This probably makes me a bad liberal, but oh well...

We aren't all cut from the same mold, afterall...

I am doing the happy dance, and if there wasn't a kid in the house I would be waltzing around the house holding a Browning shotgun. (Only idiots use a handgun for home protection, for Christ's sake...everyone knows that the shotgun is the best weapon for home defense.)

The Supreme Court has upheld the Second Amendment, and those of us who think that gun control means you can hit your fucking target are happy campers indeed.

The post from the SCOTUSblog is below the fold.

Answering a 127-year old constitutional question, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to have a gun, at least in one’s home. The Court, splitting 5-4, struck down a District of Columbia ban on handgun possession. Although times have changed since 1791, Justice Antonin Scalia said for the majority, “it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

Justice Scalia’s opinion stressed that the Court was not casting doubt on long-standing bans on carrying a concealed gun or on gun possession by felons or the mentally retarded, on laws barring guns from schools or government buildings, and laws putting conditions on gun sales.

In District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), the Court nullified two provisions of the city of Washington’s strict 1976 gun control law: a flat ban on possessing a gun in one’s home, and a requirement that any gun — except one kept at a business — must be unloaded and disassembled or have a trigger lock in place. The Court said it was not passing on a part of the law requiring that guns be licensed. It said that issuing a license to a handgun owner, so the weapon can be used at home, would be a sufficient remedy for the Second Amendment violatrion of denying any access to a handgun.

Justice Scalia’s recitation from the bench of the majority’s reasoning continued for 16 minutes. Justice John Paul Stevens followed, for seven minutes, summarizing the reasons for two dissenting opinions — his and one written by Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

The decision was the final one of the Term and, after issuing it, the Court recessed for the summer, to return on Monday, Oct. 6. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., said that concluding orders on pending cases will be released by the Court Clerk at 10 a.m. Friday.

The decision is here.

SCOTUS strikes down death penalty for child rape

The Supreme Court has struck down as unconstitutional the Louisiana law that allowed for the application of the death penalty for perpetrators convicted of child rape. In a 5-4 split decision, the court found that the death penalty when applied for crimes that do not claim the life of the individual victim amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy posited that the death penalty "is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child."

If the victim does not die or death was not intended, capital punishment for that crime violates the Eighth Amendment, the Court ruled in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The case was Patrick Kennedy v. Louisiana (07-343). The broad declaration that death sentences should be reserved “for crimes that take the life of the victim” will apply, the Court said, to crimes against individuals — thus leaving intact, for example, a possible death sentence for treason.

Part of the Court’s rationale for nullifying a death sentence for raping a child was that the child victim gets enlisted, perhaps repeatedly, to recount the crime, forcing on the child “a moral choice” that the youngster is not mature enough to make. “The way the death penalty here involves the child victim in its enforcement can compromise a decent legal system,” Justice Kennedy wrote.

It has been 44 years since the death penalty was applied in the United States for a crime that did not cause the death of the victim. That execution took place in Missouri in May of 1964, when Ronald Wolfe was executed for the crime of forcible rape. In 1977 the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for the crime of rape when the victim was an adult woman.

Forty-five states already barred the application of capital punishment for the crime of rape, and five others allowed for a death sentence if the offender had a prior conviction for child rape.

The Louisiana case revolved around Patrick Kennedy, who was convicted of raping his then-eight-year-old stepdaughter and sentenced to death for that crime. Writing for the minority, Justice Samuel Alito maintained that "[T]he harm that is caused to the victims and to society at large by the worst child rapists is grave," Alito wrote. "It is the judgment of the Louisiana lawmakers and those in an increasing number of other states that these harms justify the death penalty."

But Kennedy said the absence of any executions for rape and the small number of states that allow it demonstrate "there is a national consensus against capital punishment for the crime of child rape."

Kennedy also acknowledged that the decision had to come to terms with "the years of long anguish that must be endured by the victim of child rape."

Still, Kennedy concluded that in cases of crimes against individuals _ as opposed to treason, for example _ "the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim's life was not taken."

The decision leaves intact the option of executing individuals convicted of crimes against the nation. Convictions for treason and espionage can still carry the death penalty - even if we do fail to apply it where it is sorely needed, as in the case of Aldrich Ames and Jonathan Pollard - both of whom should still be hung in the public square.

