BoldlyRide

I had resolved not to mention this particular matter on the blog because so many others already have. But I came across this piece that is the best I've encountered. Civilization Watch - March 20, 2005 - Whose Life Is Worth Living? - The Ornery American: "Why do we let the hypothetical trump the real?
We do it with our current abortion law: In order to save hypothetical women who might die from illegal back-alley abortions, we allow the killing of millions of separate human organisms for no better reason than their erstwhile parents' convenience.
Likewise, because Terry Schiavo might hypothetically prefer death to her current state, we seem poised to allow the very real woman to be starved to death despite the desperate concern of her family who want her to be kept alive.
It is death that trumps life in this twisted, sick, upside down version of America we live in now.
Thus evil wins over and corrupts a whole society, because by our silence or inaction, our selfishness or laziness, we conspire in the slaughter of the innocents. "
Go read the whole article.

A follow-up on a previous post about (mis)statements of legal authority. I had a client in my office today (who still hasn't paid me for work I did a few years ago) who told me how he scared a local prosecutor spitless. The background is that the guy was pulled over and then arrested because the records showed that his driver's license had been suspended. The license had in fact been suspended for nonpayment of child support. However, suspension was erroneous and he got the license reinstated between the time that he pled not guilty and the pretrial conference. Once he got the license reinstated, he went to the prosecutor and told Mr. Prosecutor that he had to drop the charges for three reasons:
1. The cop never read him his rights;
2. The cop never buckled him in when he put him in the cruiser; and
3. The cop searched his vehicle FOR NO REASON when he was arrested and didn't find anything.
Naturally, in the face of those weighty arguments the prosecutor had no choice but to drop the charges.

I saw no reason to disillusion the gentleman. He wants to believe that the case was dismissed because the cop never read him his rights. Months ago when this happened, he had called me about it and I informed him then that the rights issue was meaningless and that if the suspension was erroneous, the case would be dismissed. But now I see how the system works in the minds of those who think they see clearly: Somebody didn't get their rights read to them and they got off -- that must be the reason, cause and effect, and who cares what the other facts are in the case.

Continuing, as is my wont, to disregard the deep, meaningful, and complex in favor of the inconsequential and completely meaningless, I pose this dream from last night for interpretation:

For some reason I was back at college in the eastern part of the state. Not only had I not done the required reading, I did not even have the book. I was also driving one of those little three-wheeled scooters that old people use to get around in. This scooter weighted about 700 pounds and I could not get it parked in front of the building. There was room, but the parking spaces for these things were right in front of the doors and parking there would block the doorway. I moved on, dragging the thing to park elsewhere.
As often happens in dreams for no apparent reason I then found myself in the pickup of an older friend who used to be a state legislator. He was driving and I was just sitting. We were still in the eastern part of the state and he was going to the city hall to give some sort of water presentation. He was driving terribly and tried to get around a corner before another pickup and he ended up pinning the pickup against the curb, but no damage was done. The other pickup just sped off but then reappeared behind us after a law enforcement cruiser pulled us over. The driver of the other pickup was telling the cop about my friend's bad driving. We got arrested and I was delighted that we were being taken in, my first time being arrested. I was given a sweater from my suitcase and then a pair of jail overalls by the nice officer. We walked through a steel double doorway that was now in front of my friend's pickup. We waited in a room with some very nice officers and some other folks in overalls. One man was in white overalls and had a friendly face. I asked how often they did arraignments here and the lady officer said about every 18,000 miles. I asked if that was every couple hours or what and she said, no every ten minutes. Then I woke up.

Arbitrary and Capricious: Laws my clients told me: "* If the cop didn't read you your rights, then they have to dismiss the case."
Skelly lists a number of authorative (mis)statements of law made by those facing prosecution. This last one on his list is my favorite. It one comes up every third case, and the client wants to play it like a get out of jail free card. I usually explain custodial interrogation and the potential to exclude a confession or other evidence obtained. However, it would be fun, just once to jump up and shout, "What, they didn't read you your rights? I wonder if the judge knows this. You're a free man, dude." Nah, I can't even write it with a straight face, let alone say it to some poor soul who has pinned his pathetic hopes on his misunderstanding of the law.

