A little discussed report by the United States Sentencing Commission has been released with an astonishing figure: Of the more than 2,200 people who received federal sentences for drug possession in fiscal year 2014, almost three-quarters of them were illegal immigrants. In addition, illegal immigrants reportedly made up more than one-third of all federal sentences for all crimes.
Category: Politics
The Redskins lost a major challenge this week to the cancellation of the their trademark protection by the Patent and Trademark Office. I have previously written about my disagreement with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decision to rescind federal trademark protections for the Redskins as a racially disparaging name as well as the underlying law used to strip the team of its trademark protection. The law allows for a small administrative office to effectively dictate the outcome of a long simmering societal debate over the team name. More importantly, the standard for determining what names or words are disparaging remains dangerously undefined with striking contradictions as we have previously discussed in permitted and disallowed trademarks.
Continue reading “Federal Court Upholds Decision Stripping Redskins Of Trademark Protection”
A couple months ago, we discussed the uproar in New York over people posting smiling selfies at the site of the deadly East Village fire. Many people were appalled by the insensitivity and part of the backlash was directed at Christina Freundlich, who worked at the Iowa Democratic Party. While some would suggest that a penchant for disaster scenes is not exactly a good omen for the upcoming elections, Freundlich has now been hired to be the face of the Democratic National Committee. As DNC spokespersons, we will be commenting on Republican excesses and mistakes.
Continue reading “Past Disaster Scene Selfie Raises Controversy Over New DNC Spokesperson”
There are times when New York seems like a giant set for the next Woody Allen movie. A New York Times reporter recently saw something a tad odd in the protest against the gay pride parade. The Orthodox Jewish protesters appeared to be Mexican laborers wearing ritual fringes, or tzitzit and carrying protest signs. It turns out that the Orthodox group hired Mexican laborers to be surrogate protesters so that young Orthodox boys and men would not see gay people in the parade and corrupt them. I guess the tip off for the reporter was the men saying Hoy Gavalt.
Continue reading “Professor Criticized Over Racist Postings Is Hired By Rhodes College”
Morocco has added itself to the list of farcical counties in the Middle East with two women prosecuted for wearing skirts. Morocco has a significant population of modern and secular Muslims but also has a growing influence of Islamic advocates demanding greater criminalization of immoral and anti-Islamic conduct. In this case, a market trader told police that there were two women wearing skirts and a crowd formed calling for their arrest in Inezgane last month.
Continue reading “Morocco Prosecutes Two Women For Indecency . . . For Wearing Skirts”
There is an interesting criminal appeal filed in Pennsylvania by a convicted murderer Robert Urwin Jr., 58 who has serious reservations about the judge who presided at his trial. He should know. Former Washington County Common Pleas Judge Paul Pozonsky was later sentenced in the same courthouse for stealing cocaine from the evidence room and replacing it with baking soda.
Below is my column today in the Washington Post on the ruling in Obergefell on the basis for the Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. Due to limitations on space, I could not go into great depth in the opinion which primarily dealt with the notion of the “right to dignity.” The Court did not pursue an equal protection analysis beyond the following highly generalized statement:
The right of same-sex couples to marry that is part of the liberty promised by the Fourteenth Amendment is derived, too, from that Amendment’s guarantee of the equal protection of the laws. The Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause are connected in a profound way, though they set forth independent principles. Rights implicit in liberty and rights secured by equal protection may rest on different precepts and are not always coextensive, yet in some instances each may be instructive as to the meaning and reach of the other. In any particular case one Clause may be thought to capture the essence of the right in a more accurate and comprehensive way,even as the two Clauses may converge in the identification and definition of the right.
Since the Court did not substantially address whether homosexuals are a protected class or the other Equal Protection line of cases, the opinion appears to craft a right around the inherent right of self-expression and dignity in intimate affairs. That is very appealing to many in the expansion of due process concepts, but the column explores what it portends for future rights.
Here is the Sunday column:
We have previously discussed the series of scandals in Washington where powerful individuals have been spared serious sanctions for acts where ordinary people have faced long and unrelenting prosecution. (here) It is part of America’s Animal Farm system where some individuals are more equal than others. That concern is even greater this week with the combination of the disclosure that Hillary Clinton did use a personal email system for classified communications and most media outlets appear to be ignoring the obvious import of that fact.
