by TChris

The worst isn't that President Bush has acted beyond his power, in defiance of the Constitution, Paul Starr argues. The worst is that the president believes his power is limitless, and that Congress and the Supreme Court might join in his distorted view of our constitutional framework.

But there is something more dangerous than any of these specific abuses and usurpations, and that is the theory of inherent powers that Bush invokes to justify most of these actions and the possibility of its being effectively institutionalized by a meek Congress and, worst of all, by a deferential Supreme Court. ...

The real danger today is the loaded weapon that Bush and his defenders are willing to put in the hands of all future presidents. Even members of his own party ought to be able to see that danger, and act to stop it.

by TChris

Here's a funny lesson in how not to get a job in the legal world (at least, not in the private sector).

by TChris

This isn't the most consequential Supreme Court news of the day, but it's good to see the Court admonish the Eleventh Circuit for its dismissive view of the evidence of discrimination presented in a lawsuit against Tyson Foods. Two African American superintendents at Tyson's poultry plant were denied promotions. Ash won at trial, but the district court took the victory away, concluding that he failed to prove that the denial was discriminatory.

Ash relied in part on evidence that the plant manager referred to the two men as "boy." That wasn't enough to prove a discriminatory animus, the Eleventh Circuit said, because "[w]hile the use of 'boy' when modified by a racial classification like 'black' or 'white' is evidence of discriminatory intent, the use of 'boy' alone is not evidence of discrimination." The Supreme Court concluded that juries need not be so blind to the history of racially derogatory language.

by TChris

The Supreme Court will bravely step once again into the quicksand of sentencing law. The Court will decide what impact the Blakely and Booker decisions have on California law. (TalkLeft background on the cases is collected here.)

The Supreme Court rulings say judges can't increase a maximum possible prison sentence based on their own factual conclusions, rather than the findings of a jury or admissions made by a defendant in a guilty plea. ...

by TChris

Jenna Orkin just wants her government to tell the truth.

Within days of the World Trade Center collapse, someone ordered Environmental Protection Agency administrators to tell New Yorkers the air was safe. ... No matter that private tests showed the air remained full of lead, asbestos, mercury, benzene. No matter that, according to documents forced out of the EPA by a Freedom of Information request, the agency's own tests agreed that the air in Lower Manhattan--who wanted to bother with Brooklyn?--wasn't fit to breathe.

Orkin joined other plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the EPA, contending that her constitutional right to be protected from harm by government officials was violated when "Christine Todd Whitman, then the EPA administrator, and her staff made false statements and failed to carry out its cleanup duties." An initial ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts might pave the way for the truth to come out.

by TChris

Last year, TalkLeft highlighted a conflict between the administration's desire to appease religious groups and its refusal to cede ground in its unyielding war against drugs. Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to protect certain religious practices, including the ingestion of controlled substances, which would otherwise be illegal. The Supreme Court held that the Act can't trump state drug laws, but the administration argued that Congress also lacks the authority to enact a religious exception to federal laws that punish the possession of hoasca (which contains the hallucinogenic substance DMT).

The Court was asked to decide whether the Act protects members of the New Mexico branch of a Brazilian church who want to ingest hoasca "as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God." In a unanimous decision (Alito did not participate), the Court sided with the church.

In their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. In the decision, Roberts wrote that federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church and that the Bush administration had failed to meet its burden under a federal religious freedom law to show that it should be allowed to ban "the sect's sincere religious practice."

by TChris

The Supreme Court was widely expected to take up a challenge to the constitutionality of a federal law that bans late term abortions.

The "partial birth" ban, enacted in 2003, has been invalidated by three different federal appeals courts on the grounds that the ban did not include an exception for cases when the health of the mother might be at stake and constituted an undue burden on the right to abortion.

The Court today accepted review of Gonzalez v. Carhart, an Eighth Circuit case that found the ban unconstitutional. Court watchers expect Justice Alito to be the deciding vote in Carhart.

Two doctors have refused to participate in the execution of Michael Morales, forcing the prison to delay it, at least until tonight.

The exact wording of the judge's order was not immediately available, but the anesthesiologists issued a statement through the prison saying they were concerned about a requirement that they intervene in the event that Morales woke up or appeared to be in pain.

"Any such intervention would clearly be medically unethical," said the doctors, who have not been identified. "As a result, we have withdrawn from participation in this current process."

The prison planned to switch the lethal injection drugs, using barbituates instead of the three drug cocktail that many believe result in extreme pain being felt by the executionee if the drugs did not completely sedate him.

First, a huge thanks to TChris who has kept this site running while I've been in Amsterdam. Tomorrow is my last day here and there is so much more to see.

The hotel has only wireless, and mine seems to go out every five minutes or so, requiring me to log in with user name and password over and over again and eating many posts, which has been quite frustrating. Ezra, Amanda and Lindsay haven't had this problem, so it must be my computer settings.

The best part of the trip has been the walking, probably five to ten miles a day. While there are trams that go everywhere, walking has let me take in so much more and get a better feel for the city. It's been very cold and gray every day, but we were forewarned and brought coats, gloves, hats and scarves, so it's not much of a problem.

The Rembrandts are really something to see. So are the Van Gogh paintings. The architecture is very intriguing and the city is well laid out. All in all, a great trip so far.

Here's an open thread to discuss whatever else is going on in the world.

There's something strange, to say the least, about the Bush Administration's plan to sell off control of our ports to a Dubai company.

Why are Bush and Chertoff pushing this? [Update: See the ties to the Administration, particularly John Snow]

Think Progress has more.

Update (by TChris): Whatever virtues the private market might otherwise have, John Nichols asks whether the private control of ports, "essential pieces of the infrastructure of the United States," makes sense in a security-conscious era. (via Matthew Yglesias at Tapped)

by TChris

Yes, impeachment is unlikely in a Republican controlled Congress, but Bonnie Erbe is nonetheless frustrated by "[m]edia inattention to the growing American pro-impeachment sentiment."

[G]rassroots passion for impeachment prompted by this president's circumvention of Congress and the Constitution is what's driving growing public support. And America's transition from "Bush fan" to "Bush foe" is being ignored by the mainstream media.

Surprisingly, the media did anything but ignore the Republican-led impeachment movement against former President Clinton, even when the public was decidedly more supportive of that president than it is of the current one.

As Erbe asks, why aren't members of the "liberal media" clamoring for Bush's impeachment?

by TChris

Khaled el-Masri was a victim of the CIA's rendition program. TalkLeft described him as "a Lebanese-born German who was pulled from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border in December 2003 and flown to Afghanistan, where he said he was beaten and drugged. He was released five months later without being charged with a crime." It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.

The U.S. eventually admitted its mistake to Germany. But Germany may not have clean hands in Masri's kidnapping and detention.

[O]n Monday in Neu-Ulm near Munich, the police and prosecutors opened an investigation into whether Germany served as a silent partner of the United States in the abduction of ... Khaled el-Masri ....