Prediction: DOMA and Prop 8

May as well go on record predicting the outcome of the same sex marriage cases:  The Court in Hollingsworth v. Perry  will dismiss the challenge to Proposition  8 on standing grounds, leaving gay marriage in place in California.  In Windsor v. United States it will strike down DOMA on full faith and credit clause grounds, leaving same sex marriage up to the states.  Justices Scalia and Ginsburg will be in the majority in both cases. - GWC

Supreme Court Amends First Amendment

Supreme Court Amends First Amendment - Lyle Denniston reports

No person shall engage in a demonstration within the Supreme Court building and grounds. The term “demonstration” includes demonstrations, picketing, speechmaking, marching, holding vigils or religious services and all other like forms of conduct that involve the communication or expression of views or grievances, engaged in by one or more persons, the conduct of which is reasonably likely to draw a crowd or onlookers. The term does not include casual use by visitors or tourists that is not reasonably likely to attract a crowd or onlookers.

Approved and Effective June 13, 2013
Supreme Court of the United States

AMENDMENT I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

1789

Libertarianism's Achilles' Heel | E.J. Dionne | Commonweal Magazine

Murray Rothbard's call to arms

Libertarianism's failings will never be recognized by its proponents because it never has been and never wlll be tried.  They (and here I mean the usual pantheon from Murray Rothbard to Robert Nozick to the legal academy's Richard Epstein) are free to propound their rationalist, contractarian utopia.  The practical consequence is that they are always against all social welfare measures - Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, etc.  That government  is best which governs least, etc.  But as E.J. Dionne asks - isn't the absence of libertarian government anywhere proof of its impracticality? - gwc
Libertarianism's Achilles' Heel | Commonweal Magazine:
by E.J. Dionne

We had something close to a small government libertarian utopia in the late 19th century and we decided it didn't work. We realized that many Americans would never be able to save enough for retirement and, later, that most of them would be unable to afford health insurance when they were old. Smaller government meant that too many people were poor and that monopolies were formed too easily.
And when the Great Depression engulfed us, government was helpless, largely handcuffed by this anti-government ideology until Franklin D. Roosevelt came along.
In fact, as Michael Lind points out, most countries that we typically see as "free" and prosperous have governments that consume around 40 percent of their GDP. They are better off for it. "Libertarians," he writes, "seem to have persuaded themselves that there is no significant trade-off between less government and more national insecurity, more crime, more illiteracy and more infant and maternal mortality ... ."
This matters to our current politics because too many politicians are making decisions on the basis of a grand, utopian theory that they never can -- or will -- put into practice. They then use this theory to avoid a candid conversation about the messy choices governance requires. And this is why we have gridlock.

'via Blog this'

Edward Snowden - The Coming Out Interview with Glenn Greenwald - The Guardian

Edward Snowden says that it is not the government's right to decide what should be secret - it should be the public's decision.  But he has decided that he is the surrogate for the public.  He recognizes that "if they want to get you eventually they will".  Here is his `coming out' interview with the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald. - GWC

Trending on weibo 习近平和奥巴马 - 微博

Obama and Xi Jinping channeling Poo Bear and Tigger

A Conservative Case for Prison Reform - NYTimes.com

Richard Viguerie has long been an architect of the conservative movement.   In the past thirty years politicians competed to be tougher on crime.  A racist undertone was often apparent - leading to New York's massive stop and frisk program.  Now Viguerie, like a growing number of conservatives (whose distrust of government I generally find to be excessive in its individualism and lacking in compassion)  has come to doubt our reliance on incarceration.  See, for example the blog Right on Crime.  In an Op-Ed piece in today's Times he recognizes the cruelty, and ineffectiveness of the war on drugs, and our reliance on incarceration at a rate unmatched anywhere else in the world.    - GWC

A Conservative Case for Prison Reform - NYTimes.com:
by Richard Viguerie

MANASSAS, Va. — CONSERVATIVES should recognize that the entire criminal justice system is another government spending program fraught with the issues that plague all government programs. Criminal justice should be subject to the same level of skepticism and scrutiny that we apply to any other government program.

These three principles — public safety, compassion and controlled government spending — lie at the core of conservative philosophy. Politically speaking, conservatives will have more credibility than liberals in addressing prison reform.

The United States now has 5 percent of the world’s population, yet 25 percent of its prisoners. Nearly one in every 33 American adults is in some form of correctional control. When Ronald Reagan was president, the total correctional control rate — everyone in prison or jail or on probation or parole — was less than half that: 1 in every 77 adults.

