This is a hilarious bit of doublespeak.
“The changes to the factual allegations of the complaint does not mean that Major Podliska is recanting his criticisms of the committee or the focus of its investigation,” Romer-Friedman said.
Category: Law
Obama’s Supreme Court Pick
Eh… he’s a fairly ordinary leftist jurist – especially on things like the 2nd Amendment – who hangs out with the Senators at DC cocktail parties. Obama is 75% sure that the Republicans in the Senate are going to stick to their guns (as they should) and not confirm him, but in the event that they do, this allows Obama to also pick a new justice for the DC Circuit Court. Remember that the DC Circuit Court is arguably the second most important federal court since it decides on so many cases regarding the federal government.
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday nominated Merrick B. Garland to be the nation’s 113th Supreme Court justice, choosing a centrist appellate judge who could reshape the court for a generation and become the face of a bitter election-year confirmation struggle.
In selecting Judge Garland, 63, a well-known figure in Washington legal circles who has drawn praise from members of both parties, Mr. Obama dared Republican senators to ignore public pressure and make good on their promise to block consideration of any high court nominee until after the next president is chosen.
DOJ Files Brief in Wisconsin Carry v. City of Madison
Remember that this is one of the cases on the docket for the Supreme Court this session.
Today, in Wisconsin Carry, Inc. v. City of Madison, Attorney General Brad Schimel filed a motion supporting Wisconsin Carry’s argument that state law preempts certain municipal gun regulations, namely, Madison’s Transit and Parking Commission’s rule banning all weapons from its Madison Metro buses.
Attorney General Schimel argues, contrary to Madison’s claims, that a municipality cannot delegate power that it does not have, and that municipalities do not have the power to regulate firearms in ways more stringent than state law. Since state law allows people to possess and transport firearms in vehicles, Madison may not ban them from its buses.
Let the sun shine
My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:
We all got a glimpse of spring this Saturday with warm temperatures and bright sunshine before gloomy, cold rain settled into southeast Wisconsin on Sunday, but the nation is aglow this week as Sunshine Week commences, celebrating access to public information.
Access to public records sounds like a boring issue that only reporters and politicians care about, but it is a vital issue that is absolutely necessary for we, the people, to govern. As a self-governing people, we have to know what our representatives and employees in government are doing so we can make informed decisions. Without that visibility into the workings of our government, we would be unable to effectively govern ourselves.
But not all people in government like open records laws or strive to adhere to them. Some of them are up to no good, but some just don’t like the scrutiny. Sometimes that resistance comes in the form of legislation or regulations seeking to hide records. That was the case in a bill moving through the Wisconsin legislature that would have deemed some records from medical examiners to be excluded from open records requirements. Thankfully, that offensive language was dropped.
But some of the resistance comes at the point of executing an open records request. Government employees have been known to take an unacceptable amount of time to fill requests for records. They have also been caught charging ridiculously huge fees for records in order to discourage people from picking them up. Some government officials have been caught ignoring open records requests altogether or illegally destroying records.
It is a constant push by the public to ensure our records remain accessible and open for our perusal. To that end, Gov. Scott Walker issued an executive order directing state agencies to take some measures to ensure compliance with the state’s open records laws. Those measures include implementing standardized best practices for processing requests, defining and publishing standard response times for normal requests, clarifying the costs of requests up front, and requiring training about public records for all state employees. These measures will help further the goal of making it easy for the public to access public records.
While some government officials actively resist the public prying into their business, most of them try their hardest to serve the public in good faith. As someone who has filed many open records requests over the years, I have found most government officials to be helpful and thorough in complying with my requests. It helps to know how to ask correctly, so here are a few hints.
First, know the rules. When filing an open records request, you are not required to give your identity or a reason for the request. You can if you want, but it is not necessary. Remember that your request is itself a record that is subject to the open records law.
Second, know what a record is, and is not. A record is almost anything, in any form, that has been recorded or preserved by an authority. It does not include things like drafts, notes, or things unrelated to the public’s business. The law requires the government to surrender records that it has, but if a record does not exist, it is not required to create something new. Also, not everything that passes through government must be kept, much less kept forever. A government is prohibited from destroying a record after someone has asked for it, but they are permitted to dispose of most old records after a period of time. Unless we are willing to spend a fortune to save everything forever, this is perfectly reasonable.