It often seems that a day cannot go by without finding something to truly hate about the NFL. Despite being a football (and Bears) fan, I have long found the NFL itself to operate just slightly above the level of the Barbary Pirate kingdoms. We can add the abusive treatment of cheerleaders. California this month moved to become the first state to require that cheerleaders be paid minimum wage by teams. While lawyers have long insisted that they already qualify for such pay, some NFL teams have been pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars while paying cheerleaders either nothing or the equivalent of $5 an hour. The “Buffalo Jills” for example were paid nothing. Nothing by a time that featured them and pulled in millions for televised games.
There is an interesting academic controversy out of Louisiana State University where Professor Teresa Buchanan, who specializes in early childhood education and trains elementary school teachers, has been fired for creating what university administrators describe as a “hostile learning environment” that amounted to sexual harassment. However, the crux of the charges appears to be Buchanan’s use of foul language and bawdy jokes. The question is why (as recommended by the faculty committee) Buchanan was not simply reprimand or censured for such violations as opposed to fired.
We have been discussing the horrific environmental record of the administration of Prime Minister Tony Abbott. This includes the decision to dump millions of tons of waste into the Great Barrier Reef. The move that led to international outcry including official condemnation from UNESCO. Much of the criticism has been directed at Abbott putting industry officials in charge of environmental decision-making with predictable results. This week saw the latest such controversy after Western Australia mining minister, Bill Marmion (left) declared categorically that official protection of the Great Western Woodlands, the largest remaining temperate woodlands in the world, will not be supported if it impinges on mining. Period.
The email controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton continues to grow but there is one aspects that is less of a problem for her as it is for one of her allies, Paul Begala. Begala is shown in email seeking directions or talking points from the State Department on what to say about one of Clinton’s speeches and then writes back to tell Clinton aides that he gave her an “A+.” Such talking points are common in Washington but the email forces the practice into the open and raises the question about independence of commentators, even in today’s formula conservative-liberal/democratic-republican casting. People like Begala are supposed to be crushingly predictable in blindly support one side of the formula casting, so it is hardly surprising to see such scripting or shaping. However, some have asked about the propriety of a CNN commentator who appears to be so closely coordinated with a political figure like Clinton even on his impressions of her skills as a speaker. It was an ironic twist from a commentator who declared national that “voters to not give a sh**” about the Clinton emails.
This is truly painful since I am neither a fan of Donald Trump or beauty pageants, but here it is: Is it possible that the actions taken against not just Donald Trump but his business associations are excessive? NBC has issued a statement that it will no longer air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants and that Trump will no longer participate in “The Celebrity Apprentice.” (Univision previously banned the pageant as did Televise. Mexico swore not to send its contestant to the pageant). Now many people have long advocated a Dump the Trump position because they view him as an obnoxious self-caricature. However, NBC is now dropping its association with Trump because he said highly negative things about border illegal aliens at a political event. [Now Macy’s has joined the corporate Dump Trump movement]
One could understand dropping a personality from a show like “The Celebrity Apprentice” over public comments, but the network is shooting shows that are connected Trump’s business interests. It seems odd to pull the plug on the Miss USA and Miss Universe contestants solely because the events is connected financially to someone who has controversial political views. The Miss USA contestants expected to appear on NBC on July 12 from Baton Rouge. The network has aired the program for the last 11 years.
Continue reading “NBC Dumps Trump Over Controversial Illegal Immigration Remarks [UPDATED]”
I am doing some coverage at CNN but, in addition to the predictable rejection of the lethal injection challenge, the Court handed down two major decisions. In Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, the Court ruled 5-4 that states could effectively take away redistricting decisions from state legislatures — a key move to try to end the scourge of gerrymandering. In Michigan v. EPA, the Court again split 5-4 in ruling that the EPA must consider the costs to industry in setting environmental limitations — in the case involving arsenic emissions — under the Clean Air Act.
Continue reading “Good Day For Election Reformists; Bad Day For Environmentalists”