But it’s not just the excessive and unwise spending that offends conservative values. Prisons, for example, are harmful to prisoners and their families. Reform is therefore also an issue of compassion. The current system often turns out prisoners who are more harmful to society than when they went in, so prison and re-entry reform are issues of public safety as well.

'via Blog this'

A step forward for mentally impaired facing deportation - NJLJ Editorial Board

The New Jersey Law Journal Editorial Board has commended the recent decision by federal District Judge Dolly M. Gee, in an ACLU-sponsored class action,  to require assistance to the mentally incompetent who face deportation.  That assistance may be by lawyers, law students, or otherwise qualified representatives from a social service organization.  It is a step forward. - GWC

A Reasonable Accommodation

We are moving, if fitfully, toward a national consensus that we must find an orderly way to deal with the millions of immigrants who came here illegally, overstayed visas or are subject to deportation as punishment for a crime. Each year, hundreds of thousands are deported, a consequence that for many is far more severe than that provided by criminal laws. Fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright mandated counsel for those charged with a crime and who cannot afford a lawyer. Today, there is a crisis of representation due to the unavailability of counsel for huge numbers of aliens facing removal from the country.

A recent federal decision, certifying a class of mentally disabled immigrant detainees held in custody without counsel, is a step in the right direction. In Franco-Gonzalez v. Holder, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California held that the Rehabilitation Act, which bars discrimination by executive agencies, compels the Department of Justice's Executive Office of Immigration Review to provide class members with a "qualified representative" as a reasonable accommodation of disability.

After the district court ruling, the Department of Justice promptly announced that the EOIR will make qualified representatives available to unrepresented detainees who are deemed mentally incompetent to represent themselves in immigration proceedings. In addition, detainees identified as having serious mental disorders or conditions that may render them mentally incompetent to represent themselves, and who have been held in immigration detention for at least six months, will be afforded bond hearings.

John Judis - NSA snooping scandal reveals our Constitutional amnesia | New Republic

John Judis - a long time social democratic activist -  is skeptical about the President's assurances on the NSA surveillance programs.  He was editor of Radical America - a very sensible journal of the 60's and 70's.  Now with the New Republic, he is a well-regarded editor/commentator. As one with an FBI file of his own, I share Judis's  doubts. - gwc

NSA snooping scandal reveals our Constitutional amnesia | New Republic:
by John Judis

President Barack Obama has assured us that we need not be worried about the National Security Agency listening to our phone calls or monitoring our Internet use. The NSA’s programs, he said, represent “modest encroachments on privacy” that are “worth us doing” to protect the country from terrorists. Count me among those who are not reassured by Obama’s statement. I know better—from my schoolboy knowledge of the Constitution and from my own experience during the '60s with unwarranted government surveillance.   I don’t usually like to base moral judgments on what the Constitution does or does not allow, but in this case, it makes sense to do so. 

h/t TPM
    'via Blog this'

David Simon | We are shocked, shocked…

It's not just because I am a loyal fan of Person of Interest that I am not shocked and outraged by the report about NSA searches of phone records.
- GWC
David Simon | We are shocked, shocked…:

Is it just me or does the entire news media — as well as all the agitators and self-righteous bloviators on both sides of the aisle — not understand even the rudiments of electronic intercepts and the manner in which law enforcement actually uses such intercepts? It would seem so.
–
Because the national eruption over the rather inevitable and understandable collection of all raw data involving telephonic and internet traffic by Americans would suggest that much of our political commentariat, many of our news gatherers and a lot of average folk are entirely without a clue.

You would think that the government was listening in to the secrets of 200 million Americans from the reaction and the hyperbole being tossed about. And you would think that rather than a legal court order which is an inevitable consequence of legislation that we drafted and passed, something illegal had been discovered to the government’s shame.

Nope. Nothing of the kind. Though apparently, the U.K.’s Guardian, which broke this faux-scandal, is unrelenting in its desire to scale the heights of self-congratulatory hyperbole. Consider this from Glenn Greenwald, the author of the piece: “What this court order does that makes it so striking is that it’s not directed at any individual…it’s collecting the phone records of every single customer of Verizon business and finding out every single call they’ve made…it’s indiscriminate and it’s sweeping.”

