Fail

While I oppose boycotts of Israel, and I think that many in the BDS movement are objectively antisemitic, the proposal in the Senate to criminalize boycotts against Israel is an assault on the very idea of civil rights:

Both of New York's Senators have signed on to a bill that would criminalize any attempt by Americans to boycott Israel, according to a new report.

According to The Intercept, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand are among 43 U.S. Senators who have co-sponsored the Anti-Israel Boycott Act, a bill that the ACLU wote is "antithetical to free speech protections enshrined in the First Amendment" in a letter to lawmakers urging them to oppose the bill.

The Senate bill appears to target the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement that seeks to pressure Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip through economic isolation. Under the terms of the bill, a pair of U.S. laws that prohibit U.S. citizens from supporting a boycott request from a foreign government against an ally of the United States would be updated to specifically prohibit Americans from supporting international boycott efforts against Israel.

Violators of the law "would be subject to a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison" according to the ACLU's letter.

Seriously, it's embarrassing to have to go all Schoolhouse Rock on members of the US Senate.

This full metal pander crap needs to end.

A letter from the ACLU clearly describes just how flagrantly unconstitutional this bill is.

Well What Do You Know. Obama May Have Spied on Trump………

And thousands of other Americans as well, as is revealed in a recent FISA court decision excoriating the practices of the NSA under the Obama administration:

U.S. intelligence agencies conducted illegal surveillance on American citizens over a five-year period, a practice that earned them a sharp rebuke from a secret court that called the matter a “very serious” constitutional issue.

The criticism is in a lengthy secret ruling that lays bare some of the frictions between the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and U.S. intelligence agencies obligated to obtain the court’s approval for surveillance activities.

………

The document, signed by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, said the court had learned in a notice filed Oct. 26, 2016, that National Security Agency analysts had been conducting prohibited queries of databases “with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the court.”

It said a judge chastised the NSA’s inspector general and Office of Compliance for Operations for an “institutional ‘lack of candor’ ” for failing to inform the court. It described the matter as “a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.”

The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, and is a constitutional bedrock protection against intrusion.

Parts of the ruling were redacted, including sections that give an indication of the extent of the illegal surveillance, which the NSA told the court in a Jan. 3 notice was partly the fault of “human error” and “system design issues” rather than intentional illegal searches.

………

Data captured from both upstream and downstream sources are stored in massive databases, available to be searched when analysts need to, often months or as much as two years after the captures took place.

The prohibited searches the court mentioned involved NSA queries into the upstream databanks, which constitute a fraction of all the data NSA captures around the globe but are more likely to contain the emails and phone calls of people in the United States.

Federal law empowers the NSA and CIA to battle foreign terrorist actions against the United States by collecting the electronic communications of targets believed to be outside the country. While communications of U.S. citizens or residents may get hoovered up in such sweeps, they are considered “incidental” and must be “minimized” – removing the identities of Americans – before broader distribution.

The court filing noted an NSA decision March 30 to narrow collection of “upstream” data within the United States. Under that decision, the NSA acknowledged that it had erred in sweeping up the communications of U.S. citizens or residents but said those errors “were not willful.” Even so, the NSA said it would no longer collect certain kinds of data known as “about” communications, in which a U.S. citizen was merely mentioned.

The NSA announced that change publicly on April 28, two days after the court ruling, saying the agency would limit its sweeps to communications either directly to or from a foreign intelligence target. That change would reduce “the likelihood that NSA will acquire communications of U.S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with one of the agency’s foreign intelligence targets.”

The court document also criticized the FBI’s distribution of intelligence data, saying it had disclosed raw surveillance data to sectors of its bureaucracy “largely staffed by private contractors.”

This is a particularly scathing ruling when one considers the generally lackadaisical approach to the 4^th amendment taken by the FISA court.

There is a reason why I call Barack Obama, "Worst Constitutional law professor ever.^™"

This is why we need checks and balances.

This Would Be Ironic

When the Supreme Court declined to overturn Obamacare, they did restrict it somewhat, by declaring that the provision of the law that required states to expand Medicaid or leave the program.

The Court found that it was too coercive.

Legal experts are saying that this ruling would likely apply to Jeff Sessions' attempts to defund sanctuary cities:

The Trump administration announced this week that it will make good on its January threat to claw back funding from so-called sanctuary cities that limit information-sharing with federal immigration officials. Yet hundreds of legal experts say the move would itself be illegal—in part due to a court ruling Republicans cheered just a few years ago.

