Even biased judges sometimes decide cases correctly, and with free speech experts of all stripes applauding the Citizens United decision, it’s far from apparent the Supremes falsely interpreted the First Amendment for political or ideological reasons.
Refuting conventional wisdom that the man who wrote the majority opinion was nefariously motivated, left-leaning constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley told Keith Olbermann: “[Justice Anthony] Kennedy is no corporate shill. He really believes in this...It’s all about limiting speech."
At a public hearing Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Chad Hummel, the lead defense attorney in Roman Polanski's criminal matter, wanted it known that although he had recently asked for an in-chambers meeting to confer about one particular issue of "great sensitivity," he had never suggested anything else shouldn't be discussed in open court.
One reason I don't hate Roman Polanski is I don't know exactly what he did with or to Samantha Geimer in 1977. Moreover, compared to those who perniciously enable systemic corruption by obsessing over the punishment of one person, I think Polanski's reaction to evident judicial misconduct is laudable. Why should anyone take that crap?
Demonstrating the same lack of self-esteem as prisoners who beat up child molesters, noisy segments of the American population continue to hyperventilate over Roman Polanski as if the sexual abuse of minors were not already sufficiently condemned by our society.
When Emily Bazelon of Slate.com recently asked Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley about the Roman Polanski case, “Cooley’s deputy tried to shush him.” But the DA was apparently in no mood to remain silent.
It’s a fallacy that there’s a morally or legally significant difference between what Robert Halderman stands accused of doing, and what agents and lawyers do all the time. Halderman had a marketable story to sell. Just because most agents and lawyers wouldn’t go to David Letterman’s house doesn’t mean that going to Letterman’s house is a criminal act. It’s not unlawful to sell a story without using an agent or a lawyer, and making a proposal to someone who might be embarrassed by the dissemination of a story isn’t prohibited.
In his interview with Roland Burris Wednesday, Chris Matthews conducted himself not as a fair-minded journalist but a prosecutor who believes it’s okay to conceal exculpatory evidence to win a case. Like everyone else who has been sucked in by a lynch mob mentality at Burris’s expense, Matthews simply ignored that it was completely routine for Robert Blagojevich, brother of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, to have sought a campaign contribution from Burris in a telephone conversation.
The media continues to exaggerate evidence of malfeasance on the part of Roland Burris. As if it would have been criminal for him to do what he didn’t do anyway, Monica Davey and Ann Cullotta claim in The New York Times that “Mr. Burris had promised to send a personal check” to Gov. Rod Blagojevich [...]
Although today’s decision by the California Supreme Court is understandably disappointing to proponents of same sex marriage, it should not be interpreted as any sort of disrespect to gays and their rights. Indeed, this is the very same court which last year ruled that gays do enjoy the right to marry under the California Constitution.
Some Huffington Post commenters who admire Code Pink’s moxie think the mere willingness to insult Donald Rumsfeld to his face is a great accomplishment. It is not. It trivializes his alleged crimes to showily spew inane jargon, especially when nothing else is included in the presentation.
It’s not as if it would be overly burdensome to [...]
Thursday, March 4, 2010
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