Clipmarks | Courts Clips

Connecticut Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:19:43 GMT

clipped by: zasel
clipper's remarks: This is such great news. Little by little, the U.S. is beginning to catch up with Canada, and other countries who are finally realizing that in a democracy ALL men and women and equal. This should never be subject to social interpretation.

Clip Source: www.365gay.com

Connecticut) Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that gay couples have the right to marry, making the state the third behind Massachusetts and California to legalize such unions through the courts.

The ruling comes just weeks before Californians go to the polls on a historic gay-marriage ballot question, the first time the issue will be put before voters.

Connecticut’s court ruled 4-3 that gay and lesbian couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry under the state constitution. It was a logical next step for a state that was the first to voluntarily pass laws affirming and protecting civil unions.

"Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice," Justice Richard N. Palmer wrote in the majority opinion that overturned a lower court finding.

Tags: gay, homosexual, sa, me-sex marriage

On Russia suing Bank of NY under US RICO law

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:08:11 GMT

clipped by: tommy2balmy
clipper's remarks: Then there was the role being played by Miami injury lawyer Steven Marks, who openly pitched the lawsuit to the Russian government; while he's hardly the first stateside lawyer to sell the idea of litigation against U.S. companies to foreign sovereigns, that trend in itself is one that deserves closer attention.

Clip Source: www.pointoflaw.com

the government of Russia is invoking the RICO law -- America's RICO law, that is, not some equivalent on its own books -- to demand that Bank of New York pay compensation over a ten-year-old episode in which rogue bank employees opened a channel that allowed Russian exporters and others to move money out of the country without official oversight.

To begin with, there's the sheer size of the sum demanded: $22.5 billion, an artifact of RICO's damage-trebling provisions as well as an optimistic view of underlying damages. Then there's the issue of the application of our distinctive RICO law in other countries' courts over actions and damages occurring overseas

In addition, there was the question of whether the Russian courts would prove a forum adequately protective of the rights of an entity being sued by the Russian government

Finally

the rogue employees,

had found it worth their while to assist the plaintiffs in the advancement of the suit.

Tags: us, russia, rico, bank of ny

Same Sex Marriage? Yes in Connecticut

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:36:07 GMT

clipped by: iulawboy
clipper's remarks: That pesky constitution and its equal protection provisions -- next you will be telling us we have to send our kids to integrated schools.

Clip Source: seattlepi.nwsource.com

Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled Friday that gay couples have the right to marry, making the state the third behind Massachusetts and California to legalize such unions through the courts.

Connecticut's court ruled 4-3 that gay and lesbian couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry under the state constitution.

for a state that was the first to voluntarily pass laws affirming and protecting civil unions.

"To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others,"

Tags: same sex marriage, connecticut, civil unions, equal protection

1

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:47:17 GMT

clipped by: gustaborja

Clip Source: www.goski.ca

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District Judge Orders Release Of Uighur Jihadists In D.C. By Friday

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:32:43 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: This is the very nightmare scenario I warned about. The courts' steps are outrageous, but predictable and inevitable. A lot of the blame here, however, goes to the administration and the military. They have long taken the position that radical Islamic ideology is not the problem, and that we need only worry about actively those taking up arms against the United States. They don't want us to talk about jihad — the better to keep us in the dark about jihadist ideology. Thus, the government rationalizes, the Uighurs are not a threat to us, only to the Chinese. That was all the daylight the judges need to say: OK, then release them in the U.S., since no other country — except China, where they'd be persecuted — will take them. The government's self-defeating argument is preposterous. Jihadists — and there is not question that the Uighurs are jihadists — do not recognize distinctions based on the Westphalia world of nation-states.