In 2012, the Supreme Court forced the Obama administration to make Medicaid expansion voluntary for states instead of mandatory, ruling that when the federal government “threatens to terminate other significant independent grants as a means of pressuring the States to accept” a federal policy, it is unconstitutionally coercive.

Conservative groups that celebrated this victory over "infringement on state sovereignty by the federal government" may now be dismayed to learn that it could throw a wrench into the Trump administration's current plan to punish sanctuary cities.

I am amused.

The 4th Amendment Doesn't Become Null and Void Just Because You Have an Easier Time Violating It

The title is a comment from the Techdirt article quotes GC for the DNI, Robert Litt, who claims that since computers can automatically scan your email easily, the 4^th amendment does not apply:

Reuters has an interesting piece looking at how many experts are concerned that mass surveillance efforts by the federal government are making a mockery of the 4th Amendment. The focus of the article is on the scan of all Yahoo email that was revealed back in October, but it certainly touches on other programs as well. The concern is easily summarized by Orin Kerr:

"A lot of it is unrecognizable from a Fourth Amendment perspective," said Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and Georgetown University Law School expert on surveillance. "It's not where the traditional Fourth Amendment law is."

But, have no fear, the General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Robert Litt, says there's a reason for that, and it's all technology's fault. We've covered Litt and his somewhat nutty views on the 4th Amendment and surveillance in the past, so the following isn't new. But Litt's main defense of basically all of the NSA's various abuses and mocking of the 4th Amendment is "it's technology's fault." He's quoted twice in the article, and both times, it's all about the tech. First up, an argument that the traditional 4th Amendment doesn't apply, because technology:

"Computerized scanning of communications in the same way that your email service provider scans looking for viruses - that should not be considered a search requiring a warrant for Fourth Amendment purposes," said Litt.

Later he is mentioned as making a similar argument. 

ODNI's Litt wrote in a February Yale Law Review article that the new approach was appropriate, in part because so much personal data is willingly shared by consumers with technology companies. Litt advocated for courts to evaluate "reasonableness" by looking at the entirety of the government's activity, including the degree of transparency.

Indeed, we've pointed to Litt making similar arguments many times in the past and it all comes down to "Well, people share this stuff with Facebook/Google/Yahoo, etc.," so what's the big deal?

Litt's argument is morally reprehensible and intellectually vacuous:  It is pure bullsh%$.

Choosing to use Google or Yahoo, with all of its attendant privacy compromises is a choice.

The NSA or the FBI spying on us is not a choice.  It is the government imposing itself into our private business.

The constitution is SUPPOSED to make the job of the state security apparatus more difficult.\

Live with it, or take a job making pastry.

Wisconsin Voter ID Law Gets Spanked in Federal Court

Yesterday, the 5th circuit gave the state of Texas a wedgie over its racially discriminatory voter ID law, and now Wisconsin just got spanked over its voter ID law:

Wisconsin voters who do not have photo identification will be able to vote in November's presidential election, a judge ruled on Tuesday, the latest development in a long fight over a state law Democrats say is aimed at keeping minorities from the polls.

The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman temporarily eases the impact of a 2011 Wisconsin law requiring voters to show photo identification before being allowed to cast a ballot.

"Although most voters in Wisconsin either possess qualifying ID or can easily obtain one, a safety net is needed for those voters who cannot obtain qualifying ID with reasonable effort," Adelman said in his order.

………

Republicans say voter ID laws are needed to prevent voter fraud. But Democrats say the laws are really intended to make it more difficult for poor African-Americans and Latinos - who skew Democratic in their politics - to vote.

Under Adelman's temporary injunction, people without ID can vote if they sign an affidavit at the polls declaring that they could not reasonably obtain photo identification and explaining why.

Allowable reasons include lack of a birth certificate or other documents required to obtain a photo ID, lack of transportation, disability and a tight work schedule.

I think that we are seeing this because Scalia is no longer.

Judges don't like having their decisions overturned by a higher court, and now that there is one fewer minority and civil rights hostile reactionary on the Supreme Court, the lower courts are more willing to enforce the clear meaning of the Voting Rights Act.

A Start, But Not Enough

Yesterday, the Supreme Court made what was a very important ruling.

