Finally, a President Who’s Familiar With ‘the Google’!
The Voter Fraud “Issue”
Hendrick Hertzberg of The New Yorker has written a great article on the whole voter fraud/ACORN/what-have-you issue that seems to be making the rounds in the current campaign. I think it does an excellent job of putting this notion in context.
Wait — Are We Paying Attention to Constitutionality Again?
In yesterday’s New York Times:
John F. Duffy, who teaches at the George Washington University Law School … has discovered a constitutional flaw in the appointment process over the last eight years for judges who decide patent appeals and disputes, and his short paper documenting the problem seems poised to undo thousands of patent decisions concerning claims worth billions of dollars.
The constitutional problem can be stated relatively simply:
Since 2000, patent judges have been appointed by a government official without the constitutional power to do so.
The DOJ is not saying Professor Duffy is wrong, they’re merely at a loss. The consequences could be pricey:
The problem Professor Duffy identified at least arguably invalidates every decision of the patent court decided by a three-judge panel that included at least one judge appointed after March 2000.
The question may be addressed soon by the Supreme Court. We’ll see if they sidestep the issue as the Federal Circuit did.
Score Another One for the Roberts Court
Indiana’s voter identification law was upheld in a 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court on Monday. The case of Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, — S.Ct. —- (2008), brought before the Court the issue of “the constitutionality of an Indiana statute requiring citizens voting in person on election day, or casting a ballot in person at the office of the circuit court clerk prior to election day, to present photo identification issued by the government.”
Only three justices (Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer) found this law to be unconstitutional. The “lead opinion” (written by Justice Stevens) felt that the risk of voter fraud outweighed any burden imposed on voters to produce identification.
As Linda Greenhouse wrote:
The 6-to-3 ruling kept the door open to future lawsuits that provided more evidence. But this theoretical possibility was small comfort to the dissenters or to critics of voter ID laws, who predicted that a more likely outcome than successful lawsuits would be the spread of measures that would keep some legitimate would-be voters from the polls.
It is rather puzzling that the Court that held that George W. Bush’s right to fair election procedures, Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), were violated can’t seem to extend that right to the rest of the country.
Would the real James Crow please stand up?
John McCain: Yet Another Compassionate* Conservative
In today’s New York Times, Gail Collins writes:
McCain made it clear that if he had been in Washington, he would have voted no [on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a bill that would restore workers’ ability to go to court in cases of pay discrimination] because the bill “opens us up for lawsuits, for all kinds of problems and difficulties.
The Ledbetter Bill arose out of the case of Lilly Ledbetter, a former supervisor at at Goodyear Tire plant, who discovered at the end of her 20-year career with Goodyear that she was paid less than the lowest paid man (someone far less senior than she). She sued Goodyear for the difference in pay–about $60,000–and the jury awarded her over $200k in back pay plus more than $3 million in damages.
However, the Supreme Court felt differently. In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., Inc., 127 S.Ct. 2162 (2007), Justice Alito spoke for the 5-4 Court finding against Ms. Ledbetter (who is now 70) on procedural grounds, holding that she should have filed her original complaint within 180 days of receiving the first paycheck in which Goodyear discriminated against her.
As Ms. Collins writes:
The fact that workers generally have no idea what other people are making when they start a job did not concern the court nearly as much as what Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, called “the burden of defending claims arising from employment decisions that are long past.” In other words, pay discrimination is illegal unless it goes on for more than six months.
And here’s what truly makes this decision so special. Not only did Ms. Ledbetter not get the back pay she was owed by Goodyear, but Goodyear billed her $3,165 for their legal fees.
The Ledbetter Act
would have made it clear that every time a woman like Ledbetter got a check that was lower than those of the men doing the same job, it triggered a new 180-day deadline. That was the status quo before Alito and John Roberts arrived on the scene. But the sponsors needed 60 votes, and they only got 56.
John McCain–the RNC’s candidate for President of the United States–chose to sit the vote on the Ledbetter Act. It needed 60 votes to pass. It got 56.
*The RNC reserves the right to change the definition of “compassionate” from time to time as it sees fit.
