Via the AP: Judge strikes down part of Patriot Act

A federal judge struck down a key part of the USA Patriot Act on Thursday in a ruling that defended the need for judicial oversight of laws and bashed Congress for passing a law that makes possible “far-reaching invasions of liberty.”

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero immediately stayed the effect of his ruling, allowing the government time to appeal.

[…]

The ACLU had challenged the law on behalf of an Internet service provider, complaining that the law allowed the FBI to demand records without the kind of court supervision required for other government searches. Under the law, investigators can issue so-called national security letters to entities like Internet service providers and phone companies and demand customers’ phone and Internet records.

A past posting on the national security letter situation can be found here and a WaPo column linked to the lawsuit in question can be found here. I would recommend that the column in particular. The situation is one that should be utterly unacceptable in the United States of the America.

All of this boils down to the fact that in the post-9/11 context that President and the Congress have been quite willing to gut judicial oversight from information gathering activities that could easily lead to private information of innocent citizens being obtained simply because the FBI wants it. That establishes a system that could very easily be abused.

Via Media Matter we have the wit and wisdom of Michael Savage, who opines on the possibility that there is a possible conspiracy to cause Chief Justice John Roberts’ seizure:

Am I to believe that there’s no connection between Charles Schumer on Friday saying that he would never appoint, or never, excuse me, approve another Bush appointment to the court, to any court? And then the chief justice suffers a so-called seizure two days later? You’re telling me there’s no possibility of a conspiracy by the Democrats to have caused this seizure in some manner? Tell me that it’s not possible. Tell me that the stakes are not so high that the liberals — who’ve finally lost the court after 50 years — that they would stop short of anything like this. Tell me it’s not possible, and I’ll tell you you’re a liar.

It gets worse, in fact:

Well, let me ask you something. You remember the Russian who ate some polonium sushi? He was going to give an interview that was embarrassing to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin? He ate a polonium sushi and then he died. Well, they do it over there when there’s a lot of money at stake, don’t they? Power at stake? What’s a human being to power-mad people and power-mad parties? Nothing.

So why can’t we assume for a moment that it’s within the realm of possibility that Roberts was in some way — his health was in some way tampered with by the Democrats because they can’t believe that no matter what they do, no matter what they do — even if they engineer a victory for Hillary Clinton/[Barack] Obama — they’re still not going to be in control because the court’s moved to the center? Just a thought. Just a tiny little thought for you to ponder tonight, all you left-wingers who are so glib in your attacks on the conservative movement.

And then back to Schumer:

so he had the nerve to say on Friday he will never, ever, ever permit another Bush appointee to get onto a court, to become a judge. Then today we read that the chief justice has had a seizure and fell on a dock? Something’s wrong with this picture.

(The full transcript and the actual audio are available at the link above.)

This is a remarkable series of statements–not to mention rather scary that this guy is the third most listened to talk radio host behind Limbaugh and Hannity.

It is bad enough that we cast our politics as some sort of team sport wherein we look more at whether “our side” scores points or not in every given interchange rather than looking at what is good for the country in a specific situation, but stuff like this is the true demonization of one of the major US political parties and is utterly poisonous (if one can forgive the reference) to political discourse.

Via CNN: Chief justice tumbles after seizure

Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his summer home off the coast of Maine, causing him to fall, the Supreme Court said Monday.

Roberts was conscious after the fall, which happened at his vacation home near Port Clyde, Maine, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg told CNN.

The chief justice was taken to a nearby hospital where he is expected to stay overnight.

Roberts has “fully recovered from the incident,” and a neurological evaluation “revealed no cause for concern,” the Supreme Court said.

It sounds as if everything is ok, but the story would remain in the “developing” category, one would think.

The troubling part is that this isn’t the first such incident:

Roberts, 52, experienced a similar episode years ago. Sources close to the chief justice said Roberts suffered an unexplained seizure in 1993, soon after his first nomination to the D.C. circuit stalled in the Senate.