It said that judges have a constitutional requirement to recuse themselves from cases where they have a significant personal stake:

………

On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court decided an actual case of judicial bias, voting 5-to-3 that a judge may not rule on a case in which he previously played a significant and personal role as a prosecutor.

The case before the justices was an appeal by a Pennsylvania man named Terrance Williams, who was convicted of a brutal murder committed in 1984, when he was 18, and sentenced to death.

There was never any question that Mr. Williams committed the crime. But at his trial, he denied knowing his victim, a man named Amos Norwood, and the prosecution’s case was that he had killed Mr. Norwood in the course of robbing him. It later came to light that Mr. Norwood had been sexually assaulting Mr. Williams and other underage boys, and that the prosecutors had known this fact but kept it from the jury.

A trial court agreed that this was prosecutorial misconduct and overturned Mr. Williams’s sentence, but the state supreme court unanimously reversed that decision. And that was where things went wrong, according to the United States Supreme Court. The chief justice of the Pennsylvania supreme court, Ronald Castille — who wrote separately to denounce the trial court’s decision and defend the prosecutors — had been the district attorney who personally approved seeking the death penalty in Mr. Williams’s case.

In 2012, Mr. Williams asked Justice Castille to recuse himself, and the justice refused.

In an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court ruled that this violated Mr. Williams’s right to due process, and tossed out his sentence. “Where a judge has had an earlier significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision in the defendant’s case, the risk of actual bias in the judicial proceeding rises to an unconstitutional level,” Justice Kennedy wrote.

………

As the majority noted, this ignores not only the significance of the decision Mr. Castille made as a prosecutor, but also the fact that he did not simply sign off on the decision to seek death for Mr. Williams and then forget about it. To the contrary, he was deeply invested in his tough-on-crime reputation as a prosecutor. In his campaign for the state supreme court seat, he boasted about the 45 men, Mr. Williams included, he had sent to death row.

This is a big deal, and Judge Castille should not be allowed to judge a dog show.

Not Enough Bullets

It appears that the banks are asserting that they have a constitutional right to dividends from the Federal Reserve:

A trade group for the nation’s largest banks has asserted a constitutional right to risk-free profit from the Federal Reserve.

Rob Nichols, the chief lobbyist for the American Bankers Association, argued in a comment letter Thursday that a recent federal law reducing the dividend on the stock that banks purchase as part of membership in the Federal Reserve system, violates the Fifth Amendment clause banning the uncompensated seizure of property.

Congress reduced the dividend as part of a deal to pay for transportation projects. Dividends for the stock, which cannot be bought or sold, had been set at 6 percent since the Federal Reserve’s inception in 1913. Banks cannot ever lose money on the stock; they’re even paid out if their regional Fed bank disbands. So the dividend represented a risk-free profit, earning back its investment in full every 17 years.

………

Given those facts, [American Bankers Association chief lobbyist Rob] Nichols’s argument amounts to saying that the 6 percent dividend rate itself is constitutionally protected, because it’s been around for a long time. Nichols effectively asserts that the risk-free dividend is bank property.

Seriously?

I cannot see how a government subsidy can be considered property, particularly not a dividend which, as anyone who knows anything about investments, knows is subject to change without warning.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever

Barack Obama just admitted that mishandling of classified data is OK for his friends:

In an interview Sunday with Fox News, President Obama indicated he doesn't think Hillary Clinton really truly shared top secret government information on a private email server while she was secretary of state. "There's classified, and then there's classified," Obama said.

This is another version of Nixon's comment to David Frost, "If the President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal."

He has gone after critics that has led to more prosecutions than every single president since the creation of the Republic, but when Hillary mishandles information, or when Leon Panetta leaks classified infomation to Kathryn Bigelow, the CIA's version of Leni Riefenstahl, it's OK, because it is his Evil Minions^™.

The terms corrupt and hypocritical come to mind, and this is just repulsive.

Why Law Enforcement Data Dragnets Are a Wicked Bad Idea, Part 95

In Denver, it has been revealed that police have been using law enforcement databases for personal purposes, including helping friends stalk their exes.

Rather unsurprisingly, no police officers have received any meaningful discipline for that behavior:

Denver police officers performed searches on state and federal criminal justice databases that were not work-related and instead were made to help officers' in the romance department and to assist friends, according to an independent department monitor. The report said that punishment, usually a written reprimand instead of being charged criminally, is not enough to deter future abuse of the National Crime information Center (NCIC) and the Colorado Crime Information Center (CCIC) databases.