'via Blog this'

Why Many Retirees Could Outlive a $1 Million Nest Egg - NYTimes.com

For the last forty years, the Republican lament is that wages are too high - especially teachers.  They chipped away at the unions, at pensions, at health insurance.  They got their wish - and then the 2008 crisis exposed that the housing bubble gave only the illusion of home equity.  - GWC
Why Many Retirees Could Outlive a $1 Million Nest Egg - NYTimes.com:

 MILLION dollars isn’t what it used to be.

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In 1953, when “How to Marry a Millionaire” was in movie theaters, $1 million bought the equivalent of $8.7 million today. Now $1 million won’t even buy an average Manhattan apartment or come remotely close to paying theaverage salary of an N.B.A. basketball player.

Still, $1 million is more money than 9 in 10 American families possess. It may no longer be a symbol of boundless wealth, but as aretirement nest egg, $1 million is relatively big. It may seem like a lot to live on.

But in many ways, it’s not.

Inflation isn’t the only thing that’s whittled down the $1 million. The topsy-turvy world of today’s financial markets — particularly, the still-ultralow interest rates in the bond market — is upending what many people thought they understood about how to pay for life after work.

'via Blog this'

PRISM: 'I Cannot Figure Out Why This Was Classified to Begin With' - James Fallows - The Atlantic

Are Guardian reporter Glenn Greeenwald's NSA  disclosures really Daniel  Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers redux?

'I Cannot Figure Out Why This Was Classified to Begin With' - James Fallows - The Atlantic:
quoting Fred Kaplan's interview with Brian Jenkins of RAND about the NASA PRISM electronic surveillance program:

"I cannot figure out why this was classified to begin with. It should have been in the public domain all along. The fact is, terrorists know we're watching their communications. Well, some of them, it seems, are idiots, but if they were all idiots, we wouldn't need a program like this. The sophisticated ones, the ones we're worried about, they know this. There are debates we can have in public without really giving away sensitive collection secrets. It's a risk, but these are issues that affect all of us and our way of life."

'via Blog this'

Strategy or Tactic? New York Attorney Malpractice Blog

Legal Malpractice Attorney & Lawyer : New York Attorney Malpractice Blog : New York City, Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, Bronx, NYC, Queens:

By Andrew Lavoott Bluestone
Judgment calls are exempt from legal malpractice consideration. Put another way, an attorney may not be held for legal malpractice on the basis of a reasonable trial strategy even when unsuccessful. But, what is a trial strategy and what is a departure from good standards? Often the difference is in the eye of the beholder, or in a slightly more objective sense, when it is reasonable. Today, we use a criminal case, in a different setting. Here, the question is whether there was ineffective assistance of counsel.

In People v Oliveras [June 6, 2013 Court of Appeals - Rivera, J.] the question of trial strategy v. ineffective assistance concerned the mental status of the defendant and whether the attorney reasonably refused to seek his psychiatric records.

"After several requests to review the evidence and for a clarification on Miranda, the jury found defendant guilty of murder in the second degree. The court sentenced him to 25 years to life.

Defendant moved to vacate the conviction

"This is not simply a case of a failed trial strategy(see Baldi, 54 NY2d at 146 ["trial tactics which terminate unsuccessfully do not automatically indicate ineffectiveness"]). Rather, this is a case of a lawyer's failure to pursue the minimal investigation required under the circumstances. Given that the People's case rested almost entirely on defendant's inculpatory statements, trial counsel's ability to undermine the voluntariness of those statements was crucial. The strategy to present defendant's mental capacity and susceptibility to police interrogation could only be fully developed after counsel's investigation of the facts and law, which required review of records that would reveal and explain defendant's mental illness history, and defendant's diagnosis supporting his receipt of federal SSI benefits."
'via Blog this'

Peter Steinfels: Rethinking the abortion debate

by Peter Steinfels

Co-director Fordham  Center on Law and Culture

Beyond the stalemate - Roe at Forty Years - Commonweal

MY OWN REEXAMINATION OF the Catholic stance on abortion begins with two simple statements and then attempts to determine what conclusions and practical proposals might flow from them.

First statement: From the very earliest stages of its life, the unborn offspring of human beings constitutes an individual member of the human species deserving the same protections from harm and destruction owed to born humans.

Second statement: This conviction, taught by the Catholic Church and shared by many people, religious and non-religious, is nowhere near as obvious as many of us who hold it suppose.

Let me say just a word about how the first of those two convictions relates to my religious faith.

