Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — A divided U.S. Supreme Court gave prosecutors more ability to use evidence obtained in violation of the Constitution, ruling against a man who was arrested and searched only because of a police clerical error.

The justices, voting 5-4 along ideological lines, upheld Bennie Dean Herring’s conviction for illegal possession of the methamphetamine and pistol he was carrying when he was arrested in 2004 in Coffee County, Alabama.

“In such a case, the criminal should not go free because the constable has blundered,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, using a line from a 1926 Supreme Court decision.

Herring was arrested when he came to the Coffee County sheriff’s department to retrieve something from an impounded truck. At the time, a neighboring county’s computer system showed an active arrest warrant for Herring’s failure to appear in court on a felony charge. That warrant in reality had been recalled, so Coffee County police lacked any legal basis to arrest Herring.

The Supreme Court in some past cases has applied the so- called exclusionary rule to illegally obtained evidence, barring its use at trial. The court has restricted use of the exclusionary rule under Roberts and his predecessor as chief justice, William Rehnquist.

Not Deliberate

“As laid out in our cases, the exclusionary rule serves to deter deliberate, reckless or grossly negligent conduct, or in some circumstances recurring or systemic negligence,” Roberts wrote. “The error in this case does not rise to that level.”

Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedyjoined Roberts’s opinion.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer dissented.

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Courtesy CBC.CA:

The Liberals and New Democrats signed an agreement on Monday to form an unprecedented coalition government, with a written pledge of support from the Bloc Québécois, if they are successful in ousting the minority Conservative government in a coming confidence vote.

The accord between parties led by Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe came just hours after Liberal caucus members agreed unanimously that Dion would stay on to lead the Liberal-NDP coalition, with support in the House of Commons from Bloc MPs.

The six-point accord includes a description of the role of the Liberal and NDP caucuses, which would meet separately and sit next to each other on the government benches in the House of Commons, Dion told a news conference alongside Layton and Duceppe.

Dion said he has advised Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean in a letter that he has the confidence of the Commons to form the government should Stephen Harper’s Conservatives be defeated in a confidence vote.

The Liberal leader said the parties reached the accord after watching the “sad spectacle” of other countries’ governments acting to counter the “unprecedented” global economic crisis while Harper’s Conservatives “sat and did nothing.”

“Given the critical situation facing our fellow citizens and the refusal and inability of the Harper government to deal with this critical situation, the opposition parties have decided that it was now time to take action,” he said.

“We are ready to form a new government that will address the best interests of the people instead of plunging Canadians into another election.”

Dion, who previously announced he would step down as Liberal leader, also pledged he would hand over “a strong government for a stronger Canada” to his Liberal successor on May 2.

“I am honoured to do that,” Dion said.

Layton said the accord’s proposed multibillion-dollar stimulus package for the troubled economy, which includes support for the auto and forestry sectors, is “prompt, prudent, competent and, most important, effective.”

“This Parliament has failed to act, and it falls on us to act,” Layton said.

The NDP leader also called on the prime minister to “accept this gracefully” and not bring further instability by fighting the verdict of his colleagues in the House.

“Prime minister, your government has lost the confidence of the House and it is going to be defeated at the earliest opportunity,” he said.

Following the opposition news conference, Harper dispatched Environment Minister Jim Prentice to address the “serious” situation.

Prentice called the opposition pact “irresponsible and undemocratic” and said the government will consider all options.

He wouldn’t rule out the government’s asking Jean to suspend Parliament until late in January, when the Tories have promised to introduce a new budget.

The proposed coalition cabinet will comprise 24 ministers and the prime minister. Six of these ministers will be appointed from within the NDP caucus. The position of finance minister would be held by a Liberal, while the NDP would be allotted six parliamentary secretaries.

The accord between the NDP and Liberals will expire on June 30, 2011, unless it is renewed. The Bloc is only committed to 18 months.

It includes a “policy accord” to address the “present economic crisis,” which states that the accord “is built on a foundation of fiscal responsibility.”

An economic stimulus package will be the new government’s top priority, while other policies include a commitment to improve child benefits and childcare “as finances permit.”

There is also a commitment to “pursue a North American cap-and-trade market” to limit carbon emissions.

