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The Stupidest Law Ever Proposed

May 25, 2010 By Jeff 1 Comment

I’ve seen a lot of dumb ideas put forth by politicians on both sides of the isle, but a bill introduced in the New York State legislature by Assemblymen Annette Robinson (D-Bedford Stuyvesant) and  Darryl Towns (D-East New York) is probably the single stupidest law ever proposed… anywhere!

From the New York Post:

City cops are livid over a legislative proposal that could handcuff the brave officers involved in life-and-death confrontations every day — requiring them to shoot gun-wielding suspects in the arm or leg rather than shoot to kill, The Post has learned.

The “minimum force” bill, which surfaced in the Assembly last week, seeks to amend the state penal codes’ “justification” clause that allows an officer the right to kill a thug if he feels his life or someone else’s is in imminent danger.

The bill — drafted in the wake of Sean Bell’s controversial police shooting death — would force officers to use their weapons “with the intent to stop, rather than kill” a suspect. They would be mandated to “shoot a suspect in the arm or the leg.”

Under present NYPD training, cops are taught to shoot at the center of their target and fire their weapon until the threat has been stopped.

The bill would change the wording of the “justification” clause in New York’s penal code from:

Section of state Penal Law S 35.15(2)(a)(ii)

“A person may not use deadly physical force upon another person . . . unless: he or she is . . . a police officer or peace officer or a person assisting a police officer or a peace officer at the latter’s direction.”

to:

Section of Assembly Bill A02952

“A police officer or peace officer . . . uses such force with the intent to stop, rather than kill . . . and uses only the minimal amount of force necessary to effect such stop.”

This is the kind of stupidity only liberal politicians who have been watching to many movies could dream up… Police officers are not trained to “shoot to kill” they’re trained to shoot for the center of mass, basically the area from the shoulders to the hips, it’s the largest part of the body and the area you have greatest likely hood of hitting while under stress. The notion that you could somehow shoot the gun out of a suspects hand or shoot him in the arm or the leg is pure Hollywood bullshit.

Gunfights are fast, violent and over in the blink of and eye. Most happen at relatively close ranges (generally no more than 20 feet) and are over in a matter of seconds, if not a couple of heartbeats. The sad reality there simply isn’t time to aim for a suspects arm or leg, all can do is point your gun at the center of mass and fire.

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Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Sotomayor

July 28, 2009 By Jeff Leave a Comment

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted largely along party lines to approve the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was the only Republican to vote in favor of sending Judge Sotomayor’s nomination to the full senate:

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-6 to approve Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday, with only one Republican crossing party lines to back her nomination.

The vote sends her nomination to the full Senate and brings Ms. Sotomayor one step closer to the high court, where she would become the first Hispanic justice. The Senate is expected to approve her nomination next week, before Congress adjourns for its summer recess.

So far, no Democratic senators have said they will vote against her. Five Republicans, including judiciary committee member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), have said they will support her.

“I would not have chosen her, but I understand why President Obama did,” said Sen. Graham on Tuesday, challenging some of the criticism his colleagues launched against her. “I haven’t seen this activism that we all dread and should reject.”

In the full Senate, 18 Republican senators have announced they oppose Ms. Sotomayor’s nomination, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and the remaining six Republicans on the judiciary committee.

Republicans wary of attacking the high court’s likely first Hispanic judge have been quick to praise Ms. Sotomayor’s personal achievements, lauding her rise from the Bronx housing projects to Princeton University and Yale Law School and her 17 years spent as a trial and appellate judge. But her critics have repeatedly pounced on remarks Ms. Sotomayor made in speeches they said revealed judicial activism.

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Holder Overrules DOJ Ruling Saying D.C. Vote Bill Is Unconstitutional

April 1, 2009 By Jeff 1 Comment

The Washington Post reports in today’s edition that Attorney General Eric Holder overruled lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel who ruled that the DC voting rights bill violates the Constitution:

Justice Department lawyers concluded in an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the historic D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional, according to sources briefed on the issue. But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who supports the measure, ordered up a second opinion from other lawyers in his department and determined that the legislation would pass muster.