Third, be specific and reasonable. Yes, you can ask for every email sent by anyone in government over three years to go on some fishing expedition, but it will be timeconsuming and expensive to fulfill that request. Someone has to comb through everything to redact information that should not be made public. Try to narrow your request as much as possible and it will make it easier and more likely for you to get what you want. Remember that the bigger the net is, the longer it will take to fill it.
Finally, be nice. While answering public records requests is a part of a government official’s job, it is not their entire job. And they are just a person like you. I have often found them to be helpful and friendly if you are understanding and nice — especially with local government officials. If they are not, then get aggressive.
We need to keep pressure on ensuring our public records remain open through traditional means, but we must also push to utilize modern technology to make records more accessible. For example, the city of West Bend regularly publishes detailed spending reports by amount, department and vendor on their website for public scrutiny. If the public has a question about a particular expenditure, it provides easy access to know how to ask for more details. Putting more records online and making them searchable should be a consideration with every technological improvement our government makes moving forward.
An open government is a prerequisite of a selfgoverning people. As we celebrate Sunshine Week, may that sunshine burn bright and hot.
Obama’s Clemency Plan Falters
What a shame. /sarcasm.
Only 187 inmates have had their sentences commuted, far below the thousands expected by justice reform advocates and a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million people behind bars in the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate.
The administration said it wanted to decide on all the applications before Obama’s term ends next January, when the program will automatically expire.
A senior DOJ official told Reuters it is calling on the lawyers’ group — Clemency Project 2014 — to simply hand over the outstanding cases without further vetting, saying it is not working fast enough. So far, the group estimates it has handed over around 200 cases.
But criminal justice experts say the administration itself should bear much of the blame. The idea to tap pro-bono attorneys to help vet the cases originated with the DOJ, and critics say it should have prepared its own staff to handle the large volume of applications.
“It’s unfair to criticize the volunteer group that you asked to help,” said Rachel Barkow, a criminal law professor at New York University who has studied clemency in U.S. prisons.
She estimates that about 1,500 prisoners should be eligible for commutation, saying the 187 granted so far does not “fulfill the promise of the program.”
The DOJ declined to comment when asked for its response to such criticism.
Mass Murderer Sues Over Prison Conditions
It is because of stuff like this that I support the death penalty.
Oslo (AFP) – Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik returns to court on Tuesday to accuse the Norwegian state of violating his human rights by holding him in isolation.
The right-wing extremist is serving 21 years for the murder of 77 people in a bombing and shooting assault in July 2011.
He accuses the Norwegian state of breaching two clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights, one which prohibits “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”, and one which guarantees the right to respect for “private and family life” and “correspondence”.
Since the killings, Breivik, 37, has been held apart from the rest of the prison population and his contacts with the outside world strictly controlled.
His mail is censored by prison officials to prevent him from establishing an “extremist network”, according to authorities, and his visits, which are rare, are almost exclusively with professionals behind a glass partition.
He has previously likened his prison conditions to “torture”.
Anti-2nd Amendment Groups Sue PA Over City Rules
This is why choosing good judges is so important – particularly judges who sit on a Supreme Court.
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Pennsylvania gun control advocates on Wednesday asked the state’s top court to knock down a 2014 law allowing gun-rights lobbying groups to sue cities that adopt gun restrictions and recoup legal costs if they prevail.
Firearms advocates, including the National Rifle Association, contend the law is necessary to prevent gun owners from becoming ensnared by a patchwork of municipal ordinances that violate their right to bear arms.
Gun control advocates challenged the law on a technicality – that it passed as part of what they called an unrelated piece of legislation.
Another Candidate Withdraws From Consideration
Nobody credible wants this appointment.
Washington (CNN)Adalberto Jordan, a federal judge in Miami seen as a top contender for the Supreme Court vacancy, has withdrawn his name from contention, a lawmaker told CNN on Wednesday.
Voters to determine Supreme Court’s direction
My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has agreed to review eight cases ranging from guns on public buses to open records to how low-income properties are assessed to how far a police officer’s “hot pursuit” can extend into a citizen’s home. With less than a month before Wisconsin voters head to the polls to choose a Supreme Court justice, the variety and reach of the court’s chosen case load reminds us how important voters’ choice is.
