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Sotomayor Memoir: Husband Brought Bag of Quaaludes to Wedding Night, Unknowingly Drove Cousin to Shoot Up Heroin

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says in her upcoming memoir that her lifelong battle against diabetes and the fear that she might die early played a big part in her decision not to have children.

The 58-year-old Sotomayor says in an unusually personal book for a Supreme Court justice that she feels an occasional tug of regret at not having borne or adopted children. The memoir, “My Beloved World,” is being published by Alfred A. Knopf in January. An early copy was sent by the publisher to The Associated Press.

Sotomayor also defends affirmative action — under which she was admitted to Princeton University and Yale Law School — as needed to get disadvantaged students to the starting line of a race to success. She grew up so poor in the South Bronx that her family never even had a bank account.

She acknowledges she entered through a special door reserved for minority students but writes that her accomplishments at Princeton, including receiving the highest prize given to seniors, earning a place in the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and graduating with highest honors, speak for themselves.

Sotomayor received an advance of nearly $1.2 million for the book, which Knopf will publish simultaneously in English and Spanish. The book does not deal with the more than three years Sotomayor has served as a justice or the previous 17 years she spent as a U.S. district and appeals court judge.

Read more from this story HERE.

Supreme Court Weighing Genetic Privacy

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Supreme Court justices are to [met] privately Friday to weigh whether they will hear a major genetic-privacy case testing whether authorities may take DNA samples from anybody arrested for a serious crime.

The case has wide-ranging implications, as at least 21 states and the federal government have regulations requiring suspects to give a DNA sample upon arrest. In all the states with such laws, DNA saliva samples are cataloged in state and federal crime-fighting databases.

The issue confronts the government’s interest in solving crime, balanced against the constitutional rights of those arrested to be free from government intrusion.

The case before the justices concerns a decision in April of Maryland’s top court, which said it was a breach of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure to take DNA samples from suspects who have not been convicted.

The Maryland Court of Appeals, that state’s highest court, said that arrestees have a “weighty and reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches” and that expectation is not outweighed by the state’s “purported interest in assuring proper identification” of a suspect.

Read more about this story HERE.

Justice Kagan: I’m Probably a Supreme Court Justice Because I’m a Woman

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Justice Elena Kagan said she was “not sure” if President Barack Obama would have nominated her to the Supreme Court if she had not been a woman.

During a talk before law students on Friday at the University of Tennessee Law School, Kagan said, “And to tell you the truth, there were also things that I got because I was a woman. I mean I’m not sure I’d be sitting here.”

“I’m not sure that I would’ve been President Obama’s nominee if I weren’t a woman,” she said. “And if he wasn’t as committed as he was to ensuring that there was diversity on the Supreme Court.”

“So, mostly what I think when I think about this question is how far we’ve come and how much I owe — and all the women who have come after me owe– to people like Justice Ginsburg and Justice O’Connor,” she said.

Kagan was initially asked by Dean of Tennessee Law School Doug Blaze, “It’s been a remarkable career, and you’ve been quite a pioneer along the way. [The] first woman to be Dean of the Harvard Law School, first woman solicitor general of the United States. You’re now the fourth woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court and one of three presently serving.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Abandons the Border

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Along the Arizona/Mexican border, dozens of heavily armed spotters man look out points on mountain peaks commanding the shimmering, parched landscape below. They usually man these posts for two weeks at a time, taking provisions with them to last the entire 14 days. They are equipped with night vision technology, powerful binoculars and high tech communications able to keep them in touch with command centers miles away.

But these aren’t US military personnel or law enforcement, they are soldiers of powerful Mexican drug cartels, who own these crossing points where vast amounts of drugs and human traffickers stream into the United States. These spotters are on the look out for the US border patrol who is tasked with keeping these invaders out. Hamstrung by the vast areas of desolate country they have to patrol, as well as having to respect environmentally sensitive areas which the cartels could care less about, our forces are out manned and outgunned.

Like the Cohen Brothers movie, “No country for old men,” the undercurrent of this landscape is harsh, lawless and violent. It is ruled by brutal men, who do not hesitate to resort to violence in order to protect their investment in drugs and human trafficking. Headless bodies and rape trees tell the tale of how brutal this place can be.

