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High Controversy: Don’t Opine – Saftey Risk

For your immediate attention (if you’ve been under a rock): several sensitive legal(ish) topics. But be warned, you may want to keep your opinions to yourself. Or “tell us how you really feel,” in comments (may take up to 24 hours for your comment to appear).

1. High Controversy in California (our first pun of the day).

A ballot measure legalizing marijuana in California will be voted up or down this November. Per the New York Times, supporters believe up to $1.4 billion could be raised through taxation of licensed distributors – a huge boon to the debt-ridden state. Per the Times article:

“We need the tax money,” said Richard Lee, founder of Oaksterdam University, a trade school for marijuana growers, in Oakland, who backed the ballot measure’s successful petition drive. “Second, we need the tax savings on police and law enforcement, and have that law enforcement directed towards real crime.”

What about federal preemption!? The usual rule is that if a state law (ie, pot legal) conflicts with a federal law (pot illegal), the federal law prevails. The Obama administration has decided to look the other way on California’s widespread “medical” marijuana legalization, but wholesale legalization would represent a monumental showdown. Watch for fireworks if this passes – several polls show a majority of voters favor the measure.

2. Obama Poised to Move Supreme Court Further Right?

Justice John Paul Stevens, long time liberal leader on the Supreme Court, has announced his retirement.  Elena Kagan, Solicitor General (the person who argues before the Supreme Court on behalf of the United States) and former Dean of Harvard Law School is widely regarded as a front-runner to replace Stevens. But liberal stalwart Glenn Greenwald feels her ascendance may in fact move the High Court further right on the political spectrum:

The prospect that Stevens will be replaced by Elena Kagan has led to the growing perception that Barack Obama will actually take a Supreme Court dominated by Justices Scalia (Reagan), Thomas (Bush 41), Roberts (Bush 43), Alito (Bush 43) and Kennedy (Reagan) and move it further to the Right. Joe Lieberman went on Fox News this weekend to celebrate the prospect that “President Obama may nominate someone in fact who makes the Court slightly less liberal,” while The Washington Post‘s Ruth Marcus predicted:  “The court that convenes on the first Monday in October is apt to be more conservative than the one we have now.”  Last Friday, I made the same argument:   that replacing Stevens with Kagan risks moving the Court to the Right, perhaps substantially to the Right (by “the Right,” I mean:  closer to the Bush/Cheney vision of Government and the Thomas/Scalia approach to executive power and law).

But won’t the Republicans simply filibuster anyone Obama could possibly nominate, in order to maintain a 5-3 conservative-liberal split on the Court after Stevens leaves? And if Obama is elected to a second term in 2012, just continue the filibuster? Eventually, one day, a Republican will be elected President again, right? It takes 67 of 100 Senators to confirm a Supreme Court Justice. Republicans suffered so little (gained, actually) by obstructing the health care bill, why shouldn’t they take the same approach to everything Obama tries to do? If Republicans give Kagan a pass, then I’m tempted to suspect Greenwald is correct.

3. Helicopter Gun Camera Footage

If you’re reading this blog, you’ve most likely seen this by now. Wikileaks.org released disturbing footage it received from an anonymous whistleblower, which had been suppressed by the Army – though an Army internal investigation finding no wrongdoing had been publicly available. An American Apache attack helicopter machine-gunned a group of mostly unarmed Iraqis on a Baghdad streetcorner in 2007 during “the surge.” Among the dead were two Reuters reporters, the pilots mistook a telephoto lens for an RPG (anti-tank rocket) pointed at American ground forces. Immediately thereafter, the Apache machine-gunned a van that drove up to the scene, including two unarmed men who tried to evacuate a severely wounded person. Two children in the van were wounded.

There has been much intelligent, informed, and less-so commentary on this incident. Let me direct you to a few links, so you can judge which is which for yourself:

Small Wars Journal – forum discussion thread

Wings Over Iraq

Schmedlap

We are creating more insurgents through incidents like this. That’s not my opinion, it’s General Stanley McChrystal’s. The Commander of US (and international allied) forces in Afghanistan gave this example:

An ISAF patrol was traveling through a city at a high rate of speed, driving down the center to force traffic off the road. Several pedestrians and other vehicles were pushed out of the way. A vehicle approached from the side into the traffic circle. The gunner fired a pen flare at it, which entered the vehicle and caught the interior on fire. As the ISAF patrol sped away, Afghans crowded around the car. How many insurgents did the patrol make that day?

We must make procedural changes to stop these things from happening. And if it is simply the nature of war, or standard operating procedure in a war zone – and we therefore cannot change – then our presence could be construed as self-defeating.

4. Tea Party + Military = Sedition?

According to Talking Points Memo, an active duty Marine Corps Sergeant has launched a military chapter of the Tea Party.

The group, which vows to “stand up on the very soil we defended to preserve common sense conservatism and defend our Constitution that is threatened by a tyrannical government,” currently has over 400 members, who have signed up through its Facebook page, though many are not active duty military.

These things don’t usually end well … for the active duty enlisted person proclaiming his Commander-in-Chief a “tyrant.” After his first riff generated some publicity, this marine has walked his invective way WAY back. Methinks at the insistence of his superiors. This guy is begging for a dishonorable discharge.

5. Supreme Court to Consider “Anywhere But Here” Rule for Westboro Baptist Church “Activists”

This is something I, without any hesitation, can call absolutely disgraceful. Certain members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, don’t approve of homosexuality. That in itself is not an unusual sentiment in the United States.

So what do these people do that others who don’t approve of homosexuality don’t do? Well, they go to the funerals of random United States soldiers and marines and stand around as close as they’re allowed to get and chant and scream that God hates gay people and the soldier’s death is God’s punishment for the military allowing gays to serve. Really. They do. And they bring their kids.

Mind you, the dead soldiers weren’t gay. At least, there’s no effort made by Westboro to select the funerals of gay soldiers to protest at. Mind you, the Westboro people AREN’T WAR PROTESTERS. They aren’t out there to say bring the troops home.

The Westboro crew harass and interfere with the solemn, crushingly sad experience of parents and wives and children of the dead serviceperson as the bereaved attempt to get some closure through his or her burial. “Insensitive” completely fails to convey the magnitude of Westboro’s offense, as does “selfish.”

Albert Snyder’s son, marine Mathew Snyder, died in Iraq in 2006. The Westboro horde showed up at the stateside funeral, and disrupted the proceedings. Snyder sued for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and a Maryland jury sent a message in the form of a nearly $11 million dollar verdict against Westboro, subsequently reduced to $5 million by the judge. Unfortunately, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the verdict on First Amendment (free speech) grounds, and even ordered Snyder to pay Westboro’s legal expenses.

The Supreme Court has now tapped the case as one of the few that it will review on appeal. According to SCOTUSblog, among the issues to be considered are:

(2) whether the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment trumps its freedom of religion and peaceful assembly; and (3) whether an individual attending a family member’s funeral constitutes a “captive audience” who is entitled to state protection from unwanted communication.

I can’t fathom how the First Amendment would be violated by prohibiting these people from standing along funeral procession routes or outside cemeteries or funeral homes. There are lots of other venues available for these people’s “protest.” In fact, anywhere but here. Let the families of these fallen soldiers grieve in peace.

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Let me know what you think about any or all of this, or other controversies of the moment, in comments.

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