Edited to add:  Gah.  The supposedly “absent” blogger wrote on the same story.  I’m leaving this one up, anyway.

___________________________________________________ 

From the Associated Press.

“This matter has been a fiasco. There’s no doubt about it,” said F. Lane Williamson, the chairman of the three-member disciplinary committee that stripped the veteran prosecutor of his state law license.

Ya think?

  The committee found Nifong broke the state’s rules of professional conduct more than two dozen times.

“I would say there are no winners in this scenario,” said Kevin Finnerty, Collin’s father. “With that said, I think there’s closure. I think it’s appropriate and I think it’s justice.

“I think he brought it on himself.”

Again:  Ya think?

This is a well-deserved punishment for Nifong, who — even if you accept his side of the story entirely — behaved egregiously.

Via All Headline News: All Headline News - Landmark Court Ruling Orders Apple To Pay $700,000 For Blogger’s Legal Fees:

In a landmark ruling in favor of bloggers and cyber journalists, a Santa Clara County Court defended the First Amendment rights of online journalists to protect their confidential sources, effectively giving web journalists the same protections afforded to traditional print journalists.

Apple Inc., had issued subpoenas to online tech journalists, including the publisher of AppleInsider.com and PowerPage.org, over reports the company claimed “violated California state trade secret law” which divulged so-called confidential information about not-yet released Apple products. Apple claimed the journalists were not entitled to First Amendment protections similar to those afforded to their print counterparts.

However, a California court disagreed, ruling against Apple and in favor of the defendants…

Most interesting and based on what I know of the case (which is only what I read when it first broke), the right ruling.  I see no reason why a print journalist would have been able to print the story in question while someone publishing electronically would not.

The LAT has an interesting story in today’s paper about a free speech case currently before the US Supreme Court:  Woman’s crusade against bar spawns free speech case.  The case is about whether prior restrain orders can be issued in defamation cases.  The basics have to do with the crusade of a Newport Beach woman against  bar next to a cottage she owns.

The basics:

Lemen owns a cottage only feet from the restaurant and led a campaign to restrict it because she said it disrupted the neighborhood. Aric Toll, 41, a chef who bought the restaurant and bar with his parents, filed a defamation lawsuit against Lemen, saying she was ruining his business.

After a trial, a judge ordered Lemen to stop videotaping Toll’s customers and barred her from telling anyone that the bar makes sex videos, dabbles in child pornography, distributes illegal drugs, encourages lesbian activities, has mafia links, is a whorehouse or sells tainted food — all false statements, the court said, that Lemen had made. She appealed the order before it could be enforced.

Courts around the country have disagreed over whether such “prior restraint” orders in defamation cases are constitutional, and cases involving them are multiplying as people sue to stop alleged defamation on the Internet. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld prior restraint in cases of national security and obscenity, but not in a defamation complaint. When it took up the question in a case brought by the late attorney Johnnie Cochran against a picket, the high court said only that the order against the picket was unconstitutionally broad.

Duke University constitutional law professor Erwin Chemerinsky is paying his own way to California and working free of charge to tell the California Supreme Court today that the order violates Lemen’s right to free speech.

If Lemen loses, such court orders might become “a regular remedy in defamation cases,” Chemerinsky said. Newspapers could even be barred from covering a person who won one, he said. In his view, the only appropriate remedy for defamation is monetary damages.

One needs to reads the entire piece to get a feel for the situation.  One gets the impression that Lemen is, well a tad eccentric, and one wonders why some of her behavior (like sitting in front of the establishment and laying on her car horn for half an hour straight) isn’t considered harassment or at least disturbing the peace.

Still, one also wonders why, if the Village Inn believes that their business has been damaged that they can’t put a monetary value on the damages.

I certainly would think that Lemen could be ordered to stop making videotapes and taking still pictures of the customers.  Indeed, it seems like there ought to be a legal remedy to her behavior outside of the issue of speech.  I am guessing the fact that she owns property adjacent to the Inn makes a restraining order a moot option.

