The Spanish-American War? Now THAT Was a Quagmire

Thu   25 May 2006   15:49 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Courting Disaster] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

...since the government is still collecting a tax to pay for it. The Treasury Department said Thursday it will stop collecting some telephone taxes on long-distance calls and refund about $15 billion to consumers. Companies have been fighting the tax in court and winning, arguing that the 3 percent excise tax should not apply to some long-distance calls. Individuals will be allowed to claim three years’ worth of refunds on their 2006 tax returns, filed in 2007. They would be given the option of calculating their actual taxes paid or claiming a standard amount set by the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service. Businesses would be required to calculate the taxes they paid before requesting a refund. The federal excise tax on local telephone service remains in effect. The tax dates to 1898, when telephones were a luxury and lawmakers needed money to fight the Spanish-American War. It imposes a tax on calls billed according to distance and duration. Businesses fighting the tax in court had argued that many modern billing plans ignore the distance of telephone calls, and the tax should be declared invalid. » AP: Treasury Concedes Telephone Tax Fight The war itself didn’t even last a year, but the tax has lasted 108 years. The federal income tax first really skyrocketed to help pay for World War II, which (for our part) lasted four years. Here’s hoping we don’t still have 500 years left on that tax bill.

Class-Action Corruption

Fri   19 May 2006   10:51 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Courting Disaster] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

I’ve pointed before to the practice of the class-action lawsuit—in effect, a lawsuit filed not by plaintiffs but by lawyers on the assumption they’ll be able to recruit plaintiffs. A federal grand jury has indicted a top class-action law firm in a scheme that paid more than $11 million in illegal kickbacks to get people to take part in shareholder lawsuits. The charges follow years of investigation into the way New York-based Milberg Weiss, Bershad & Schulman conducts shareholder lawsuits against major corporations. Lawsuits by the firm, the lead plaintiff in more than half the federal shareholder suits settled from 1997 to 2004, generated hundreds of millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees, the indictment said. “The conduct alleged in the indictment is particularly troubling because it represents a pattern of deception that spans 2 1/2 decades,“ said U.S. Attorney Debra Wong Yang. Wong said the secret kickback arrangement often allowed the firm to be among the first to file a lawsuit on behalf of shareholders. The government seeks to recover at least $216 million in “tainted attorneys’ fees.“ » AP: Top Law Firm Indicted in Alleged Scheme to Pay Plaintiffs for Class-Action Suits It’s the natural next step in the way these kinds of lawsuits occur. In fact, it kind of surprises me that (a) it took so long for someone to be doing this, and (b) it turns out to be illegal—considering that the lawsuits themselves are not. Class-action lawsuit reform is way overdue. A limited category of these actions does need to be allowed—but the overwhelming majority of them should be banned outright.

Maybe Not the ‘Only’ Blotch

Thu   11 May 2006   11:48 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Courting Disaster] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

I’m not all that sympathetic to anyone associated with Trent Lott—but here we’re talking about the American Bar Association’s standards for rating someone “unqualified” to serve on the federal bench. My personal opinion is one thing, and the rating policy of a national lawyers’ guild is—or ought to be—entirely different. At least five of the 15 members American Bar Association qualifications review panel who evaluated the legal background of Mississppi’s Michael Wallace, a former legal aide to Sen. Trent Lott, were charter members of the American Constitution Society, the liberal knock-off of the Federalist Society. The panel has garnered attention in the past 36 hours after rating Wallace, nominated to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, as “unqualified.“ “This is a guy who is extremely bright and talented as a legal mind,“ says a former classmate of Wallace’s at the University of Virginia Law School. “He clerked for a Supreme Court justice [Rehnquist]. He’s served our nation in positions of responsibility and performed well [Wallace was appointed to head the Legal Services Corp. by President Reagan]. This is not a case of the President nominating some ambulance chaser. This is a highly qualified individual.“ The only blotch on his record—if you’re a Democrat—is his service to Senator Lott as special counsel during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. According to a Republican member of the ABA, the Wallace review is now the big buzz in ABA circles. “You talk to a lot of the Dems, and they say that this was coming, particularly after the Alito and Roberts nominations. Wallace is to them a test case.“ » Prowler: Qualifying Wallace In a comment thread here—where the topic was Brett Kavanaugh—I wrote in response to another commenter’s question about what has changed for Kavanaugh’s rating to be downgraded, What changed is, the Gang of 14 actually turns out to have had an apparent positive impact on the judicial confirmation process, so the Bush opponents have had to re-double their efforts. Apparently the unnamed Republican ABA member quoted by the Prowler agrees.

More Baggage for Hillary

Tue   9 May 2006   9:43 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Courting Disaster] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

Washington divorce lawyer Marna S. Tucker, a registered Democrat, conducted the most recent interview of Mr. Kavanaugh and delivered testimony on behalf of the ABA over the telephone yesterday for the Judiciary Committee hearing today. Ms. Tucker has donated more than $10,000 to Democratic candidates and causes, according to Federal Election Commission records at http://www.politicalmoneyline.com, a Web site that tracks campaign contributions. She has never given to Republicans, according to the site. The Washington Post described her as a “prominent liberal” in 1991 and the following year noted her friendship with Hillary Rodham Clinton, now a Democratic senator from New York. » Washington Times: GOP rips lowering of nominee’s ABA rating Brett Kavanaugh is being resisted for his judicial appointment because Hillary doesn’t want anyone formerly associated with Ken Starr to sit on the federal bench. Ever. I dunno, folks. Maybe this means she’s given up on the idea of ever being president.

