State tuition tax credit program defended before nation’s highest court
WASHINGTON — Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed an opening brief (PDF) Friday with the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of school choice in Arizona. The brief asks that the suit be dismissed because the opponents have not proven that they have suffered any legal injury that would give them standing to sue over the state’s tuition tax credit program. Arizona’s program, like many others across the country, merely allows state residents to claim a tax credit for donations to private organizations that provide scholarships to private schools.
ADF represents Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization, a party in the case, which is one of about 53 non-profit 501(c)(3) corporations organized to distribute private donations in the form of scholarships to over 27,000 students attending hundreds of private schools throughout the state. Continue reading “ADF files opening brief with U.S. Supreme Court in Ariz. school choice suit” »
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan picked up more GOP backing Wednesday in her drive toward near-certain confirmation next week, even as a top Republican lashed out at her as “dangerous.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, warned senators in unusually dire terms against voting for President Barack Obama’s choice, saying, “Be careful about it, because I’m afraid that we have a dangerous, progressive, political-type nominee.”
Sessions’ words of caution — he said they were primarily directed toward Democrats — came just hours after Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine became the fourth Republican to say she would break with her party to vote for Kagan, who’s in line to succeed retired Justice John Paul Stevens. Continue reading “Key Republican calls Kagan a ‘dangerous’ nominee” »
With a majority in the U.S. Senate, Elena Kagan appears to be headed to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court despite her overt liberal bent.
U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, R-Okla., voted against her nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“By her own words, Elena Kagan will violate her oath as soon as she’s sworn in,” Coburn said. “Kagan believes wrongly-decided Supreme Court precedents trump the original intent of our founders. With Kagan on the Court, Congress and the executive branch may succeed at sweeping away whatever limitations remain on its power to micromanage the decisions of states and individuals.” Continue reading “Coburn opposed to Kagan nomination to court” »
The NAACP is trying to downplay calling the Tea Party movement the “R” word. According to the Kansas City Star reported:
The Rev. Jesse Jackson told reporters in Kansas City that the focus on the tea party was a “diversion” from more important issues, while NAACP President Ben Jealous said the resolution was just a small part of a bigger agenda and blamed the media for focusing too much on the tea party.
“I give a 42-page speech. Half a page is focused on the tea party,” Jealous said. “We need the media to pay attention to the issues that are most important to this country” such as jobs, education and crime.
Conservatives reacted angrily after learning of the resolution, approved by delegates at the NAACP’s national convention this week in Kansas City.
Yes. John Marshall was revered as “the great chief justice,” but before joining the Supreme Court he had never served a day in a judicial robe; he even lost the one case he argued before the high court. Earl Warren worked for 18 years as a prosecutor, with no prior judicial experience. The list of distinguished judges without prior judicial experience goes on to include: William Rehnquist, William O. Douglas, Robert Jackson and Roger Taney — all listed among the greatest jurists to sit on the high court.
Like Elena Kagan, none of them ever served as a judge prior to becoming a justice on the Supreme Court. However, many on current court did serve as federal appeals judges, immediately prior to their appointment to the high court. Continue reading “Opposing Views: Would Kagan be a good justice?” »
With committee and floor votes beginning this week on the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan, skeptical lawmakers could not resist the opportunity to search for a weak point that might provoke last-minute controversy.
Six Republican senators submitted questions that produced 74 pages of written responses from Kagan. In ritual form, her answers — released Friday — were finely sanded to avoid any clamor.
J.D. Hayworth is running ads using his wife to complain about John McCain attack ads. Perhaps he is training her in case he has to announce a law suit against a state.
The problem is that neither one of them truly represents a Republican form of government. While Hayworth arguably helped a company rip people off, John McCain approved of the Patriot act and the death of thousands of troop and the waste of billions—by some estimates a trillion, now—dollars in Afghanistan. A constitutional Republican would approve of neither. So much for John McCain’s “savings” on pork barrel spending.
The third candidate—whom Rasmussen Reports refers to as a “Tea Party Activist,” Jim Deakin—we will get a chance to learn about in the debates on July 16. Though there are some videos about him on youtube.com. According to the following video, Jim Deakin has made encouraging statements that he wants to end the Federal Reserve and the Department of Education allowing States to set up their own curriculum. With End the Fed day coming up in two days, I can certainly get behind that piece of his platform.
J.D. Hayworth’s statements at Tea Party meetings generally centers around how much he likes S.B. 1070 and not generally how he is going to stop big government—at least in the videos that I have seen. While he has experience in Washington, that experience was not really all that impressive.