Mule trains of human and drug traffickers on foot, some carrying burlap sacks filled with drugs, walk into the United States under the watchful eyes of the spotters high above them. Once they reach a staging area, they change clothes so they look more American and discard what they had been wearing. They also discard the burlap bags as they transfer the drugs to vehicles. These smuggling corridors are littered with abandoned vehicles,plastic bottles, cans, clothing, shoes, food, black plastic bags, and empty burlap sacks.

You would think, that at the very least, the EPA would be enthusiastically suing the cartels for despoiling the desert environment…as enthusiastically as they sue and harass our own US corporations and industries.

We are having a war waged against us on our southern border. This war is filling our country with dangerous illegal drugs and swamping us with undocumented illegal immigrants who are overloading our social services.

A border state trampled and drowned by illegal and criminal invaders, Arizona was dealt a severe blow a few months ago by the Obama administration. They were told not to call Dept of Homeland Security for help with their immigration enforcement problem because Homeland security wasn’t going to answer.

Evidently President Obama was in a snit when the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a controversial provision requiring police to check the immigration status of people they detain and suspect to be in the country illegally. So President Obama decided to circumvent the intent of the ruling by another executive order and withdrew federal immigration enforcement help and cooperation from Arizona.

Even Justice Scalia wrote a scathing indictment against the Obama administrations intimidation of Arizona’s efforts to protects its borders when he penned: ” Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.”

President Obama’s decision to suspend laws on immigration and harass the State of Arizona for trying to protect its citizens from a criminal invasion, is indeed mind boggling.

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Supreme Court Justices: Skilled Charlatans, Undeserving of Public Trust & Respect?

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey

The ObamaCare decision exposed the Supreme Court as an emperor without clothes. Hoping for deliverance from ObamaCare, many usual critics defended the Court. But with a new term fast approaching, a month before a critical election, Chief Justice Roberts’ handiwork should be remembered as a final wake-up call to consider, once and for all, whether the Court and judicial review merit respect, acceptance and legitimacy.

Upon Paul Ryan’s vice presidential selection, supporters noted his objection that Chief Justice Roberts had “contort[ed] logic and reason to come up with [the ObamaCare] ruling.” Such contortion is nothing unusual except for one thing. The Supreme Court, which normally operates in obscurity, could not escape a glaring spotlight this time, affording a rare opportunity to inform the public about the dark side of what many justices do. This raises questions concerning the utility of elections, what remains of our actual Constitution, the rule of law, and public acceptance of judicial review.

The Roberts opinion as well as attempts to defend it provide easily understood textbook examples of how justices have turned “interpretation” into a scam by manipulating words to mean anything in order to impose their will by authorizing what is constitutionally prohibited and prohibiting what is authorized or required.

Bluntly acknowledging, in order to challenge, the charge that Roberts is “a liar [and] coward,” devoted Roberts apologist Matthew Franck candidly clarified high stakes questions rarely presented to the public. Are all high court justices always honest? Or are many of them, often a majority, just politicians undemocratically, crassly and lawlessly imposing their personal morality based on misplaced public faith in them — blind faith similar to that once placed in witch doctors and medicine men?

If many justices are merely skilled charlatans distinguished from the latter solely by using far more sophisticated and incomprehensible mumbo jumbo, then what they do is illegitimate, their whole enterprise and institution are illegitimate, and they are not entitled to public trust and respect.

Read more from this story HERE.

Scalia’s comments this weekend open the door to more gun control legislation

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Photo credit: US Mission Geneva

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Sunday the Second Amendment leaves open the possibility of gun-control legislation, adding to what has become a slow-boiling debate on the issue since the Colorado movie theater massacre earlier this month.

Scalia, one of the high court’s most conservative justices, said on “Fox News Sunday” that the majority opinion in the landmark 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller stated the extent of gun ownership “will have to be decided in future cases.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

Scalia’s comments follow the July 20 massacre at the Aurora, Colo., movie theater in which the alleged gunman, with the help of a semi-automatic weapon and an ammunition clip that could hold as many as 100 rounds, killed 12 and wounded 59 others.

His comments also follow those of lawmakers who have called for tougher gun-related laws in the wake of the shootings – most recently New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg and New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, Democrats who said Sunday they will introduce legislation this week to “make it harder for criminals to anonymously stockpile ammunition through the Internet, as was done before the recent tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Publisher’s Note:  Scalia also noted in his interview on Fox News Sunday that an original construction of the Constitution opens the door to gun limitations as well, noting that the Second Amendment allows us only to “keep and bear arms.”  The word “bear” means that the Founders intended some restrictions, at the minimum allowing prohibition of weapons that cannot be carried.