Our girls had another soccer game last night. They played much better. I think they were just intimidated by the boys team. They played against girls last night. It probably would have been a shut but our girls just seemed to lose the will to play for the last ten minutes of the game and let the other team score two points.

Wampum: More SCOTUS News ...: "In Krud Coal Co. v. Wrings Water From Rocks, the Court ruled, 6-3, that a Wyoming coal company that drained the entire water supply of a nearby Indian reservation in order to pump coal through its pipeline was not obliged to provide 'compensatory hydration' to 2,300 Arapaho left parched by the drainage of the aquifer they have been using since 1000 A.D. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Rehnquist pointed out that 'there are Coca-Cola machines on the reservation,' and that the Arapaho 'are by reputation excellent rain dancers.' "

My Indian Law Professor, who wrote his own course text an entitled it something like Rhenquist's Indian Vision, would love this story. Click the link for more fabricated Supreme Court Opinions. I also like the one about the 187 bullet holes being an indicia of zeal on law enforcement's part.

Over the weekend I got to change the starter on the van for the third time since we've owned it. I must admit, it gets easier every time. When I gashed open my hand loosening the first bolt and smashed and bloodied a finger breaking loose the second bolt, I was reminded of a shoddy little piece I had written for fun the last time I performed this operation. I present it here:

Okay, I guess I don't present it here. I can't find it at the moment. I will endeavor to track it down and then add it here.

The girls had their first soccer game last night. They played a boys team and got trounced. Our star player scored four goals but nobody else on the team scored. Defensively our goalies blocked about ten shots on goal, unfortunately there was an equal number of unblocked shots. The game was really quite fun to watch, but not that fun to coach. One girl, the smallest on the team, would run along near the ball and then veer away before contact to let the other team have the ball. If no one else was around, she would kick the ball back toward our own goal -- either way she was a great benefit to the boys team. We worked on kicks by the goalie in practice, relentlessly -- trying to get the goalie to get the ball to the side rather than to the middle of the field where the other team would just kick it straight back in to the goal. After the boys scored a handful off that move the goalie remembered to get it to the side. Two really good players on our team were out of town or unable to play because of injuries -- so we only had one substitute and our girls were completely exhausted. Almost all of them were whining to come out so they could rest. The best we could do was bring out one and shift the others around to a different position. Although for two or three of the girls it didn't seem to matter what position they were assigned, they always went to the same part of the field or just ran wherever they felt like.

My friend with the PD contract in a neighboring rural county asked me to handle his calendar this morning. All but two of the defendants were in custody, complete with orange overalls. One of the two non-custodials met me in the parking lot and immediately said he wanted the hearing on his probation violation postponed -- which was fine with me as my friend has suggested that and the prosecutor went along with it too because it looks like there are some new PV's that need to be added.

One of the guys in custody is an illegal alien. He had been found guilty of a felony, got a 180 day rider that he did well on and so now is back before the court with a recommendation that he be given probation. The guy says he doesn't know what probation means so I explain it means not going back to jail, just being supervised and reporting to the PO, etc. The court grants probation and carefully goes over all of the terms and conditions with the defendant. There is an INS hold on the guy so the guy remains in jail until the INS decides whether to deport him. He tells the judge that he just wants a second chance. Afterward court has adjourned, I hear him talking to the sheriff and the sheriff asks if he is also on probation out of California -- the answer: "I don't know." So I have to wonder, does he not know because he still isn't clear on what probation is, or does he JUST NOT REMEMBER IF HE WAS CONVICTED OF A FELONY IN CALIFORNIA?

I have come to realize that Scalia is the Ann Coulter of the Supreme Court. Both of these intellectuals make their points with combinations of words that demand your attention like a pipewrench across the bridge of the nose. Perhaps, Pres. Bush should consider nominating Coulter to the Supreme Court.

