NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge threw out charges Thursday against a man who urged jurors in multiple East Coast cities from Florida to New Hampshire to sometimes disregard the law and vote their conscience.
U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan tossed the case against Julian Heicklen, saying the First Amendment protects speech concerning judicial proceedings as long as the speech doesn’t prevent fair and impartial justice. She noted that the essence of the First Amendment …
NY judge tosses out jury nullification charges [continued]
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Modern Issues Of States’ Rights
Ninety percent, if not more, of what the central government does today is unconstitutional. All of the following legislation violates the Tenth Amendment: national healthcare, welfare, all federal education programs, federal highway construction and funding, the National Defense Authorization Act, gun control, the Federal Reserve System, etc., and these are just some of the large issues. An itemized list based on a modern federal budget would be too substantial to publish in a book length project, let alone a short essay. Proponents of the Tenth Amendment in the founding generation viewed it as a necessary check on the power of the general government and in particular the famous “sweeping” or “elastic” clauses of the Constitution, i.e., the “general welfare clause,” the “supremacy clause,” the “necessary and proper clause,” and now the infamous “commerce clause.” The Tenth Amendment was designed to keep domestic issues under the purview of the States and leave matters of commerce (meaning interstate and international trade) and defense in the hands of …
Amendment X: Modern Issues of States’ Rights [continued]
In the pages of The Federalist, Publius reassured not only his contemporaries but future generations of Americans, that if there be times in the life of our republic in which one or more branches of the national government should shamelessly exercise power beyond that prescribed by the Constitution, the state legislatures will be ever ready to mark the violation and “sound the alarm to the people.”[1]
Nine years after the institution of the new government under the Constitution, in response to the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts, the state legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia did precisely this. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Kentucky Resolutions and James Madison penned the Virginia Resolutions. In some of the toughest, most exacting political language of America’s political tradition, Jefferson and Madison threw down the gauntlet: the national government had broken trust with the sovereign authority, and they were put on notice that such violations of the people’s fundamental rights and liberties would not …
Sound the Alarm to the People: James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and the Principles of 1798 [continued]
In a showdown between the Obama Administration and the “Town Too Tough to Die,” the U.S. Forest Service is refusing to allow the City of Tombstone to repair its mountain spring water infrastructure after the 2011 Monument Fire destroyed pipelines and catchments.
Despite Gov. Jan Brewer’s declared state of emergency to empower Tombstone to restore its municipal water supply, the feds continue to block Tombstone, citing the Wilderness Act, which was passed decades after Tombstone secured the water rights. The Forest Service’s decision risks the lives and properties of Tombstone residents and tourists due to the loss of adequate fire suppression capabilities and safe drinking water.
Arizona to battle Feds over water rights [continued]
(Reuters) – The battle over illegal immigration heads to the U.S. Supreme Court next week, when the court will hear arguments for and against new Arizona laws requiring police, employers and landlords to expose undocumented immigrants.
Arizona of course is not alone in its crackdown on illegal immigrants, with states including Alabama, Georgia, Utah, as well as a number of cities, passing similar measures.
The movement’s chief legal architect is 45-year old Kris Kobach, a former constitutional law professor, current secretary of state of Kansas and adviser to Mitt Romney on immigration issues.
While Kobach is not arguing in the Arizona case, he has been helping other states and cities defend their laws against challenges by the U.S. Justice Department and civil rights groups.
Reuters’ Terry Baynes recently discussed with Kobach the issue of state …
Kris Kobach: Immigration isn’t just a federal matter [continued]
The stand-your-ground doctrine, which has vaulted into national prominence with the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, isn’t limited to the two dozen states that have passed laws since 2005 expanding the right to use deadly force in confrontations.
It’s also the rule in California, by court decree. For more than a century, the state’s judges have declared that a person who reasonably believes he or she faces serious injury or death from an assailant does not have to back off – inside or outside the home – and instead can use whatever force is needed to eliminate the danger.
The California Legislature has never enacted one of the National Rifle Association-sponsored laws, pioneered by Florida in 2005, that spell out the rights of a defendant in such confrontations and the procedures for applying them in court. But in California …
Stand-your-ground the rule in state, courts affirm [continued]
Click here to watch a highlight reel of media criticism from the podium at the National Rifle Association conference.
WASHINGTON — Elected lawmakers in five states have a message for the federal government: Don’t interfere with state medical marijuana laws.
In an open letter to the federal government, lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle called on the government to stop using scarce law enforcement resources on taking pot away from medical marijuana patients.
“States with medical marijuana laws have chosen to embrace an approach that is based on science, reason, and compassion. We are lawmakers from these states,” the lawmakers explained in their letter.
“Our state medical marijuana laws differ from one another in their details, such as which patients qualify for medical use; how much marijuana patients may possess; whether patients and caregivers may grow marijuana; and whether regulated entities may grow and sell marijuana to patients. Each of our laws, however, is motivated by a desire to protect seriously ill patients from criminal penalties under state law.”
The letter — signed by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-Calif.), Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Wash.), Rep. Antonio Maestas (D-N.M.), Sen. Cisco McSorley (D-N.M.), Assemblyman Chris Norby (R-Calif.), Rep. Deborah Sanderson (R-Maine) and Sen. Pat Steadman (D-Colo.) — comes directly on the heels of a federal raid in the heart of California’s pot legalization movement: medical marijuana training school Oaksterdam University in downtown Oakland, where U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials on Monday blocked off doors with yellow tape and carried off trash bags full of unknown substances to a nearby van. An IRS spokeswoman could not comment on the raid except to say the agents had a federal search warrant.
Lawmakers In 5 States Tell Feds To Back Off Medical Marijuana [continued]