"When used appropriately, they can be powerful tools to investigate crime," the report stated. "But the misuse of these databases for personal, non-law enforcement purposes may compromise public trust and result in harm to community members. We believe that the reprimands that are generally imposed on DPD (Denver Police Department) officers who misuse the databases do not reflect the seriousness of that violation, and may not sufficiently deter future misuse."

The report by Independent Monitor Nicholas Mitchell listed a host of wrongful searches, including an officer getting a phone number of a woman he met on assignment, and an officer running the license plate of a man for a friend who then stalked that person. None of the 25 Denver officers who abused the crime databases were charged with any access crime. The harshest penalty was a three-day suspension. Civilians who accessed the databases without authorization, however, most likely would be charged with hacking.

There's been reports across the country of officers wrongly accessing criminal justice records for their personal use, sometimes resulting in criminal punishment. And sometimes police officers abuse the database to troll their own. In 2012, for example, Minneapolis paid out $1 million to a former female police officer whose driver's license record was looked up more than 400 times by fellow officers.

I would bet dollars to navy beans that the suspensions were of the paid variety.

We saw the exactly the same thing with the NSA.

This is what happens when the authorities have access to your data.  They abuse that access for their personal benefit.

This is why the bulk collection of data by the state security apparatus is so toxic.

Excessive Schadenfreude May Cause Dizziness, Euphoria, and a Sense of Smug Satisfaction

So now both Donald Trump and Ann Coulter have gone birther on Ted Cruz.

First, the Donald:

Donald Trump cast doubt on Republican candidate Ted Cruz’s eligibility for the presidency on Tuesday, on the basis that he may not be a natural-born US citizen.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump said the fact that Cruz was born in Canada was a “very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.”

The Republican frontrunner went on to claim a “lot of people are talking about … the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.”

Cruz, whose campaign declined to comment, was born in Calgary in 1971. Although his father Rafael was not an American citizen at the time, his Delaware-born mother, Eleanor, was. Article II of the US constitution requires that “no person except a natural born Citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

And from the Dennis Rodman of Republican spokesbimbos, we have:

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter, who once dismissed birthers as "cranks," suggested Wednesday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) may be ineligible for the presidency because he is not a “natural born citizen."

In a series of tweets, Coulter, an ardent anti-immigration advocate, suggested that Cruz was not a "natural born citizen," a requirement to run for President outlined in the Constitution:

I'm amused.

Obama's Lawless Behavior in Support of the Security State

You may recall that the NSA bulk data collection of phone records were ruled by an Federal appellate court.

It not turns out that the Obama administration tried to get a ruling from the FISA court saying that they could ignore this ruling.

The interesting bit here is that the FISA court is technically a district court, and so is subordinate to an appellate court.

This shows a complete contempt for the rule of law:

The Obama administration has asked a secret surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans for six months.

The legal request, filed nearly four hours after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning precisely the bulk collection he asks the secret court to approve, also suggests that the administration may not necessarily comply with any potential court order demanding that the collection stop.

US officials confirmed last week that they would ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court – better known as the Fisa court, a panel that meets in secret as a step in the surveillance process and thus far has only ever had the government argue before it – to turn the domestic bulk collection spigot back on.

Justice Department national security chief John A Carlin cited a six-month transition period provided in the USA Freedom Act – passed by the Senate last week to ban the bulk collection – as a reason to permit an “orderly transition” of the NSA’s domestic dragnet. Carlin did not address whether the transition clause of the Freedom Act still applies now that a congressional deadlock meant the program shut down on 31 May.

But Carlin asked the Fisa court to set aside a landmark declaration by the second circuit court of appeals. Decided on 7 May, the appeals court ruled that the government had erroneously interpreted the Patriot Act’s authorization of data collection as “relevant” to an ongoing investigation to permit bulk collection.

Carlin, in his filing, wrote that the Patriot Act provision remained “in effect” during the transition period.

“This court may certainly consider ACLU v Clapper as part of its evaluation of the government’s application, but second circuit rulings do not constitute controlling precedent for this court,” Carlin wrote in the 2 June application. Instead, the government asked the court to rely on its own body of once-secret precedent stretching back to 2006, which Carlin called “the better interpretation of the statute”.

