Courts & Law

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the annual convention of the NAACP on Tuesday, and in the wake of the George Zimmerman trial in Florida, he addressed the legitimate concerns of African-Americans that simply being a black male in America renders them a "criminal suspect." Attorney General Eric Holder denounces ‘stand your ground’ laws:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. strongly condemned “stand your
ground” laws Tuesday, saying the measures “senselessly expand the
concept of self-defense” and may encourage “violent situations to
escalate.”

* * *

“These laws try to fix something that was never broken,” Holder told cheering delegates of the annual convention of the NAACP,
which is pressing him to file civil rights charges against Zimmerman.
“The list of resulting tragedies is long and, unfortunately, has
victimized too many who are innocent.”

The attorney general, who
is the first African American ever to hold that position, drew parallels
between his own life and the claims of many here that Zimmerman
racially profiled Martin after spotting the teenager walking through his
father’s neighborhood in a hooded sweatshirt. Martin was African
American. Zimmerman’s father is white, his mother Peruvian.

Holder
recalled being pulled over twice by police on the New Jersey Turnpike
as a young man and having his car searched, “when I’m sure I wasn’t
speeding.” Another time, he said, he was stopped by law enforcement in
Georgetown while simply running to catch a movie after dark.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Blog for Arizona's Pamela Powers Hannley wrote a richly detailed post about Martha McSally in October 2012, after McSally avoided giving her an interview that she had scheduled with her campaign. Martha McSally: Warrior woman hides from questions, constituents, inconsistencies.

As I recall, Pamela was criticized for her reporting on McSally's annulment of marriage in Santa Cruz County, and "Rumor has it that McSally and Henry had a sham marriage of convenience." And then there was this:

There are multiple rumors on the Internet about McSally being a Lesbian. I don't care if she is gay and is in the closet. I do care
if she had a sham marriage to avoid being outed– since Don't Ask Don't
Tell was in full swing in the late 1990s. I also care about this issue
because McSally's rhetoric is decidedly anti-gay— particularly
when it comes to gay marrriage– yet another "cookie cutter" Republican
issue. Is McSally another one of those Republicans who talks loudly
against gays and then turns out to be one?

I for one do not care what a person's sexual preference is, but I do care if a candidate for office is "pulling a Mehlman."

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The California Supreme Court has denied a request by backers of Proposition 8 to reinstate the measure. California High Court Refuses to Revive Gay Marriage Ban:

Proposition 8 supporters filed a lawsuit July 12 asking the
state’s high court to order county clerks to enforce the gay-marriage ban, claiming the measure was still valid because a
U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month didn’t find it was
unconstitutional. They sought an immediate injunction
reinstating the law while the lawsuit proceeds.

* * *

The court denied the request for an injunction reinstating the law in a one-sentence filing that didn’t give a reason.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

No, I am not referring to James Bond, 007. Any American living in a state that has lax gun laws and stand your ground laws, and which permits its citizens to engage in vigilante justice (like Arizona) has the tacit approval of the state for a license to kill. It is a sickness in our culture.

There are two good opinions on this topic that I have read. The first is Ed Kilgore at the Political Animal Blog, who writes, Licenses to Kill:

[T]he more I think about it, the real aberration in law and society
that’s been exposed by this case involves the incentives offered to
Zimmerman and people like him—not just in Sanford, Florida, but in much
of the country. At TAP, Scott Lemieux nails it:

Carrying a deadly weapon in public should carry unique
responsibilities. In most cases someone with a gun should not be able to
escape culpability if he initiates a conflict with someone unarmed and
the other party ends up getting shot and killed. Under the current law
in many states, people threatened by armed people have few good options,
because fighting back might create a license to kill. As the New Yorker’s
Amy Davidson puts it, “I still don’t understand what Trayvon was
supposed to do.” Unless the law is changed to deal with the large number
of people carrying concealed guns, there will be more tragic and
unnecessary deaths of innocent people like Trayvon Martin for which
nobody is legally culpable. And to make claims of self-defense easier to
bring, as Florida and more than 20 other states have done, is moving in
precisely the wrong direction. And, even more importantly, no matter
how self-defense laws are structured the extremely unusual American
practice of allowing large number of citizens to carry concealed weapons
leads to many unecessary deaths. (All 50 states, it’s worth noting,
permit concealed carry.)