New details are emerging on the botched execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood in Arizona that we discussed earlier. If you recall the horrific scene, Wood took roughly two hours to die. Now it appears that the dosage for the new drugs were way off — requiring the prison to increase the dosage to 25 times what was thought to be necessary.
I am not a golfer and it is one of the sports that I least enjoy watching. However, it does occasionally supply an interesting legal controversy. Pro golfer Dustin Johnson this week is taking a leave of absence from the PGA tour (the Washington Post is calling it a suspension). The reason is intriguing. He failed three drug tests and allegedly has been sleeping with the wives of other players. The drug tests however were reportedly for marijuana and cocaine. Since those are not performance enhancing drugs, I do not understand why the PGA even tests for them or why Johnson being a cad is an issue for the PGA.
As of close of business on July 31, 2014, our debt has risen to $17,618,599,653,160.19. That crippling level of debt is itself astonishing but what is equally astonishing is that $7 trillion of that debt has been added in just the five and a half years of the Obama Administration. That $7 trillion is more than the debt accumulated from George Washington through Bill Clinton combined.
This month, Washington seems caught in some strange time loop. The President allegedly fighting off an attempt to remove him while Members of Congress are denouncing his “Imperial Presidency” and contempt for constitutional law. It must be enough to give Bob Woodword and Carl Bernstein vertigo.
As one of the legal experts who testified during the Clinton Impeachment and lead defense counsel in the last judicial impeachment trial in the Senate, I have been struck by the replication of a number of misconceptions surrounding impeachment. That led to Sunday’s column on certain myths regarding impeachment. According to a CNN/ORC poll last week, some 33 percent of Americans think the president should be impeached. Over a majority now disapprove of his conduct in office according to other polls. However, that is not enough for impeachment. As many of you know, I am highly troubled about the actions taken by President Obama in violation of the Separation of Powers. I testified (here and here and here) and wrote a column on President Obama’s increasing circumvention of Congress in negating or suspending U.S. laws. I ran another column recently listing such incidents of executive over-reach. Some like the violations of the power of the purse in the shifting of hundreds of millions of dollars raise extremely serious challenges to our system. However, I do not believe that these violations have yet reached the point of impeachable offenses. Ideally, a federal court will review some of these violations and show that the system can work in the maintenance of the lines of separation though the Administration is clearly going to fight hard to block any review of the merits by any federal court. That is where such matters should, in my view, be heard and resolved. In the meantime, the President’s threat to continue to act unilaterally is playing a dangerous game of chicken in our system and, if he goes too far in an act defying clear congressional or judicial authority, he could cross over from interpretive disagreements into impeachable offenses. Yet, the current array of conflicts have divided lower judges on the merits. Such interpretive disagreements are not the thing that impeachments are made off. Having said that, one should not take the lack of impeachable offenses to take away from what some of us view as very serious violations by this President — a usurpation of authority that all citizens should denounce in the interests of our constitutional system. Continue reading “ON THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF NIXON’S RESIGNATION: 5 MYTHS ABOUT IMPEACHMENT”
We recently discussed the controversy surrounding a confrontation between Thrin Short, 16, and her sister Joan, 21, and Feminist Studies Associate Professor Mireille Miller-Young. Miller-Young was then charged with criminal conduct including Theft of Person; Battery; and Vandalism. While initially pleading not guilty, Miller-Young has now entered a no contest plea to charges to the three misdemeanors. Despite the videotape of the incident and violation of both criminal law and presumably university regulations, Miller-Young remains employed at the university.
There is a disturbing story how this week concerning the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and specifically Commissioner Michael Yaki, a Democratic appointee who was a former senior adviser to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Yaki spoke on sexual harassment law in education, a subject on which I have previously written to express my concerns over the loss of due process rights for accused students. Yaki’s comments however seem to threaten core free speech principles as he laid out his view of the need to curtail harmful speech. Yaki spoke of the need to outlaw unpopular or what he considers degrading speech because college students are too impressionable.