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SACRAMENTO, Calif.- A former opponent of Barack Obama’s has come back to haunt him over questions regarding Obama’s citizenship.

According to a press release from the American Independent Party, former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and other members of the party have filed suit in California Superior Court in Sacramento to stop the state from giving its electoral votes to President-elect Barack Obama until documentary evidence is provided to prove Obama is indeed a natural born citizen of the United States. More here…

Mr. Keyes, this only goes to prove why nobody in America wanted you as President. Seriously, take the hint this time! -Sue

Courtesy Rawstory

Henry Waxman, a long-serving, outspoken, progressive California Democrat, has launched a bid to take control of perhaps the most powerful committee in the House of Representatives. 

The move has many moderate Democrats worried about what they see as a takeover from the party’s left flank.

Waxman currently chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, but last week he announced an attempt to take over the Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI). The powerful committee has jurisdiction over an array of important areas, including environmental policy and healthcare.

While there had been some expectation in Washington over the last several months that Waxman might seek the new post, his formal announcement last week caught Dingell off guard. Roll Call reports that Dingell is mobilizing allies in the Blue Dog and New Democrats coalitions to stave off Waxman’s rise.

The coordination marks a departure for the groups, which have not traditionally worked together, and a shared fear that with Democrats preparing to take control of all levers of political power, moderates could get steamrolled by emboldened liberals.

“We’re very concerned about the direction that some are trying to move our majority,” said Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), Blue Dog co-chairman for communications.

Leaders of both groups were working the phones last week to round up support for Dingell, the 27-term dean of the House, in his counteroffensive against Waxman’s surprise challenge. Ross and Reps. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) and John Tanner (D-Tenn.), both senior Blue Dogs, joined Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the New Democrats, on Dingell’s 26-member team.

Dingell’s sympathy for the auto industry has contributed to a lack of action on climate change legislation, frustrating environmentalists. 

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Courtesy Salon:

The only real sign that this wasn’t just any other Sunday at New Life Church was the pickup truck perched just off church property, on the shoulder of the road between the highway and the parking lot. Enormous pictures of smiling babies covered the truck and the extra-large camper attached to its bed. “Let me live!” the photos implored. The truck — and a group of demonstrators waving and greeting worshipers as they arrived at the corner — was part of a get-out-the-vote effort for Colorado’s Amendment 48, a ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to say that life begins at conception.

 

 

The amendment was cooked up by an antiabortion group calling itself “Colorado for Equal Rights.” When sponsors pulled together the votes this spring to land Amendment 48 on the ballot, it seemed like it would drive turnout among conservative activists. But it may not be having the desired impact. Already, Democrats have turned in several thousand more early and absentee ballots than Republicans, according to state statistics, even though Republicans hold a slim edge in registered voters. And polling shows the amendment itself may be defeated by a wide margin.

 

 

Against that backdrop, politics were muted Sunday at New Life Church. The main theme of the week at the church was “Heaven Defined,” a month-long series of sermons that promised to tell worshipers exactly what their relatives were up to in the afterlife, right down to their heavenly recreation. The church’s weekly video announcements opened with a mock disclaimer, like the federally mandated ones on campaign ads, from the Rev. Brady Boyd, its senior pastor. “My name is Brady Boyd, and I approve these announcements,” the video began, as the pastor smiled down in front of a waving flag. The congregants laughed.

 

 

New Life isn’t just any megachurch. Its founding pastor, the Rev. Ted Haggard, once led the National Association of Evangelicals. He helped rally his flock — and conservative Christians around the country — behind George W. Bush’s reelection campaign four years ago. For a time it seemed New Life, the largest church in Colorado, was set to be the vanguard of a political movement that would put the Bible into policymaking for years to come, as Karl Rove and evangelical leaders like Haggard teamed up to turn the country red.

 

 

But that was before Haggard was forced out of his post after a scandal involving methamphetamines and a gay hooker, two elements that don’t go over that well among fundamentalists, and especially not when mixed together. Two days later, Republicans lost control of Congress in the 2006 elections. Now, two days before another election, with the polls pointing toward a Barack Obama victory both in Colorado and nationwide, the country no longer quite seems to be going New Life’s way.

