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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court's revamped conservative majority flexed its muscle Monday in three 5-4 decisions that undercut precedents set by more liberal courts. The rulings — which included decisions that weaken restrictions on broadcast ads during election campaigns and that narrow students' speech rights in schools — reflected how President Bush's appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, have begun to move the court toward the right. But Monday's decisions also suggest that Roberts and Alito are reluctant to completely gut court precedents, a tactic favored by conservative Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
The less audacious approach shown by Roberts and Alito seemed to matter little to the court's increasingly frustrated liberal wing — John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — who on Monday issued fierce dissents protesting the court's new direction. "The court (and, I think, the country) loses when important precedent is overruled without good reason," Souter wrote in objecting to the campaign finance ruling.
In Monday's most significant ruling, the court carved into the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance law by opening the door to corporate and union financing of broadcast ads just before an election. The decision is likely to lead to an advertising bonanza by such groups before the 2008 elections. In a decision written by Roberts, the court dramatically scaled back the reach of the law's limits on such advertising. "Discussion of issues cannot be suppressed simply because the issues may be pertinent in an election," Roberts wrote. "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor.
In the decision limiting students' speech rights, the court ruled against a former high school student in Alaska who said his rights were violated when a principal tore down a banner the student had held up in 2002, as the Winter Olympics torch relay passed by the school. The banner read "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," which officials saw as a violation of their anti-drug policies. Making an exception to a 1969 ruling that protected non-disruptive students' speech rights on campus without reversing the previous decision, the court ruled that schools could ban signs, buttons and T-shirts that conflict with their anti-drug policies.
Meanwhile, in a case that focused on a potential challenge to President Bush's efforts to direct public money to religious charities, the court also limited the reach of a 1968 ruling that allowed taxpayers to sue the government over potential violations of the separation of church and state. Taken together, the decisions "were victories that conservatives will be happy about," said Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi, who worked in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "But many conservatives will be struck by the incremental, small steps taken" by the court.
A bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday issued what is likely to be a landmark opinion -- ruling that race cannot be a factor in the assignment of children to public schools. The court struck down public school choice plans in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, concluding they relied on an unconstitutional use of racial criteria, in a sharply worded pair of cases reflecting the deep legal and social divide over the issue of race and education. A conservative majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts said other means besides race considerations should be used to achieve diversity in schools. "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race," he wrote. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the majority "reverses course and reaches the wrong conclusion. In doing so, it distorts precedent, it misapplies the relevant constitutional principles, it announces legal rules that will obstruct efforts by state and local governments to deal effectively with the growing resegregation of public schools, it threatens to substitute for present calm a disruptive round of race-related litigation.
- JJ Commentary: Praise God for these shifts back to constitutional principles and away from judicial activism.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's immigration bill suffered a crushing defeat Thursday in the Senate, when members voted against advancing the controversial legislation. The tally was 46 to 53, 14 votes shy of the 60 needed to end debate. The bill would have provided a path to citizenship for some of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and toughens border security. Supporters and opponents of the controversial legislation said that it probably won't be resurrected until after the 2008 elections.
The controversial bill won support and derision from both sides of the political aisle. Those voting in favor included 12 Republicans. Sixteen Democrats voted against it and 18 senators switched their votes from an earlier vote on the bill on Tuesday. Bush had lobbied heavily for support for the compromise legislation, which was also crafted by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy. Senators were voting against cutting off debate and referring the bill for a final vote. On Wednesday, supporters beat back a number of potentially fatal amendments.
- JJ Commentary: Praise God that this “compromise” bill (which supports all the North American Union and New World (Dis)Order goals) has been defeated.
WASHINGTON — For three decades, reports of rogue CIA operations from plotting Fidel Castro's assassination to collecting files on U.S. citizens have trickled into the public arena. Now the agency is acknowledging its past illegal activities and revealing in startling detail how it crossed the line. Tuesday's disclosure of the CIA's secrets from the 1950s until the early '70s shows how the agency repeatedly violated its own charter. As the CIA now endures criticism for its role in pre-Iraq war intelligence failures, it has exposed past flaws by complying with a 15-year-old request to disclose those activities.
Gen. Michael Hayden, the CIA director, said the agency has learned "from its history" and moved beyond the abuses detailed in the report. "We will find in the press coverage of today's release reminders of some things the CIA should not have done," Hayden said in a note to agency employees. "The documents truly do provide a glimpse of a very different era and a very different agency." Critics say the modern CIA is too quick to distance itself from past abuses. The documents provide an important historical record of the CIA's "skeletons," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a watchdog group. The Archive's 1992 Freedom of Information Act request prompted the documents' release.
- JJ Commentary: Many who were declared “conspiracy nuts” are owed an apology. Now the issue is whether the CIA has been reformed, or continues its illegal rogue activities in even greater secrecy.
House Democrats on Thursday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney's idea of abolishing a government office charged with safeguarding national security information — and criticized him for refusing to cooperate with the agency. Cheney's office — over the objections of the National Archives — has exempted itself from a presidential executive order that seeks to protect national security information generated by the government, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Under the order, executive branch offices are required to give the Information Security Oversight Office at the archives data on how much material it has classified and declassified.