A river to a major city is now so polluted that almost half a million people residents have been told not to drink their tap water. Sounds like China, right? Think Toledo, Ohio. While we have been following the rolling environmental disasters in China, we often forget about our own failure to protect the basic health of our citizens. Toledo is such an example. While newspapers have detailed how algae blooms are releasing toxins, they largely fail to state the likely reason or downplay it: phosphorous and nitrogen from farm fertilizer runoff.
Warning: the image above may get you sued by the New York Port Authority. We have long discussed the insane evolution of trademark and copyright laws. Now, Fishs Eddy, a housewares store in Manhattan, has been hit with a cease-and-desist letter from the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) over dishes that merely show the skyline of the city. The MTA claims that the common silhouette of the city includes some of its “assets” and that the store must destroy all of its products with the images and promise never again to sell images of the skyline. It is reminiscent of the English decision finding that taking photographs of London icons are also violations. Here the authority is claiming ownership to skyline images and 9-11 images even in silhouette.
Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
The Russian Parliament passed worrying laws that will certainly have a chilling effect on free speech in Russia. Now these laws are in effect and certainly prove to be useful to the government in stamping out dissent and non-sanctioned information.
BBC news reports bloggers with more than 3,000 daily readers must register with the mass media regulator, Roskomnadzor, and conform to the regulations that govern the country’s larger media outlets.
Internet companies will also be required to allow Russian authorities access to users’ information.
Submitted By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
On August 3, 1914 Europe began the worst human disaster known to that time when the German Empire declared war on France. The subsequent world war would cost the lives of at least fourteen million individuals and shattered the fabric of society that had evolved for centuries. The devastation that was once Germany set in motion a chain of events and underlying conditions that would lead Europe into the Nazi terror of the Second World War.
Today, the presidents of Germany and France presided over a ceremony in the French region of Alsace marking the beginning of the conflict between their nations with an affirmation of their continued solidarity to maintain peace between their nations and of Europe generally.
Submitted By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
The nation’s top constitutional court invalidated the Uganda’s highly controversial anti-homosexuality law, citing improper parliamentary procedures. The opinion cites that the Speaker of the House acted illegally when she allowed the original bill to be voted for passage by MPs despite the lack of a quorum in the chamber. Afterward, President Museveni signed the legislation into law.
Activists held the decision as a significant victory in for civil rights in Uganda, but will this be only a temporary legal reprieve?
Continue reading “Uganda Constitutional Court Strikes Down Anti-Homosexuality Law”
Submitted By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Recently elected Mukilteo, Washington Mayor Jennifer Gregerson hired a friend and fellow politician to the position of Policy Analyst position created after her election. Of the fifteen applicants who submitted interest in the position the mayor hired the person who provided a significant campaign contribution.
State Senator Marco Lias, who represents the21st district in which Mukilteo is situated is now a Policy Analyst.
His efforts provided $5,000 to the mayor’s election.
Continue reading “Mayor Denies Hiring Of Political Contributor Was Cronyism”
Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Presenting a succinct short story of a heart attack and the billing as experienced by a patient
One afternoon a man sitting at home and reading a news article, stood up to walk to the kitchen. He felt a sudden pain in his chest along with shortness of breath. About an hour later the pain returned and this time began spreading over the top of his chest and into his neck. Concerned, he drove to the emergency department of a local hospital.
The hospital admitted this patient and did not initially find any signs of heart issues from blood labs and ECG tests but the Hospitalist ordered an overnight stay for observation.
Around 1:30 AM a blood test revealed elevated cardiac enzymes, and again at 6:00 AM. A cardiologist ordered the patient into a cath-lab at 8:00 for an angiogram, concerned of a heart attack.
What follows is one of many true testaments to some health care issues in America.
Submitted By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
It is said the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. Here, the hand that scratches the kitty, is the hand that rocks the house.
For some cats, the scratch is a joy of no equal: music their only words.
Watch Tabby’s excellent rendition of what brings his joy. The pleasure is most certainly all his.
Video Below the fold…
Following the admission that the CIA hacked Senate computers and lied to Congress, President Obama today affirmed that it did indeed torture people. This admission (while belated) is an important recognition by the United States of what is obvious from a legal standpoint. However, that also means that CIA officials violated both federal and international law. The question is why Obama began his first term by promising CIA employees that they would not be tried for what he now describes as “tortur[ing] some folks.”