For example, in State v. Weber, an officer turned on his lights to pull over Weber for a busted taillight. Weber proceeded to ignore the officer, pull into his attached garage and head into his house. The officer entered the garage without a warrant and detained Weber. Weber subsequently pled no contest to felony drunk driving (it was not his first time driving drunk).
The question the court will decide is whether the officer should have obtained a warrant before entering Weber’s garage. Even though he was drunk driving, the officer did not know that at the time and was only pursuing him for the minor offense of a broken taillight. Should law enforcement be permitted to enter private property without a warrant for such a minor offense?
In Democratic Party of Wisconsin v. Wisconsin Department of Justice, the court will decide on the appropriate balance between the public interest in keeping a record hidden versus the public’s right to know under Wisconsin’s open records laws. In this case, the Democratic Party sought videos in which Attorney General Brad Schimel, who was a candidate at the time, conducted training regarding victims of sensitive crimes and how to prosecute internet sexual predator cases.
The Democratic Party wanted the videos because they thought there might be some embarrassing things in the video that could be twisted against Schimel during the campaign. The DOJ refused to release the videos, saying the public interest in protecting the identities of the victims and the techniques used by investigators and prosecutors of internet sexual predator cases outweighed the public’s interest in seeing the videos. The Democratic Party disagreed and appealed. The court must decide where the appropriate balance lies between these competing public interests.
In Wisconsin Carry Inc. v. City of Madison, the court will decide if the city of Madison violated the state’s concealed carry law when implementing a ban on guns on public buses. Wisconsin’s concealed carry statute prohibits local units of governments from enacting an ordinance or resolution regulating the ownership, transportation, taxation or carrying of firearms.
The city of Madison has banned people from carrying firearms on city buses, but claims the statute does not apply because it is a “bus rule” and not an ordinance or resolution and that the rule was enacted by the city of Madison’s Transit and Parking Commission — not the city itself. Wisconsin Carry sued the city, arguing — rightly — the statute is designed to prevent local governments from enacting gun laws more restrictive than the state as a whole.
The Supreme Court must decide how the statute must be applied. Of course, in this case, the Legislature could have easily clarified the statute before now, but they must certainly do so next year if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the city of Madison.
As the highest court in the state, the Supreme Court decides cases that govern how the laws apply to us, how far our government can reach into our lives, how transparent our government must be and countless other important matters. As such, the selection of each justice on that court is of critical importance. On April 5, Wisconsin’s voters will choose between two drastically difference candidates.
Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg is running for the Supreme Court for the second time after being rejected by the voters five years ago. She is proudly a liberal’s liberal with a decidedly activist perspective regarding the role of a Supreme Court justice.
Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley was appointed to the court in 2015 and is on the other end of the judicial philosophy spectrum. She has demonstrated a healthy understanding that judges must act according to how the law is and not how they would like it to be.
Unlike the United States Supreme Court, the voters decide who sits on the state Supreme Court. Vote wisely.
Judge Sides with Apple
This has a long way to go in the courts.
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge ruled Monday that the U.S. Justice Department cannot use a 227-year-old law to force Apple to provide the FBI with access to locked iPhone data, dealing a blow to the government in its battle with the company over privacy and public safety.
The ruling, by U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, applied narrowly to one Brooklyn drug case, but it gives support to the company’s position in its fight against a California judge’s order that it create specialized software to help the FBI hack into an iPhone linked to the San Bernardino terrorism investigation.
Court Justice’s Uncle Not Allowed to Vote
MADISON — A Wisconsin Supreme Court justice says her uncle was unable to vote in last week’s primary election, even though he has a veteran’s ID from his service in World War II.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley has written a letter to Gov. Scott Walker urging the use of veterans’ ID at the polls, a form of identification not included in the current state voter ID law. Bradley says her uncle, Leo Olson of Reedsburg, doesn’t have a driver’s license.
The Journal Sentinel reports Bradley wrote that her 90-year-old uncle, who fought at Iwo Jima, tried to use his veteran’s photo ID at the polls, but was denied a right to vote in the primary.
The Senate is expected to take up legislation next month that would allow the veterans ID for voting.
First, it looks pretty likely that the state will allow veterans IDs to be used for voting and I don’t think there’s much of a problem with that. As long as the ID is secure and can be used to validate a voter’s identity, it’s fine.