Cheney's office provided the information in 2001 and 2002, then stopped. Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee, said Cheney's office claims it need not comply with the executive order because it is not an "entity within the executive branch." "Your decision to except your office from the president's order is problematic because it could place national security secrets at risk," Waxman wrote in a letter to Cheney on Thursday.
- JJ Commentary: Huh? The VP’s office not part of the executive branch of government? I can understand why Cheney feels this way, since he is a key New World (Dis)Order leader.
Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey. The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it. There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week. "However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.
The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said. Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said. Just because almost all of the scientific community believes in man-made global warming proves absolutely nothing, Bryson said. "Consensus doesn't prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe."
- JJ Commentary: From the evidence I’ve seen, it would appear that humans contribute very little to global warming. However, the New World (Dis)Order will use any excuse to further their case for global governance.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in an emergency Cabinet on Sunday and outlawed the militia forces of the Islamic Hamas movement, deepening the violent rupture in Palestinian society. Hamas seized control of Gaza last week after routing Abbas' Fatah movement. The hurried swearing-in ceremony of the new Cabinet left the Palestinians effectively with two governments — the Hamas leadership in Gaza and the new Cabinet in the West Bank led by respected economist Salam Fayyad.
- JJ Commentary: The one thing we can count on from the Moslems is internal conflict, just as the Bible prophesied about Ishmael’s descendants in Genesis 16:12: “He shall be a wild man; his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him” – even his own people, as in Iraq between the Sunni’s, Shiites and Kurds.
WASHINGTON, June 15 — A year after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran’s nuclear program, according to senior administration officials. The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.
In the year since Ms. Rice announced the new strategy for the United States to join forces with Europe, Russia and China to press Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities, Iran has installed more than a thousand centrifuges to enrich uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency predicts that 8,000 or so could be spinning by the end of the year, if Iran surmounts its technical problems. Those hard numbers are at the core of the debate within the administration over whether Mr. Bush should warn Iran’s leaders that he will not allow them to get beyond some yet-undefined milestones, leaving the implication that a military strike on the country’s facilities is still an option.
- JJ Commentary: Negotiations with Iran are futile. They will lie, stall and cheat until they have their nuclear weapons. Ezekiel 38 prophesies that Rosh (Russia) and Persia (Iran) will conspire with other Arab nations against Israel. Russian and Iran have never been aligned before, but now Russia is providing the expertise to build Iran’s nuclear capabilities – and Russian/U.S. relations are deteriorating.
RENO (AP) — The national chairman of the Democratic Party urged his faithful in Nevada Monday night to reach out to a constituency more typically aligned with Republicans — evangelical Christians. Democrats are poised to recapture the White House because they are the most fiscally responsible party and will end the war in Iraq, said former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. But the 2008 presidential election may ultimately hinge on evangelical Christians he said are undergoing a "generational change" that emphasizes social responsibility over social conservatism.
"I haven't seen gay marriage in the Bible once," Dean said in the keynote address at a Democratic fundraiser at a Reno hotel-casino.
- JJ Commentary: Hmmm. I guess he doesn’t really read the Bible. Both the Old and New Testaments have quite a bit to say about homosexuality. He should especially read Romans 1. Fake Christians are worse than non-Christians because they muddy the waters with deception.
The Orthodox Righteous Court of Law (Badatz) have placed a curse on the organizers and particpicants in the gay pride parade scheduled to take place in Jerusalem next Thursday. The curse also applied to police forces that will secure the event. The Edah Haredit is an extreme body which has declared ideological warfare against the "heretic Zionist government." Its members shun Knesset votes, do not carry Israeli ID cards, and refuse allowances from the government budget.
On Sunday of next week members of the community are planning to launch protests against the pride parade. A mass demonstration is scheduled to take place on Jerusalem's Bar Ilan Street, which will "shock and agitate" the public according to posters. The protest's organizers expect some 100,000 people to show up. Noa Satat, head of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, said in response: "The Orthodox curses and their refusal to commit to non-violence prove that this is not just a pride parade but a fight for Israeli democracy, freedom of expression and for the capital city, which is everyone's city."
- JJ Commentary: A gay-pride march in Jerusalem, God’s capital of this world, will call down judgment on the participants regardless of whether we curse them or not. Instead, let’s pray for their deliverance and salvation.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Calm returned to the streets Thursday after three days of demonstrations touched off by President Hugo Chávez's refusal to renew the broadcast license of a Caracas television station. The government halted broadcasts by Radio Caracas Television on Sunday. Since then, police have repeatedly clashed with angry crowds. Opposition leader Manuel Rosales on Wednesday demanded the release of dozens of students jailed during clashes with the police. Rosales — the governor of western Zulia state who was defeated by Chávez in December elections — said protesters are demanding not only free speech but also the right to protest "peacefully and democratically."
Chávez accused RCTV of helping incite a failed coup in 2002 and violating various broadcast laws. He said his decision to replace it with a new state-funded public channel, TVES, was a step toward "democratizing" the airwaves. Earlier this year, Chávez moved to nationalize telecommunications and power companies. He recently ordered the government to take control of the last privately run oil fields and refineries. In recent months, his government seized hundreds of thousands of acres on several large farms and said it would redistribute the land to poor farmers as part of its "drive toward socialism."
- JJ Commentary: Socialism leads to communism which leads to oppression. Chavez is a lunatic who ultimately wants dictatorial powers.
