(LA Times) A federal judge appeared dubious Monday about a lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that seeks the release of orcas from SeaWorld on anti-slavery grounds.

PETA attorney Jeffrey Kerr told U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller that invoking the anti-slavery 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in hopes of freeing the orcas is “the next frontier of civil rights.”

But Miller told Kerr that he cannot find a legal precedent for allowing a lawsuit to be filed on behalf of the orcas under the 13th Amendment. The orcas, he noted, are animals, not people.

Judge Miller said he will consider the request by Sea World to dismiss this absurd and frivilous lawsuit, but gave no timeline for his decision. Over to the BBC

Five killer whales have been named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit which argues they deserve the same constitutional protection from slavery as humans.

Jeffrey Kerr, the lawyer representing the five whales, said: “For the first time in our nation’s history, a federal court heard arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights and can be enslaved simply because they happen to not have been born human.

“By any definition these orcas have been enslaved here.”

No mention as to whether Judge Miller took frequent breaks to go back in his chambers and laugh his head off.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Hat tip to Allahpundit that who says:

A constitution is as good as the political culture that surrounds it. Ginsburg would have been better off reminding Egyptian TV of that.

Please! This is one of the main reasons that you need to vote against Obama when it is time. I don’t want him to have the chance to appoint another justice as liberal as this one! Perhaps she should recuse herself from any rulings based on Constitutional grounds since she isn’t so fond of our Constitution. Or maybe she should move to South Africa!

Others: Jeff Goldstein

Skip ahead on the video to 9:28.

Obama’s Department Of Justice claims that Texas redistricting is somehow “unfair” because Democrats have lost power. Therefore the DOJ is going to take the state to court over its new map. Yet, in Illinois, the Democrats have decimated Republican districts and slighted several Hispanic districts, yet the DOJ has turned a blind eye to pleas for redress there. This all tends to prove that Obama’s DOJ is less about “fairness” and more about politics. Sadly, Obama is playing politics with justice.

Only days after his inauguration in 2009 President Barack Obama warned Republicans that he wasn’t much interested in what they had to say on policy. In a meeting with congressional leaders he told Republicans “elections have consequences” and “I won.” Obama apparently wanted to stress that those that win elections should set the agenda and run the table. To echo Rep. Joe Wilson, Obama lied.

Take Texas, for instance. Thanks to two years of one failed Democrat policy after another and after two years of a sustained assault on American values, an attack on our business community, capitalism, and an avalanche of regulations quashing any chance of an economic recovery, the political landscape of Teas turned a deep, deep red in the 2010 midterm elections.

Because “elections have consequences” Texas Republicans had the power to control the redistricting process and, unsurprisingly, the new map favors Republicans even more than it did to help the GOP win the right to remake the map.

But “I won” doesn’t seem to satisfy Obama when the “I” happens to be anyone other than himself and apparently elections only “have consequences” when it favors him and his far left ideas because suddenly the Department of Justice has decided that Texas Republicans should not be allowed to control redistricting like every other winning party has since the *early days of the Republic.

Obama’s DOJ is basing its attempt to intervene in Texas redistricting on claims that Hispanic voters are not being properly represented. More likely its that Democrats are further being cut out of power.

But, even if we were to take Mr. “I Won” at his word and his DOJ is only interested in making sure that a party in power won’t disenfranchise Hispanics a similar complaint in Illinois has fallen on deaf ears. In Illinois the Democrats have a hammerlock on power and have similarly redistricted the state to seriously harm GOP districts. GOP leaders and Hispanic leaders in Obama’s homestate also say that Hispanics have been given short shrift.

After having gained five new GOP congressmen in the 2010 midterms Illinois Democrats want to take away the will of the voters by so altering the districts that GOP votes will be dissipated to the point of nonexistence. Due to reapportionment the state lost one House seat anyway. But the Democrats also want to materially damage all other GOP gains, as small as they were.

Along with GOP voters, Hispanics also seem to have lost out. Hispanics did not gain the influence they were promised in Illinois. Hence the lawsuit.

So, where is the Obama DOJ for Illinois? Nowhere to be seen. And what is the difference between Illinois and Texas? Only that in Texas where Obama is ready to take everyone to court, the Republicans were the ones that proved that “elections have consequences.” In Illinois it is Democrats high on the “I won” meter.

