Patterico's Pontifications

5/18/2007

Amnesty Open Thread

Filed under: Immigration — Patterico @ 8:19 pm



Consider this an open thread on the amnesty deal, which I have been too busy to follow closely. I thought Allah has been doing a bang-up job of analysis at Hot Air, and Ace has been blogging nonstop on the subject.

Your thoughts?

Comment Filter Overactive

Filed under: Blogging Matters — Patterico @ 8:16 pm



Apologies to those of you who have left comments lately, only to see them disappear into the vortex of the Akismet spam filter. I try to check it, as an extraordinary number of comments get caught by it. But I have been quite busy lately.

It does make things a bit more difficult if you leave several copies of the comment, as I have to read each and try to determine if they are duplicates. Better to e-mail me and let me know it’s caught there, rather than leaving the same comment several more times.

If you are one of those people who leaves several links in a single comment, your comment is more likely to get trapped — especially if it has five links or more.

Again, apologies for the trouble. Commenting on a blog should not be frustrating, and I know it has been for some of you. I’m looking into a better way to do this. If anybody knows of one, be sure to let me know.

P.S. I welcome it if people want to leave comments with information relevant to the discussion, but I prefer that you not copy and paste entire articles and/or blog entries. Just leave the link. Lengthy cut and paste jobs, in addition to constituting a copyright violation, are unsightly and take up bandwidth. If we want to read your article, we will. If we don’t, we’ll skip over it. Please show some courtesy and just include the link and a short description or quote.

Coen Brothers Movie Appears Good

Filed under: Movies — Patterico @ 8:08 pm



The latest Coen brothers movie looks pretty good, if this review is accurate.

Stakes Are High for the High Court in the 2008 Presidential Election

Filed under: 2008 Election,Judiciary — Patterico @ 7:57 pm



At SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein has an interesting analysis of what the next presidential election is likely to mean for the Supreme Court. For Republicans like me, who think a Democrat will win in 2008, the outlook is bleak:

whether the Court moves more fundamentally to the right, so that it could genuinely undo the jurisprudence of the Warren Court, depends on the next President. If two or three of the moderate-to-liberal votes were replaced with genuine conservatives, the existing constraints on more radical doctrinal shifts created by swing votes like Kennedy or O’Connor would be lifted.

Those sorts of dramatic changes are not at all implausible. Current law students tend to view Warren Court-era decisions as if they were written into the text of the Constitution itself. But as noted, Roe v. Wade and the exclusionary rule have been the subject of recent opinions urging their overruling. Miranda was recently challenged. A number of cases challenging existing doctrine on the separation of church and state are likely to reach the Court in the coming years.

By contrast, if a Democratic President wins in 2008, the current conservative-leaning détente on the Court is likely to be enshrined for the indefinite future. Imagine if in 2009 Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg were replaced by Judge Garland (then age 57), former Solicitor General Seth Waxman (58), and Dean Elena Kagan (49); they would join Justice Breyer (71). On the right, you would have Scalia (73); Thomas (60); Alito (59); Roberts (54). And Kennedy in the center (for this Court) would be 73.

In that scenario, the potential range of movement in the Court’s jurisprudence would narrow dramatically. Only three Justices – one from the left, one from the right, and one in the center – would be at an age at which they would even be thinking of retiring. The other six Justices would be expected to serve at least 10 (and more likely 15 or 20) years.

In sum, the 2008 election window presents the most significant opportunity to shape the direction of the Supreme Court that can be anticipated for roughly the next two decades – i.e., as far into the future as anyone can reasonably hope to look. For the left and the right, the stakes are genuinely high.

I have regarded it as a foregone conclusion for some time now that a Democrat will win the 2008 presidential election, so analyses like this depress me quite a bit.

Illegals Voted in San Antonio

Filed under: General,Immigration — Patterico @ 6:06 am



Commenter Mike K. provides this link to a very disturbing story about voting in Bexar County, Texas, where San Antonio is located:

Hundreds of illegal immigrants have registered to vote in Bexar County in recent years and dozens of them have actually cast ballots, canceling out the votes of U.S. citizens, 1200 WOAI news will report Thursday morning.

Figures obtained by 1200 WOAI news shows 303 illegals successfully registered to vote, and at least 41 cast ballots in various elections.

Oh well. I’m sure that happens only in Bexar County, Texas — and not anywhere else in the country.

And I’m sure they caught every such instance where it happened.

Teaser: this ties in nicely with a project that DRJ has been helping me with over the past few weeks. I have been too busy to complete it, and I don’t want to say more about it, but I think you’ll find the results interesting once they are compiled.

For Law Nerds Only

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:00 am



At this link (.pdf file) Simon Dodd of the Stubborn Facts blog provides his analysis of standing issues involved in a recent Supreme Court case. He introduces the analysis in this blog post. The analysis is set forth in his amusing law-review article style.


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