Courts & Law

A shameful day in the U.S. Senate

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BlindJusticeAttorneys are not supposed to be judged by the crimes of their clients. In the United States, we believe that everyone accused of a crime, no matter how heinous,  is entitled to a legal defense by competent legal counsel.

We believe in this so much that we made it the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the Bill of Rights.

A majority of the U.S. Senate failed this fundamental principle today. Seven Democratic senators shamed themselves and their oath to uphold the Constitution by joining with Tea-Publican senators, whom are incapable of being shamed, to defeat the nomination of Debo Adegbile as an assistant attorney general.

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Tea-Publican assault on Common Core, school vouchers, and more

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education_appleBefore anyone starts to panic over Cap’n Al and his Tea Party pals killing Common Core education standards in Arizona, Senate approves ban on Common Core standards, let’s make some salient points.

Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal supports the Common Core standards, and last September proposed renaming the standards to quiet down the black helicopters caucus of the Tea Party that sees everything as a federal “guvmint” conspiracy by that secret Muslim Kenyan in the White House who wants to indoctrinate their children with godless communism, or some such nonsense.

(The Common Core standards were developed by the bipartisan National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. It was only after President Obama said, “sure, give it a try” that the black helicopters caucus of the Tea Party assigned evil intent to the standards.)

Governor Jan Brewer also supports the Common Core standards and went along with Huppenthal’s scheme to rename the standards by issuing an executive order last September renaming the standards the”Arizona’s College and Career Ready Standards.”

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Financial Reports: Cathi Herrod & Center for Arizona Policy Give AZ Lege More than Ideas

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capitol940-sig-sm72The nationwide outrage generated byhighly discriminatory SB1062 shined a harsh light on the Arizona Legislature and on the bill’s creator– lobbyist Cathi Herrod and her non-profit political group, the Center for Arizona Policy.

With 123 Center for Arizona Policy bills becoming law, Herrod and her fundamentalist Christian organizationhave been highly influential have beenway too powerful in the the Arizona Legislature for years. (Details here.) Herrod is such a fixture at the Capitol that “admirers and foes alike refer to as Arizona’s 31st senator,” according to AZCentral.com.

A recent fluff piece about Herrod in AZCentral.com said that her group brought in $1.7 million in 2011 (the most recent tax report available) but spent under $20,000 on lobbying the Arizona Legislature that year. Hmmm…

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Senate Tea-Publicans vote for nullification and minting their own money

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6a00d8341bf80c53ef019103d205f6970c-piTea-Publicans in the Arizona Senate demonstrated that they are just as batshit crazy as their counterparts in the Arizona House this week.

Tea-Publican senators voted to pass SR 1003 (.pdf) the Neo-Confederate Senate Resolution for “nullification” of EPA regulations in Arizona, on a vote of 18-11, with one member not voting. Democrat Carlyle Begay, who represents the SRP Navajo Power Generating Station, voted with the Tea-Publicans.

The long-discredited “nullification” theory is unconstitutional, how many times do we have to go over this? The Supremacy Clause, Article VI, paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution, and the post-Civil War 14th Amendment, Section 3 is settled law. These Neo-Confederate dead-enders always want to re-litigate the discredited theories that led to the Civil War.

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About Cathi Herrod’s side of the SB1062 story

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So, a few days ago the Center for Arizona Policy got a group of law professors together to get them to sign a letter saying the people opposing SB1062 were “misleading” everyone.

On letterhead for Douglas Laycock, a professor of law and of religious studies at the University of Virginia, 10 professors in addition to Laycock signed on. The thrust of the letter is that SB1062 is not discriminatory because it’s not the bill that was proposed in Kansas.

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