Another point goes to the rule of law

In the ongoing battle of bu$h v western civilization, western civilization scored another small victory today. In today's ruling, in the case of Parhat v Gates, the high court found that the petitioner, Huzaifa Parhat, was incorrectly classified as an enemy combatant and directed the United States to immediately release or transfer Parhat from detention at Guantanamo Bay, or expeditiously set up a new tribunal that meets the criteria set forth by the court. The court also stated that its disposition was without prejudice to Parhat's right to seek release immediately through a writ of habeas corpus in the district court, pursuant to the Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v. Bush.

The text of the opinion contains classified information, and a redacted version is being prepared for public release. We will be watching for it.

We aren't in favor of letting terrorists walk free, but we are in favor of making damned sure we have the right people locked up, so we are always excited when the rule of law wins a round, especially after the beating it's taken for the last eight years.

~~BG

SCOTUS will hear the case of Ashcroft, et al., v. Iqbal

The high court announced this morning that it will hear the case brought against former AG John Ashcroft and current FBI director Robert Muller in the next term. The ruling will spell out when the cabinet officers can be sued for Constitutional violations carried out by their subordinates.

The Iqbal case grows out of a lawsuit that was filed against former AG Ashcroft, director Mueller and others in their command chain following the post-9-11 roundup of men of Arab descent or who had been identified as Muslims, in an apparent clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The suit does not challenge the actual roundup, but focuses instead on conditions in the federal prison facility in Brooklyn where many of the men were held.

We have been appalled by the roundup of individuals based on their ethnicity and/or faith since it happened and will be watching the next session for the ruling to be handed down.

~~BG

It's about the Supreme Court, Stupid

Pandering shamelessly to the social conservatives of the christian right yesterday, John McShameless gave us our rallying cry, if we can get our act together and take up the banner. A whole shitload of people need to get over their feelings of being aggrieved and sorely used because their candidate doesn't have it sewed up, because that other (clearly inferior) candidate won't step aside for the (clearly superior) alternative they were brilliant enough to get behind.

It isn't about you. It isn't even about your candidate. It is about the future of the republic itself...how our laws will be interpreted and applied and whether the freedoms we have traditionally enjoyed as Americans are restored; or whether they wither and die.

Highlighting an issue he plans to use aggressively in the general election campaign, Sen. John McCain on Tuesday decried "the common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power" and pledged to nominate judges similar to the ones President Bush has placed on the bench.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. "would serve as the model for my own nominees, if that responsibility falls to me," highlighting the gap between Republicans and Democrats on the question of who should sit on the Supreme Court. Both justices have established strong conservative records since Bush appointed them, and the appointment of one more conservative to the nation's highest court could tip the balance on issues such as abortion, discrimination, civil liberties and private property.

The two remaining Democratic candidates, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), opposed the nominations of Roberts and Alito.

"My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power," McCain told a crowd of several hundred at Wake Forest University's Wait Chapel, as he stood in front of nine American flags and mock-ups of the preamble to the Constitution.

Later in the day, he announced the formation of a conservative-leaning Justice Advisory Committee, which he said will counsel him on judicial appointments if he wins the presidency. The group, which will be chaired by former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), is a Who's Who of prominent conservative legal minds, with members including Princeton University professor Robert George and Rachel Brand, former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy.

"Here's what McCain was really telling the party base: If you liked George W. Bush's nominees, you're going to love the judges John McCain will put on the bench," said Kathryn Kolbert, president of People for the American Way.

Yeah, rein in judicial power where polluting and thieving corporations are concerned, but when women and voters get uppity - that's a different story. When the former wants to control their bodies and the latter wants to participate in the Democratic process, judicial power can be appropriately applied to bring the rabble to heel.

I read stuff like this, and I get furious all over again about the pie-fights that erupt between Clinton and Obama supporters. I roll my eyes and curse you all. Let's just get this straight right now - I really don't care who you support or why. It doesn't matter. The bottom line is, we have to elect a Democratic president, and either of the Democratic nominees will be a better president than John "I call my wife a cunt and I want to stay in Iraq for a hundred years" McCain.

It. Isn't. About. You.

Got it yet?