"I can't [seek medical attention for my mortally ill 11-year-old daughter] because Biblically, I cannot find that is the way people are healed," Dale Neumann told the jury. "If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God. I am not believing what He said He would do."Dale Neumann for the defense, cites the Good Book
A judge today dismissed the 29-year-old first-degree murder case against Ralph Armstrong, citing what he said were repeated violations by prosecutors of a court order concerning evidence in the case and a failure to tell Armstrong's lawyers about his brother's purported confession nearly 15 years ago.A prior appeal of Ralph Armstrong's to the Wisconsin Supreme Court was the subject of advertising deemed defamatory and deployed by one of those so-called "family values" outfits last year in support of currently embattled judge Mike Gableman.
Jude Law [Who he? — ed.], who has three children with ex-wife Sadie Frost, has discovered he's expecting a fourth child with an unidentified former lover.Could have gotten her name at least.
Law will appear in Hamlet on Broadway.People
National Review MSM elites, yada, yada yada, When Glen Beck and Rush* make the same pronouncement then I might reappraise my opinion. The Rinos are beginning to influence Charlie, its about time to think about storming the barricades before all hope is lost.Even to his own biggest fans, Charlie Sykes is less credible than Glenn Beck. That must be tremendously reassuring. For everybody.
"This is how riots start."Mark Fuhrman, explaining to Sean Hannity how Cambridge, MA police sergeant James Crowley was right to arrest Henry Louis Gates for — get this — "stating things" to the officer. Yes, that Mark Fuhrman.
WOW! I almost need a staff just to stay on top of and respond to all the misinformation and unenlightened opinions of Patrick McIlheran at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.Aina?
The rationale behind criminalizing disorderly conduct rests on the belief that a disorderly person can provoke violence in others. Given that an inherent part of police work involves being in the presence of distraught individuals, and given that police officers are trained to maintain order, the Court concluded that police should be the least likely to be provoked [by a 58-year-old professor who walks with a cane]. Therefore, police presence alone does not satisfy the public element.Via The Massachusetts District Attorneys Association.*
The court majority explicitly stated its decision stands on independent state grounds, precluding review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Specifically, the justices said that the "Freedom of Conscience Clauses" in Article I, Section 18 of the Wisconsin Constitution "uses the strongest possible language" to protect the right of worship free of state involvement. These protections are even more expansive than those in the First Amendment, the court added.Never mind the highly questionable proposition that the "right of worship" includes for a judicially created exemption from answering to a lawsuit alleging a discriminatory employment practice expressly prohibited by duly enacted Wisconsin statutes.
As the product of seven years of Catholic primary school, and the son of a longtime Catholic schools teacher, I’m convinced the Court [sic] got this determination right.How about this one: As the product of eight years of Catholic primary school, four years of Catholic secondary school, and the son of a longtime president of the PTA, I'm convinced the court's decision is a corruption of the controlling principle announced in Rayburn v. Gen. Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, a federal case out of a Virginia court upon which Gableman (ironically) relies heavily.*
I screwed up my facts [but] it didn’t detract from the overall point.Who needs facts anyway. What matters is the "point."
"If she thought it was tough in Juneau with a bunch of petty, harassing complaints, then she has no idea what awaits a serious presidential contender," said Paul Erickson, a GOP presidential strategist.The hell she doesn't. Palin was one of the biggest liars, sleaze mongers, and rabble rousers out there.
Her biggest legacy may be putting Alaska on the national stage. "Before if you played a word game and someone said 'Alaska,' you might say 'oil' or even 'whales,'" said a former staffer. "Now you say 'Alaska': Palin."Unfortunately for Alaska.
Defense attorney Jay Kronenwetter told jurors the efforts of the ambulance attendants or doctors who eventually cared for 11-year-old Kara Neumann might have caused her death.Trial of "full-Gospel Christian" underway in Wausau — JSOnline.com
The defense attorney told a jury this morning that doctors’ treatment plans for the girl would likely have killed her.Big difference.
The Maziarkas were still fighting to have books moved, having identified 82 questionable titles — more than double their original list.Sounds like they've got a real nose for it.
Ginny Maziarka and her husband also asked the West Bend Community Memorial Library to obtain books about homosexuality that affirmed heterosexuality, such as titles written by "ex-gays," Maziarka said.Forgive me, but it stretches credulity that there is any such thing. I also heard they tried to turn Wilt Chamberlain gay, but it didn't take.
"All the books in the young-adult zone that deal with homosexuality are gay-affirming," she said.What, no Bibles?
