Quote:

For two decades, the nation’s top credit rating agencies have managed to fend off a crackdown from Washington by relying on a surprising ally – the First Amendment.

Despite their key role in the most recent economic calamity, the three big bond raters–Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch–seem poised to do it again. With help from two of the most storied constitutional lawyers in the country, the raters have successfully argued that when they make a mistake — say, awarding the top triple-A grade to a multibillion-dollar bundle of bonds that later default — they cannot be sued or held accountable.

That’s because ratings are opinions, the agencies claim, protected by the constitutional right to free speech.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/28/under-attack-credit-rater_n_337712.html

You do know Jill still posts here, right?

_________________________________

Sotomayor Asks More Questions In An Hour Than Thomas Has In Years

Does Clarence Thomas really ask so few questions that Sotomayor could beat his total in an hour, you may wonder. Indeed, he does. As the AP reported in February 2008, Thomas had gone 2 years and 144 cases without speaking up during oral arguments. “It is a period of unbroken silence that contrasts with the rest of the court’s unceasing inquiries,” the AP wrote at the time.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/06/sotomayor-asks-more-quest_n_310988.html
_________________________________

Full disclosure: I support Ms. Sotomayor.

You need to the the photo of old ‘Tony n’ Clarence’ at HuffPo with Ms. Soto.

Sotomayor’s vote in Donniger shows a overreaching expectation of state jurisdiction.

All seem to forget the base context of any minor student school case – the minors are COMPELLED by law to be there. That alone is reprehensible to my sensibilities, but when the state then parlays that offense into justification to curtail even more freedoms, on the basis of compelled association no less, it breaks all bounds of reasonable legal reasoning.
The justification of control over the student’s personal life, unrelated to his school activities, is that he is a student there, is just a naked assertion of moral-based micromanagement, capricious control over another human being.
Maddening.

On the right to sell photos of a crime that one did not participate in, I would go it one further and say the same principle should apply even to child pornography.

To make criminal “depictions” of a crime, that is, images, seems to go beyond the letter of constitutional law. Images alone can never be a crime – sure they can be evidence of the crime committed, but inofthemselves?, it is a vicarious reference to an evil, it is a depiction of a crime, not a crime itself.
I know the argument, that the images themselves are a commodity that encourages the crime, but that is a leap of associative logic that lead to a slippery slope.
It legitimizes the precedent that photos of any arbitrary crime (or anything at all) could be made illegal. That then slips into making depictions of depictions illegal, which is the stuff of storytelling and drama.
However reprehensible pornographic child abuse is, I cannot see how a piece of paper with ink on it, or worse pixels/bits in a computer, can be seriously proclaimed a crime inofitself without a bit of magical mysticism necessarily backing it up.

“Citizens United v. F.E.C.”

Cursed multitasking!

Personally, I’m a leather shoe wearing omnivore, but it seems that responsible groups (which might or might not include PETA) should have the right to document and share evidence of animal slaughter practices (and abuses) for their political speech.

As an aside: I’ll be in DC next week and looking forward to hearing some of the oral arguments. The cases being heard on the day we can get over there aren’t particularly exciting, but should will be interesting!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/us/politics/05scotus.html?hp

You have nothing to choose from then. Sotyomayer has reject pleas for exactly the same reason. Of course we likely differ in opinion on whether some felon’s last ditch bid not to be justly executed should have been heard in the 1st place, just as we likely differ in opinion on animal cruelty.

I would take back their devil with his lady in a blue dress any day of the week before entrusting the morals of the right wing to deem for me what is right.

Yesterday was a type of right to life day by even the christian fundamentalist. This is wrong on so many fronts. Children teach your children well is all I can say, they will select your quality of care later in life.

“Fortunately there is still a majority of right-thinking, moral judges in the SCOTUS.”

************

Yep, they’re the guys who denied a death row appeal because it was filed a day late. Right-thinking and moral, indeed. How about just fatally “efficient?”

By Krista Gesaman | Newsweek Web Exclusive”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216740