Courts & Law

Sen. John McCain calls for review of Arizona’s ‘stand your ground’ law

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Careful, Johnny. Arizona's "Ms. NRA," Governor Jan Brewer, will be sticking her boney finger in your face next like she did to President Obama. Brewer:
Fla. case doesn't change her mind on 'stand your ground'.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Sen. John McCain joined President Barack Obama's call to review so-called "Stand Your
Ground" laws in the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman in
the 2012 shooting of black teen Trayvon Martin. NBC reports, McCain joins Obama in calling for review of 'Stand Your Ground' laws:

Sen. John McCain, Ariz., a prominent Republican who's been known to
break ranks with fellow members of the GOP at times, urged state
legislatures to review Stand Your Ground laws in the wake of the
Zimmerman trial, which became a national flashpoint for race relations
in America.

"I can also see that Stand Your Ground laws may be
something that needs to be reviewed by the Florida legislature or any
other legislature that has passed such legislation," McCain said on
CNN.

Asked whether his home state legislature should consider revising its own similar law, McCain said yes. 

"I
think that, yes, I do, and I'm confident that the members of the
Arizona legislature will because it is a very controversial
legislation," he said.

(Update) Voter ID on trial in Pennsylvania

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The AP wraps up the first week of trial. Pennsylvania voter ID law trial wraps up first week:

A professor who specializes in political communication gave low
grades Friday to the 2012 multimedia campaign to educate Pennsylvania
voters about the state’s new voter-identification law as part of a court
trial on its constitutionality.

Diana Mutz, a faculty member at
the University of Pennsylvania and its Annenberg School for
Communication, said the centerpiece of the campaign — TV ads in which
people holding up photo ID cards urged voters to “show it” — seemed
confusing.

“It wasn’t always clear what ‘it’ was,” said Mutz, the
author of several books, who testified as an expert witness on behalf of
plaintiffs who sued the state in an attempt to overturn the
yet-to-be-enforced March 2012 law.

The “show it” slogan, which was
also incorporated in radio and print ads, also provided little guidance
to voters who lacked a Pennsylvania drivers’ license or other
acceptable IDs.

“To say ‘show it’ presumes you have it,” she said.

Her testimony wrapped up the first week of the trial in Commonwealth Court.

New study confirms the Supreme Court is wrong in Shelby County v. Holder

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I previously posted about the richly detailed data analysis by Morgan Kousser at Reuters, Gutting the landmark civil rights legislation, which blows away the disingenuous sophistry of Chief Justice John Roberts in Shelby County v. Holder. Research data proves the Supreme Court is wrong.

Key takaeway: updating the data, as the court suggests in Shelby County, would produce nearly the identical coverage as the current formula that the court found "outdated" and thus "unconstitutional" under a previously heretofor unknown constitutional standard of review ("we don't like it"):

Congress did not update the formula because it knows it still works. The comprehensive database that I assembled proves this.
Consider, from 1957 through 2006, almost 94 percent of all voting
rights minority lawsuits, legal objections and out-of-court settlements
occurred in jurisdictions now subject to federal oversight under the
Section 4 formula.

* * *

My database, however, shows that Congress acted wisely because it knew
that the formula works. Of 3,874 voting rights actions from 1957 through
2006, 3,636 — or 93.9 percent — came from jurisdictions covered under
the Section 4 formula. Many depended on the coverage formula because
they were based on Justice Department objections, or drew “more
information requests” or lawsuits to enforce Section 5.

Suppose we look instead at cases and consent decrees filed under Section
2 — which can be filed anywhere in the country, in areas not subject to
federal jurisdiction as well as in covered jurisdictions. I have
identified 1,244 Section 2 actions from 1957 through 2006 — and fully
83.7 percent occurred in the jurisdictions subject to federal oversight.

AIRC Update: the GOP files its brief in Harris v. AIRC

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Howard Fischer reports today that the lawyers/lobbyists for the GOP's secretive redistricting organization FAIR Trust, representing the Arizona GOP, have filed their brief requested by the U.S. District Court of Arizona in Harris v. AIRC on the question of the effects of Shelby County v. Holder on this case. GOP lawyer asks court to order new legislative districts for '14:

Arizona's 30 legislative districts need to be redrawn before the 2014
election, an attorney for Republican interests contends, citing the
U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling that voided a key section of the
Voting Rights Act.

In legal papers filed in federal court late
Friday, attorney David Cantelme said the Independent Redistricting
Commission's data show that it overpopulated some of the districts and
underpopulated others.

he result was to politically disadvantage Republican candidates, he said.

Cantelme
also pointed out to the three-judge panel that the commission's key
legal argument for why it made those decisions was that it needed to
comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

Commissioners wanted to
ensure that the map it drew was "precleared" by the U.S. Justice
Department and didn't dilute the voting strength of minorities.

Howard Fischer's stenographic reporting for the the lawyers/lobbyists of the GOP's secretive redistricting organization FAIR Trust has been a persistent problem from day one. It is misleading and misinforms readers.

President Obama asks the pertinent question

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In all the media coverage of the George Zimmerman trial, I do not recall anyone posing the pertinent question: "What if Trayvon Martin had been carrying a firearm? Would he have been justified in using deadly force to 'stand his ground' when he was lawfully where he had a right to be and was accosted by George Zimmerman?"

In President Obama's remarks today on Trayvon Martin, he posed the pertinent question. Lawyers are like that.