Activist judges call halt to burning flesh

America has come a long way over the past several centuries. We've given up drowning women for the crime of being familiar with black kittens, stopped sterilizing them just in case they produce more imbeciles (although I confess to occasional nostalgia for the practice), and now it appears we've finally put an end to burning them in chairs with massive charges of electricity.

Predictably, as bloggin' Mayor Soglin notes, the Republican governor of Nebraska is out shouting about "activist judges" and bemoaning the cessation of cruelty, which he decries as "appalling."

As for the Nebraska Supreme Court's decision itself, Genghis Hitler,* the lovely and talented case synopsizer nonpareil at Subject to Complete Defeasance, has all that information right here.

For those following the nerdier, doctrinal aspects of our own State's Butler/Gableman campaign, Genghis also provides a few illuminating observations on the "New Federalism," as applied to the Nebraska decision (and, incidentally, to the Wisconsin race).

As if that wasn't enough, Mr. Hitler, who plies the legal trade in the Great State of Colorado, today offers another delightfully humorous take on the brazenly dissembling chicanery of local Republicans over so-called "tort reform" legislation which concludes,

Any lawyer who argues that a one-dollar judgment qualifies his client as a “prevailing party” under [Colorado law] risks being ordered to stand on the courthouse steps wearing nothing but a funny paper hat while singing I’m a Little Teapot.

Needless to say, SCD is required daily reading 'round these parts, and it should be 'round yours, also (ages 18 and over only please).

* Not his real name.