A finding that the voting rights bill runs afoul of the Constitution could complicate an upcoming House vote and make the measure more vulnerable to a legal challenge that probably would reach the Supreme Court if it is enacted. The bill, which would give the District a vote in the House for the first time, appeared to be on the verge of passing last month before stalling when pro-gun legislators tried to attach an amendment weakening city gun laws. Supporters say it could reach the House floor in May.

In deciding that the measure is unconstitutional, lawyers in the department’s Office of Legal Counsel matched a conclusion reached by their Bush administration counterparts nearly two years ago, when a lawyer there testified that a similar bill would not withstand legal attack.

Holder rejected the advice and sought the opinion of the solicitor general’s office, where lawyers told him that they could defend the legislation if it were challenged after its enactment.

Ed Morrissey asks “What part of “support and defend the Constitution” does Holder not understand?“… I’m wondering the same thing, the Constitution is quite plain on the matter. The Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion is not in any way out of line or rogue it’s the same position that the OLC has held since at least 1963.

Ed Whelan was more here.

Related

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WSJ: The Minnesota Recount Was Unconstitutional

January 15, 2009 By Jeff Leave a Comment

There’s an interesting Op Ed by Michael Stokes Paulsen, a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis in today’s Wall Street Journal. Prof. Paulsen examines the recount procedures being used by Minnesota officials in the senate contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

His conclusion? “Isn’t just embarrassing. It is unconstitutional.”

You would think people would learn. The recount in the contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken for a seat in the U.S. Senate isn’t just embarrassing. It is unconstitutional.

This is Florida 2000 all over again, but with colder weather. Like that fiasco, Minnesota’s muck of a process violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, the controlling Supreme Court decision is none other than Bush v. Gore.

Remember Florida? Local officials conducting recounts could not decide what counted as a legal vote. Hanging chads? Dimpled chads? Should “undervotes” count (where a machine failed to read an incompletely-punched card)? What about “overvotes” (where voters punched more than one hole)? Different counties used different standards; different precincts within counties were inconsistent.

The Florida Supreme Court intervened and made things worse, ordering a statewide recount of some types of rejected ballots but not others. It specified no standards for what should count as a valid vote, leaving the judgment to each county. And it ordered partial recounts already conducted in some counties (but not others) included in the final tabulation. The result was chaos.

By a vote of 7-2, Bush v. Gore (2000) ruled that Florida’s recount violated the principle that all votes must be treated uniformly. Applying precedents dating to the 1960s, the Court found that the Equal Protection Clause meant that ballots must be treated so as to give every vote equal weight. A state may not, by “arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.” Florida’s lack of standards produced “unequal evaluation of ballots in several respects.” The state’s supreme court “ratified this uneven treatment” and created more of its own, and was unconstitutional. Read the rest…

I’ll confess that I haven’t followed the goings on in Coleman/Franken race that closely but I have read has left a bad taste. If our elections are going to have any integrity there have to be uniform standards that apply equally to all parties… From what I’ve read that doesn’t appear to be the case in Minnesota.

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Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid…

October 28, 2008 By Jeff Leave a Comment

Be afraid, be very afraid… In all the furor over Barack Obama’s 2001 remarks on redistribution we missed a larger more frightening point. Take a look the transcript of Sen. Obama’s remarks (emphasis mine):

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

Barack Obama’s view of the Constitution and the role of the courts should scare the living daylights out of every American who understands that the Constitution is the sole and most important safeguard of our rights and our liberties.

The framers intended the Constitution to be a limiting document, it is not a charter, it is the law of the land. Without it we are subjects, not citizens.

Steven Calabresi has much more detailed look at Obama’s views on redistribution and the Constitution in today’s Wall Street Journal.

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