 

 

Sitting outside the sanctuary between the morning’s services, congregants worried about what might happen Tuesday. “I’m afraid Obama is going to change our country into a Muslim country,” said Melody Edwall, 51, a manager for an air carrier who lives in Colorado Springs. “I do. I’m afraid of him.” Edwall was pretty sure Obama wanted to change the country too much. “This is America — you don’t like it, leave,” she said. She’d heard Obama wanted to change the flag and the symbols of the country somehow. “He wants it to be this one big — I don’t know — it’s not America. It’s going to be something else, and I don’t know what it’s going to be.”

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy USAToday.

WASHINGTON — Montana gunsmith Dan Cooper has been ousted as chief executive of the rifle company that bears his name after pressure from gun owners who are angry that he is supporting Democrat Barack Obama.

Cooper, founder and part owner of Cooper Firearms, told USA TODAY in a story published Tuesday that he has voted for Republicans for most of his life, but he is backing Obama “probably because of the war. And also because the Republican Party has moved so far right in recent years.” Cooper said he was attracted to the Democrat’s message about “the retooling of America, which involves the building of middle-class jobs and helping American small business be competitive with those overseas.”

 

ELECTION 2008: More executives sold on Obama

 

Cooper contributed $3,300 to Obama’s presidential campaign, according to election records complied by the non-partisan CQ MoneyLine.

The USA TODAY article sparked outrage from some gun owners and bloggers, including an open letter on a blog called Firearms and Freedom, urging people to boycott the company’s products. Many gun enthusiasts believe Obama will try to restrict their right to bear arms, although he has said he respects the Second Amendment.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Barack Obama |Pennsylvania | Hillary Rodham Clinton | Republican Party | Republican John McCain | Second Amendment| Freedom

In a portion of the interview that was not included in Tuesday’s story, Cooper said, “I don’t believe that what’s being said about Obama and his policies about guns are accurate. I have had a conversation with the senator … he is a stanch supporter of the right to hunt and the right to bear arms.”

The company posted a statement Wednesday night on its website that said:

“The employees, shareholders and board of directors of Cooper Firearms of Montana do not share the personal political views of Dan Cooper. Although we all believe everyone has a right to vote and donate as they see fit, it has become apparent that the fallout may affect more than just Mr. Cooper. It may also affect the employees and the shareholders of Cooper Firearms. The board of directors has asked Mr. Cooper to resign as President.”

Cooper Firearms employs 38 people, Cooper said Monday. Cooper started the company with two partners in 1990. It manufactures wood-stock bolt-action hunting rifles that start at around $1,600. In October 1992, Cooper presented a rifle to then-President George H.W. Bush at a Montana campaign event.

In a statement Thursday to USA TODAY, Cooper said, “There is nothing on this earth I will not do for my employees … we have fought through 20 years of building what I believe to be the finest rifles built in America …When the internet anger turned on these innocent people, I felt it was important to distance myself from the company so as not to cause any further harm.”

He said he had resigned the company. He did not address whether he will maintain an ownership stake — except to say, “stronger measures may be forthcoming.”

“It’s a really McCarthyism at its worst,” said Bob Ricker, executive director of the American Hunters and Shooters Association, which has endorsed Obama. “That’s really why our organization was formed, was to deal with this craziness. If you’re a gun owner, but you have a contrary view to some of these wackos, they will go out and try to destroy you.”

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, said in a phone interview that he was disturbed by the backlash against Cooper.

Article continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Four months after the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess guns, its decision is under assault — from the right.

Two prominent federal appeals court judges say that Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in the case, District of Columbia v. Heller, is illegitimate, activist, poorly reasoned and fueled by politics rather than principle. The 5-to-4 decision in Heller struck down parts of a District of Columbia gun control law.

The judges used what in conservative legal circles are the ultimate fighting words: They said the gun ruling was a right-wing version of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that identified a constitutional right to abortion. Justice Scalia has said that Roe had no basis in the Constitution and amounted to a judicial imposition of a value judgment that should have been left to state legislatures.

Comparisons of the two decisions, then, seemed calculated to sting.

“The Roe and Heller courts are guilty of the same sins,” one of the two appeals court judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, wrote in an article to be published in the spring in The Virginia Law Review.

