national news

Nightmare ends in N.Y. … good job

A million bucks a day.

That’s one estimate of the cost of hunting down two escaped murderers. Yes, there were some eyebrows raised over the cost of the manhunt.

However, I am reckoning today that no one is going to gripe out loud about the cost. One of the bad guys, Richard Matt, is dead; the other, David Sweat, is in custody.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/troopers-hunting-escapees-scrambled-to-save-1-they-captured/ar-AAcgwNV

They had crawled out of a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, the first such escape in the history of the century-old lockup. At least two prison employees are accused of aiding in the men’s escape.

But this story, which has all the earmarks of a potential movie or TV dramatization, was hair-raising in the extreme for residents living anywhere near the prison.

The men didn’t get very far before the police caught up with them.

Matt resisted arrest and was gunned down. The police didn’t waste any time with Sweat; a lone officer spotted him walking along a rural road a little more than a mile from the Canadian border. Sweat started running and the officer shot him twice, injuring him critically.

These two are bad men. Both were serving life sentences for committing brutal crimes. To say they were considered “dangerous” is to commit a serious understatement.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — perhaps channeling the late President Ford — declared at a news conference, “The nightmare is finally over.”

Good job all around.

 

legal news, national news, political news

Trump favors ‘traditional marriage’

The Donald opened himself up for some snickering.

I’ll admit that I snickered a bit when I heard Donald Trump declare that he favors “traditional marriage” and that he disagrees with the Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage.

Trump: ‘I’m for traditional marriage’

I won’t pass judgment here. Members of my family have been married more than once.

But this is the kind of thing that The Donald will face as he answers questions from the media while he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination.

He’s on his third marriage. He’s been divorced twice. Trump’s life is now officially an open book — not that it wasn’t before he declared his presidential candidacy.

When the host of CNN’s “State of the Union,” Jake Tapper, pressed him on the traditional marriage matter and whether he was qualified to speak on it, given his own marital history, Trump talked of how his business activity got in the way of his relationships.

To his credit, Tapper told Trump he didn’t care to hear why his first two marriages failed.

When The Donald, though, steps into some of these particularly tricky issues, he’d better watch where his foot lands. There could be a political land mine or two out there.

 

legal news

It’s official: Texas AG says clerks can flout the law

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has just told county clerks they don’t have to uphold the sacred oath to which they swore when they took office.

I don’t know where to begin.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/28/paxton-county-clerks-can-deny-same-sex-marriage-li/

Paxton issued a statement today that said county clerks do not have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples if they have religious objections. He has challenged the legal opinion of a majority of the nine men and women who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 this past week that gay marriage is now legal in the United States of America.

Texas county clerks, according to Paxton, are now free to flout federal law.

“Our religious liberties find protection in state and federal constitutions and statutes,” Paxton said in a statement. “While they are indisputably our first freedom, we should not let them be our last.”

Yes, they do “find protection” in the law. But there’s another factor that Paxton and others who oppose the court ruling are giving short shrift. It is that county clerks — as well as state attorneys general, I should add — take an oath to follow federal and state law. They swear to God that they’ll do that.

Is that oath now rendered moot? Why bother, then, to swear to uphold the Constitution?

 

legal news

Tumult unlikely to let up

gay marriage

It’s been a tumultuous past few days, right?

The Confederate flag has come under intense fire; then the Supreme Court steps in and — in order — affirms the Affordable Care Act and then legalizes gay marriage.

Let the arguments ensue.

As for the gay marriage issue, I want to make only this point.

Those who oppose the court’s ruling as a threat to traditional marriage ought to take a deep breath and wait.

They need to wait to see — and this will take time — if the rate of traditional weddings drops off; or if the rate of traditional divorce increases.

I suspect we’ll see an increase in gay marriages across the land, as same-sex couples now are able to marry openly — and legally. Would that increase signify a disproportionate representation of the number of Americans who happen to be gay? That remains to be seen as well. I continue to believe the percentage of gay people is as it’s always been; we’ve seen a spike in the percentage of those who have “come out.”