A June 22 Rasmussen Reports poll shows McCain in the lead with 47%, Hayworth behind by 11 percent and Deakin receiving only 7%. This can probably be attributed to name recognition more than a result of critical thinking.
Deakin may be a viable third alternative if he expresses himself well in the debate. But I doubt they will cover the fact that all federal gun laws are unconstitutional1 or that the Federal Reserve, health care reform, Department of Education, Hate Crimes legislation, and so-forth, are all unconstitutional.
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan might be shocked if she knew a bit more about Aharon Barak, the former president of the Israeli Supreme Court, and the man whom she strongly and warmly praised during her confirmation hearings this week.
Kagan described Barak as the “John Marshall of the state of Israel because he was central in creating an independent judiciary for Israel, a young nation threatened from its very beginning in existential ways and a nation without a written constitution.” She admired Barak for ensuring that Israel would become a “very strong rule of law nation.” Continue reading “What Elena Kagan Ought to Know About Her ‘Hero’ Aharon Barak” »
WASHINGTON — Elena Kagan declined to discuss her passions, demurred when asked anything that might tip her hand on the Supreme Court and invoked her right to remain inscrutable even on cases buried in the past.
In short, Kagan did her best to ensure her high court nomination hearing was just the kind of benign event she criticized years ago for lacking “seriousness and substance.”
Chief Justice John Marshall (1833). Strong States' Rights proponent.
If you were watching the confirmation hearing of Elana Kagan, you would have seen Feinstein and Schumer announce with glee that the Supreme Court upheld the Second Amendment, once again, and reversed the gun laws in Illinois banning handguns.
The important thing is that, reading that decision, we find what this matter of incorporation was all about. Section II, B of the Opinion of the Court reads:
The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, originally applied only to the Federal Government. In Barron ex rel. Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore, [32 US] 7 Pet. 243 (1833), the Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Marshall, explained that this question was “of great importance” but “not of much difficulty.” Id., at 247. In less than four pages, the Court firmly rejected the proposition that the first eight Amendments operate as limitations on the States, holding that they apply only to the Federal Government
Here we go again. We are now going through plenty of blunders in opening statements by the Senators. From Republican Tom Coburn’s statement about our “Constitutional Democracy” to Schumer and Feinstein showing that they do NOT KNOW the Constitution, or “…don’t care about it in instances like this.” Continue reading “Elena Kagan confirmation hearing.” »
WASHINGTON — A study from a liberal interest group says the Supreme Court of Chief Justice John Roberts has a decidedly pro-business tilt, echoing the line Democrats are taking in support of the nomination of Elena Kagan to fill its latest vacancy.
The analysis from the Constitutional Accountability Center finds that the court’s five conservative justices side with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at least two-thirds of the time, while the four liberal justices all disagree with the position by the nation’s largest business group more than half the time.
Red flags went up, for me, during the speech in which Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Not only did he say she was his friend, in her speech she indicated, “During the last year as I have served as Solicitor General, my longstanding appreciation for the Supreme Court’s role in our constitutional democracy has become ever deeper and richer.” I presume that she was marked incorrect in law school for her answer concerning Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution.
I still have not found the word democracy anywhere in the Constitution. I have, however, found a document where it is deeply and richly reverenced. Along with unions, health care plans, welfare, social security, rent on property to pay for public schools and the like. Continue reading “A very unconstitutional Elena Kagan is emerging.” »
In a letter to Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee Republican, Robert Bauer, counsel to Obama, implied the president may use executive privilege to hide some memos Elena Kagan wrote when she served in the Clinton White House.
“President Obama does not intend to assert executive privilege over any of the documents requested by the Committee,” Bauer writes.
President Obama’s nomination this week of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court has had little impact so far on voters’ opinions of the high court – or the president’s views of it.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows 37% give the Supreme Court good or excellent ratings, up just two points from last month.
Only 15% say the Supreme Court is doing a poor job, down seven points since April.
Forty-four percent (44%) of voters say justices nominated by President Obama will be too liberal, showing virtually no change over the past five months. Forty percent (40%) say his nominees will be about right, while only six percent (6%) say they will be too conservative.
May 22, 2012 1813 Richard Wagner 1931 Kenny Ball 1950 Bernie Taupin 1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1938 Susan Strasberg 1959 Morrissey 1907 Lord Laurence Olivier 1946 George Best 1970 Naomi Campbell
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