Supreme Court Restores Habeas Corpus for Detainees

So long, torture loving, John McCain voted for Military Commissions Act:

Federal judges cannot block U.S. military officials from turning over two Americans held in Iraq to local authorities who want to prosecute them for involvement in the insurgency or criminal activity, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

The high court's decision was a defeat for two Americans who say they are innocent and who are being held by U.S. soldiers at Camp Cropper near Baghdad International Airport.

The usual suspects (Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas) dissented.

Slowly but surely.

Racism Is Not Dead

Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or... a racist.

In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree.

The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena's black population didn't take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen."

Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles.

We still have much work to do.

Update: The Supreme Court is not helping:

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected public school assignment plans that take account of students' race.

The decision in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it leaves public school systems with limited means to maintain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by the court's other three liberals. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion in which he said race may be a component of school district plans designed to achieve diversity. But he agreed with Justice Roberts that the plans in Louisville and Seattle went too far.

Thanks, gang of 14! Thanks, Joe Lieberman! Thanks, bipartisan sensible centrist David broder! This is what the good bipartisans in the Senate have brought us!

Later update: Yes, this means the Supreme Court just gutted Brown v. Board of Ed.

Bush's Court

One decision at a time.

All of these decisions are split 5-4, it's not even funny.

To the Courts in 180 Days

Good:

The top legal executive for General Electric Co.'s transportation unit sued the company for gender discrimination Thursday, saying she has been paid less than male counterparts and was denied a promotion because she is female.
Lorene F. Schaefer, a 13-year GE veteran who has served as the transportation unit's general counsel since May 2005, also contends gender discrimination at the Connecticut conglomerate is widespread, and her lawsuit has been filed as a purported class action.

I wonder if this will make to all the way to the Supreme Court, which just threw out a gender pay-discrimination case on grounds of standing of the techinicality that such a case had to be brought within 180 days or the statute expired, an opinion that justice Ginsburg sliced to ribbons. Maybe the Roberts court can now issue an opinion, penned by justice Kennedy, that women should not have a say in what they get paid because it involves things beyond their understanding and they may come to regret it some day.

The Scalito Court

If this is any indication, we are in for a rough ride.

Justice(s) Matter

Wingnuts in robes:

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling written by swing vote Justice Anthony Kennedy, upheld a federal ban on late-term abortion procedures.

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how -- not whether -- to perform an abortion. The decision reverses lower court rulings that had held the federal law was unconstitutional because it lacked a health exception for the mother, as required by earlier Supreme Court precedents. Congress approved the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban in 2003, placing new federal restrictions on some late-term abortion procedures.

Not Kennedy, mind you, but our new hacktacular Justices along with the old ones.

I thought we stopped telling people what they could and could not do with their bodies when we got rid of slavery...