The Constitution protects religious exercise, and we decline to turn the Free Exercise Clause into a license for the free exercise of discrimination unmoored from religious principle. We therefore conclude that under the Free Exercise Clause the ministerial exception will not bar Title VII claims by ministerial employees when an employment decision is not motivated by religious belief, religious doctrine, or church regulation.But no. Gableman's opinion overlooked it.
This is an issue of constitutional law ...A rather important one.
... which we review de novo.Or, as it turns out, the intermediate not-quite-de novo review. On the other hand, perhaps few might be surprised that prohibited discrimination is considered part and parcel of "religious exercise."
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell recently made a speech to the Senate referring to the "bureaucrats who run Canada's health care system" and using the Kingston General Hospital as an example of the horror of Canada's health care. KGH supposedly had waits of 340 days for knee replacement and 196 days for hip replacement. McConnell also fussed that Ontario's wait time for breast cancer surgery is three months. CNN did interview Dr. David Zelt, KGH's chief of staff, who pointed out the wait times are actually 91 days for hip replacement, 109 days for knees, and that these aren't the average wait times, but the time that nine out of 10 people have had the procedure. Many have them done much faster. For breast cancer surgery, the wait time at KGH is 23 days, across Ontario it's 34 days.
"Speak your mind." We reserve the right not to publish comments based on such concerns as redundancy, incivility, untimeliness, poor writing, etc. All comments must include the first and last name of the author and a valid e-mail address.Don't believe it.
I have a birth certificate here, from the United States of America, saying I'm an American citizen.There is no such thing. The lady in red goes on to claim that the President of the United States is in fact a citizen of Kenya, a country in Hawaii. The woman brandishing the document, which is expressly unauthorized by the Constitution, was not immediately arrested.— "This lady in red"
In Hindu mythology, the two demons Rahu and Ketu are said to "swallow" the sun during eclipses. It takes the life-giving life and causes food to become inedible and water undrinkable.So keep an eye on that life-giving life.
In 2003, Sandra Day O'Connor upheld race-based discrimination in college admissions [in those narrowly tailored ones of a Michigan law school, to be precise] ... but only for the current generation. Such policies "must be limited in time," she wrote, adding that "the Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."Inventing from whole cloth, Douthat surmises: "It's doubtful, though, that Sonia Sotomayor shares this view." And why is that? Because Judge Sotomayor responded that she "hopes" instead of "expects" that corrective affirmative action policy will go by the wayside.
There is no allegation that any of these properties [that is, the individual ones subjected to the Takings Clause] is blighted or otherwise in poor condition; rather, they were condemned only because they happen to be located in the development area.Then last Thursday Prof. Ilya Somin appeared live in person before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
If you look on yourself as being part of a government health system of millions of people, getting a bedsore and dying in hideous pain is no big deal in the scheme of things.Oh really.
But I look on myself as being part of the Mark Steyn health system. So if I get a bedsore and die, as far as I'm concerned, that's a 100% systemic failure.
According to a report from Harvard Medical School, several thousand Americans die each year from complications associated with pressure sores.Including Christopher Reeve. And this guy.
Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could've changed that case.Ah, but Judge Cabranes is only a Wise Latino, not a Wise Latina. Besides, Judge Cabranes was only voting to rehear the New Haven firefighters case, not to change anything about it. Who knows, he may have affirmed Sotomayor. Anyway, it isn't even clear whether Sotomayor could have changed the decision below, let alone an en banc rehearing, as she was part of a unanimous three-judge panel. She could have dissented there,* but two is greater than one.
"They had added a huge amount of infrastructure to meet this demand going forward," said Jeff Mintz, an analyst.Failure to plan obsolescence may doom world's ugliest shoe — WaPo
"One can infer that at least some of these calls may have related to Gableman supporting Gov. McCallum* and the Cable [WI] fundraiser," said the OLR investigator."May have related" doesn't cut it, apparently.
Gableman told the investigator he was mindful that he could not make political calls from his office phone.
It can only be seen as funny that demagogues give speeches denouncing men who insert their penises into other men's anuses — and then go home to insert their penises into their wives' vaginas! (One might have thought it obvious that either both of these acts are completely outrageous or neither of them is.)Neither, I reckon.— Wallace Shawn
A monster moonlight-green tie; a velvet jacket, concerning the fit of which he should have a word with his tailor; and loose trousers of subdued tint but of very self-assertive cut.It's unclear how they could be both "loose" and "self-assertive."
