Category Archives: Law

Remember Meredith Kercher

Crime, Europe, Justice, Law, Media, Science

The country’s national media, left and right, have once again galvanized in defense of “America’s Angelic O.J,” Amanda Knox. The same media mafia has, again, thronged to put the Italian judicial system on trial for railroading their cherub.

The reason? Via CNN:

“This is the second time an Italian court has convicted the former American exchange student of murder. Knox and her ex-boyfriend, Rafael Sollecito, were both found guilty of killing Knox’s roommate, Meredith Kercher, in 2009.”

Agitating for Amanda in years past “were mass murderer Hilary Clinton, corrupt King County Superior Court Judge Michael Heavey—he abused his office (my state; my taxes) to petition members of the Italian judiciary on behalf of Knox, in violation of Washington state’s Code of Judicial Conduct—Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell (she misspells her surname), ubiquitous tele-attorney Anne Bremner, public relations adviser David Marriott, and ’48 Hours’ correspondent Peter Van Sant, who had abandoned impartiality for outright advocacy.”

Said Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz:

Knox’s looks and public support may help her. “As popular as she is here and as pretty as she is here — because that’s what this is all about, if she was not an attractive woman, we wouldn’t have the group love-in — she will be extradited if it’s upheld.

“The Italian legal system, though I don’t love it, is a legitimate legal system and we have a treaty with Italy so I don’t see how we would resist,” he told AFP.

“We’re trying to get (fugitive NSA leaker Edward) Snowden back — how does it look if we want Snowden back and we won’t return someone for murder?” he asked.

Dershowitz told CNN last March that, even if Knox avoids extradition, “she remains a prisoner in the United States, because Interpol will put a warrant out for her and, if she travels anywhere outside the United States, she’ll be immediately arrested and turned over to Italy.”

And former homicide prosecutor, Paul Callan:

I don’t have a personal opinion on this, but I do have the opinion that we have an obligation to respect of the Italian system and they heard all of the evidence in this case. You know, the one name we haven’t heard is Meredith Kercher. She was a young woman in her 20s, stabbed 40 times and that’s why British public opinion and Italian public opinion is anti-Amanda Knox.

What is the case against her? One, the Italians says she confessed to the crime. Then she recanted the confession, but she also wrote it out in addition to orally confessing to the crime. They said that her DNA is linked to the murder. It’s on the murder weapon. They say that her DNA was found mix would Meredith Kercher’s blood at the apartment. Then they say she acted totally inappropriately after the murder.

she and her boyfriend were making out in the area that they were being held while questioning was going on. Now, this, while Meredith Kercher her best friend and roommate lies stabbed to death. So everyone thought inappropriate conduct. Now let me add one other thing the Italians say. They say that Sollecito [was] her alibi. The alibi was that they were together at the time of the murder. However, when they interviewed him first, his alibi was different than her alibi.

BURNETT: So, stories didn’t match up.

CALLAN: The stories didn’t match up. So they say false alibi, DNA, inappropriate behaviour and she confessed to the crime. How can you ridicule the Italians for convicting on that evidence?

Of course you can. “Another of our media’s collective moos was that, not being American, Italian justice was simply backward.”:

… Five spots of blood were harvested from the apartment where Meredith Kircher was murdered. More key forensic evidence against Knox included her footprint in blood outside Kercher’s room. Traces of Knox’s DNA and Kercher’s blood commingled on the fixtures in the bathroom the girls shared, “on doorjambs and walls,” to be precise. And a knife found in Sollecito’s apartment bore Knox’s DNA on the handle and Kercher’s DNA in a groove on the blade.

MORE.

UPDATE II: Conned About Marriage, Constitution And ‘States’ Rights’ (Constitution’s About Process)

Conservatism, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Gender, Homosexuality, Law, The Courts

“Conned About Marriage, Constitution And ‘States’ Rights'” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

The ban on the ban is unconstitutional.

This was the gist of broadcaster Mark Levin’s angry tirade against the humdrum, and certainly predicable, decision of a federal judge to strike down “Oklahoma’s voter-approved ban” on gay marriage.

At the center of conservative contretemps are similar decisions in California, New Mexico and Utah, following on which U.S. District Judge Terence Kern had “determined that Oklahoma’s constitutional amendment” violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. It stipulates that “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Broadly speaking, WND’s Alan Keyes concurred with Levin, alluding to the Constitution’s 10th and Ninth Amendments by which “the judges and justices of the federal judiciary are forbidden to … deny the antecedent rights retained by the people.”

Indeed, “the prevailing view in 1791,” observed The Honorable Robert T. Donnelly, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of the state of Missouri, “was that the national government had only delegated powers and that reserved to the people was an undefined sphere of non-government within which people may not be interfered with by government.”

But that was then.

In voiding “voter-approved law,” Justice Kern has resorted to perfectly proper 14th Amendment judicial activism. Deploying the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, Kern nullified the 10th. It specifies that, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

As expressed in the once-impregnable 10th Amendment, the Constitution’s federal scheme has long since been obliterated by the 14th Amendment and the attendant Incorporation Doctrine.

