praise from the New York Times and other MSM outlet on Justice Kennedy in hopes of cowing him into striking down the Second Amendment.

Labels: Gun Control, SCOTUS

New York Senator Chuck Schumer is one of the repugnant members of the United States Senate. He is, in fact, an Authoritarian, if not a Stalinists. He would be very happy if we had a form of government where we could get rid of elections and the people are governed by a ruling elite...the kind of government Plato and Marx wrote about.

Schumer is angry that the new conservative members of the Supreme Court have made some decisions that have gone against precedent. In fact, one of the court's liberal members, Stephen Breyer, is actually lobbying members of Congress to look at the recent decisions. Naturally, he was able to persuade the Senate's biggest eunuch, Arlen Specter.

Breyer has publicly raised concerns that conservative justices were violating stare decisis, the legal doctrine that, for the sake of stability, courts should generally leave precedents undisturbed.

"It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much," Breyer said, reading his dissent from the bench in June to a 5-4 ruling that overturned school desegregation policies in two cities.

Okay, so the court shouldn't ever go against precedent. What is established now is absolutely, Constitutionally correct and not even debatable. What is this, Global Warming? I'd like to ask Justice Breyer if how he feels about the precedent of the Dred Scott decision. "Oh well, that's was an obvious mistake," he'll say. So what? It's precedent, isn't it?

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Chuck Schumer has declared that Bush will not be allowed to put another conservative on the Supreme Court. Well, democracy was fun while it lasted, wasn't it?

There's another story out today about how Daily Kos and Moveon.org are going to start targeting advertisers on Fox News. Their argument:

"We're not trying to silence anybody," Green said. "Rush Limbaugh has a right to be on the air—he admits his point of view. Fox doesn't."

Okay, I'm making a similar call to the Democrat Party. Admit who you really are.

Labels: Chuck Schumer, Fox, Marxism, Plato, SCOTUS, Stalinism, The Left

Good stuff coming out of the Roberts' Court this morning as the current term winds down. Part of McCain-Feingold is struck down, a frivolous lawsuit over a pair of pants is gobsmacked and home-builders beat back environmental wackos.

Michelle Malkin has a good roundup of all the action. She also looks into the talk of what will happen if another Justice retires after this term. I think this is a waste of time. The liberal judges on the court, especially in light of these decisions, are going to hold onto their seats and their lives with everything they've got. I just don't see Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter or Breyer giving up their seats to what will be at worst a moderate conservative (at best, Janice Rogers Brown) unless their health gets so bad they can't go on.

To me, the biggest question to come out of all this is whether the liberal ass-kissing of Anthony Kennedy in the past year has backfired. We'll see more decisions this week...should be interesting.

Labels: SCOTUS

You heard me. (Hat tip: Instapundit)

Labels: Abortion, Harry Reid, SCOTUS

The reason: for one day, he stopped "growing in office."

Labels: Abortion, SCOTUS

I didn't have to read further to know that the vote was 5-4. No bonus points if you can guess which judges were on which side.

This is bad news. This decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, will no doubt become the Global Warming version of Roe v. Wade.

G-d help us.

Labels: Global Warming, SCOTUS