Reporting from Washington ― Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts maneuvered through three days of an often-antagonistic confirmation hearing by portraying himself as a legal MLB official who would stick to precedent and never "make law." But in doing so he revealed almost nothing about the philosophy that would guide him on the high court.An umpire in a black robe ― Los Angeles Times
In 1831, Juneau began learning English [aboot the age of 37].I wonder if he called it "soda" or "pop," and did he mix up "borrowed" for "loaned" and vice versa.
Obama comes from the law academia environment that I'm very familiar with [she's a law professor at the University of Wisconsin] where that talk about "empathy" is what you hear all the time. It's very normal, it's "sophisticated," and I can understand how Obama has just been soaking in that. And then when he, as a former constitutional law professor, comes to us and starts to tell us about law, I can really understand how he thought he was saying something profound and meaningful.Huh. I think I took just about every available constitutional law class and seminar at Marquette University (a Roman Catholic school) and never once did I hear anyone say anything about empathy for litigants, or for anything else, come to think of it.
Oh yes. It's a straight line from community organizing to crack cocaine dealer. Community organizers use crack cocaine in exchange for votes.The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's political calumnist and (mostly) inveterate hyperlinker to "good reading on the web" Patrick McIlheran has apparently given up at marshaling his own alleged "thoughts" on the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.
— American Spectator's Matthew Vadum
That of the nine state constitutional protections for the right to bear arms enacted immediately after 1789 at least seven unequivocally protected an individual citizen’s right to self-defense is strong evidence that that is how the founding generation conceived of the right.In other words, Heller teaches that self-defense is a purpose protected by the rights contained in the Second Amendment, but not that self-defense is in and of itself a constitutional right.
One of the things we hope to learn during confirmation hearings is a nominee's approach to the constitutional protection of liberty. But in her exchange with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) about the second amendment and its potential application to the states, Sonia Sotomayor revealed remarkably little about her understanding of how the Supreme Court protects liberty under the fourteenth amendment. For example, more than once she said a right was "fundamental" if it was "incorporated" into the fourteenth amendment. But this gets it backwards. The Supreme Court incorporates a right BECAUSE it finds it to be fundamental.I was paying particular attention to Judge Sotomayor's Second Amendment exchange with Orrin Hatch, and have written about these questions here before on several occasions.
It's not that I considered [the right to keep and bear arms] unfundamental, but that the Supreme Court didn't consider it fundamental so as to be incorporated against the State."Fundamental, so as to be incorporated." Exactly right. In fact, I can't think of a way to put it any more succinctly.
Here is her characterization of a "fundamental right":And by "evidence" I mean, of course, "zero evidence."SOTOMAYOR: Those rights have been incorporated against the States. The States must comply with them. So in — to the extent that the court has held that...
HATCH: Right.
SOTOMAYOR: ... then they are — they have been deemed fundamental, as that term is understood legally.
There is no justification for liberals to pontificate from their lofty high horses* since they have no ability to reason or rationalize using clear thought, facts, and documentation.I'm informed that the author of this trenchant and doubtlessly well-supported claim is not only a regular "debater" on Milwaukee Public Television, but an actual legislative aide to a State Senator.
SOTOMAYOR: And [in Kelo], the Court held that a taking to develop an economically blighted area was appropriate.There is some mildly entertaining commentary underway at the famous highbrow gun nut website The Volokh Conspiracy, related to today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.
SOMIN: [Sotomayor] incorrectly claimed that Kelo upheld a taking in an "economically blighted area." In reality, both sides in the Kelo litigation agreed that the area in question was not blighted.First of all, one does not normally characterize the holding of a U.S. Supreme Court decision by reference to what the litigating parties agreed to. That may be interesting, but it is not controlling.
ZUCH: Prof. Somin, you're nitpicking here. The Court said the area was "distressed" (or at least that the CT gummint's determination that it was "distressed" was entitled to some deference; Kelo, p. 13). I don't think [Sotomayor's] characterization of the case was fundamentally wrong, even if she didn't use the 'right' words; the exact words used by the opinion, not having the text of such in front of her. There's a fine line between "blighted" and "distressed," but the fact is that she didn't say, as you imply above, that the gummint could take land for "public use" for any reason whatsoever.Commenter Zuch has it exactly right. From the opinion:
Those who govern the City [of New London] were not confronted with the need to remove blight in the Fort Trumbull area, but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference.Emphasis added.
SHELBYC: The area was distressed, not the property itself. So as opposed to condemning "blighted" property to remove the blight, they were condemning property within an economically distressed area to help uplift the entire area. Big difference.Indeed. Regardless of what the litigating parties agreed to.
SOTOMAYOR: STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS DETERMINED OUTCOME IN KELO CASEWhile she was explaining they had nothing to do with each other.