Fertilization, a remarkable process involving the union of twenty-three chromosomes from each parent, creates a new, unique, individual member of the human species, a physically dependent but genetically distinct and self-directing organism. That is a scientific fact, not one dependent on faith or religious teaching. However, to say that such an individual human life, from the completion of fertilization or at any later stage, including adolescence, deserves the full protection afforded individual humans generally is a moral claim, one informed by science but not dictated by it.

That moral claim is made by the moral tradition and community to which I belong, the Catholic Church. Since my Catholicism has been a matter of lifelong commitment, critical reflection, spiritual experience, and regular practice, its teaching is obviously important to me. By no means, however, is that the single basis on which I affirm that claim about unborn life. Like any other historically aware Catholic, I know that there are issues about which my moral tradition and community, in a history of many centuries, right up to the last, have been seriously, even shockingly, in error. 

Furthermore, growing up Catholic I did not hear priests rail against abortion. To the contrary, given the reticence, perhaps I should say prudery, of that environment, the subject was seldom mentioned. On the rare occasions when it was mentioned, abortion was certainly assumed to be a grave wrong. So were many other things mentioned far more often. One of them, for example, was contraception, about which I later concluded that the hierarchy’s continuing condemnation was a tragic and self-destructive error.

Andrew Greeley - Loving Pugilist | Commonweal Magazine

Another admiring obit for Father Andrew Greeley, by E.J. Dionne, the ubiquitous liberal Catholic political commentator. - GWC
Loving Pugilist | Commonweal Magazine:

You wanted Father Andrew Greeley as your friend and not your enemy. You got the sense he was born with his fists up and his loyalties fully formed. He was ready to do battle at the first signs of disrespect toward those he cared about.

Understanding Greeley, the priest, sociologist, and novelist who died last week at 85, is essential to understanding the last half-century of American Catholic history and the glorious contradictions of politics.'via Blog this'

Robot translations

Mr. China - Liam Casey

We expect computers to sound like R2D2 or Trekkies.  But they're not ready for that.  Here is a translation from Chinese to English to Chinese and then back to English. h/t James Fallows

 TechCrunch

Mr. China Goes to San Francisco," with gracious references to the ongoing Atlantic chronicles of the activities of Mr. China. It also explains Casey's current ambitions for the center, and in general:

A teetotaling Irishman, the inexhaustible Casey ostensibly lives in a hotel [JF: the Four Points Sheraton] in downtown Shenzhen but is nearly always in the air. He and his cross-cultural team make nearly all the accessories you can imagine for multiple vendors. You couldn't point a finger in a Best Buy without hitting a product PCH builds.
He envisions his new building as a gateway to China and a way to help clients - and the public - understand the vagaries of mass manufacturing.

Vote in Albany on Changing Retirement Ages for Judges - NYTimes.com

New York's Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman is nearing 70

Judges in New York now have hope of postponing their retirement to age 80.   In New Jersey the state constitution sets 70 as mandatory retirement age for judges.  It helps assure a flow of new blood.  That means nominees picked by the current Governor with the consent of the majority party in the Legislature.  For the past 60 years that has meant choices between moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats.  

When he was elected three years ago Chris Christie declared his intention to remake the state's "liberal" Supreme Court and others in a judiciary who had run afoul of his own views on school funding, open housing, budget cutting etc.  A partisan standoff resulted.  Debate on judicial retirement age ceased being a calculation of the point of declining energy and competence.  It became a debate on spurring or retarding ideological change in the judiciary.   Judicial politics in new Jersey came to resemble the federal government - where Republicans seek to block any attempt by President Obama to remake the federal judiciary (which has life tenure).

At the New Jersey Law Journal Editorial Board we have called for raising the age to 75, a vote, some would say, in favor of prolonging the consensus of the past several decades.  

- GWC

Vote in Albany on Changing Retirement Ages for Judges - NYTimes.com: by Jesse McKinley"ALBANY — At 74, Justice Sidney F. Strauss loves his job and has no desire to stop working. But at the end of 2014, he may be forced into his golden years by a mandatory retirement rule"...Each year, judges across New York and the rest of the country grudgingly hang up their robes because of these rules, many of which were inscribed in state constitutions well before the eras of penicillin, cholesterol drugs and hip replacements. More than 30 states and the District of Columbia have an age limit on jurists, according to the National Center for State Courts: 70 is the limit in many states, but in Vermont, it is an optimistic 90.