In a prize fight between the opinions, Scalia's dissent scores all the points.

The majority and O'Connor both take swipes at Scalia's original intent interpretation. Scalia's introduction has the power of a grizzly paw swatting away the majority's anemic alternative interpretation:
"What a mockery today's opinion makes....announcing the Court's conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years--not mind you, that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed."

The close of his opening paragraph scores a blow to the head of the majority opinion, a prelude to the pummeling he will deliver in the opinion:
"Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent."

Here's a blow to the solar plexus that has the majority opinion gasping for breath:
"By what conceivable standard can nine lawyers presume to be the authoritative conscience of the Nation?"

A nice jab to the nose:
"In other words, all the Court has done today, to borrow from another context, if to look over the heads of the crowd and pick out its friends."

Followed by a nice combination:
"[T]he basic premise of the Court's argument--that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world--ought to be rejected out of hand."

"To invoke alien law when it agrees with one's own thinking, and ignore it otherwise, it not reasoned decisionmaking, but sophistry."

Another body blow has the majority staggering:
"[T]his is no way to run a legal system... The result will be to crown arbitrariness with chaos."

Two power punches from the footnotes put the opposition down for the knockout:
"The votes in today's case demonstrate that the offending selected lawyers' moral sentiments are not a predictable basis for law--much less a democratic one.

"Either America's principles are its own, or they follow the world; one cannot have it both ways."

LILEKS (James) The Bleat: "it tells you where some opponents of private accounts reside. It?s not Social Security they love, I suspect, it?s what it represents. It?s not socialism as they?d like, but it?s all we?ve got. In their vision of society, all obligations to one another are equal ? at least that?s the presumption from which their ideas flow. "

My wife reported that the vacuum had made a bad sound after she had put a new belt on it, and it continued to make bad sounds and although the brush worked, there was no suction. I told her I would look at it the next day. She reminded me every five minutes of my promise to look at the machine. After untold years of marriage she has a sense for when I'm trying to avoid things -- although perhaps it's not much of a sense because I always trying to avoid the tasks she asks me to do. Turns out it was an easy job -- but not fixable by me. The propellor, a disk with flanges on one side that spins and creates the suction had broken into three pieces. Also, the housing on the electric motor was broken out where the screws held it together. A new prop would have probably sufficed -- but no place in the area has one. I suppose we could have looked for a similar model at a yard sale and then bought it for the part -- but the yard sale season is still months away. I think she's out getting a new vacuum today.

Another soccer season has started -- Girls under age 10. I coach with a friend -- he's the tall good looking guy and I'm the other one. Both of our daughters are on the team and have played several seasons now. Our first practice was last night. We only had 7 of 10 girls there. All of them have talent. One of the girls who has never played before keeps trying to stop the ball with her hands -- that always ends up costing points in the game - so unless she wants to play goalie (almost no one ever wants to play goalie)she will have to get over that. For the first practice we did dribbling, passing, shooting, and some one-on-one before we ended with an informal scrimmage (they always want to scrimmage). I'm always looking for useful tips on how to coach kids soccer. The only time I ever played soccer was in France against groups of boys. Two of us would play against several boys. If we could get a long enough field we could win because we could kick the ball over their heads and outrun them to it.

David Yeagley's BadEagle.com: "No actor, through no series, has ever aggrandized the Judeo-Christian values of American society more effectively than Michael Landon. This is a most unusual phenomenon in Hollywood history. Of course, Landon chose to do it through TV, in which more Americans are actively involved, than through movies. This reflects his true motives of mission. Landon was a dramatically American, and clearly had a message for the country. He loved everything America was, is, and hopefully, will continue to be. "

We Win, They Lose: "Kennedy is the biggest joke of them all. The guy thinks he is King"

See the whole post and link to prior writings on Kennedy.

HughHewitt.com: "'The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards--and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures. Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent.' "

I'll read the opinion and post more on this.