While it is true that  the FISA court is not technically under the 2^nd court of appeals, which ruled the program illegal, because they are not in the 2^nd district, (technically, they are not in any district) but blithely asking the court to overrule an appeals court shows a complete contempt for due process and the rule of law.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever!^™

The Fact That This Passed the Laugh Test Is Concerning

In a case from (where else) Texas, the plaintiffs are claiming that redistricting should be done on the basis of registered voters, not on the basis of people:

The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear a case that will answer a long-contested question about a bedrock principle of the American political system: the meaning of “one person one vote.”

The court’s ruling, expected in 2016, could be immensely consequential. Should the court agree with the two Texas voters who brought the case, its ruling would shift political power from cities to rural areas, a move that would benefit Republicans.

The court has never resolved whether voting districts should have the same number of people, or the same number of eligible voters. Counting all people amplifies the voting power of places with large numbers of residents who cannot vote legally, including immigrants who are here legally but are not citizens, illegal immigrants, children and prisoners. Those places tend to be urban and to vote Democratic.

A ruling that districts must be based on equal numbers of voters would move political power away from cities, with their many immigrants and children, and toward older and more homogeneous rural areas.

………

The Supreme Court over the past nearly 25 years has turned away at least three similar challenges, and many election law experts expressed surprise that the justices agreed to hear this one. But since Chief Justice John G. Roberts has led the court, it has been active in other voting cases.

In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, a closely divided court effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act.

The new case, Evenwel v. Abbott, No. 14-940, concerns state and local voting districts. But “the logic of the decision in Evenwel will likely carry over to congressional redistricting,” said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.

This is a big deal, and the fact that they are even hearing this is an indication of just how corrupt and partisan the conservative wing of the Court.

This would be a complete reversal of decades of precedent, and if the Court to overturns their prior rulings, it would the most unprincipled and biased ruling by the Court since Bush v. Gore in 2000.

Note also that by putting impediments to registration between citizens, in Wisconsin, photo ID sites avoid urban areas for example, it possible for evil people to further skew redistricting.

Of course, for "jurists" like Scalia and Alito, this is a feature, not a bug.

The effect of this bill might be less than anticipated though: There were 2,266,800 adults in detention in 2011, and 70,792 juveniles incarcerated in 2010^*, and particularly for the prison population these are overwhelmingly held in rural areas.

These inmates are counted as residents of the district in which they are held, and as such, they give a big bump to rural representation.

If these people are not counted for the purposes of redistricting, this would move what would likely be over a million people out of rural districts.

^*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

It Ain't Treason. It Does Not Come Close

So, someone has set up a petition at Whitehouse.gov asking for the 47 Senators^* be charged with treason:

More than 155,000 people by Wednesday had signed a petition to the White House urging charges be filed against 47 Republican senators who they say committed "treasonous" offenses by writing Iran's leaders about ongoing nuclear negotiations.

Lawmakers caused a political furor with their controversial letter Monday that warned an international nuclear deal with Iran could be scrapped by the next US president, particularly if Congress does not give its seal of approval.

The White House has said it responds to such petitions when they reach the 100,000-signature threshold, providing President Barack Obama's administration with another opportunity to slam a letter that it considers inflammatory.

According to the petition, the 47 senators "committed a treasonous offense when they decided to violate the Logan Act, a 1799 law which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments."

Critics argue that the lawmakers, including at least three potential Republican 2016 presidential candidates, broke the law, or at least violated the traditions of Congress, by directly engaging a foreign power on US foreign policy.

This is a pet peeve of mine.

Because of hundreds of years of abuse of the treason charge by the British Crown, treason is the ONLY crime defined in the constitution, specifically Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

The letter to Iran is stupid, and is clearly a case of placing sensibilities the Republican primary voter above the interests of the United States, but this is not treason, under US law.

Treason charges, and the abuse of treason charges by the sovereign, has a long and ignominious history, and calling for treason charges runs directly counter to US values and the founding beliefs of our republic.


^*People keep saying, "47 Senators," and I keep hearing, "47 Ronin". There is something profoundly wrong in my head

If Republicans Want to Impeach Obama, This Would Be a Good Starting Point

Buried in the report about the CIA hacking the Senate Intelligence Committee computers is a report that the White House approved explicitly approved these actions against congressional oversight:

According to a report by the CIA Inspector General, the White House was informed of the CIA’s plan to hack US Senate computers to discover what was going to be in the Senate Torture Report. CIA Director John Brennan met with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough then ordered CIA employees to “use whatever means necessary” to find out what Senate investigators knew.

