I think they should. The justices don’t.
Who will win?
“Televising our proceedings would change our collegial dynamic,” Kennedy said, asking the Senate Judiciary Committee not to introduce “the insidious temptation to think that one of my colleagues would be trying to get a sound bite for TV.”
Kennedy was making a rare public appearance on Capitol Hill [...]

I certainly don’t use the term “junky” lightly, but we’re talking about more than a decade long, hardcore addiction to incredibly strong painkillers. It certainly makes mild drug use by former and current Presidents (and any hopefuls) seemingly irrelevant.
From Law.com…
The FBI’s 1986 report on Rehnquist’s drug dependence was not released at the time of [...]

As expected, there has been a barrage of polls in the last few days. While it is impossible to determine what the final outcome will be on Tuesday night, I think it warrants a look at the polls to see if anything can be gleaned. The following is a list of those polls, the dates [...]

The Bush administration, amid rebukes from Congress and the courts, is now trying to get legislation passed to authorize or indemnify themselves for much of what they’ve done in the past few years.
It’s a bit like getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and then seeking to have stealing cookies declared retroactively legal.
In [...]

Sen. Specter Readies Bill to Sue Bush
A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush’s signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court.
“We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will…authorize [...]

In today’s Washington Post, Arlen Specter defends his flawed deal with the White House over its warrantless surveillance program. His main point:
Critics complain that the bill acknowledges the president’s inherent Article II power and does not insist on FISA’s being the exclusive procedure for the authorization of wiretapping. They are wrong. The president’s constitutional power [...]

So I posted yesterday about the SCOTUS’ decision to gut “knock and announce”, and reasoned that it was a bad idea because it’ll end up getting more cops shot.
While this is still a grave prediction, it seems that NRA-backed bills (based on the Castle Doctrine) have been passing in some states and they basically allow [...]

Yes people, the cops don’t have to knock and announce anymore when they have a warrant. And to the best of my knowledge, the exclusionary rule has been part of the fourth amendment for about 100 years now. Knock and announce has been part of that for about as long.
I’m sorry, what does the right-wing [...]

…. is to re-argue case law that has been settled for more than 100 years.
Well, actually, it’s not so much re-arguing as simply ignoring precedents that one doesn’t like.
In a debate with powerful echoes of the turbulent civil rights era, four Republicans running for Alabama’s Supreme Court are making an argument legal scholars thought was [...]

Is today’s rejection of an appeal from Jose Padilla a case of SCOTUS playing dodgeball?
A divided Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Jose Padilla, held as an enemy combatant without traditional legal rights for more than three years, sidestepping a challenge to Bush administration wartime detention powers.
Padilla, a former Chicago gang member [...]

Well, Scalia didn’t recuse himself from this case, and I think he’s right given the fine reporting of Daveed Gartenstein-Ross on Scalia’s previous views on similar cases.
Still, it doesn’t seem like many on the highest bench agree with Antonin.
From SCOTUSblog:
With Justice Antonin Scalia taking part — and, in fact, providing the only clearcut signs [...]

Can states use newspapers and magazines to discipline prisoners? And we’re not talking about a smack across the nose with a rolled-up “Boston Evening Transcript.”

The Supreme Court struggled Monday with whether states can keep troublesome inmates from reading secular newspapers and magazines.
Pennsylvania prison officials urged the high court to allow them to use access to [...]

Weekly Standard writer Daveed Gartenstein-Ross emailed me via The Moderate Voice about my recent Scalia post. He seems to think that Scalia’s recent speeches are perfectly within reason.
And after reading his article, I think Daveed has a valid point:
BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Scalia’s Freiburg speech did not go beyond the views he already expressed in his [...]

That should be the headline we see in the next few days.
Newsweek has more:
The Supreme Court this week will hear arguments in a big case: whether to allow the Bush administration to try Guantánamo detainees in special military tribunals with limited rights for the accused. But Justice Antonin Scalia has already spoken his mind about [...]

Yes, the Senate in SD voted for eliminating abortion rights, and by nearly a 2-1 margin:
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) â€â€? South Dakota moved closer to imposing some of the strictest limits on abortion in the nation as the state Senate approved legislation that would ban the procedure except when the woman’s life is in danger.
The bill, [...]

At the time I decried, and I still think it’s rightfully so.
But this perspective sheds some light on the why the court ruled why they did:
Contrary to what many continue to believe, the Court in Kelo did not blaze any new trails. It was well-settled law dating back to Berman v. Parker in [...]

Alito just hired one of his former clerks, Adam G. Ciongoli, to work with him at the SCOTUS. As the NY Times points out, Ciongoli was also the top aide to John Ashcroft when he was Attorney General. So what about the Federalist Society connection? Well, Ciongoli was a speaker at last year’s Federalist [...]

So, now that Justice Alito has been sworn in, just how quickly will he push his nefarious plans for an ultra conservative agenda?
Wait, here’s his first case as a Supreme Court Justice …
New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito split with the court’s conservatives Wednesday night, refusing to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal [...]

Now that Alito is on the bench, several very pro-life states are going to start introducing legislation that will test Roe v. Wade.
From the Washington Times:
Legislators in at least five states are proposing bold anti-abortion measures as the Bush administration reshapes the U.S. Supreme Court, a report said.
With the goal of challenging the Roe vs. [...]

From the AP:
“We need to recognize, because Judge Alito will be confirmed, that, if we’re going to oppose a nominee that we’ve got to persuade the American people that, in fact, their values are at stake,” Obama said.
“There is an over-reliance on the part of Democrats for procedural maneuvers,” he told ABC’s “This Week.”
[...]
“There’s one [...]