Clip Source: hughhewitt.townhall.com

Now as the inevitable consequence of that ruling, seventeen hard-core Islamic jihadists who'd come from their homes in China to train at terrorist camps in Afghanistan — captured there by our armed forces, and held since at Guantanamo Bay — are on the brink of being released this week, not for return to China, but into the general population of our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.:

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said it would be wrong for the government to continue holding the detainees, known as Uighurs (WEE'-gurz), who have been jailed for nearly seven years, since they are no longer considered enemy combatants. Over the objections of government lawyers who called them a security risk, Urbina ordered their release in Washington D.C. by Friday.

Former federal anti-terrorist prosecutor Andrew McCarthy put this latest national peril into exactly the right context yesterday, apportioning blame appropriately between the courts and the lawyer-driven position of the Administration:

Tags: scotus habeas corpus, u.s. district judge urbina, uighur jihadists, dar al islam, gitmo detainees

I want the pro-life option!

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:33:07 GMT

clipped by: pcmkrfn

Clip Source: www.azcentral.com

An anti-abortion group has won its long legal fight to force Arizona to issue “choose life” license plates, and the proposed new plates could be available to the group's members within several months.

The Arizona Department of Transportation said it would “quickly and fully comply” with the courts' direction. The department said it would consider what to do next, “including the potential” for a meeting of the state license plate commission to reconsider the proposal.

Obama Uses CAIR Lawyer To Stall BERG v OBAMA

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:03:19 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Sandler’s role for CAIR has been to stifle people from telling the truth about Islam. For example, last year he tried to get Jihad Expert Robert Spencer banned from speaking to the Young American Foundation, by using a threatening letter. Sandler followed up by threatening columnist Mike Adams for writing about the Spencer incident.

Look, everyone deserves legal representation that is not the Issue. The real issue is why is a candidate for President of the United States, a guy who wants to take over the role of Commander-in-Chief in the war on terror, using the Lawyer for CAIR a group with terrorist connections, to represent him in a law suit? Once again the Junior Senator from Illinois leave us with questions and no answers.

Hon. R. Barclay Surrick
United States District Court Judge
For the Eastern District of PA

For the complete PDF file
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/pennsylvania/paedce/2:2008cv04083/281573/13/

Clip Source: community.marketwatch.com

Here come another of those “Guilt by Associations” that Senator Barack Obama will try to weasel himself out of. As you may know, Philip Berg is suing Senator Obama in Civil Court. Berg wants Obama to Produce his real birth certificate to prove that he meets the citizenship requirements to be President. Rather than just product the birth certificate (is he trying to hide something?) Obama’s legal team filed a motion to dismiss. One of the Lawyers filing the motion was Joe Sandler (sandler@sandlerreiff.com) of the Washington law firm Sandler, Reiff, and Young (see the document below).

If Mr. Sandler’s name sounds familiar it Should. He is the Legal Hit Man for the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR is an organization with terrorist ties, and has been as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Holyland Foundation Hamas Funding trial.

Tags: barack obama, elections, news, u.s. constitution, berg vs obama, birth certificate

Corruption in Nevada Courts

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:03:32 GMT

clipped by: chriswilliamdavis
clipper's remarks: Join the fight against corruption and become one of the 6400. Share this video with as many people as possible.

Thank you
Chris Davis

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

JibJab Judge

You think you're Tired of Corruption? Go to ChrisDavisForJudge.com and learn in JibJab style why Nevada Courts have become a national soap opera plagued with scandal after scandal. Then join the fight against corruption at ChrisDavisForJudge.com and become one of the 6400!

Pray or Go To Jail

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:43:12 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: Can anyone envision a court forcing someone to engage in Hindu worship? How about Bar Mitzva vs prison? Consider a judge ordering someone to join a Coven? Why is this different?

Clip Source: atheism.about.com

California Forcing Atheists to Attend Religious Programs

In Shasta County, California, atheist Barry A. Hazle is suing the state department of corrections because he was given a blatantly unconstitutional choice: go to jail or attend a religious 12-step program as a condition of his parole after a drug possession conviction. Hazle didn't object to participating in some program to deal with addiction, but he wanted a secular program rather than a religious one. Government officials refused and sent him back to jail for what amounts to refusing to go to religious services.