Given the White House’s role in the illegal hacking of Senate computers it becomes obvious why the Justice Department headed by President Obama-appointed Attorney General Eric Holder is not likely to bring charges against the CIA – charges against the CIA could lead back to the White House.

The specific content of the conversation between Brennan and McDonough is not disclosed but after the conversation Brennan instructed his subordinates at the CIA to trash the Constitution and engage in espionage activity against the US Senate.

If the Congress can show that Obama knew about this, you have a deliberate attempt to subvert Congressional oversight and the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitutions.

If they go after him on this, it's actually a decent case.

Of course, the most likely he was willfully blind, much as Reagan was with Iran Contra, which most certainly an impeachable offense, even if the Democrats didn't have the stones to go there.

In fact, it could be argued that from a constitutional perspective, spying on the Senate oversight committee is worse.

In any case, it's a lot worse than getting a blow job from an intern.

F%$# Me, I Agree With Mitch McConnel

Yes, his motives are suspect, but when he calls for Congressional approval for the new war in Iraq, he's right:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Tuesday that President Barack Obama should seek congressional approval for the U.S. strategy on ISIS.

"The view of myself and most of my members is the president should be seeking congressional approval, period, for whatever he decides to do because that's the way you hear from those of us who represent everyone in the country," the Kentucky Republican said.

McConnell stressed that Obama must come up with a plan and present it to Congress. He signaled "broad support" for U.S. action against the group.

"That's the way you get congressional support. I've said — when Elizabeth Warren begins to sound like Dick Cheney, you know that there's pretty broad bipartisan support here for dealing with this group of terrorists."

He's right.

I would actually go further, and say that a formal War Powers Act resolution.

This may be simple political posturing on the part of the Senate Minority Leader, but the ability to declare war was vested in the legislative branch for a reason.

God Bless the Satanists*

The Satanic Temple has demanded an exemption from state laws restricting abortion using the Hobby Lobby case as precedent:

The Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision, which allowed some for-profit companies to claim a religious exemption to Obamacare’s contraception mandate, has sparked a heated debate over the definition of religious liberty and its role in modern society. At this point, even a Satantic cult has decided to weigh in.

The Satanic Temple — a faith community that describes itself as facilitating “the communication and mobilization of politically aware Satanists, secularists, and advocates for individual liberty” — has launched a new campaign seeking a religious exemption to certain anti-abortion laws that attempt to dissuade women from ending a pregnancy. The group says they have deeply held beliefs about bodily autonomy and scientific accuracy, and those beliefs are violated by state-level “informed consent” laws that rely on misleading information about abortion risks.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, the Satanists point out, it strengthens their own quest to opt out of laws related to women’s health care that go against their religious liberty. “Because of the respect the Court has given to religious beliefs, and the fact that our our beliefs are based on best available knowledge, we expect that our belief in the illegitimacy of state­ mandated ‘informational’ material is enough to exempt us, and those who hold our beliefs, from having to receive them,” a spokesperson for the organization said in a statement.

Truth be told, their case is actually far stronger than Hobby Lobby's because they are objecting to forced state speech, which is far more significant from a constitutional perspective than an incidental requirement that a company provide full insurance coverage.

Well played.

^*Yes, I know that will piss off Satanists, but what the hell!^†
†Oops.

Why Snowden Going Through Channels was Never a Real Options

NPR looks at what happened to other people who attempted to complain about agency misconduct, and it ain't pretty:  Harassment, bogus charges, and systematic vilification, specifically the cases of Bill Binney and Thomas Drake.

I think that the quote describes just how effective the inspectors general are about such things:

"Perhaps it's the case that we could've shown, we could've explained to Mr. Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do," [NSA Inspector General George] Ellard said.

We he is refer"Perhaps it's the case that we could've shown, we could've explained to Mr. Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do," Ellard said.

If you listen to the interview, you realize that he's not talking the Inspector General's office, he's talking about the NSA.

The IG, and the whole whistle blowing apparatus are completely captured, and have not the slightest interest in addressing any potential issues.

His goal is talking Edward Snowden and other potential whistle-blowers out of actually blowing the whistle.

Also, it as it is noted in in the report, the new "protections" for intelligence operatives does not apply to contractors, and almost all new hires of the intelligence agencies are contractors.

