Law prof who alleged injury from a colleague’s shoulder squeeze is allowed to pursue assault suit
A law professor who alleges he was bullied by colleagues and injured when a professor grabbed and squeezed his shoulder may pursue claims of assault…
Can the President Kill Americans?
Can the president kill you? The short answer is: Yes, but not legally. Yet, President Obama has established a secret process that involves officials from the Departments of Justice and Defense, the CIA, and the White House senior staff whereby candidates are proposed for execution, and the collective wisdom of the officials then recommends execution to the president, who then accepts or rejects the recommendation. If the recommendation is to kill and the president rejects the recommendation, the CIA is directed to arrest the person. If the president accepts the recommendation to kill, then death is ordered. This is not unlike the procedure used in the reign of the monstrous British King Henry VIII, except that the king himself delegated the final say to his chancellor so …
The Tyranny of One Man’s Opinion
Thomas Cromwell was the principal behind-the-scenes fixer for much of the reign of King Henry VIII. He engineered the interrogations, convictions and executions of many whom Henry needed out of the way, including his two predecessors as fixer and even the king’s second wife, Queen Anne. When Cromwell’s son, Gregory, who became sickened as he watched his father devolving from counselor to monster, learned that an executioner for the queen had been sent for from France a week before her conviction, he asked his father what the purpose of her trial was if the king had preordained the queen’s guilt and prepaid the executioner. Cromwell replied that the king needed a jury to give legitimacy to her conviction and prevent the public …
The Judiciary Was Excluded From Policymaking
by Raoul Berger EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an excerpt of the book (chapter 16) Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Foreword by Forrest McDonald (2nd ed.) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997). It is a singular fact that the most significant single piece of evidence that the Framers excluded the judiciary from policymaking—rejection of their participation in a Council of Revision of legislation—went unnoticed by bench and bar until it was called to their attention by a political scientist, Benjamin F. Wright. Not the least remarkable aspect of judicial neglect of this history is that it should finally be invoked by Justices Black (1965) and Douglas (1968), oblivious to the shattering effect that it has on their own sweeping policymaking …
Originalism All the Way Down?
How should the Constitution be interpreted? What context should be considered, if at all? And if the Constitution should be interpreted as it was originally conceived, how does one go about determining what the Founders meant? In a review of Originalism and the Good Constitution by John O. McGinnis and Michael B. Rappaport*, Kurt T. Lash at the University of Illinois College of Law examines the rather complicated matter, highlighting the strengths and flaws in their argument. Lash defines originalism in the context of the review as a “reformist movement in contemporary American constitutional law” whose proponents “reject modern interpretive theories such as ‘living constitutionalism’ and call for the restoration of the foundational understanding of the text.” The next question, of course, is how one goes …
Obamacare’s Constitutionality and the Origination Clause: New Evidence
One of the constitutional disputes triggered by the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, is whether by substituting new material for the original House-passed bill (H.R. 3590), the Senate exceeded its constitutional power to amend the original measure. This, in turn, has provoked a debate over whether the Founders considered complete substitutes to be valid amendments. A recently-republished piece of evidence suggests that they did. The Constitution’s Origination Clause requires that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.” Because the final version of Obamacare imposed a variety of taxes, it unquestionably was a “Bill for raising Revenue.” Obamacare’s taxes, appropriations, and health-care regulations did not …
City’s ban on vehicle for-sale signs violates First Amendment, judge rules in lawyer’s $1 lawsuit
A lawyer has won a First Amendment victory in his suit challenging Alexandria, Virginia’s ban on for-sale signs on vehicles parked on city streets.…
Left and Right Agree: Don’t Nullify Because it Will Work!
From left to right, the mainstream agrees. Don’t nullify. Why? Because it might actually work. Last year, Ian Millhiser, Senior Fellow at the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress Action Fund and Editor of Justice at the establishment-liberal ThinkProgess.org, made that very argument against nullification in an article headlined Why a Bipartisan Move Against the NSA Could Kill the New Deal. He was all twisted up in knots because many on the left rallied behind efforts to nullify in practice mass NSA spying through state resistance. “This might seem like a good idea to NSA critics unhappy with President Obama’s reform proposals, but the constitutional theory it depends on is profoundly dangerous. It poses a serious threat to that liberal touchstone, a …
Turning America into a Battlefield: A Blueprint for Lock Down
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. —President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961 A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the American people of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the …
NSA Gadget Transfer Program Turning Local Cops into Spies
With the media spotlight shining on police militarization, most Americans know something about the federal 1033 transfer program that enables police departments to get military equipment like armored vehicles, high power weapons, grenade launchers, and even bayonets. But most Americans don’t realize that local law enforcement agencies can also acquire spy gear from the feds. The NSA transfers electronic gadgets to a variety of agencies including local law enforcement, and it is as simple as catalog shopping. This is yet another example of the tangled web of cooperation between state and local law enforcement, and the feds – a phenomenon quickly devolving America into one massive interconnected surveillance state. These transfer programs have largely gone unnoticed. However, the most recent NSA tech catalog was recently released and …
Doctors Hesitant About Xarelto For Few Years
In 2012, Reuters published a piece that touched on the hesitancy that some doctors felt about a new generation of blood thinners, one of which was Xarelto. In 2011, the FDA had approved Xarelto for prophylaxis of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in patients undergoing hip or knee replacement surgeries. A few months later, in November of 2011, the FDA approved it for a second use, for stroke prophylaxis in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation. This condition affects about 3 million Americans and Xarelto, a once-daily pill, was meant to decrease the chances that patients with this illness would develop blood clots in a storage chamber of the heart. Xarelto has been marketed as a one-size-fits-all solution to traditional warfarin but even in 2012, a year after the …
61 percent of IRS employees who violated tax laws got to keep their jobs, report says
The Internal Revenue Service allowed 61 percent of its employees who violated tax laws to remain on the job, according to a report by the…