I only can speak for myself and — on this matter — for my wife. Neither of us feels threatened by the court decision. We’ve been at this marriage game for going on 44 years. It’s worked pretty well for us.

In that regard, I’m not yet willing to concede that the court majority’s ruling is going to trigger an avalanche of divorces among heterosexual couples. Nor am I willing to believe that a serious decline in weddings involving men and women marrying each other is on the horizon.

Patience, please. Let’s see what transpires.

legal news, political news

How about changing the oath of office?

IN THE NAME AND BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE STATE OF TEXAS, I, John Q. Public Servant, do solemnly swear (or affirm), that I will faithfully execute the duties of the office of county clerk of the State of Texas, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of this State, so help me God.

That, right there, is the oath of office county clerks must take before they can perform their duties on behalf of the people they serve in their respective counties.

In Texas, all 254 counties are governed by state statute, which means the state sets the laws by which county residents — and their elected officials — must abide.

I found it on the Texas Secretary of State’s website. It’s kind of a generic oath that county officials must take. Granted, some county officials take longer oaths, but it must include this particular pledge.

Just as an aside, I attended the swearing in on Jan. 1 of newly elected Potter County Judge Nancy Tanner and the oath she took was tantamount to the “War and Peace” version of the mandatory oath given to county officials.

I mention this oath in light of what Republican presidential candidate — and Texas’s junior U.S. senator — Ted Cruz said about how county clerks “absolutely” should be given the right to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Texas. He said the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage amounts to a declaration of war on religious liberty.

As I look at this oath, I don’t see any reference to the faith of the person taking it. I see nothing in there that enables the elected official to not follow all “the laws of the United States and of this State.”

I read the oath as requiring that those who take it must adhere to it — to the letter.

A majority of the justices on the Supreme Court has declared that gay marriage is now legal everywhere, in each of the 50 states. That includes Texas.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, another GOP presidential candidate, said that we could save a ton of money if we just got rid of the court. I don’t know how serious he was about that suggestion.

Sen. Cruz, though, seems to be dead serious in encouraging county clerks to violate their sacred oath, which does end with “so help me God.”

Hey, let’s just change the oath and have county clerks affirm that they’ll uphold only those laws that do not trample on their religious beliefs.

 

legal news

Court switches roles and angers everyone

Think about this for a moment.

Before this past week, political liberals across the United States were angry with the Supreme Court, calling it a body comprising conservative “judicial activists.”

They cite the Citizens United ruling of 2010 in which the court ruled that unlimited amount of money can pour into political campaigns, thus giving the very rich an even more powerful voice in electing public officials.

We’ve witnessed a 180-degree turn.

Conservatives now are chastising the “liberal” court — even though its ideological balance is the same as it was in the Citizens United ruling. Conservatives say the court is “too activist” because it upheld the Affordable Care Act and then ruled that the Constitution guarantees gay people the right to marry.

Liberals dislike the high court. So do conservatives.

Journalists are fond of saying that if “Both sides are mad, then I must doing something right.”

Does the same truism apply to judges?

 

religious news

‘If we can find grace, anything is possible’

I just want to share this blog post about President Obama’s stirring eulogy this past week of the late state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine people killed in that horrifying massacre in Charleston, S.C.

I don’t know what to add to this.

So I won’t even try.

“A Chance To Find Our Best Selves”: Obama; ‘If We Can Find Grace, Anything Is Possible’

 

national news, religious news

Constitution reads like … the Bible

The eruption of interpretations of the U.S. Supreme Court’s two blockbuster rulings this week brings to mind a thought about two quite famous pieces of writing.

The U.S. Constitution and the Bible have something in common. You can take from either document what you want to take from them.

The court affirmed the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage. It upheld the federal subsidies critical to the ACA and it declared that gay couples can marry legally anywhere in the United States.