How convenient.

Here is an Amicus Brief I Fully Support

There has been a fascinating friend of the court (amicus) brief on the latest Obamacare suits, the "ladyparts are icky" suits from Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties.

It argues that the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" is an unconstitutional because it is an unconstitutional abrogation of the constitutional role of the courts in interpreting the law:

Arguing that Congress has gone too far to push aside the Supreme Court’s constitutional role in religion cases, a loose coalition of child welfare organizations, survivors of clergy child sexual abuse, and non-believers has urged the Justices to strike down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when it rules on a new dispute over the federal health care law.

The amicus brief, written by a prominent academic authority on religion and the law, Cardozo Law School’s Marci A. Hamilton, seeks to add a bold new dimension to the Court’s review of the Affordable Care Act’s “contraception mandate.”

“RFRA,” the document contended, “is Congress’s overt attempt to take . . . over this Court’s role in interpreting the Constitution. . . . [T]his novel federal statute, which is one of the most aggressive attacks on this Court’s role in constitutional interpretation in history, has fomented culture wars in the courts like the one ignited” in the pending cases by for-profit businesses seeking a RFRA-based exemption from the mandate to provide health insurance for pregnancy-related services to workers.

Normally, I would not expect that this would have any bearing on the court's decision, but the core of this argument is flattering the court as an institution, so that makes it a bit more likely.

Fed Judge Rules Parsonage Tax Exemption Unconstitutional

The Freedom From Religion Foundation prevailed in their challenge:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation and its co-presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker have won a significant ruling with far-reaching ramifications declaring unconstitutional the 1954 “parish exemption” uniquely benefiting “ministers of the gospel.”

“May we say hallelujah! This decision agrees with us that Congress may not reward ministers for fighting a ‘godless and anti-religious’ movement by letting them pay less income tax. The rest of us should not pay more because clergy pay less,” Gaylor and Barker commented.

U.S. District Judge Barbara B. Crabb for the Western District of Wisconsin issued a strong, 43-page decision Friday declaring unconstitutional 26 U.S. C. § 107(2), passed by Congress in 1954. Quoting the Supreme Court, Crabb noted, “Every tax exemption constitutes subsidy.” The law allowed “ministers of the gospel” paid through a housing allowance to exclude that allowance from taxable income. Ministers may, for instance, use the untaxed income to purchase a home, and, in a practice known as “double dipping,” may then deduct interest paid on the mortgage and property taxes.

“The Court’s decision does not evince hostility to religion — nor should it even seem controversial,” commented Richard L. Bolton, FFRF’s attorney in the case. “The Court has simply recognized the reality that a tax free housing allowance available only to ministers is a significant benefit from the government unconstitutionally provided on the basis of religion.”

Crabb wrote: “Some might view a rule against preferential treatment as exhibiting hostility toward religion, but equality should never be mistaken for hostility. It is important to remember that the establishment clause protects the religious and nonreligious alike.”

The benefit to clergy is huge — saving an estimated $2.3 billion in taxes in the years 2002-2007 alone, according to a statement by Congressman Jim Ramstad in 2002. Clergy are permitted to use the housing allowance not just for rent or mortgage, but for home improvements including swimming pools, maintenance and repairs. They may exempt from taxable income up to the fair market rental value of their home, particularly benefiting well-heeled pastors. The benefit extends to churches, which can pay clergy less, as tax-free salaries go further.

The 1954 bill’s sponsor, Rep. Peter Mack, argued ministers should be rewarded for “carrying on such a courageous fight against this [godless and anti-religious world movement].”

“I agree with plaintiffs that §107(2) does not have a secular purpose or effect,” wrote Crabb, adding that a reasonable observer would view it “as an endorsement of religion.”

Given the decades of Republican court stacking, I would expect this to be overturned on appeal, but I hope that it isn't.

I do not know about the general makeup of the 7^th circuit court of appeals, but if it does not get shut down at that level, it will be by the Supreme court.

H/t Cthulhu at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Petition to Arrest Teabagger Reps is Both Stupid and Unconstitutional………

It's been floating around the internet for a few days, and it is wrong on every level.

First, criminal charging your opponents for being your opponents is wrong.

We have hundreds of years of history to document that.

And then there is Congressional immunity, which guaranteed freedom from criminal or civil liability for official actions of Congress critters, no matter how mind boggling stupid those actions are.

Done with rant.