Law & Justice: June 2016 Archives
I have great respect for the FBI and confidence in their capability -- but they need to wrap up their Clinton investigation soon. I realize that the FBI shouldn't be guided by political concerns... but... but... please finish.
"I hope that this is close to being wrapped up," Clinton said on CBS's "Face the Nation" in May.But nearly two months later, there have been no reports that an interview with the former top diplomat has taken place.
"I, like other people, am a bit surprised that it hasn't come to a resolution yet," said Douglas Cox, a professor at the City of New York School of Law.
He added that within Clinton's campaign, "I would think internally that there would have to be a little bit of concern."
Like many laws, the Texas regulations on abortion providers were intended to do accomplish something other than their ostensible purpose -- leading the SCOTUS to strike the regulations down.
The justices voted 5-3 in favor of Texas clinics that had argued the regulations were only a veiled attempt to make it harder for women to get abortions in the nation's second-most populous state.Justice Stephen Breyer's majority opinion for the court held that the regulations are medically unnecessary and unconstitutionally limit a woman's right to an abortion.
Texas had argued that its 2013 law and subsequent regulations were needed to protect women's health. The rules required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and forced clinics to meet hospital-like standards for outpatient surgery.
Breyer wrote that "the surgical-center requirement, like the admitting privileges requirement, provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions and constitutes an 'undue burden' on their constitutional right to do so."
I guess all sorts of regulations will be invalidated soon! Oh, nevermind.
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The regulatory state should tremble in fear. There is now "no reason to believe" that additional regulations would affect wrongdoers. That means that regulations may not even be able to escape the lowest level of judicial scrutiny -- rational-basis review.Environmentalists are quaking in their boots. Gun controllers are throwing their hands up in despair.
Financial and business regulators may as well close up shop. Wait. What's that you say? This is an abortion decision? The regulations in questions were deemed responsible for closing substandard abortion clinics?
Never mind. The regulatory state is safe. Everyone knows that the Supreme Court privileges the killing of children above all else. After all, as Justice Ginsburg has said, Roe v. Wade was motivated by "concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." The undesired have to die -- the reasoning matters not.
Devin Watkins says that Karl Racine, the Washington, D.C., attorney general, has instructed police officers not to issue concealed carry permits, in violation of a court order. But don't these police officers have individual liability for refusing to follow a court order? Can't they be sued for civil rights infringement, regardless of what the attorney general says? Or does the instruction from the attorney general somehow insulate the police from liability?
After the order, I went to apply for a concealed-carry permit in the District of Columbia. The police officers there told me the D.C. attorney general's office had ordered them to ignore the court order and continue to deny applications. Thinking there might be some kind of mistake, I contacted the AG's office, which explicitly told me if I had a complaint about what they did I could file that complaint online.