In New York, judges have to retire at either 70 or 76, depending on their courts. But this year, a reprieve seems possible.
'via Blog this'

WSJ: Totalitarians impose free bike program

Dorothy Rabinowitz, Editorial Board member at the Wall Street Journal, is shocked by the totalitarian free bike program.  She is aided by a fawning reporter.  This is NOT a piece by the Onion.

FRBSF Economic Letter: Fiscal Headwinds: Is the Other Shoe About to Drop? (2013-16, 6/3/2013)

The right - and I mean to define that so broadly as to include a substantial part of the Democratic elite e.g. Erskine Bowles - isn't really pro-growth.  They are anti-tax and that means cut anything that doesn't go to them.  This letter from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco explains how the austerity process hurts us. - GWC

FRBSF Economic Letter: Fiscal Headwinds: Is the Other Shoe About to Drop? (2013-16, 6/3/2013):

The current recovery has been disappointingly weak compared with past U.S. economic recoveries. Researchers and policymakers have pointed to a number of potential causes for this unusual weakness, including contractionary fiscal policy. For example, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen (2013) argues that three tailwinds that typically help drive strong recoveries—investment in housing, consumer confidence, and discretionary fiscal policy—have been absent or turned into headwinds this time.

'via Blog this'

Blacks Are Singled Out for Marijuana Arrests, Federal Data Suggests - NYTimes.com

White people can spit out the phrase "drug-infested Black neighborhood" in a single breath.  Odd that drug use is actually no higher in Black neighborhoods, and cigarette smoking rates are lower.  But never mind - we know better.  Except of course that we don't.  We do know that police stop, frisk, and jail Black men at a greater rate than we stop, search, arrest, and incarcerate white men. - GWC

Blacks Are Singled Out for Marijuana Arrests, Federal Data Suggests - NYTimes.com: '

by Ian Urbina

WASHINGTON — Black Americans were nearly four times as likely than whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates, according to new federal data.

This disparity had grown steadily from a decade before, and in some states, including Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, blacks were around eight times as likely to be arrested.

During the same period, public attitudes toward marijuana softened and a number of states decriminalized its use. But about half of all drug arrests in 2011 were on marijuana-related charges, roughly the same portion as in 2010.

via Blog this'

Legal Ethics Forum: Do You Know When Your Attorney-Client Relationships Are Over?

Legal Ethics Forum: Do You Know When Your Attorney-Client Relationships Are Over?:

by Nicole Hyland
Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz PC

Do You Know When Your Attorney-Client Relationships Are Over?

The English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy once wrote “The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.”  This observation, which Galsworthy applied to “the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge” and “the finish of a voyage,” could also describe many attorney-client relationships.  In the best of all possible worlds, such relationships start with a well-drafted retainer agreement, duly executed after an appropriate conflict-checking process; when they end, they do so with a happy client and a zero A/R balance.  Most of the time, however, lawyers neither live nor practice in the best of all possible worlds. 

The “untidiness” problem can be particularly challenging when it comes to figuring out when an attorney-client relationship ends.  Yet, pinpointing the end of the relationship is critical for at least two reasons.  First, it distinguishes between a “current” client and a “former” client for conflicts purposes.  Since conflicts with current clients are subject to a much higher standard and – in some cases – are unwaivable, knowing whether someone is a former or current client is essential to getting the conflict analysis right.  Second, it cuts off the “continuous representation” tolling period, which is necessary in many legal malpractice cases to calculate the statute of limitations.  Although the limitation period is three years from the act of malpractice, that period may be tolled while the attorney continues to represent the client in the same matter. 

'via Blog this'

NJ Supreme Court Standoff: Democrats don't budge on Christie nominees as two more vacancies loom

New Jersey's famously combative Governor Chris Christie, and the state's Democratic legislative majority continue their standoff.  Despite two vacancies on the state's high court the Senate President Stephen Sweeney refuses to schedule hearings on the Governor's two nominees.

The battle began when Christie broke a fifty year tradition when on ideological grounds he refused to nominate for tenure John Wallace - who was two years from the constitutional retirement age of seventy. In the coming year two more justices initial terms end - one is the Chief Justice Stuart Rabner.
The New Jersey Law Journal editorial board this week strongly backed Associate Justice Barry Albin's `call to arms'  to the bar to support judicial independence: here the tradition of non-political renomination.  