Via the NYT, Senator Removes His Block on Federal Court Nominee:

Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who blocked the confirmation of a woman to the federal bench because she attended a same-sex commitment ceremony for the daughter of her long-time neighbors, says he will now allow a vote on the nomination.

[…]

Mr. Brownback said that he believed Judge Neff’s attendance at the 2024 ceremony merited further investigation, but that he had not meant to set any precedent with his proposal. “It was the last day of the session and I was just trying to provide some accommodation to see if we could make this thing go forward,” he said.

He said that “this is a big hot-button issue” and that Judge Neff had not made it clear that her presence at the ceremony did not mean she could not rule without bias in deciding cases involving same-sex unions. “I’d like to know more factually about what took place,” he said.

Of course, by this logic if a nominees’ neighbor’s son got into college based on affirmative action, and the nominee went to the child’s graduation they should be considered suspect for the bench because they might  be predisposed to having a more favorable view of racial preferences.  If a nominee’s niece had an abortion, then wouldn’t that be a red flag as well?  Of course, if a nominee is religious, does that mean that they cannot rule on church/state matters?  Oh wait, atheists couldn’t rule either!  What to do?

Either Brownback was pandering to the hardcore social conservative base with the block, has serious problems with homosexuals in general, or has a very odd view about what can make a nominee unfit for the bench.  Regardless of which is the right answer, I don’t find that any of them impress me in regards to Brownback’s capacity to be a serious contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.

At least he removed the block.

Ed Morrissey isn’t too impressed, either.

More: The Carpetbagger Report notes some hypocrisy in Brownback’s willingness to deny an up-or-down vote and Peter Lattman, posting at the WSJ’s Law Blog provides a few additional details.

Via the AP: Is a burrito a sandwich? Judge says no.

Basically, a restaurant was trying to block another restaurant from moving into a shopping center because:

Panera has a clause in its lease that prevents the White City Shopping Center in Shrewsbury from renting to another sandwich shop. Panera tried to invoke that clause to stop the opening of an Qdoba Mexican Grill.

Panera is one of my favorite places, but please, the judge is correct: a burrito ain’t a sandwich.

Via Reuters: NJ court grants gay couples equal marriage rights

Saying times have changed, New Jersey’s highest court on Wednesday guaranteed gay couples the same rights as married heterosexuals but left it to state lawmakers to decide if such unions can be called marriage.

[…]

the court gave the legislature six months to either amend the state’s marriage statutes to include gay people, or write a new law in which same-sex couples “would enjoy the rights of civil marriage.”

New Jersey’s marriage statutes define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

The ruling leaves state lawmakers with two options — allow gays to marry in the same way as others, or develop a parallel system of unions for same-sex couples. That second option would leave New Jersey with civil unions akin to those in Vermont.

This is hardly surprising and, quite frankly, the entire situation should be seen as inevitable.

The opponents of same-sex marriage would have been smarter to have pushed civil unions in an attempt to reserve the term “marriage” to heterosexual couples, preserving at least a legal figleaf protecting the concept. As it stands, the equal protection issues inherent in the debate are going to drive courts to continue to make these types of decisions.

Of course, as I think I have noted before, regardless of the legalities of it all, one cannot legislate the usage of vocabulary, and no doubt even same-sex civil unions would be called “marriage” in popular parlance. To see what I am talking about, note Secretary Rice’s usage of the term “mother-in-law” in official remarks at the State Department wherein she refers to the mother of Mark Dybul’s partner as his “mother-in-law.”

Ultimately if people of the same gender wish to be legally bound to one another, I am not sure what the tremendous social harm is supposed to be.

Via the AP: Court temporarily OKs domestic spying

The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge’s ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

[…]

The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest.

This isn’t especially surprising, nor will it be so if the 6th Circuit overturns the lower court’s ruling.