What does this mean?

If the Bill of Rights was intended to place strict limits on federal power and protect individual and locality from the national government—the 14th Amendment effectively defeated that purpose by placing the power to enforce the Bill of Rights in federal hands, where it was never intended to be. …

… Either way, the freedoms afforded by federalism are no longer because American federalism is no longer. …

… Conservatives as astute as Mr. Levin, Esq., ought to quit misleading their readers and listeners about the restoration of a constitutional structure that has suffered death by a thousand cuts, long before the dreadful cur Obama appeared on the scene. …

Read the complete column. “Conned About Marriage, Constitution And ‘States’ Rights'” is now on WND.

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UPDATED I (1/24): American constitutional federalism is about process, rather than what law you like or don’t. The process is clear. The Courts were never meant to tell people how to run their homes and communities. It’s a column I’ve been wanting to write for a while. It’s quite disturbing how little people understand about a structure/scheme that is no longer and that was intended to protect liberty. The 14th is a real problem, as it killed the 10th.

UPDATE II: Facebook thread:

Todd Frank: The post-civil war Republicans did not think several things through when they drafted the 14th amendment. That said, there still has to be some sort of remedy when states themselves trample on the rights of the individual short of giving the US government carte-blanche to do whatever they want to us.

Ilana Mercer : Todd Frank, you make a good point. But just about every state had itself a constitution with a bill of rights.

The Sweet Sounds of Secession

Constitution, Homosexuality, Law, States' Rights, The State

Contra broadcaster Mark Levin, the healthiest and most intuitive response to deep-seated unhappiness—political or personal—is not to hold a constitutional convention, but to leave; to exit the abusive relationship.

In Utah, it was U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby who did the honors of striking down “Utah’s voter-approved law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.”

In response, a “constitutional attorney” named Joe Wolverton spoke stirringly about secession:

The federal government does hundreds of things every day that are not in the “contract,” so states have the right to rescind it, he said.

“We are absolutely within our right to secede from a political union that no longer answers to the demands of liberty and justice,” he said.

Wolverton also went after elected officials who he says have betrayed the country.

“Have we elected traitors? Yes we have, absolutely. Both parties continue to grow the federal government and burden the states and the people.”

Mark Levin has trashed secession but looks to the states for salvation:

To reclaim the republic, Levin and his listeners look to the states and their role in the amendment process, as stipulated in Article V of the Constitution. Never mind that the states, contrary to the mistaken predictions and hopes of the Constitution makers, have never initiated a constitutional amendment; and never mind that even in the event that the states demand a constitutional convention, there is no mechanism to compel Congress to act.

The great constitutional scholar James McClellan was no “neo-confederate.” Yet even an ardent defender of the Constitution as McClellan conceded that, sadly, “the Framers relied on the good faith of Congress for the observance of the requirement” and that “there was no way to force Congress to act.” (“Liberty, Order, And Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government,” p. 310.)

Levin and his listeners are deluded if they think that from the “free” states—all four of them (New Hampshire, Colorado, South Dakota and Alaska)—will come our salvation. The legislatures of two-thirds of the states have to unite to call on Congress to hold a national Constitutional convention for the purpose of amending the dead-letter Constitution.

Incidentally, as a libertarian, I want to keep the state out of marriage altogether. “In furtherance of liberty, Uncle Sam’s purview must be curtailed, not expanded. On this score, let our gay friends and family members lead the way. Let them solemnize their commitment in contract and through church, synagogue and mosque (that will be the day!).”

UPDATED: Liars at Labor (40,000 New Reasons For More Joblessness)

Economy, Labor, Law, Regulation

As a more realistic index of unemployment, we’ve always reported the U-6 unemployment index, which includes the unemployed and people who would like to work but who have not looked for a job recently, as well as those involuntarily working part-time. But at 13.1 percent, the U-6 is overly optimistic. The “actual unemployment rate is 37.2 percent.”

Via Washington Examiner:

David John Marotta calculates the actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2 percent, not the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government.

Marotta, who recently advised those worried about an imploding economy to get a gun, said that the government isn’t being honest in how it calculates those out of the workforce or inflation, the two numbers used to get the Misery Index figure.
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“The unemployment rate only describes people who are currently working or looking for work,” he said. That leaves out a ton more.

“Unemployment in its truest definition, meaning the portion of people who do not have any job, is 37.2 percent. This number obviously includes some people who are not or never plan to seek employment. But it does describe how many people are not able to, do not want to or cannot find a way to work. Policies that remove the barriers to employment, thus decreasing this number, are obviously beneficial,” he and colleague Megan Russell in their new investors note from their offices in Charlottesville, Va.

MORE.

UPDATE: Here are 40,000 new reasons for more unemployment. These lousy laws will also make you an outlaw, if violated.