“Strict constructionists” have declared that the court overstepped in both rulings. More liberal thinkers say the court ruled correctly.

It reminds a bit of the debate over Scripture between the fundamentalists and those who view the Bible a bit more, um, interpretatively.

You can read both documents in accordance with your own view of the law or of your own faith.

Furthermore, you can argue that your version of the truth is correct and the other side is wrong. How many times have you had that discussion about the Bible? I’ve had it more than a few times over many years.

I am guessing we’re entering a new phase of constitutional interpretation that will be just as fierce.

political news, religious news, State news

Cruz to county clerks: Sure, go ahead, break the law

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is running hard for president of the United States and he’s now taking every opportunity to have his voice heard.

Let’s take the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that legalizes gay marriage across the nation.

What’s the junior Republican Texas senator’s take on it: It ought to be OK for county clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples if it violates their religious beliefs.

Let’s hold on here, young man.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/27/cruz-clerks-should-be-able-opt-out-gay-marriage-li/

County clerks in Texas take an oath to uphold the law. It doesn’t offer any qualifiers, that they can opt out of fulfilling that oath if their religious faith stands in the way.

Texas county clerks do have an option if they simply cannot authorize a marriage license to a gay couple. They can resign their public office. Indeed, when New Mexico legalized gay marriage this past year, the Roosevelt County clerk did exactly that; she quit rather than do something with which her religious faith did not believe.

“Ours is a country that was built by men and women fleeing religious oppression,” Cruz said in an interview with The Texas Tribune, “and you look at the foundation of this country — it was to seek out a new land where anyone of us could worship the Lord God Almighty with all of our hearts, minds and souls, without government getting in the way.”

Without government getting in the way? My goodness, senator. We all are able to do all those things. We can go to church, to synagogue, to the mosque — anywhere we wish — and pray to whichever deity in which we believe. The Supreme Court decision handed down this week say not a single word about any of that.

It merely affirms that the 14th Amendment guarantees all U.S. citizens the right to “equal protection” under the law. Thus, they are entitled to marry whomever they wish.

I have no clue what the state’s county clerks are going to do, which of them will adhere to the law and which of them will declare that they just cannot in good conscience issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

Those who refuse will be breaking the law they took an oath to uphold.

It’s interesting to me that Sen. Cruz keeps tossing the word “lawless” around to describe the Supreme Court, the Obama administration — and virtually anyone who disagrees with his world view.

Yet, he’s seeking a way for county clerks to evade the law. That’s my definition of “lawlessness.”

 

legal news

Justices vent their anger, show their fangs

What? Do you mean to say that the U.S. Supreme Court justices are human beings, with actual tempers?

I guess so, if the story attached to this post is any indicator.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/supreme-court-justices-antonin-scalia-samuel-alito-119486.html?ml=po

The two huge rulings this week — affirming the Affordable Care Act and legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states — reportedly has revealed a growing schism between the two wings of the court.

Conservative justices don’t like the liberal tilt the court showed in the two rulings.

And at least one of them, Justice Antonin Scalia, said as much in his dissenting opinions.

Scalia and fellow Justice Samuel Alito appear to be angriest at Justice Anthony Kennedy, who joined the liberal justices on both rulings. Kennedy was picked for the court by a conservative president, Ronald Reagan, as was Scalia; Alito was picked by President George W. Bush.

I happen to believe that Scalia and Alito need to settle down. It seems a stretch for me to believe that a high court headed by yet another Bush selection, Chief Justice John Roberts, is going to become a bastion of liberal constitutional interpretation.

OK, so the liberals won two gigantic victories. Obamacare stands and gay marriage is now legal.

There will be plenty of other fights along the way.

What’s more, the fact that Scalia wrote such scathing dissents shouldn’t surprise anyone. He’s known for using colorful language and is fearless in stating his case.

As for the court’s fifth conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, well … he’s always silent during oral arguments before the court. The day Justice Thomas erupts in a fit of rage might be cause for concern.

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