 

CBS: Justice Roberts switched views to uphold health care law

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Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court’s four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama’s health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.

Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy – believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law – led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.

“He was relentless,” one source said of Kennedy’s efforts. “He was very engaged in this.”

But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, “You’re on your own.”

The conservatives refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause, the sources said.

Instead, the four joined forces and crafted a highly unusual, unsigned joint dissent. They deliberately ignored Roberts’ decision, the sources said, as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate.

The inner-workings of the Supreme Court are almost impossible to penetrate. The Court’s private conferences, when the justices discuss cases and cast their initial votes, include only the nine members – no law clerks or secretaries are permitted. The justices are notoriously close-lipped, and their law clerks must agree to keep matters completely confidential.

But in this closely-watched case, word of Roberts’ unusual shift has spread widely within the Court, and is known among law clerks, chambers’ aides and secretaries. It also has stirred the ire of the conservative justices, who believed Roberts was standing with them.

Continue reading on the CBS News website…

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

My Verdict: Obamacare UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

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Today’s shocking Obamacare decision caused me to reminisce about my time on the federal bench ten years ago.  When I was a United States Magistrate Judge, I took the same oath of office that every federal judge and justice in the country swears to.  I swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. . .”

That oath is anchored to the phrase, “Constitution of the United States.”  If the Constitution changes over time by an activist majority of the Supreme Court, then my oath was essentially an oath to the Supreme Court, not to the Constitution.  Of course, that’s not what the Founders intended.  The Supreme Court was never designed to be the pinnacle of federal power.

But that’s where we are today.  Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005, wrote the 5-4 opinion saving Obamacare and causing President Obama to declare “victory” and pundits to say that his administration has been “vindicated.”  Incredibly, Roberts determined that the government, under its taxing power, has the right to “impos[e] a tax on those who do not buy [a] product,” in this case, health insurance.*

From the bench today, Justice Kennedy issued a scathing denuciation of Robert’s reconstruction of Obamacare:  “The majority rewrites the statute Congress wrote … What Congress called a penalty, the court calls a tax.”  He concluded, “The law is “invalid in its entirety.”

The chief justice’s rescue of the individual mandate is a massive expansion of federal power, now permitting the federal government to regulate, by taxation, its citizens’ “failure to act” or passivity.  I challenge you to go back to the first 150 years of U.S. jurisprudence and find any Supreme Court opinion that would suggest such a construction of Congress’s power to tax and spend under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

In his powerful dissent, Justice Scalia agreed that this power grab was unconstitutional:

What is absolutely clear, affirmed by the text of the 1789 Constitution, by the Tenth Amendment ratified in 1791, and by innumerable cases of ours in the 220 years since, is that there are structural limits upon federal power—upon what it can prescribe with respect to private conduct, and upon what it can impose upon the sovereign States.

And then the zinger:

Whatever may be the conceptual limits upon the Commerce Clause and upon the power to tax and spend, they cannot be such as will enable the Federal  Government to regulate all private conduct and to compel the States to function as administrators of federal programs.

In other words, when the federal government is allowed to tax non-activity, what powers are left to the states and the people under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments?  Not much.

But even more basically, Roberts and the four more liberal members of the bench are all starting with the assumption that the federal government can tax and spend for things outside of its enumerated powers, misconstruing the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution.  James Madison apparently disagreed, suggesting the clause “amounted to no more than a reference to the other powers enumerated in the subsequent clauses of the same section.”

Not anchoring the general welfare clause to the enumerated powers enables virtually unlimited federal spending/taxation power and is completely contrary to the whole nature of the Constitution: a document designed to restrain the federal government, retaining all unspecified powers to the states and people.

The Roberts decision reflects that any faith in the Supreme Court to solve our nation’s problems is misplaced.  We must engage like never before.  Reject the LSM, rely on solid Internet news sources, support a Tea Party congressional candidate, engage in vote integrity efforts, and reflect upon the moral crisis we’re facing.   A massive victory in November will put today’s defeat in the proper dustbin of history.  But unless we rapidly correct the downward spiral, there won’t be much left for future generations.

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Author’s note:  To his credit, Chief Justice Roberts did reject the Commerce Clause as constitutional authority for Obamacare.

PHOTO CREDIT: DonkeyHokey