Monday, May 21, 2012

The Supreme Court and Government Surveillence - Whose precedent takes precedent?

So here’s one of those pesky questions of legal consistency the U.S. Supreme Court is supposed to sort out regularly: Can the Obama Administration get a lawsuit quashed on, essentially, lack of standing due to lack of harm grounds, after getting enjoined from putting the NDAA indefinite detention provisions in effect for esentially the same assertion? What’s the catch you say? Well the federal judge who ruled on the NDAA case specifically cited the plaintiffs fears of indefinite detention as probable cause for success on the merits, and enjoined the NDAA until the action could proceed and be completed. Given that this action before the Supreme Court is essentially on the same question – albeit under a different piece of federal legislation – will they respect the District Court’s precedent, or will they throw more turmoil into the air to try and acquiesce to the Surveillance State?

Seems to me the NDAA injunction gives the Supreme’s an out to let the surveillance lawsuit proceed – if they have the stones to tell the DoJ enough’s enough.

In support of their motion, Plaintiffs assert that § 1021 already has impacted their associational and expressive activities–and would continue to impact them, and that § 1021 is vague to such an extent that it provokes fear that certain of their associational and expressive activities could subject them to indefinite or prolonged military detention.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Abandoning all Reason - the case of the DoS "Nipple Effect"

Lest you think we live in modern times, where prudish and puritanical thought police shush all mention of normal human anatomy from public view, consider this:

You see, as I mentioned in my last post, this blog was recently deleted from a blog roll.  Never mind the fact that its presence on that site was specifically requested well over two years ago.  The online community specialist managing the page (at the time) was eager to list it, glad for my input and seemed grateful for my participation.  I always thought it was a rather arbitrary list, but it seemed like a work in progress and names were being added, not subtracted (at first).  Recently and without warning, that inexplicably changed.  Care to guess why? 
I used the "n" word:
nipple.
Read more at The Dinoia Family.