Yep. It’s all about politics.

*After all, the word “Gerrymandering” came from the name of our fifth vice president, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts.

Leftist foundations, litigators and organizations have established permanent structures designed to alter election outcomes through policy advocacy and strategic litigation. Project Vote, DEMOS, the Asian American Legal Defense Fund (AALDF), the Brennan Center for Justice, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Advancement Project, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), League of Women Voters, Asian Pacific American Legal Center and Common Cause are some of the groups that push election law in a direction hostile to conservatives, and the rule of law. Not surprisingly, money tainted by George Soros also flows downstream through various groups and institutes to the cause.

◼ Every Single One: The Politicized Hiring of Eric Holder’s Voting Section (MUST READ) – Pajamas Media

For nearly a year, the Civil Rights Division rebuffed Pajamas Media’s Freedom of Information Act request for the resumes of attorneys hired into the Division during the tenure of Eric Holder. PJM was finally forced to file a federal lawsuit earlier this year. Only then did Justice relent and turn over the documents. The result leaves little wonder why PJM’s request was met with such intense resistance.

The Department’s political leadership clearly recognized that the resumes of these new attorneys would expose the hypocrisy of the Obama administration’s polemical attacks on the Bush administration for supposedly engaging in “politicized hiring” — and that everyone would see just how militantly partisan the Obama Civil Rights Division truly is. Holder’s year-long delay before producing these documents — particularly when compared to the almost-instantaneous turnaround by the Bush administration of a virtually identical request by the Boston Globe back in 2006 — also shows how deep politics now runs in the Department.

Sixteen attorneys have come on board in this hiring binge. Who are these new radicals? Read the rest

STAY INFORMED: Learn more about activist groups; who’s related to who, and how they work, at:
◼ activistcash.com
◼ discoverthenetworks.com
◼ muckety.com

In an effort to ensure their citizens are treated fairly in Alabama, 16 nations, including Mexico, filed briefs against the state’s controversial new immigration law that has already drawn fire from the U.S. Department of Justice.

So, Mexico and the other 16 nations are admitting that their citizens are present in Alabama in violation of Unites States law? Which means that we should listen to Mexico and find all their citizens and send them on back.

Edward Still, a Birmingham attorney who filed the brief, told The Montgomery Advertiser that the nations “want to have one immigration law and not 50.”

“Mexico has an interest in protecting its citizens and ensuring that their ethnicity is not used as basis for state-sanctioned acts of bias and discrimination,” the brief said, according to the paper.

And Alabama has an interest in protecting its citizens and ensuring that illegals are not around, taking Alabama citizens’ jobs, stealing their identities, stealing their property, assaulting them, raping them, killing them.

The Justice Department argues that the states are overstepping their authority by wading into something that is a strictly federal responsibility: immigration enforcement.

Which, in an of itself, is an idiotic argument: should state, local, and county police ignore lawbreakers if they are only breaking federal laws? But, then, the Politicized Obama DoJ doesn’t want to argue that they hate the law because these could be future Democrat voters if they could just ram through some amnesty programs.

A high school student has won the right to wear a nose stud in class after claiming she was a member of a religious group that practices body modification.

Ariana Iacono, 15, was suspended four times this school year from Clayton High School, North Carolina, for violating the dress code by refusing to remove her small nose stud. The ninth grade student claimed the nose stud was an essential part of her faith in the Church of Body Modification.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the school system on her behalf and a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order in October demanding that the school lifted her suspension and allowed her to wear the jewellery.

Officials with the Johnston County Schools said they would drop their appeal of the order, and would settle it out of court ‘rather than pursue a lengthy process of hearings, depositions and likely appeals’.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Most Americans are under the mistaken assumption that we as voters can elect someone to make changes in our government. Whether the government of our city, county, state or that in Washington DC we voters have this romantic idea that we can affect change by electing people to office that will make those changes. The New Jersey Supreme Court, however, has disabused us all of those absurd notions.

Governor Chris Christie was elected to office for one reason, to solve New Jersey’s budget mess. He’s not Mr. Nice guy. He’s not the prettiest face in New Jersey politics. He wasn’t even the state’s most beloved public figure. He ran on fixing the budget and the people hired him to do just that.