In a second piece 'Two wrongs..."  the Board criticizes the Senate Democrats' refusal to schedule hearings for the two vacancies on the court, which are filled by temporary assignment of the most senior Appellate Division judges. The editorial asks rhetorically

So why is Senate president Steve Sweeney saying we should wait until after the November elections? Perhaps some who support Sweeney's strategy claim that since Christie has essentially declared his intention to reshape the court, to undo such judicial decisions as the Abbott v. Burke school funding ruling, the confirmation process has become just another part of the ideological battle, as it has long been in Washington.

For fifty years - since the landmark product liability case Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, the New Jersey  Supreme Court and judiciary have operated in a center-left milieu.  Christie vowed to break that egg.  I am among those who take him at his word.

Senate President Sweeney has said they will address the pending Hanna and Baumann nominations after the November elections: when both he and Christie will presumably remain in place.  Looming then will be expiration of the seven year term of Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, a moderate Democrat.   Christie's decision then: to nominate the Rabner for tenure or not will be the overriding issue.  

Stuart Rabner

Helen Hoens

In his presumptive two terms Chris Christie will have the chance top name five members of the state's Supreme Court - transforming its jurisprudence to his liking.  His next opportunity comes in October - the term expiration of Helen Hoens, a generally conservative voice on the court.  
Next June Chief Justice Rabner's probationary term expires.  No Chief Justice has been denied tenure since the current court was created by the New Jersey Constitution of 1949, an event that in modern New Jersey political-legal history has assumed mythic proportions.  
No choice Christie faces will be more consequential for his state than the Rabner decision.  That will determine the direction of New Jersey law and politics for a generation. (Rabner is seventeen years from retirement age.)  And it will be a critical moment for Christie, who must choose between his Bruce Springsteen angel and his Tea party sirens.  His predecessors - Thomas Kean and Christine Whitman shared Republican antipathy for higher taxes but otherwise broke little glass.

Fr. Andrew Greeley, sociologist and priest-novelist, dies at 85 | National Catholic Reporter

Fr. Andrew Greeley, sociologist and priest-novelist, dies at 85 | National Catholic Reporter:

by John L. Allen

The progressive Catholic values of the 1960s informed Greeley's approach, both to secular politics and to the church. Over the years, he supported ordaining married men and women as priests, attacked what he saw as the inflated power of the Vatican, and railed against what he termed the "original sin" of clerical culture: envy. He was no less a lefty in secular terms; his last nonfiction book was titled A Stupid, Unjust and Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007.

Yet Greeley was very much his own man, unafraid to skewer nostrums of the left just as much as those of the right. He was critical of liberation theology ("It was a terrible mistake to get in bed with Marxism"), some strains of feminism ("If you define reality as a class conflict between men and women, you'll never get out of it unless men surrender"), and Catholic pacifists such as Jesuit Fr. Daniel Berrigan ("We're still friends, but I completely disagreed with his tactics during the war"). He repeatedly asserted that anti-Catholicism remained one of the few fashionable prejudices left in America.

Though Greeley denounced clerical sex abuse as early as the mid-1980s, he was also fiercely critical of what he saw as exaggerated criticism of the church from some organized victims' groups. He asserted in 2002 that these activists "probably would not be satisfied if the Vatican had mandated castration for every priest in the nation."

Prominent among Greeley's passions was his love affair with his own hometown. He was a classic example of what Chicagoans call a "lifer," meaning someone who might travel far and wide, but who never felt at home anywhere other than the Windy City. Greeley was an avid fan of the Bulls, Bears and Cubs, and his trademark literary creation, Blackie Ryan, typically sported a Chicago Bulls windbreaker.

At the end of the day, Greeley saw his wide-ranging literary endeavors as a service to the church, whether Catholic officialdom was always prepared to see it that way or not.
'via Blog this'

Andrew Greeley, Outspoken Priest and Writer, Dies at 85 - NYTimes.com

Andrew Greeley, Outspoken Priest and Writer, Dies at 85 - NYTimes.com:

by Peter Steinfels

“I suppose I have an Irish weakness for words gone wild,” Father Greeley once told The Times. “Besides, if you’re celibate, you have to do something.”

No Use for Elites

His ten best selling novels made him rich, though he gave his first million to charity and continued to give to various causes, including a donation, decades ago, to the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, then a fledgling advocacy group.

Father Greeley had been an early and vehement advocate for victims of abusive priests at least since 1989, when he began writing articles in Chicago newspapers demanding that the church take action against pedophile priests. The public criticism angered the archdiocese and many fellow priests, but his outrage and proposals for reform were eventually recognized by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, among others, as prescient.

