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5/23/2011 Justices, 5-4, Tell California to Cut Prisoner Population
Conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, ordering the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that broke along ideological lines, described a prison system that failed to deliver minimal care to prisoners with serious medical and mental health problems and produced “needless suffering and death.” Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. filed vigorous dissents. Justice Scalia called the order affirmed by the majority “perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.” Justice Alito said “the majority is gambling with the safety of the people of California.” The majority opinion included photographs of inmates crowded into open gymnasium-style rooms and what Justice Kennedy described as “telephone-booth-sized cages without toilets” used to house suicidal inmates. Suicide rates in the state’s prisons, Justice Kennedy wrote, have been 80 percent higher than the average for inmates nationwide. A lower court in the case said it was “an uncontested fact” that “an inmate in one of California’s prisons needlessly dies every six or seven days due to constitutional deficiencies.” Monday’s ruling in the case, Brown v. Plata, No. 09-1233, affirmed an order by a special three-judge federal court requiring state officials to reduce the prison population to 110,000, which is 137.5 percent of the system’s capacity. There have been more than 160,000 inmates in the system in recent years, and there are now more than 140,000. Prison release orders are rare and hard to obtain, and even advocates for prisoners’ rights said Monday’s decision was unlikely to have a significant impact around the nation. “California is an extreme case by any measure,” said David C. Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, which submitted a brief urging the justices to uphold the lower court’s order. “This case involves ongoing, undisputed and lethal constitutional violations. We’re not going to see a lot of copycat litigation.” State officials in California will have two years to comply with the order, and they may ask for more time. Justice Kennedy emphasized that the reduction in population need not be achieved solely by releasing prisoners early. Among the other possibilities, he said, are new construction, transfers out of state and using county facilities. (New York Times)
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posted: 5/27/11                   0       7
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5/17/2011 Smell Pot? SCOTUS Kills 4th Amendment
The Supreme Court says police can enter your home without a warrant, if they smell marijuana, and if when knocking on the door, they hear what sounds like the destruction of evidence. But apparently, by making sounds like destruction of evidence like flushing a toilet, police can come in. Students for Sensible Drug Policy's Aaron Houston discusses. (Russia Today)
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posted: 5/18/11      
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5/17/2011 The Supreme Court's Stinky Ruling on Marijuana Odor: What Does it Really Mean?
This week's Supreme Court decision in Kentucky v. King has civil-libertarians and marijuana policy reformers in an uproar, and rightly so, but it's not exactly the death of the 4th Amendment. Here's a look at how this case could impact police practices and constitutional rights. It all started when police chased a drug suspect into a building and lost him. They smelled marijuana smoke coming from an apartment and decided to check it out, so they announced themselves and knocked loudly on the door. They heard movement inside, which the officers feared could indicate destruction of evidence, so they kicked in the door and entered the apartment. Hollis King was arrested for drugs and challenged the police entry as a violation of his 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches. In an 8-1 decision written by Justice Alito, the Court determined that an emergency search was justified to prevent destruction of evidence, even though police created the risk of such destruction by yelling "Police!" and banging on the door. The determining factor, in the Court's view, was that police had not violated the 4th Amendment simply by knocking on the door. Since the subsequent need to prevent destruction of evidence was the result of legal conduct by the officers, the events that followed do not constitute a violation of the suspect's constitutional rights. Naturally, any fan of the 4th Amendment can look at this scenario and wonder what's to stop police from "smelling" marijuana and "hearing" evidence being destroyed any time they have an urge to enter a particular dwelling. What does destruction of evidence sound like anyway, and what doesn't it sound like? Doesn't someone jumping up to destroy evidence sound the same as someone jumping up to answer the door before police kick it down? It's hard to argue with anyone who sees this result as a blueprint for facilitating not only widespread police actions that circumvent the warrant requirement, but also more innocent people being killed in their own homes in misunderstandings that could have been prevented by just a little patience from police. (Flex Your Rights)
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posted: 5/18/11                   0       7
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keywords: Flex Your Rights, Hollis King, Marijuana, Police, Privacy, Samuel Alito, Scott Morgan, US Constitution, US Supreme Court, United States, War On Drugs Add New Keyword To Link



10/13/2010 Campaign finance reform: R.I.P.?
For four decades, advocates for stricter campaign finance rules have been on a long, slow march to make big money in politics less important and more transparent. Now, in 2010, they are seeing the results: Never in modern political history has there been so much secret money gushing into an American election. By Election Day, independent groups will have aired more than $200 million worth of campaign ads using cash that can’t be traced back to its original source, predicts Fred Wertheimer, president of the nonprofit group Democracy 21. "And this is just the beginning," Wertheimer said. "Unless we get some changes here to mitigate this problem, I would expect we will see $500 million or more in 2012." (Politico)
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posted: 1/5/11                   0       2
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keywords: 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, American Crossroads, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Brad Smith, Brigham Young University, Campaign Finance Reform, Campaign Legal Center, Center For Competitive Politics, Chris Van Hollen, Citizens United, Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission, Craig Holman, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, David Magleby, Democracy 21, Enron, Federal Election Commission, Fred Wertheimer, George W Bush, George Will, Institute For Justice, Jack Abramoff, James Bopp, James Madison Center For Free Speech, John Mccain, John Roberts, Karl Rove, Lynde And Henry Bradley Foundation, Mike Grebe, Public Citizen, Richard Nixon, Russ Feingold, Samuel Alito, Trevor Potter, US Chamber Of Commerce, US Congress, US Supreme Court, United States, Watergate, White House Add New Keyword To Link



1/6/2009 Congress' plan would let AG 'ban guns at will': 2nd Amendment critics are 'ready to run wild'
A perfect storm is developing for Second Amendment opponents that could allow President-elect Barack Obama's choice for attorney general – Eric Holder – to "ban guns at will" despite the 2008 affirmation from the U.S. Supreme Court that U.S. citizens have a right to bear arms. The situation was described with alarm by Alan Korwin, author of Gun Laws of America, in a recent commentary. (World Net Daily)
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posted: 7/25/10                   0       4
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