The 12-step program required "acknowledgment of the existence of a supernatural God,....deference to a monotheistic 'higher power,' and participation in prayer," the suit alleges. He was subsequently arrested for violating parole and sent back to prison for four months, the suit alleges.

Courts across the nation have recognized that the 12-step method is religious in nature

"People have found other ways to be cooperative – without God."

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:39:27 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: The study also points out that in today's world religion has no monopoly on kind and generous behaviour. In many findings, non-believers acted as prosocially as believers. The last several hundred years has seen the rise of non-religious institutional mechanisms that include effective policing, courts and social surveillance.

Very interesting read, on the social function of god.
maybe we can say that JC, Moses and the like are history social workers

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Religion Makes People Helpful And Generous -- Under Certain Conditions

"The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality" appears in the October 3, 2008 issue of the journal Science.

explore how religion, by encouraging cooperation, became a factor in making possible the rise of large and stable societies made of genetically unrelated individuals.

The investigators found complementary results across the disciplines:

Empirical data within anthropology suggests there is more cooperation among religious societies than the non-religious, especially when group survival is under threat

Economic experiments indicate that religiosity increases levels of trust among participants

Psychology experiments show that thoughts of an omniscient, morally concerned God reduce levels of cheating and selfish behaviour

notion of an all-powerful, morally concerned "Big God" usually begat "Big groups" –large-scale, stable societies that successfully passed on their cultural beliefs.

Tags: religion, society, cooperation

Another terrorists; Should we fight their ??

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:34:44 GMT

clipped by: Yassin_M

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Blast outside Basque region court

A bomb has exploded outside a court in Spain's north-eastern Basque region, after a warning from ETA, the armed separatist group, Spanish media report.

The small blast went off at 0115 (0015 BST) in the town of Tolosa and no injuries were reported.

The attacks come at a time of increased turbulence in Basque politics after Spanish courts banned two Basque parties over their links to Eta.

Spanish public television station TVE said a man claiming to represent ETA called the Basque traffic department to warn of an imminent blast about half an hour before the explosion.

The group resumed its campaign of violence in December 2006, following the failure of secret dialogue with Spain's Socialist government.

RIAA lawsuit campaign loses credibility

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:50:29 GMT

clipped by: tommy2balmy
clipper's remarks: Since September of 2003, the recording industry has leveled legal threats against close to 30,000 American music fans. In a report released today, "RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) presents a comprehensive overview of the RIAA's litigation campaign and concludes that it is hurting music fans and artists alike, without making a dent in unauthorized file-sharing.
"If the RIAA wants to keep suing hundreds of people each month and collecting these huge settlements, it can't take shortcuts," said EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry. "It's not enough to say the law 'could have been' broken and demand thousands of dollars to make the accusation go away. The recording industry must prove its case and show that infringement actually occurred."

Clip Source: www.eff.org

San Francisco - Five years after the Recording Industry of America (RIAA) began its massive litigation campaign against music fans suspected of sharing copyrighted music files over the Internet, the campaign has failed to get artists paid or reduce peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. Meanwhile, the legal foundation of the campaign is being questioned by several federal courts.

judges have repeatedly rejected the RIAA's "making available" theory, the notion that merely having a music file in a "shared" folder on a computer constitutes copyright infringement, even if no one ever copies the file.

Downloading from P2P networks continues unabated, while some people simply choose to share files in ways that are harder to monitor, like burning and exchanging CDs among friends.

For the full report "RIAA v. The People: Five Years Later":
http://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-years-later

For more on the litigation campaign:
http://www.eff.org/riaa-v-people

Tags: riaa, file sharing

SCOTUS Admits Blunder on UCMJ, But Says "Nevermind"

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:07:13 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: and shows again, how Obama's model judges pull constitutional law from thin air.