Father Greeley was not shy about his politics, a New Deal liberalism grounded in an acute sense of family and neighborhood. (One of his recent books was titled with typical directness, “A Stupid, Unjust and Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007.”) Nor did he hide his devotion to his hometown Chicago Bears, Bulls and Cubs.

'via Blog this'

Peoples Electric - Engaged Legal Education at Rutgers-Newark Law School in the '60's and '70's

Peoples Electric - Engaged Legal Education at Rutgers-Newark in the '60's and '70's

by George W. Conk 

Fordham Law School

Fordham Urban Law Journal, Vol. 40, No. 503, 2012
(download from SSRN - registration is free and it is spam-free}
Abstract:      
Rutgers-Newark Law School was the most innovative, exciting, and effective law school in America in the 1960's and 1970's. Civil rights and liberties, 'poverty law', women's rights, employment discrimination, open housing, and public education were the foci of legal education at Rutgers - the State University of New Jersey. In those two decades Rutgers-Newark - which we affectionately called People's Electric - developed a model of engaged legal education that was and is unique.

No other law school of its era - and perhaps since - to my knowledge - has been so thoroughly characterized by a broad progressive social agenda. Affirmative action, racial justice, women’s rights, public education, open housing, and civil liberties were the focus of the frequently landmark litigation which originated or was substantially aided by students and faculty from Rutgers Newark.

The unique activism of Rutgers-Newark - a small public law school in an afflicted city - had a huge impact in the development of the law. The activist faculty and the clinics engaged law students deeply in innovative and intense litigation regarding the most important and controversial issues of the day. Students at People’s Electric learned first-hand the law-making function of the courts. They often helped make that law.

No other law school in the country can begin to match its record in the 1970's. This was accomplished without endowment, without a base of high ranking or wealthy alumni, without a tradition of such activism at the school, a public law school whose tuition was nominal. Students learned from extraordinarily talented lawyers who they assisted. Their successes showed students how to succeed by really trying. We left Rutgers confident that we knew how to and could change the law, confident that we could make a difference.

Graduates continued the mission in many ways. One outstanding example is the cadre who joined the Office of the Public Defender - a statewide agency - which led or participated in the defense of over two hundred capital trials from 1982-2007 when the death penalty was repealed and replaced with life without parole. There were no executions.

Yes we can - straight call on D.C. Circuit nominations by the Times

Credit where credit is due.  James Fallows lauds the Times for "avoiding false equivalence" in  its presentation of the news that President Obama is finally going to confront Republican obstructionism on the(now three) vacancies on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.  It is the staging area for Supreme Court justices in waiting. - GWC

PD's may refuse cases due to excess workload - Florida Supreme Court

In Public Defender v. State of Florida the state's Supreme Court granted certification of the following question, submitted by the 11th District Public Defender (Miami-Dade):

Whether section 27.5303(1)(d), Florida Statutes (2007), which prohibits a trial court from granting a motion for withdrawal by a public defender based on “conflicts arising from underfunding, excessive caseload or the prospective inability to adequately represent a client,” is unconstitutional as a violation of an indigent client’s right to effective assistance of counsel and access to the courts, and a violation of the separation of powers mandated by Article II, section 3 of the Florida Constitution as legislative interference with the  judiciary’s inherent authority to provide counsel and the Supreme Court’s exclusive control over the ethical rules governing lawyer conflicts of interest? [emph. added]

The Third District also certified a question regarding the constitutionality of section 27.5303(1)(d), which provides that “[i]n no case shall the court approve a withdrawal by the public defender . . . based solely on the inadequacy of funding or excess workload.” See Bowens, 39 So. 3d at 481.

The Court has now spoken and the answer is YES the statute is constitutional on its face, but perhaps not as applied.  Withdrawal may be permitted - in appropriate cases which will have to meet Strickland v. Washington standards of ineffective assistance of counsel under the 6th Amendment's guarantee of a fair trial in a genuine adversary proceeding:

Thus, we find the statute to be facially constitutional and answer the certified question in the negative. However, the statute should not be applied to preclude a public defender from filing a motion to withdraw based on excessive caseload or underfunding that would result in ineffective representation of indigent defendants nor to preclude a trial court from granting a motion to withdraw under those circumstances."

Black and White and Red All Over - By Scott Atran | Foreign Policy

Black and White and Red All Over - By Scott Atran | Foreign Policy: ""Americans refuse to be terrorized," declared President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. "Ultimately, that's what we'll remember from this week." Believe that, and I've got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn." 'via Blog this'

Human rights in China : The Lancet

Shanghai's shopping street
Nanjing East Rd.

