The proper role and scope of government

[xoxoxoBruce]

There's been a proliferation of bad charities that sound like they help cops, firemen, and veterans, often with names sounding very similar to good charities. It's a double whammy in they not only con you, they're diverting your money away from actual people in need.

[DanaC]

Depending on the cook, they're pretty good for stabbing with...

[BigV]

Our government gets a lot of press, usually about the fight between the Executive and Legislative branches. This time, the Judicial branch gets the headline.

Supreme Court of the United States to take up the issue of gay marriage.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court may rule once and for all this year whether the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law gives gay and lesbian Americans the right to marry.

Meeting behind closed doors on Friday, the nine justices decided to review a 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit that upheld bans on same-sex marriage in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee. The decision by two judges on the Cincinnati-based court, both appointed by President George W. Bush, marked the first time a federal appeals court backed a same-sex marriage ban after other appellate courts had found similar bans unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments and likely rule by June.

The court said it would specifically address two questions: Does the 14th Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex? And does the 14th Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?

The justices also announced that oral argument in the case (actually four consolidated cases) will be longer than usual: 90 minutes for the first question and another 60 minutes for the second.

The decision to take up the case returns the justices to a path that began in 2013, when the high court struck down parts of the Defense of Marriage Act, ruling 5-4 that key provisions of the 1996 law that banned the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages were unconstitutional. The same day, the court avoided ruling on the merits of a separate case questioning the constitutionality of state same-sex marriage bans, finding instead that a private party did not have standing to defend the California law in court.

[Happy Monkey]

Big news:

State and local police in the United States will no longer be able to use federal laws to justify seizing property without evidence of a crime, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Friday.
The practice of local police taking property, including cash and cars, from people that they stop, and of handing it over to federal authorities, became common during the country’s war on drugs in the 1980s.

Cops can still use state laws, but this is an improvement.

It's insane that this was ever legal.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

It's insane that this was ever legal.

Just as insane are extremist lawmakers and law enforcement officers who associate marijuana and heroine as equally dangerous drugs. They cannot learn because rhetoric rather than knowledge is the source of all conclusions.

Same rhetoric justified using any laws rather then considering the purpose of that law and enforcement. Well over 50% of prisioners in the world's most imprisioned country are there only for drug violations - most only for marijuana.

They forgot to first learn the purpose of that law. Even forgot to learn that the gateway drug is coffee. If they learned that, would they use Federal laws to seize the property of coffee drinkers?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Big news:

Cops can still use state laws, but this is an improvement.

It's insane that this was ever legal.

This is good news, the shit that's been going down is incredible. I know several long distance truck drivers who have been relieved of thousands of dollars, just because it was in cash. Never charged with anything, just robbed. Going through the legal dog & pony show to recover it costs more than walking away and letting them keep it.

[BigV]

Heroin. It's spelled h-e-r-o-i-n. Heroine is something completely different, I do not think it means what you think it means.

[regular.joe]

Extremist.

[tw]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

Extremist.

English Nazi. They don’t maime or turtore.

[classicman]

tartar?

[Lamplighter]

If this is true, it is time to call the current GOP for what it is... fanatical and unpatriotic zealots.

White House Faults G.O.P. Senators’ Letter to Iran’s Leaders
NY Times - PETER BAKER - MARCH 9, 2015

WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday sharply rebuked nearly four dozen Republican senators who sent a letter to Iranian leaders just as nuclear negotiations reach a pivotal moment, characterizing the correspondence as an illegitimate interference in President Obama’s foreign policy.

The letter, signed by 47 Republican senators and addressed to “leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” suggested that the Iranian leaders might not understand the American system and warned them that any deal Mr. Obama and other world leaders might reach on the future of its nuclear program would be reversible without congressional approval.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the senators were trying to “essentially throw sand in the gears here” in a way that went beyond the role envisioned for Congress in foreign policy by the authors of the Constitution. He said the White House wanted to send a “forceful” rebuttal to the letter because it seemed intent on torpedoing the talks.

“Writing a letter like this that appeals to the hard-liners in Iran is frankly just the latest in a strategy, a partisan strategy, to undermine the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy and advance our national interests around the world,” Mr. Earnest said. He linked it to the decision by Speaker John A. Boehner to invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel without consulting the White House to denounce a possible Iran deal in a speech to Congress last week.

The letter, drafted by Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and signed by most of the Republican majority in the Senate, suggested to Iran that reaching a deal with Mr. Obama might not stick because Congress would not approve it.
<snip>

There have long been rumors that the GOP pulled this same sort of crap
back when George Bush Sr was running for President, and even when
Ronald Reagan was running, but I've been able to ignore them until now.

[classicman]

.. .. ..

[Lamplighter]

The letter from the Arkansas Republican to the ayatollahs and other Iranian officials,
critics say, is a violation of the 1799 Logan Act, which says starkly:

“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States,
directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse
with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof with intent to influence
the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof,
in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States,
or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title
or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

Usually, and for my adult lifetime, I have been able to avoid calling someone "unpatriotic".
But these 47 GOP signatories to this letter are being unpatriotic because the intent
of their letter is to undermine the legitimate duties of the Offfice of the President.

Their mothers would not be proud.

.

[classicman]

Dems did the same thing in the past... Nothing new here. Move along.
They are virtually all the same - they are the elites. We are insignificant.

[El Veto-Voter]

Originally Posted by classicman

Dems did the same thing in the past... Nothing new here. Move along.
They are virtually all the same - they are the elites. We are insignificant.

Some politicians look good in the early going. But the more I hear them say, the more I learn about what they've done, and the more I discover what they plan to do... the worse they seem. It doesn't take long for most of them to appear downright dangerous.

They say the stupidest things and expect us to believe them. They get caught lying and act like it is somebody else's fault. They promise to do what's impossible, like spending trillions on new programs without raising taxes or cutting existing programs. They are unbelievable.

I wonder why most of them are out of the looney bin. I certainly can't agree to give them power over me, you, and the normal people.

In fact, I can't imagine any reason for giving anybody the power to rule.

My vote is my power -- and they're not getting it.

El Veto-Voter
www.HaltVote.com