Similarly, Judge Richard A. Posner, in an article in The New Republic in August, wrote that Heller’s failure to allow the political process to work out varying approaches to gun control that were suited to local conditions “was the mistake that the Supreme Court made when it nationalized abortion rights in Roe v. Wade.”

Sharp criticism of a recent Supreme Court decision by federal appeals court judges is quite unusual, though these two judges — both Reagan appointees — are more outspoken than most.

Judge Wilkinson, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., was recently considered for a spot on the Supreme Court. Judge Posner, of the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, is perhaps the most influential judge not on the Supreme Court.

Not all conservatives agree with the critics, of course. Robert A. Levy, a libertarian lawyer who was a principal architect of the victorious strategy in the Heller case, rejected the comparison to Roe.

The two sides in the Heller case claimed to rely on the original meaning of the Second Amendment, based on analysis of its text in light of historical materials. The amendment says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The more liberal justices said the amendment protected only a collective right tied to state militias, thus allowing most gun control laws. The more conservative justices found an individual right and struck down parts of a District of Columbia gun control law.

In Judge Wilkinson’s view, the upshot of the court’s extensive historical analysis was that “both sides fought into overtime to a draw.”

Others said the quality of the combat was low. “Neither of the two main opinions in Heller would pass muster as serious historical writing,” Jack Rakove, a historian at Stanford, wrote on the blog Balkinization soon after the decision was issued.

The strong reaction from the right after Heller was preceded, with a sort of symmetry, by liberal support for an individual-rights reading of the Second Amendment. For much of the 20th century, the conventional view of the amendment had been that it only protects a collective right. (Warren E. Burger, after retiring as chief justice in 1986, called the individual rights view “one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word ‘fraud’ — on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen.”)

Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Courtesy The Daily Beast.

Christopher Buckley, in an exclusive for The Daily Beast, explains why he left The National Review, the magazine his father founded.
I seem to have picked an apt title for my Daily Beast column, or blog, or whatever it’s called: “What Fresh Hell.” My last posting (if that’s what it’s called) in which I endorsed Obama, has brought about a very heaping helping of fresh hell. In fact, I think it could accurately be called a tsunami.
The mail (as we used to call it in pre-cyber times) at the Beast has been running I’d say at about 7-to-1 in favor. This would seem to indicate that you (the Beast reader) are largely pro-Obama.
As for the mail flooding into National Review Online—that’s been running about, oh, 700-to-1 against. In fact, the only thing the Right can’t quite decide is whether I should be boiled in oil or just put up against the wall and shot. Lethal injection would be too painless.
I had gone out of my way in my Beast endorsement to say that I was not doing it in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column, because of the experience of my colleague, the lovely Kathleen Parker. Kathleen had written in NRO that she felt Sarah Palin was an embarrassment. (Hardly an alarmist view.) This brought 12,000 livid emails, among them a real charmer suggesting that Kathleen’s mother ought to have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a dumpster. I didn’t want to put NR in an awkward position.
Since my Obama endorsement, Kathleen and I have become BFFs and now trade incoming hate-mails. No one has yet suggested my dear old Mum should have aborted me, but it’s pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land. One editor at National Review—a friend of 30 years—emailed me that he thought my opinions “cretinous.” One thoughtful correspondent, who feels that I have “betrayed”—the b-word has been much used in all this—my father and the conservative movement generally, said he plans to devote the rest of his life to getting people to cancel their subscriptions to National Review. But there was one bright spot: To those who wrote me to demand, “Cancel my subscription,” I was able to quote the title of my father’s last book, a delicious compendium of his NR “Notes and Asides”: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.
Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there. This offer was accepted—rather briskly!—by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.
My father in his day endorsed a number of liberal Democrats for high office, including Allard K. Lowenstein and Joe Lieberman. One of his closest friends on earth was John Kenneth Galbraith. In 1969, Pup wrote a widely-remarked upon column saying that it was time America had a black president. (I hasten to aver here that I did not endorse Senator Obama because he is black. Surely voting for someone on that basis is as racist as not voting for him for the same reason.)

-Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

Ed Comment: Remember Fellow Obama Supporters, we can’t rest on our Laurals. We gotta vote, vote, VOTE for Obama! Let the McCainiacs and Palindrones stay HOME! -Shinai.