The 9th Circus and the Stopped Clock Phenomenon

Tue   2 May 2006   8:20 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 5 comments [Courting Disaster] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

There’s really no workable alternative to the conclusion reached in this ruling. A county social services department cannot be required to accommodate the belief of an evangelical Christian employee that he must share his faith with clients and others on the job, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. On balance, said the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the constitutional duty of the Tehama County agency to avoid entangling itself in religion outweighs the constitutional right of Daniel M. Berry to promote his religious views. The decision upheld one by U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton in Sacramento. » Bee: Court says sharing religion not an employee’s right Tehama County’s taxpayers are not paying Berry to proselytize his religion, they’re paying him to counsel clients in accordance with the laws of the state and county as they relate to the functions of the social services department. There are plenty of faith-based charity agencies where Berry would be able to advocate his religious views as part of the counseling process. And while there are legitimate reasons to question the standing judicial doctrine of separation of church and state, that doctrine is in place and widely known—so he can’t claim he didn’t know. Those who are concerned about the “flaky 9th” getting one right, fail to worry—they’ll be back to getting ‘em wrong before the day is out. It’s what they do.

Screw Palm Beach

Sat   29 Apr 2006   9:51 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 4 comments [Courting Disaster] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

Rush Limbaugh already voluntarily went through treatment, so the only thing about this deal that comes close to justifying three years of fishing expeditions and attempted trial-by-media, is that Limbaugh is being made to pay the local D.A.‘s office for some of the money they frittered away in what has proven to be a politically overhyped pursuit of baseless charges. If Limbaugh continues to live in Palm Beach after this, he’s certifiably insane.

Yup
Sun   16 Apr 2006   8:15 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [War] [Humor?] [Courting Disaster] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

Just Wondering

Fri   14 Apr 2006   18:05 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 2 comments [Courting Disaster] [Here's Your Sign] [Wackadoodle] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

I remain convinced that the burning of a stolen U.S. flag isn’t protected “speech”—despite the Supreme Court ruling that held exactly that—but vandalism. Destruction of property. Obviously my view is not widely shared these days among the blognoscenti, and I’m wondering if anyone can explain to me how it is that this, which is earning almost universal condemnation in the blogosphere, is materially different from what SCOTUS deemed “protected speech” in Texas v. Johnson (1989)? The demonstrators marched through the Dallas streets, chanting political slogans and stopping at several corporate locations to stage “die-ins” intended to dramatize the consequences of nuclear war. On several occasions they spray-painted the walls of buildings and overturned potted plants, but Johnson himself took no part in such activities. He did, however, accept an American flag handed to him by a fellow protestor who had taken it from a flagpole outside one of the targeted buildings. The demonstration ended in front of Dallas City Hall, where Johnson unfurled the American flag, doused it with kerosene, and set it on fire. Emphasis added. If it can only be expressed by vandalism, it isn’t an idea. It isn’t speech. It’s a temper tantrum. That goes for destroying someone else’s pro-life display on a college campus, and it goes for burning a flag that has been stolen off somebody’s flagpole. And if it can be expressed without resorting to vandalism, there is no rational basis for protecting the vandalism.

Son of Kelo?

Sat   8 Apr 2006   12:09 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 4 comments [Courting Disaster] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

According to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, any federal employee can invade private property purportedly on official business, and you have no recourse. A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of trespassing and littering charges against a federal wolf biologist and a private contractor who were found with tranquilized wolves on private property near Cody. [...] U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson later dismissed the charges, saying that federal employees acting in their official capacity cannot be prosecuted under the trespass law. He also concluded the charge was “ridiculous.“ » AP: Court upholds dismissal of charges The rancher whose land was intruded upon sums it up: “They don’t seem to have much sympathy for people’s rights nowadays,“ he said. Oh, they’re all for “rights” that don’t exist, like the right of illegal aliens to access to all the government services that citizens pay for, or the right of a woman too lazy to use birth control and too undisciplined to abstain, to kill her unborn child just because she wants to—but actual legitimate rights like political speech, or free exercise of religion, or the right to be secure in one’s property, those rights have been excised from the “living constitution.“

Legal Lobotomy

Thu   6 Apr 2006   7:07 by Kevin McGehee in Coweta County, GA 0 comments [Courting Disaster] [Wackadoodle] [Yippee-Ki-Yay!]

It’s the only plausible explanation—that they’ve somehow begun performing lobotomies on students as part of the graduation requirement in law school. Weissman contended in his March 17 letter that Lewis apparently considered his court “to be an American court, rather than a court for all persons situated in America.“ » AJC: Judge’s recital of pledge leads to recusal If it’s not an American court, maybe that explains why Supreme Court justices like Ginsburg and Kennedy are so enamored of using foreign law in their rulings.

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