Human rights in China : The Lancet:

On May 14, the Information Office of the State Council—China's cabinet—published Progress in China's Human Rights in 2012. The cabinet's white paper assesses human rights achievements through the lens of development: “Development is the key to solving all existing problems and facilitating progress of human rights in China.” The report reviews economic and social achievements as progress in human rights. It also lists improvements in living standards, stresses the achievements of lifting millions of Chinese out of poverty, raising annual incomes, improving education, housing, health insurance coverage, and access to health, and decreasing mortality of children younger than 5 years ahead of the Millennium Development Goals deadline. Acknowledging the scale of the threat to people's right to live in a clean and sustainable environment, the report devotes an entire section to ecological quality. Although the abolition of the death penalty is not discussed, there is a substantial reduction in the number of situations in which a defendant could face such a penalty.Physical and mental health are mentioned in the white paper, providing an opportunity for health professionals in China to improve human rights in many important ways. First, by making health and high-quality care a human right. Second, by seeking protection of their own rights, which too often have been violated by dissatisfied patients and their families. Third, by defending the rights of their patients, including sex workers, who allegedly face coercive testing for HIV according to another report, Swept Away: Abuses against Sex Workers in China, published by Human Rights Watch on May 14.Progress on human rights depends on openness, which makes China's white paper welcome and marks an important stage in the evolution of rights for its people. China has made colossal progress to improve economic and health standards. Further advances, like those announced by the cabinet for human rights, are encouraged—particularly for groups for whom progress in development alone might not be important enough.

'via Blog this'

An end to the"global war on terror" - President Obama

An end to the "global war on terror", declared President Obama at the National Defense University. - GWC

Fact Sheet
Full Text of the May 23, 2013 speech

Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror' - but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America

With the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a new dawn of democracy took hold abroad, and a decade of peace and prosperity arrived here at home. And for a moment, it seemed the 21st century would be a tranquil time. And then, on September 11, 2001, we were shaken out of complacency. Thousands were taken from us, as clouds of fire and metal and ash descended upon a sun-filled morning. This was a different kind of war. No armies came to our shores, and our military was not the principal target. Instead, a group of terrorists came to kill as many civilians as they could.
And so our nation went to war. We have now been at war for well over a decade. I won’t review the full history. What is clear is that we quickly drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but then shifted our focus and began a new war in Iraq. And this carried significant consequences for our fight against al Qaeda, our standing in the world, and -- to this day -- our interests in a vital region.

Meanwhile, we strengthened our defenses -- hardening targets, tightening transportation security, giving law enforcement new tools to prevent terror. Most of these changes were sound. Some caused inconvenience. But some, like expanded surveillance, raised difficult questions about the balance that we strike between our interests in security and our values of privacy. And in some cases, I believe we compromised our basic values -- by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.

So after I took office, we stepped up the war against al Qaeda but we also sought to change its course. We relentlessly targeted al Qaeda’s leadership. We ended the war in Iraq, and brought nearly 150,000 troops home. We pursued a new strategy in Afghanistan, and increased our training of Afghan forces. We unequivocally banned torture, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked to align our policies with the rule of law, and expanded our consultations with Congress.

Today, Osama bin Laden is dead, and so are most of his top lieutenants. There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure. Fewer of our troops are in harm’s way, and over the next 19 months they will continue to come home. Our alliances are strong, and so is our standing in the world. In sum, we are safer because of our efforts.

More evidence that Washington is addicted to spending: Skagit River bridge - I-5, Washington State

Deficit fighters fought Obama's American Jobs Act and won.  Tragically for the passengers in the cars on I-5 when the bridge fell.

English in 21 accents - Amy Walker

English in 21 accents. 
Excellent diction demonstration by Amy Walker - an American actress. 

Beyond Chinglish - English in many accents

中国人模仿9国人说英语(日本韩国印度英国法国意大利美国俄罗斯中国）
A talented young Chinese guy speaks English with multiple accents.  They are, in order, Japanese,Korean, Indian, British, French, Italy, American, Russian).

他的网上的名字是东北哥，真名是张旭 ，大连人，在大连的一家外企工作，好像并没有在国外留学的经历

His screen name is DongBei Guy (Northeast Chinaman), his real name is Zhang Xu.  From Dalian, he has never bee outside China but works ion international products and has pickled uyp the accents of persons with whom we deals on the job.