The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution tersely says that “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion”. Over time, this short phrase has had to be fleshed out and this has resulted in a messy stew of decisions resulting in great confusion.
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The US Supreme Court on Friday decided to hear the case King v. Burwell of whether the subsidies provided by the health exchanges set up by the federal government under Obamacare are constitutional. This is ominous. Why?
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Yesterday the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its verdict on the six same-sex marriage cases from the four states in its jurisdiction (Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee). District judges had in each case ruled that the bans on such marriages in each of those states was unconstitutional and the three-judge panel looked at all the cases together. The panel ruled 2-1 to reverse the lower courts and uphold the bans, meaning that same-sex marriages cannot proceed in these four states. The majority opinion is, frankly, appalling. I do not say this simply because I disagree with the conclusion but for reasons that I give below.
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In a ruling issued early this morning, the US Supreme Court upheld the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the Texas voter ID law SB 14, one of the most restrictive in the nation, should stay in place through the current election, thus likely disenfranchising many poor and minority and student voters, the ones most likely to vote for the Democratic party.
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Last Thursday, a federal judge in Texas threw out that state’s new voting ID requirements enshrined in the law SB 14, the strictest in the nation, on the grounds that it imposed undue hardship on voters, was discriminatory, and the costs involved amounted to a poll tax. It was a sweeping judgment that Texas immediately appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is one of the most conservative of the Appeals Courts and on Tuesday, they reversed the judge’s ruling, allowing the rules to remain in place.
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It has been clear for some time that, since their actual policies and practices are so unpopular with key demographics, the GOP strategy for winning elections is to try and reduce voting by likely Democratic voters by enacting strict voter ID laws under the pretext of preventing fraud, a problem that does not exist in any significant way to matter. But yesterday, these measures received two significant setbacks.
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When it comes to same-sex marriage, the current state of play can be a little confusing, consisting as it does of a mixture of legislative and judicial decisions. Since the US Supreme Court has declined to hear, for now at least, cases that deal with this issue, we are left with a patchwork of laws passed by referenda and legislatures and state and federal courts. We have basically three different situations:
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The more inscrutable an important organization is, the more effort that goes into trying to discern why they behave the way they do. The US Supreme Court is a prime example. It almost never gives reasons as to why it accepts or rejects cases for review and has been quite successful in having the justices and their clerks not reveal their internal discussions and workings, at least until their papers are released long after they have retired or died.
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I have been writing a lot about the abuses by police during traffic stops and in response to one such post, reader culuriel asked a good question as to what one should do in such a situation and what the ACLU recommends. I looked into it and came across this video produced by the ACLU that features comedian Elon James White addressing this very question that is both informative and amusing. It is part of their Know You Rights program that gives more explicit details what to do in a variety of situations.
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Ok folks, let’s get one thing clear. The First Amendment guarantee of free speech does not mean that you can say anything to anyone at any time in any place in any capacity. That this need to be clarified at all is astounding but clearly some people just do not get it, as when a state trooper Brian Hamilton started questioning Ellen Bogan after he pulled her over.
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