Law

I love it when a filthy hippie gets their comeuppance. This time around it's 70-year-old radical lawyer Lynn Stewart, who was convicted of passing notes from her terrorist client Omar Abdel-Rahman (also known as the 'Blind Sheik'). While representing Abdel-Rahman she secretly passed notes to his supporters in Egypt, including a note that advised his supporters to end a cease-fire. For abusing her role as the terrorist's lawyer, Stewart was given a 28-month jail sentence -- but the story doesn't end there!

In keeping with the apocalyptic theme from my last post, here's some interesting news:

Douglas Hughes, darkhorse candidate for governor in California has declared on his website that, if elected, he would propose a law giving convicted pedophiles the option of either leaving the state forever, remaining in jail for life, or being exiled to an island off the coast of California.

President Obama's nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan marks the first time in forty years that a non-jurist has been appointed to the Supreme Court.

Put aside the obvious far-left bent that Kagan possesses - is this really the time to put an inexperienced non-jurist on the High Court? Could they not find anyone out there, even in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who had experience and shared the same views?

Last week Arizona passed a controversial law allowing it's police officers to (in the course of ordinary police action) to ask for identification from people they believe may be illegal immigrants. This has caused an uproar in some quarters, with declarations from some that the law is 'hateful' to immigrants.

A federal court has recently ruled that the FCC does not have the right to regulate the Internet. This means the government cannot enforce 'net neutrality', a term I've heard before, but wasn't familiar with its exact meaning.

On first blush, I relish any event in which the government (at any level) is told that it does not have the 'right' to do something. That's my default position as it seems that whenever the government gets involved in anything of real importance disaster and stupidity soon follow.

After some research I found that 'net neutrality' is really more of a euphemism. It's a feature of federal expansion to give laws names that signify the precise opposite of what they really mean. For example, the 'Bank Secrecy Act' -- sounds great. Banking should be private, it shouldn't be open to the public. I like the sound of the 'Bank Secrecy Act'. What it really means is that any transaction with a bank over $3,000 must be reported to the federal government. But they couldn't very well call it the 'No Secrets May Be Kept From Government Act', now could it? Or it's like the FCC's old 'Fairness Doctrine' -- which had nothing whatsoever to do with 'fairness'.

I'm not much of a fan of Pat Buchanan -- he's too much the left's stereotypical dyspeptic conservative, and I don't always like his very populist tone. But I think he's hit on something very important in regards to Obama's decision to send Guantanamo terrorist detainees to a civilian court in New York City.

As speculated at the time of Ted Kennedy's death, the Massachusetts House has passed a bill to allow the Governor (Democrat Deval Patrick) to appoint a successor to Ted Kennedy, to serve until the Jan. 19, 2010 special election. Apparently, Barack Obama has had a heavy hand in pushing the change:

On this day in 1787, the Constitution was formally adopted by the Convention in Philadelphia, and sent to the several States for ratification. As Ed Whelan of NRO's Bench Memos quotes: