Results matching “thomas”

SCOTUS to Review NY Gun Law:  The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a unanimous Second Circuit ruling which held that New York City's harsh gun restrictions comply with the high court's 2008 Heller v. District of Columbia decision.  Adam Liptak of the New York Times reports that the Second Circuit ruling rejected claims made in a lawsuit by the New York Rifle and Pistol Association, that by prohibiting lawful gun owners from taking their unloaded and locked firearms to second homes, out of city shooting ranges, competitions or anywhere else, the law violates Heller and the Second Amendment.  The article suggests that by agreeing to hear the appeal after denying review of gun cases for nearly a decade, the Court, with the recent confirmation of a new more conservative justice, may be poised to expand Heller.  Last year, Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a dissent to denial of a Second Amendment case that "The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this court's constitutional orphan."  On Tuesday, NY Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters that his city would vigorously defend the gun restrictions.    

First, we must continue the progress we have made on violent crime while, at the same time, recognizing the changes that have occurred since I last served as Attorney General. Then, the Nation was suffering from the highest violent crime rate in our history. My priority was to protect the public and attack those soaring crime rates by targeting chronic violent offenders and gangs. The crime rate has substantially fallen since 1992. The recently passed First Step Act, which I intend to diligently implement if confirmed, recognizes the progress we have made over the past three decades. Like Attorney General Sessions, I believe we must keep up the pressure on chronic, violent criminals. We cannot allow the progress we have made to be reversed. As Attorney General, I will continue to give priority to the joint efforts with our state and local partners to combat violent crime.

SF a Sanctuary City for Drug Dealers:  An article in today's New York Times by Thomas Fuller describes the squalor on the streets of the once beautiful City by the Bay; "The heroin needles, the pile of excrement between parked cars, the yellow soup oozing out of a large plastic bag by the curb...For many who live here it is difficult to reconcile San Francisco's liberal politics wiht the misery that surrounds them."  One of the policies contributing to this is the fact that there are no longer any consequences for drug dealers or drug users in the city.  As reported by Heather Knight of the San Francisco Chronicle, the city has become a sanctuary for dealers, and cannot afford anything close to the resources necessary to treat addicts.  "It's almost impossible to get convicted in this city,"  noted one officer in the narcotics division.  Dealers routinely sit in chairs in front of one non-profit for the homeless near the city library and sell drugs while nobody bothers them. The Mayor's answer is to offer the dealer's jobs, which sounds really nice.  The problem according to police is that most dealers don't live in the city...they commute on BART from Oakland and Richmond to sell drugs in a protected environment.  This is the logical result of California's Proposition 47, which turned most street dealers into misdemeanants, and San Francisco's apparent willingness to tolerate virtually anything.    

Kristina Peterson and Peter Nicholas report for the WSJ:

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing next Monday with the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, according to lawmakers and aides.

The hearing would give the public an chance to hear more about the three-decades-old accusations against Judge Kavanaugh that now threaten to derail his nomination to the high court. The Senate is expected to announce details of the hearing shortly.

Erwin Chemerinsky has this article in the ABA Journal identifying areas where Justice "Kennedy was the fifth vote for a liberal result, and where it is uncertain, or even unlikely, that Kavanaugh would decide the same way" as Justice Kennedy did.

Exclusionary rule: In Hudson v. Michigan (2006), Justice Antonin Scalia wrote an opinion--joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito--that called for the elimination of the exclusionary rule in Fourth Amendment cases. He argued that the costs of excluding evidence when police officers violate the Fourth Amendment outweigh the benefits of doing so. Justice Kennedy agreed to the result in that case, but declared that the continued operation of the exclusionary rule was not in doubt. But with Kennedy being replaced by Kavanaugh, there could be five votes to overrule a doctrine that conservatives have opposed for decades.

Really?  I have been arguing to limit Mapp for many years. I think I would remember if the Supreme Court came within a single vote of overruling it completely, especially in a case where my organization filed a brief.

To anticipate our conclusions just briefly, we believe that Catholic judges (if they are faithful to the teaching of their church) are morally precluded from enforcing the death penalty. This means that they can neither themselves sentence criminals to death nor enforce jury recommendations of death. Whether they may affirm lower court orders of either kind is a question we have the most difficulty in resolving. There are parts of capital cases in which we think orthodox Catholic judges may participate - these include trial on the issue of guilt and collateral review of capital convictions. The moral impossibility of enforcing capital punishment in the first two or three cases (sentencing, enforcing jury recommendations, affirming) is a sufficient reason for recusal under federal law. But mere identification of a judge as Catholic is not a sufficient reason. Indeed, it is constitutionally insufficient.

This is 2018.  For those of us who can do elementary mathematics, that is a year divisible by 2 and not by 4.  In American politics, that means it is a year for election of the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate, but not the President.

Justice Byron White joined the majority opinion in National Bellas Hess, Inc. v. Department of Revenue of Ill., 386 U. S. 753 (1967). Twenty-five years later, we had the opportunity to overrule Bellas Hess in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U. S. 298 (1992). Only Justice White voted to do so. See id., at 322 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). I should have joined his opinion. Today, I am slightly further removed from Quill than Justice White was from Bellas Hess. And like Justice White, a quarter century of experience has convinced me that Bellas Hess and Quill "can no longer be rationally justified." 504 U. S., at 333. The same is true for this Court's entire negative Commerce Clause jurisprudence.See Comptroller of Treasury of Md. v. Wynne, 575 U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (Thomas, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1). Although I adhered to that jurisprudence in Quill, it is never too late to "surrende[r] former views to a better considered position." McGrath v. Kristensen, 340 U. S. 162, 178 (1950) (Jackson, J., concurring). I therefore join the Court's opinion.

This case concerns the bounds of that discretion, and whether a miscalculation of the United States Sentencing Guidelines range, that has been determined to be plain and to affect a defendant's substantial rights, calls for a court of appeals to exercise its discretion under Rule 52(b) to vacate the defendant's sentence. The Court holds that such an error will in the ordinary case, as here, seriously affect the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings, and thus will warrant relief.

There isn't a woman alive who was ever raped while either intoxicated or unconscious who doesn't consider the entire experience violent.

But that's not how these crimes are defined legally in California. The same for human trafficking of a child, abducting a minor for prostitution, drive-by shootings at inhabited homes or cars, felony domestic violence, solicitation to commit murder, among others.

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But a series of bills aiming to expand the list of crimes defined as violent died in legislative financial committees. Too expensive, was the verdict. That was the reason given when the Assembly Appropriations Committee just about one year ago killed a bipartisan measure aiming to classify all rapes and all human trafficking as violent.