The Supreme Court Rules

[MJZiggy]

I mean while transporting.

[the_idle_threat]

I can't say I know the reasoning for certain, but I suspect it has something to due with law enforcement's concerns about a driver or passenger having access to a loaded weapon---long gun or not---during a traffic stop. That probably has something to do with it, anyway.

And with regard to carrying a long gun uncased when not in a vehicle, it's probably a similar concern to the one that causes bans on open carry of handguns: people get intimidated/upset when they se a person carrying a gun around uncased and possibly loaded. When it's in a case, it's not so threatening to people. Really doesn't make a huge difference in reality---a gun can be loaded in the case and very easily accessible---but it's all about perception.

[MJZiggy]

Ok, I can see that logic...

[mraynrand]

people get intimidated/upset when they se a person carrying a gun around uncased and possibly loaded.

QFT

[Harlan Huckleby]

I don't have any strong opinion about guns or gun control. But the Supreme Court just overturned a gun control law that was wildly popular among the people and police of Washington DC. And the constitutional basis for doing so was debatable. At least the courts since the 1920's read the constitution differently.

I just point this out to all you conservatives who complain about the Supreme Court "legislating from the bench." Sheepshead, you were all mad about the CA court going against the will of the people regarding gay marriage. You pissed off about this one, too?

And the boldest move the Supreme Court has made in my lifetime was stopping a vote recount in Florida. The constitutional argument there was razor thin. I'm having trouble remembering the conservative outrage.

[Partial]

http://opencarry.org/

[BallHawk]

http://opencarry.org/

Sponsored by....

[HarveyWallbangers]

I just point this out to all you conservatives who complain about the Supreme Court "legislating from the bench."

Actually, I don't complain much about the US Supreme Court. It's the lower courts that mostly legislate from the bench, IMHO. I have no problem with the US Supreme Court ruling on ambiguous parts of the Constitution. I think oftentimes the lower courts overstep their bounds, and the US Supreme Court is there to remedy it. I think this is a case of the Supreme Court ruling on something, and either way it's going to look like "legislating from the bench."

And the boldest move the Supreme Court has made in my lifetime was stopping a vote recount in Florida. The constitutional argument there was razor thin. I'm having trouble remembering the conservative outrage.

I don't know if you want to go there.


I think you can blame the Florida legislature more than anybody--for having such shitty laws dealing with a recount process.

[MJZiggy]

Or you could blame an electorate that was too feeble to follow the instructions on the ballot. It just wasn't that hard, people (though admittedly it did make a mess).

[3irty1]

Stories like the one Freak posted are not reasons for the death penalty. A guy like that is best dealt with outside of the law.

[Tyrone Bigguns]

Or you could blame an electorate that was too feeble to follow the instructions on the ballot. It just wasn't that hard, people (though admittedly it did make a mess).

Or you could blame a the governor and republicans who hired a company to purge the voter rolls...and victimized voters who should have been able to vote.

[MJZiggy]

Or you could blame an electorate that was too feeble to follow the instructions on the ballot. It just wasn't that hard, people (though admittedly it did make a mess).

Or you could blame a the governor and republicans who hired a company to purge the voter rolls...and victimized voters who should have been able to vote.

Damn Bushs!

[bobblehead]

Or you could blame an electorate that was too feeble to follow the instructions on the ballot. It just wasn't that hard, people (though admittedly it did make a mess).

Personally I like letting the machine count them, period. Its not biased. Can it be rigged...I guess so, but I would think its much less likely than a partisan pollster messing with a paper ballot to change/invalidate a vote.

[Freak Out]

In Weighing Death Penalty, a Flaw in Fact
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either.

This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the court’s analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” by which the court judges how the death penalty is applied.

It turns out that Justice Kennedy’s confident assertion about the absence of federal law was wrong.

A military law blog pointed out over the weekend that Congress, in fact, revised the sex crimes section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 2006 to add child rape to the military death penalty. The revisions were in the National Defense Authorization Act that year. President Bush signed that bill into law and then, last September, carried the changes forward by issuing Executive Order 13447, which put the provisions into the 2008 edition of the Manual for Courts-Martial.

Anyone in the federal government — or anywhere else, for that matter — who knew about these developments did not tell the court. Not one of the 10 briefs filed in the case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, mentioned it. The Office of the Solicitor General, which represents the federal government in the Supreme Court, did not even file a brief, evidently having concluded that the federal government had no stake in whether Louisiana’s death penalty for child rape was constitutional.

The provision was the subject of a post over the weekend on the blog run by Dwight Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve who now works for the Air Force as a civilian defense lawyer handling death penalty appeals.

Mr. Sullivan was reading the Supreme Court’s decision on a plane and was surprised to see no mention of the military statute. “We’re not talking about ancient history,” he said in an interview. “This happened in 2006.”

His titled his blog post “The Supremes Dis the Military Justice System.”

Jeffrey L. Fisher, a Stanford Law School professor who successfully represented the defendant in the case, Patrick Kennedy, said that he and others on the defense legal team, in researching how various jurisdictions treat child rape, had actually looked into what military law said on the subject. All they found was an old provision making rape a capital offense; it predated the court’s modern death penalty jurisprudence, under which the death penalty for the rape of an adult woman was ruled unconstitutional in 1977.

“We just assumed it was defunct,” Mr. Fisher said of the military provision. “We figured if somebody in the government thought otherwise, we’d hear about it.”

The Justice Department declined to comment. “We do not comment on internal deliberative matters,” said Erik Ablin of the department’s Office of Public Affairs. The lawyers in the Jefferson Parish, La., district attorney’s office who handled the case for the state, in defense of Louisiana’s child rape law, were out of the office this week. Steve Wimberly, the lawyer in the office designated to handle press inquiries about the Supreme Court case, did not return a telephone call.

Any losing party in the Supreme Court can file a petition within 25 days asking the justices to reconsider their decision. Granting such a petition requires a majority vote. Although these petitions are filed rather often, they are, not surprisingly, almost never granted.

R. Ted Cruz, who argued the case in support of Louisiana on behalf of a coalition of 10 states, said in an interview that the chance that the court would reconsider the decision was “extremely unlikely” even if Louisiana brought the omission to the justices’ attention. “A member of the majority would have to change his mind, but it’s obvious that both sides gave this case very careful consideration,” Mr. Cruz said. The vote in the case was 5 to 4.

At the time of the argument, Mr. Cruz was the Texas solicitor general. He has since gone into private practice. In preparing for the case, he said, the existence of the military provision simply “eluded everyone’s research.”

No one in the military has been charged with a capital crime yet under the revised provision. And despite the flurry of activity surrounding the death penalty, the military has not in fact executed anyone for decades. Its last execution took place on April 13, 1961, when Pvt. John A. Bennett was put to death by hanging. His crime: the rape of an 11-year-old girl.

[HarveyWallbangers]

Or you could blame an electorate that was too feeble to follow the instructions on the ballot. It just wasn't that hard, people (though admittedly it did make a mess).

Personally I like letting the machine count them, period. Its not biased. Can it be rigged...I guess so, but I would think its much less likely than a partisan pollster messing with a paper ballot to change/invalidate a vote.

It ain't an election until the Democrats try some new form of cheating.