That was spectacularly clueless, and one of the many occasions on which Obama has demonstrated that for all his fine degrees from Columbia and Harvard Law, he's ignorant of world history. First, no one at Nuremberg was permitted to file a habeas corpus petition in the American courts. Second, the Military Commissions Act provides substantially greater procedural and substantive protection than what any of the Nuremberg defendants had.

Rights for foreigners accused of being terrorists that even our own service personnel don't get. A "living, breathing" Constitution whose answers, are blowin' in the wind. You do get an indirect vote on whether that's what you want — but you have to cast it through your choices for POTUS/VPOTUS and (even less directly) U.S. Senators. Judicial appointments are just one more issue on which this year's presidential election presents you with a stark, vivid choice.

Clip Source: hughhewitt.townhall.com

In a sentence: In June the SCOTUS said UCMJ-based provisions are inadequate; in July the SCOTUS proved that it has no clue what the UCMJ actually says.

That's why we've had an Attorney General and a Department of Justice since the founding of the Republic.

But both Barack Obama and Joe Biden are indeed lawyers, and Barack Obama frequently reminds us that he's even been a "professor of constitutional law" (which is a slight overstatement, but whatever). He immediately applauded the Boumediene decision:

Taking audience questions in Pennsylvania, Obama praised Thursday's Supreme Court decision to allow detainees at Guantanamo Bay to challenge their imprisonment in federal courts. Enforcing habeas corpus rights, he said, is "the essence of who we are."

"Even when Nazis' atrocities became known in the 1940s, he said, "we still gave them a day in court" at the Nuremberg trials. "That taught the entire world about who we are," he said.

Tags: supreme court, boumediene decision, uniform code of military justice, habeas corpus rights, nuremberg military tribunal

Former rulers, father and son on trial

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:12:45 GMT

clipped by: tommy2balmy
clipper's remarks: Emmanuel — also known as Chuckie Jr. — was born in Boston and spent most of his life in Orlando, Fla. before moving to Liberia when he was a teenager to be with his father. There, prosecutors say, he led a notorious unit blamed for silencing Taylor's critics.

Taylor meanwhile is charged with orchestrating atrocities by rebels in Sierra Leone from 1996-2002 while he was ruling Liberia.
"Many of the people who commit these crimes perceive that if they win they're in the presidential palace for life, if they lose they'll find exile somewhere and live comfortably," Rapp said. "We really want to eliminate that perception that you can get away with these things."

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

Once rulers, father and son now on trial

Atrocities alleged against Liberia's Charles Taylor and U.S.-born son

Charles McArthur Emmanuel, the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, in a courtroom drawing while in court Monday in Miami. Emmanuel is the first person ever tried under a 1994 U.S. law that makes it a crime for an American citizen to commit torture overseas.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - In separate courts on different continents, former Liberian President Charles Taylor and his American son are standing trial on charges of committing atrocities in neighboring West African nations.

The unprecedented father and son trials — one by a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in The Hague and the other by a U.S. federal court in Miami — are revealing the savagery of the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor in court at The Hague, Netherlands, in January. He is charged with orchestrating atrocities by rebels in Sierra Leone from 1996-2002

Tags: charles taylor, atrocities, liberia, charles emmanuel, hague

Russia's last tsar rehabilitated

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:48:31 GMT

clipped by: RecordSage
clipper's remarks: How big of them.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Russia's last tsar rehabilitated

Russia's Supreme Court has ruled that the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family were victims of political repression and should be rehabilitated.

The rehabilitation has long been demanded by the tsar's descendants.

Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their five children, doctor and three servants were shot dead by Bolshevik revolutionaries in July, 1918.

Lower courts had previously refused to reclassify the killings, which had been categorised as simply murder.

The Romanov family have been canonised as saints by the Orthodox Church, which has enjoyed a post-Soviet revival.

For most of the last century, Tsar Nicholas II was officially reviled as a tyrant. To Russia's Soviet regime, he personified all they had tried to destroy in the revolution of 1917.

The Romanovs were shot by a firing squad without a trial, in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.