From the Houston Chronicle: A mandatory moment of silence for Texas schoolchildren has a secular purpose of encouraging thoughtful contemplation and does not advance or inhibit religion, a federal judge said this week in a ruling upholding the 2003 state law. U.S. District Judge Barbara M.G. Lynn of Dallas ruled in a lawsuit brought by…
Category: Law
Deadly Force
The question of when or if deadly force can be used is an open one in the minds of many Americans. Not so in the case of Joe Horn. The Houston Chronicle first reported on Mr. Horn’s case and the pair of burglars he gunned down nearly a month ago, saying: On a 911 tape released…
Runaway Juror
The case against the Holy Land Foundation was an open-and-shut one – the nominal charity was almost certainly guilty of funneling money to Hamas, an organization that most Americans recognize as a sponsor of terrorism in Israel and beyond. So how did the U.S. government lose the case? The Investigative Project on Terrorism’s new report…
Just Say No
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that judges do have the discretion to override federal sentencing guidelines in their courtrooms: By a 7-2 vote, the court said that a 15-year sentence given to Derrick Kimbrough, a black veteran of the 1991 war with Iraq, was acceptable, even though federal sentencing guidelines called for Kimbrough to…
Posted: No Sex Offenders
Determined to keep itself safe, an Amarillo subdivision is implementing deed restrictions that will bar sex offenders from owning or living in new homes built there: G.R. Chapman Limited Partnership said the restriction will apply to future development within The Woodlands. The 550 existing homes are not affected. “We want to try to have a…
Parents, Kids, Guns
Judging from this article in the Boston Globe, the parenting situation in Beantown is worse than I could have imagined: Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms. The program, which is…
Refusing Medical Care
In the U.K., Emma Gough, a young Jehovah’s Witness woman recently died after refusing to accept a blood transfusion that could have saved her life: She had signed a form refusing blood transfusions, and her family would not overrule her. Couldn’t doctors have intervened? If they had, they may well have been charged with a…
Lawsuit May Bankrupt Phelps’ "Church"
After members of Reverend Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church demonstrated at the funeral of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder his father was justifiably upset. But Albert Snyder didn’t just get mad – he got even: A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals in the…
Genarlow Wilson to be Freed
As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, a uniquely stupid chapter in the story of the American legal system is drawing nearer to a close. The Georgia Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of Genarlow Wilson, the Douglas County man who has been serving a controversial 10-year sentence for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old…
Progressives Hold Up FISA Modifications?
Earlier today the Huffington Post reported that the Democratic leadership in the House postponed announcing a new set of proposed changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after progressive lawmakers promised to fight legislation that omitted their “principles on wiretapping that preserve the ‘rule of law.’” Steny Hoyer, the House Majority Leader, had planned to…