But now, even though he was able to get certain budget changes through both houses of his state legislature, even though he has kept his shoulder to the grindstone doing the very job that the people hired him to do, even as he was on the verge of succeeding, the courts have stepped in and torpedoed the effort.

In a 3-2 decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered the governor to restore $500 million in funding to the state’s “poorest schools” by July 1. So, the wasteful spending perpetrated against the taxpayers by New Jersey’s schools can continue apace regardless of what the voters of New Jersey wanted.

Now some New Jersey commentators are claiming that this is not judicial activism. The decision, they claim, only restored the funding promised by former Gov. John Corzine and his legislature so this is not the courts making new law, they say.

But what else could it be but judicial activism to reach back to prior elections to find old budget schemes all the while ignoring the current administration’s — and therefore the voter’s — wishes. This is an activist court deciding that it did not like the recent election and reaching back to a previous, more favorable — and more left-wing — administration, one that satisfies the court’s desire toward big spending government waste.

Naturally, it doesn’t surprise that this level of wasteful spending makes unions happy, too.

This decision could possibly open the door for every school system in New Jersey to cry poor and run to the courts to stop Governor Christie from altering the obscenely generous funding that former administrations promised them. This ruling will prevent these profligate school administrators from doing what they should be doing: finding ways to cut budgets. Instead of facing reality, they will now have a tendency to pin their hopes on activist court interventions instead of making the hard decisions they must make.

It isn’t just New Jersey we see this sort of left-wing judicial activism happening. Unions in every state are running, to the courts bawling their eyes out about budget cuts and pointing to union contracts “negotiated” with spendthrift legislators that unions had for decades bought and paid for. Unions are desperately trying to save their overly generous pay scales, outrageous pensions, and cushy benefits given by politicians they paid to give them free stuff courtesy of the taxpayer. They are crying “breach of contract.”

Just today another union bought and paid for judge went into action. In Wisconsin, another left-wing, anti-democracy judge struck down the hard-fought policy of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who has been trying to solve his state’s budget troubles. Once again the voters are overruled by an activist judge.

Is a contract gotten by graft one worth honoring? The voters are increasingly saying “no” by voting in officials that will cut back the undeserved riches showered on government union members by past pliant, sold-out pols.

Yet, despite that the people are speaking by voting in those interested in finally getting a grip on the waste seen in every last government all up and down the line, the unions are running to the courts to step in to thwart the voter’s will.

For decades the court system has been acting against the will of the majority of the people. This has not changed in our current debt crisis. It’s time we did something about these activist judges.

Indiana’s highest court has turned against our rights and the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court of Indiana has just decided that the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution does not apply to the citizens of Indiana.

The court has decided that Hoosiers have no right to be safe in their own homes from illegal entry, search, and seizure by police. Indiana’s highest court has just said that Hoosier stormtrooers can invade any home at any time and citizens have no right to resist because it is “against public policy.”

Blogger Bruce McQuain said this appalling incident in Indiana is an example of, “why you have to constantly protect your rights daily from attacks from within,” and boy is he right.

NorthwestIndiana.com pinpoints the problem perfectly.

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

The Supreme Court has decided that the right to be safe in one’s own home is not as important as the state being allowed to batter down people’s doors at will. Justice Steven David averred that there are enough protections of homeowners after they are accosted illicitly by police, after they’ve been arrested and possibly physically harmed, and after the state has caused them to spend untold thousands of dollars on their own bail and defense in the courts.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

This turns natural rights on its head and alters the basic compact between citizen and government in the USA. It takes us from an “innocent until proven guilty” premise to one where citizens have no rights at all unless the state deigns to allow them.

Now, the argument that the anti-constitutionalists make almost sounds sensible at first blush. This ruling, they say, is merely meant to prevent any chance that the actions of a homeowner in a given situation will “escalate the level of violence.” If homeowners sit meekly by and allow police to illegally enter their home, why the level of violence won’t grow. We need to protect the lives of our police, right?

Almost logical, eh?

The problem is that with a rule such as this in place, the police have no real reason to be sure that they are in the right when battering down a homeowner’s door in the first place. Freed from this onerous requirement to be 100% sure, they will find themselves battering down doors with little provocation because, hey, THEY are covered by the law from being wrong. THEY don’t need to be sure that the home they are invading is the right home, one inhabited by real criminals. Why, it can all be cleared up later, right? So the citizen can just shut up, sit down, and take this violation of his rights.

