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Forget the attempt by Newdow to get the inaugural prayer breakfast stopped (it was a non-starter, and not the best political theater, if you ask me, which he didn't), there is some interesting stuff afoot in the Supreme Court.
Norma McCorvey, better known to most of us as the (in)famous Jane Roe, of Roe v. Wade, has petitioned the court to overturn the decision. Petition.pdf.
As SCOTUS Blog points out there are a host of things which make it an uphill battle for the petitioner, not the least of which is that three lower courts have all found reasons the case ought not to be heard (and at least one of those was a procedural issue, timeliness of petition, which has larger ramifications if the Supremes should elect to set it aside for this case, most notably the precedentiary possibility for certain types of habeas petitions)
The opening paragraph of the petition sets the tone, so you don't really need to wade through all 43 pages to understand what's going on. The petitioner claims a number of harms, to both women, and society; directly resulting from Roe v. Wade, which make it needful to overturn it, and so afford a remedy.
Scary stuff.
More compelling, at least to me, is the decision handed down in the Washington District Court ruled, in effect, that the mechanics of the detainees rights to petition are all they get. The actual need to weigh the facts, and for the courts to decide the merits of a petition for writ of habeas corpus is null.
He also held that so long as the president is acting under color (no matter how faint, nor watered down) of an authority granted by congress, he can hold any, non-national, at Gitmo for as long as his heart desires. The only comfort is that if they are tortured, the Army is still allowed to court martial the torturers.
We can be sure that good ol' Bertie "Set Aside" Gonzales, will be there to look out for them on that front.
More Scotus Blog
Norma McCorvey, better known to most of us as the (in)famous Jane Roe, of Roe v. Wade, has petitioned the court to overturn the decision. Petition.pdf.
As SCOTUS Blog points out there are a host of things which make it an uphill battle for the petitioner, not the least of which is that three lower courts have all found reasons the case ought not to be heard (and at least one of those was a procedural issue, timeliness of petition, which has larger ramifications if the Supremes should elect to set it aside for this case, most notably the precedentiary possibility for certain types of habeas petitions)
The opening paragraph of the petition sets the tone, so you don't really need to wade through all 43 pages to understand what's going on. The petitioner claims a number of harms, to both women, and society; directly resulting from Roe v. Wade, which make it needful to overturn it, and so afford a remedy.
Scary stuff.
More compelling, at least to me, is the decision handed down in the Washington District Court ruled, in effect, that the mechanics of the detainees rights to petition are all they get. The actual need to weigh the facts, and for the courts to decide the merits of a petition for writ of habeas corpus is null.
He also held that so long as the president is acting under color (no matter how faint, nor watered down) of an authority granted by congress, he can hold any, non-national, at Gitmo for as long as his heart desires. The only comfort is that if they are tortured, the Army is still allowed to court martial the torturers.
We can be sure that good ol' Bertie "Set Aside" Gonzales, will be there to look out for them on that front.
More Scotus Blog
Since the Supreme Court’s June decisions, many of the 500-plus detainees at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba have filed habeas challenges, and all of those are pending in the U.S. District Court in Washington. Judge Green is coordinating most of the cases, but she split off several for a separate ruling by Judge Leon on the government motion to dismiss. The Bush Administration’s lawyers have been arguing strenuously, in all of the litigated cases, that the detainees have no rights at all, so their challenges should be dismissed outright. That is exactly what Judge Leon has now done.
“The Court concludes,” Leon wrote, “that no viable legal theory exists by which it could issue a writ of habeas corpus” for “non-resident aliens captured abroad and detained outside the territorial sovereignty of the U.S., pursuant to lawful military orders, during a congressional authorized conflict.” The judge found he did not have to rule on the most far-reaching claim of the administration – that the president has power on his own, without any authorization from Congress, to order the capture and indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. Since Congress’ post-Sept. 11 resolution authorizes what the president has done, Leon said, that is a sufficient basis for denying all relief to the detainees.
The judge said that, if the detainees have any rights of any kind, such as some review within the military itself (like the status tribunals now under way at Guantanamo), those rights can be enforced only by action of Congress and the Executive Branch, not the courts. He noted the possibility of military courts-martial if members of the U.S. military torture any detainees.
