Archive for the ‘Law & Jurisprudence’ Category

NPM: The Whiskey Speech of Judge “Soggy” Sweat.

faked by Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

Maybe this ain’t poetry in the way most people think of it. But back in 1952 Judge Sweat encapsulated the wonders and confusion of Mississippi in one speech about prohibition. That is enough for me.
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Gonzales Pie.

faked by Monday, April 9th, 2007

For this delicious and spicy dish, you’ll need 14 ingredients (integrity not needed).
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“The Gentleman from Mississippi Has the Floor.”

faked by Friday, March 23rd, 2007

On March 21 the Republicans moved to gut a Katrina recovery bill with a provision that cities receiving funds from the government would have to provide “matching funds” themselves. The catch: many of the cities—such as Bay St. Louis and Waveland—were virtually destroyed, leaving no tax base through which to generate any income.
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Ephemera 12.27.06.

faked by Monday, November 27th, 2006

Annnnd . . . welcome back! This post is for you if you, like me, spent most of Saturday huddled around a radio, sipping delicious corn chowder, and gulping Mad Dog 20/20 “Purple Rain” in order to stave off the bitter taste of defeat. Here we go!
[Updated]
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“JUSTICE ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court.”

faked by Wednesday, October 25th, 2006

Today, New Jersey judicially recognized that the fundamental right of liberty includes the ability to choose who you want to marry.
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Dear Tyron Garner,

faked by Thursday, September 14th, 2006

You died yesterday, at only 39. The newspapers keep using the “s”-word—even in the headlines!—and talking about how you did so much for gay rights.

Apparently, they forget, or don’t understand, how much John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner v. Texas meant and means for all Americans. Justice Stevens said it best in his dissent from Bowers, which Justice Kennedy quoted for the Court in Lawrence:

[I]ndividual decisions by married persons, concerning the intimacies of their physical relationship, even when not intended to produce offspring, are a form of ‘liberty’ protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, this protection extends to intimate choices by unmarried as well as married persons.

In other words, Lawrence is about being safe and secure in our own homes from government intrusion. We are a free country, and Texas forgot that, like its faux child Mr. Bush often does. We the People cannot forget that. For we are all “entitled to respect for [our] private lives,” just like John and Tyron.

There are some places that the government has no place going: our bodies, our spiritual life, our private emotional life. Justice Kennedy wrote Lawrence with a bunch of “theirs” and “thems,” because he was talking about John and Tyron personally. I’m going to switch it to American, because when we talk about freedom in America, the words we always use are “ours” and “us.”

Because in America, no “State can[] demean [our] existence or control [our] destiny by making [our] private sexual conduct a crime,” because our “right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives [us] the full right to engage in [our] conduct without intervention of the government.”

So written and so ordered, June 26, 2003. So, Tyron—because you had the courage to push forward, to demand that those words be written for all of us—I thank you, and may God bless you and hold you close to Him,

Your Friend,

gorjus

Law & Comics: She-Hulk #10 (“I Married a Man-Wolf!”) and the Superhuman Registration Act.

faked by Thursday, August 17th, 2006

Ahoy, comic-law fans! It’s time for a new installment of “Law & Comics,” wherein we examine the legal world through the eyes of the best thing in the world, comics. This isn’t intended as nit-picking, but to provide a richer background (or somtimes, needed explanation) for the stories.
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Law & Comics: She-Hulk #9 (“The Big Reveal”) and the Spider-Man fraud lawsuit.

faked by Wednesday, August 16th, 2006

I love comics so much, but like other media, the results can be confusing and just plain wrong when wandering into the legal world. Scott at Polite Dissent does an fantastic job of looking at the medical snafus of comics, and inspired by his work, I wanted to look at a recent comic that often has legal overtones—She-Hulk.
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RSS Reader.

faked by Tuesday, August 1st, 2006

I use the Google reader. This is what’s in it as of 04.27.07:

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Hernandez v. Robles.

faked by Friday, July 7th, 2006

Yesterday the New York Court of Appeals, the highest appellate court in that state, rejected the arguments of forty-four same-sex couples that their state’s constitution required the recognition of same-sex marriage.
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