That’s right, you, the citizen, can just shut up, taste the cop’s boot heels, and maybe (if you are lucky) some judge down the line might agree with you that your rights were violated and, gosh, they need to mumble an apology to you sometime.

As McQuain said, this is proof of why we need to zealously protect our rights and fight for them every day.

It is also proof that our legal system is badly breaking down. It is proof of yet another thing, too. It is proof that these “judges” have no fear of the people. The Indiana Supreme Court judges that voted in support of this outrageous decision should all be thrown off the bench if not by outright impeachment, then at least in the next election.

But, I’d rather see impeachment, as opposed to election turnovers. Our elected politicians need to begin to systematically eliminate judges of this sort who have turned against the US Constitution. These people need to fear for their jobs. Impeachment of these un-American monsters has never been used enough and we should start doing it ASAP.

When even a red state such as Indiana starts turning against our natural rights, we know our governments have turned against we the people.

“Should students who conspire to “shut down” an invited speaker with whom they disagree be prosecuted for the misdemeanor of conspiracy to disturb a meeting? That is the question roiling the University of California.

The facts are not really in dispute. Israel’s Ambassador to the United States—a moderate academic named Michael Oren—was invited to present a talk at the University of California at Irvine, a hotbed of radical Islamic hate speech against Israel.

The Muslim Student Union organized an effort, in the words of one of its leaders, to “shut down” Oren’s speech—that is to prevent Oren from expressing his views and to stop the audience who came to hear him from listening to them.

Ultimately, that effort failed and Oren managed to deliver his speech, after many long and sustained disruptions, but if the Muslim Student Union had gotten its way, Oren would have been shut down completely.

The University, which is a state institution, had a constitutional obligation to protect the First Amendment rights of Oren’s audience to hear what he had to say, and the state prosecutor has a legal obligation to deter future conspiracies to censor controversial speakers, by criminally prosecuting those students who conspired to deny other students their First Amendment rights.

It is shocking therefore to see who has lined up behind the students who set out to censor Ambassador Oren. Two prominent leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union have joined with radical Muslims and other extremists in an effort to pressure the local District Attorney to drop misdemeanor charges against 11 student censors.

Ultimately a jury will decide whether the students conspired to “shut down” Oren’s talk, or whether they were merely “protesting” the content of his talk. The evidence will clearly show a conspiracy to stop Oren from speaking.

Why then have the ACLU leaders distorted the facts and conveyed a totally misleading impression of what took place at the University of California? The answer seems clear. These leaders don’t like Israel and they support the censorship of pro-Israel views. They would never take the same position if the shoe had been on the other foot: If the speaker were from Hamas and the students trying to shut him down were pro-Israel.

Source

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

A small but enthusiastic clutch of Bergen Community College students carried homemade signs and chanted anti-pollution slogans as they marched from their Paramus campus to Ridgewood High School on Tuesday to raise awareness about climate change.

The college students then met up with about 20 high school students who said they want to get the next generation more involved in the issue.

The protest march was part of a much larger weeklong series of youth-led marches in towns and cities around the globe called the iMatter March. The marches coincide with a series of legal actions being filed by lawyers representing young adults in states across the country in a bid to get governments to take action against climate change.

Just to reiterate once again, it seems that climate moonbats always want Someone Else to Do Something. They never want to Do Something themselves, because that would be expensive and mess up their high greenhouse gas lives. All the partying, electricity used while partying, the beer, all the CO2 in beer bottles and kegs, road trips, hot tubs using lots of power and water, etc, they can’t afford to give that up. Someone Else has to change their lives, at the barrel of a government decree.

Here we are 15-20 years on, and the Warmists still haven’t gotten beyond “spreading awareness”. The iMatter march was meant to be a multi-day affair (I never did get around to posting a saved draft about how they were attempting to ruin another holiday, Mother’s Day), with the young alarmists getting out and about and doing….nothing to reduce their own “carbon footprints.”

The climate change (hoax) debate is much like the increase taxes debate: liberals are all for raising taxes, they just want them on “that group over there.” They want the government to have more money, yet, they refuse to give more to the IRS.