Second, there is something unappealing (get it?) about a Supreme Court justice inserting herself into a political debate about pending legislation. So much for the pretense of an impartial judiciary.
Third, the voter ID requirement has been widely publicized and known for years… certainly in the last few months since the court upheld it as constitutional. And Bradley is certainly in a position to know the current law and has some means. Why didn’t she take 30 minutes out of her life to help her uncle get a valid ID for voting? Or at least make sure he knew he needed one to vote? Where is her respect for her uncle’s vote? Instead, it appears that she intentionally let him fail to vote so that she could use him as a prop in a political stunt. SHAME!
Court Rescinds Life Sentence for Toddler
Whew.
Cairo (CNN)Family members of a 3-year-old Egyptian boy who was sentenced last week to life in prison say they feel relieved after receiving assurances from officials that neither the boy nor his father will be arrested.
The boy’s father, Mansour Qorany Sharara, has returned to the family home in the southern Egyptian province of Fayyoum after nearly 18 months on the run. He had been avoiding authorities who had previously detained him when they came to arrest his young son.
In a surreal verdict, a military court last week found the boy, Ahmed Mansour Qorany Sharara, and 115 other people guilty of killing three people and sabotaging public and private property during a political demonstration in January 2014.
Seattle Man Exercises Gender Rights
This was bound to happen.
Seattle Parks and Recreation is facing a first-of-a-kind challenge to gender bathroom rules. A man undressed in a women’s locker room, citing a new state rule that allows people to choose a bathroom based on gender identity.
It was a busy time at Evans Pool around 5:30pm Monday February 8. The pool was open for lap swim. According to Seattle Parks and Recreation, a man wearing board shorts entered the women’s locker room and took off his shirt. Women alerted staff, who told the man to leave, but he said “the law has changed and I have a right to be here.”
Particularly sticky is this:
Right now, there’s no specific protocol for how someone should demonstrate their gender in order to access a bathroom. Employees just rely on verbal identification or physical appearance, and this man offered neither.
Nor can there be a specific protocol. In our culture, we have been conditioned to not question how someone feels. If a man says he identifies as a woman – even if he has a magnificent beard and a soothing baritone voice – who are we to doubt him? What city employee is going to risk being sued and/or fired for making that call? Once we have unmoored ourselves from nature and centuries of social norms, it is no easy matter to settle on a new societal consensus.
Doe Inquisitors Lash Out
Heh.
Milwaukee County investigators fired back Friday at Attorney General Brad Schimel in a court filing, calling his public statements about their actions in a halted John Doe probe into Gov. Scott Walker’s recall campaign “defamatory” and “unacceptable.”
Last month, Schimel asked a federal judge in a related lawsuit not to block the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s order that the investigators turn over evidence collected in the John Doe investigation, which the state court halted in July.
In a statement issued the same day as his filing, Schimel said the state high court determined investigators “are requesting the federal court contradict the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s order requiring that the evidence unlawfully seized by the John Doe investigators be kept under seal.”
Schimel also told conservative talk radio hosts that day that the investigators were illegally holding the evidence and that they “stole” it, according to a transcript of the interview.
Pastafarian Headgear Allowed
The station reports that the Department of Transportation has instructed all DMV offices to recognize colanders as religious headwear after receiving a letter from the man’s lawyer.
Attorney, Derek Allen told WTMJ that his client is a Pastafarian and was denied his religious right as a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which was first established in 2005.
The religion denies it is satirical or intended to be humorous, but says it is based in science.
It describes heaven as a place with a “beer volcano” and a “stripper factory.” It attributes the invention of the lawn sprinkler to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Anyone can become ordained for a $25 fee.
Justice Scalia slips the surly bonds of Earth
My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here it is:
Justice Antonin Scalia, the intellectual mainspring of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court appointed by President Ronald Reagan, is no more. Known for his brilliant opinions and clarity of expression, Scalia occupies a rare space in American legal history with the likes of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Hugo Black and John Marshall.
With Scalia’s passing, the balance of the Supreme Court has been thrown into the political sphere. While it may feel unseemly to discuss the jurist’s replacement before his family has had time to grieve, it is necessary for our Republic to begin the discussion. The result of that decision will likely shape the high court for decades to come.