At no point does Palin mention CO2 emissions, rising global temperatures or anything that's at the core of the legislation.Surprising. Palin's expertise is normally quite feared and hated.
Instead she prefers to talk about the "mountains of oil" we sit on and our "abundant" coal and "the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil."
Sotomayor dismissed the complaint with an almost contemptuous lack of comment.This is unadulterated nonsense, of course, and is easily debunked. Still, McIlheran continues to repeat it.
Well, first, with regard to Levi, I think First Dude up there in Alaska, Todd Palin, ought to take Levi down to the creek and hold his head underwater until the thrashing stops.Hilarity ensues.
Dick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials.If this is true, then anyone with an apprehension of the political principles underpinning the Constitution should be mighty troubled.
Sarah Palin loves God. God loves Sarah Palin.Follow the logic:
And that is why they hate her ... and Him.
And why she — and He — will be back.
Sarah Palin is grounded in the divine, which means, in part, that she believes, as did the framers of our constitution, that individuals [being evidently the politically correct rendering of the original, pre-universal suffrage "all men"] are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit ofWait a minute. I thought Jefferson was touring France in 1787.Property* Happiness."— Stuart Schwartz, Dist. Professor of Telemarketing
While Sarah Palin's legal defense fund has raised more than $250,000 to defend against ethics complaints, the money cannot be spent pending resolution of an ethics complaint that contends the contributions could amount to improper gifts.Paparazzi stake out the Beehive — New York Times
Even as the breadth of [Sarah Palin's] support narrows, the intensity of the support she receives grows greater, a fatal attraction for a political party whose base seems increasingly detached from anything resembling reality. To reinforce their delusion, those folks then go around talking about how the "other side" is afraid of or intimidated by Palin's superhuman political skills.The Recess Supervisor (not by any means a fearful "leftist").
Hardly. Sarah Palin is an erratic, intemperate politician of average intelligence and below average eloquence. If she ran for President in 2012, she would undoubtedly suffer a loss worse than anyone since Walter Mondale met the Reagan steamroller in 1984.
Ultimately, there are two ways to frame Frank Ricci's penchant for filing employment discrimination complaints: Perhaps he was repeatedly victimized by a cruel cadre of employers, first for his dyslexia, then again for his role as a whistle-blower, and then a third time for just being white. If that is so, we should all be deeply grateful for the robust civil rights laws that protect Americans from unfair discrimination in the workplace. I look forward to hearing Republican Sen. John Cornyn's version of that speech next week.More to the point:
The other way to look at Frank Ricci is as a serial plaintiff—one who reacts to professional slights and setbacks by filing suit, threatening to file suit, and more or less complaining his way up the chain of command. That's not the typical GOP heartthrob, but I look forward to hearing Sen. Cornyn's version of that speech next week as well.
His views on jurisprudence seem to begin and end with the proposition that legal protections against discrimination are great when they work in his favor, and unconscionable when they don't.Kind of like the classic Republican take on "judicial activism" — you got your bad kind (liberal) and you got your good kind (conservative).
Raphael's sitter has been identified as the final lover of the artist, who died when he was 37 from a fever after a night of excessive sex.Renaissance masterpiece to visit Milwaukee
Mr. Cheney's legal adviser, David S. Addington, had to approve personally every government official who was told about the program.On direct orders from Mr. Cheney — New York Times
Wrote site owner Jim Robinson sarcastically: "We should steer clear of Obama's children. They can't help it if their old man is an American-hating Marxist pig."Just another day at FreeRepublic.com — Vancouver Sun
Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn and journalist Jessica McBride traded an astounding 217 messages over four months on his city e-mail account, newly released records show.You sly devil, you.
In the e-mails, the pair proved chatty and friendly.
"Once the article is declared done, with the expectation that you won’t be ‘covering’ me in your professional capacity, I guess we wouldn’t be violating journalistic ethics (notice I didn’t make a smart remark) if we stayed connected and I received the benefit of your particular perspective," the chief wrote on Jan 6.
Interesting that such a right-winger only seems to be able to keep her government job and not anything in the public sector.* Ironic.Indeed. Along with the occasional political hack work. The future of that government job remains to be seen, as Bice reported earlier:
In the next year or two, McBride will be up for "indefinite status," which is similar to tenure for academic staff members. Officials in the journalism department have declined to comment so far on the matter.Kind of a "do as I say, not as I do" teaching position.
It is clear from the very early exchanges that both McBride and Flynn are (figuratively) "buttering each other up."But alas, no Last Tango in Paris for Juan McAdams.