Before contemplating the ramifications and political consequences triggered by Scalia’s untimely death, we must lament the fact that those ramifications and political consequences are so gigantic. It was never meant to be. Our nation’s founders did not intend for the federal government to be such a large institution that has so much impact on our daily lives. Nor did they intend for the Supreme Court to be the final arbiter of all American legal and cultural matters. The Supreme Court was intended to be one of three balanced, equal branches of government charged with upholding the very limited scope of the federal government the Constitution created.
Yet that is no longer the case and we must deal with the reality in which we live. The Supreme Court has become a powerful institution whose decisions reach into every part of our lives, from deciding who may marry whom, what guns we may keep and bear, when it is acceptable to kill an unborn child, what health care we may use and much more. The reality is that we have granted nine lawyers in Washington, D.C., almost unlimited power to issue decrees big and small to an allegedly free people.
Most recently, the power of the court has been roughly divided between four judicially conservative justices who seek to interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning, and four judicially liberal justices who view the Constitution as a living document that allows for judicial interpretation leading to desirable outcomes. Then there is one justice who sits in the middle, but usually leans toward the conservative wing of the court. Of course, the balance of the court is not fixed and has often swung far to the left — as it did in the first ruling about Obamacare.
Scalia was the bedrock of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court. His passing means that a liberal President Barack Obama has the opportunity to appoint a liberal replacement and tip the balance of the court decidedly more liberal. Unfortunate as it is, the person who replaces Scalia will likely be more important and have more long-lasting impact on American society than the person who replaces Obama.
Fortunately, we are already deep into an election year to elect Obama’s replacement. There is no constitutional requirement that Scalia’s replacement be selected immediately, nor is it uncommon for the court to conduct business with a justice or two absent. The business of the court can continue apace until an appropriate replacement is found.
With that being the case, the next Supreme Court Justice should be chosen by the next president. By preserving the appointment for the next president, the American people will have an active and immediate voice in selecting not only the next president, but also the balance of the Supreme Court. Given the importance of the issues that are adjudicated by the court, the serendipitous opportunity for the American people to choose both their next president and the makeup of the Supreme Court is not one to be ignored. Every senator — both Republican and Democrat — should assure the American people they will not confirm an appointment until the people have had the opportunity to let their will be known through the vote.
As a final note, Scalia had a fulfilling and consequential legal career. He was married to Maureen for 55 years, and had nine kids and 28 grandchildren. He died in his sleep after a day of quail hunting with an unshakable faith that Jesus had assured his eternity. We should all hope to be so fortunate.
Milwaukee Responsible for Moving Utilities
This was expected. While it’s good that utility rate payers won’t be stuck with the bill for Barrett’s Folly, the taxpayers will be.
The city would be left to pick up the $10 million to $25 million tab for utility relocation costs linked to the Milwaukee streetcar project under a judge’s decision.
The decision, issued Thursday by Milwaukee County Circuit Judge William Sosnay, said it was unreasonable to require utility companies to pay any part of the costs for relocating or modifying their lines to accommodate the streetcar.
The ruling agreed with an earlier decision by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin in the utility dispute, which said the city — not utilities and their ratepayers — should pay for moving underground utility lines along the streetcar route.
Justice Scalia Dead
Wow. This is huge. RIP for one of America’s greatest justices.
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said.
Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa.
Christopher Manney’s Story
Dan O’Donnell did an outstanding piece of journalism with this interview of ex-officer Christopher Manney. Manney was the officer who was cleared of any wrongdoing in the self-defense killing of Dontre Hamilton in Milwaukee. Despite being fully justified, Manney was crucified in the media, hung out to dry by the police chief, and driven into hiding by threats to his family and himself. The guy’s life was destroyed despite the fact that he made the hard decisions – and correct decisions – in a split second that we expect from police officers every day.
Car Thief Gets Beat Up
The photo shows a teen laying in the snow after he was beaten. Police said he tried stealing a car, but was stopped and attacked by a group of men.
“I saw the photo and I was really displeased by it. It made my stomach turn,” Tietyen-Mlengana said.
It happened near 33rd and Scott on Monday afternoon, February 8th.
Bob Donovan is the alderman of the district where the incident occurred. He is calling what happened “street justice.”
Car thefts are an epidemic in Milwaukee thanks, largely, to the inept and weak response from the mayor and the criminal justice system. Can you really blame people for taking it into their own hands when the system is failing them? Hopefully this kid has finally learned his lesson and will get his act together.