Texas supreme court affirms special rights for religion

The Texas state supreme court ruled unanimously on Friday that a town which had altered its zoning to ban two church-sponsored halfway houses in a residential neighborhood was in violation of the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

That act, which was passed in 1999 and endorsed by then-Governor George W. Bush, affords greater legal protection to religious operations than to equivalent secular operations.

Under its provisions, cities have to prove that zoning regulations — like the one passed by the town of Sinton to ban jails and rehabs within 1000 feet of a home, school, or church — further a “compelling” interest, such as protecting public safety, and do not place a “substantial burden” on the free exercise of religion.

Town officials asserted that the zoning regulations placed no restrictions on worship or the practice of religion and were merely intended to protect the safety of residents. This position was upheld at the local and appeals court levels.

However, the all-Republican and generally conservative state supreme court agreed with Pastor Richard Barr’s claim that because the town of Sinton is so small, the regulation had the effect of excluding him from operating his “ministry” for parolees anywhere.

Barr’s case was argued by the conservative Liberty Legal Institute (LLI) and was also supported by the American Center for Law and Justice — founded by Pat Robertson — and by the ACLU.

LLI was involved several years ago in a widely-noted case against a Texas school district which its litigation director, Hiram Sasser, claimed had demonstrated “pervasive religious hostility” by banning the distribution at Christmas time of candy canes with a religious message.

According to Sasser, today’s decision “means that in zoning cases you have to give churches special treatment. … You have to have very special reasons for telling a church you can’t locate here and locate there. That’s going to be a touch burden for cities.”

“This is a home run,” Sasser proclaimed. ‘I think it will be a model for other states.”

• Texas supreme court affirms special rights for religion - sm

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credibility in the Bush/Gore recount. 

Thate 5-3 decision would have been a 5-4 decision, had Roberts not recused himself from ruling due to his prior ruling in the case at a lower court.

Alito and Roberts are Bush loyalists who will vote in his favor every time.  Same with Scalia and Thomas.

Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion, is 86.  This means there is a very good chance that Bush will have the opportunity to appoint a third Supreme Court Justice, thus negatively tipping and fixing the scales of justice for decades to come, long after Bush is gone.  Some radical right-wingers (including Ann Coulter) have publicly called for the assassination of a Supreme Court Justice, and Pat Robertson has been *praying* for another Bush appointment.  If/when that happens, freedom as we know it in the United States will be gone for generations. 

In the meantime, the current Supreme Court ruling won't mean much.  They're already talking about creating a law to make Bush's tactics legal.

Not that even THAT would matter much.  Bush hasn't agreed with Congress' laws 750 times since he's been in office, and he's issued *signing statements* allowing him to ignore the law.

He apparently views himself as having expanded Presidential powers in a time of war.  Maybe that's a large part of the true reason we're at war with Iraq.

May 26, 2009, 8:15 am
Obama Chooses Sotomayor for Supreme Court Nominee
By Jeff Zeleny

Ron Jordan Natoli Studio/U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, via Associated Press

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. President Obama will nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as his first appointment to the court, officials said Tuesday, and has scheduled an announcement for 10:15 a.m. at the White House.

If confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, Judge Sotomayor, 54, would replace Justice David H. Souter to become the second woman on the court and only the third female justice in the history of the Supreme Court. She also would be the first Hispanic justice to serve on the Supreme Court.

Conservative groups reacted with sharp criticism on Tuesday morning. “Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”

The president reached his decision over the long Memorial Day weekend, aides said, but it was not disclosed until Tuesday morning when he informed his advisers of his choice less than three hours before the announcement was scheduled to take place.

Mr. Obama telephoned Judge Sotomayor at 9 p.m. on Monday, officials said, advising her that she was his choice to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Later Monday night, Mr. Obama called the three other finalists — Judge Diane P. Wood of Chicago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Solicitor General Elena Kagan — to inform them that he had selected Judge Sotomayor.

White House officials worked into the night to prepare for the announcement, without knowing who it would be.

Judge Sotomayor has sat for the last 11 years on the federal appeals bench in Manhattan. As the top federal appeals court in the nation’s commercial center, the court is known in particular for its expertise in corporate and securities law. For six years before that, she was a federal district judge in New York.

In what may be her best-known ruling, Judge Sotomayor issued an injunction against major league baseball owners in April 1995, effectively ending a baseball strike of nearly eight months, the longest work stoppage in professional sports history, which had led to the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years.

Born in the Bronx on June 23, 1954, she was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 8. Her father, a factory worker, died a year later. Her mother, a nurse at a methadone clinic, raised her daughter and a younger son on a modest salary.

Judge Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University summa cum laude in 1976 and and attended Yale Law School, where she was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal. She spent five years as a prosecutor with the Manhattan district attorney’s office before entering private practice.

But she longed to return to public service, she said, inspired by the “Perry Mason” series she watched as a child. In 1992, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan recommended the politically centrist lawyer to President George H. W. Bush, making good on a longstanding promise to appoint a Hispanic judge in New York.

On the Circuit Court, she has been involved in few controversial issues like abortion. Some of her most notable decisions came in child custody and complex business cases. Her most high-profile case involved New Haven’s decision to toss out tests used to evaluate candidates for promotion in the fire department because there were no minority candidates at the top of the list.

She was part of a panel that rejected the challenge brought by white firefighters who scored high but were denied promotion. Frank Ricci, the lead plaintiff, argued that it was unfair he was denied promotion after he had studied intensively for the exam and even paid for special coaching to overcome his dyslexia.

The case produced a heated split in the Circuit Court and is now before the Supreme Court.

I stated in a previos post a few days ago that BO birth certificate case would not be heard by the Supreme Court.   As many of you have said the judges and the Supreme Court are suppressing evidence as to the real situation that many of you do have extemsive, and true facts about.  Clearly from your in depth knowledge about this situation, a cover up is occurring, not only by the Federal courts, but by the Supreme Court as will.

As in my previous post I strongly suggest that with the real evidence that you posses, that you most simplyt take action now, and save this country, not only ultimately disallowing Obama to be president, but to ultimately perform the ultimate patriotic duty for yourselves, as well as performing the highest civic duty that you likely will ever do in your lifetimes.

There is another current legal case in the works regarding this serious situation. Thus far the costs for persuing this matter are over $30,000 dollars. This can be found by doing a Google search, donations are badly needed,  and if you people will make substantial donations regarding this, the higher the likelihood that the case will be placed in the hands of a federal judge.

The other possibility here is to start as a group, a collective case, pool your resourses to hire an attorney who speecialises in these matters, pay the retainer fees, the attorney's hourly fees regarding the case, and get the case filed in the Federal courts. The fees for doing this are not cheap, but you are MTs and make high paying salaries, so $20,000 to $30,000 should not be a problem here. Even the appeal process that is likely to occur is not out of your range as MTs, as it really only costs about double the amount of money to do so, as  again  the total expenses regarding filing an appeal would likely only be about $50,000 to $60,000 dollars,, and the beauty of the system is that if you are ultimately successful in winning the case, and you likely would be with the real facts at your disposal, the court costs are covered, and you would become true national hero's!!!!!

I don't understand that with the true information that you posses, why you are not persuing this instead of writing about on message boards.

With the true facts that you posses it is quite likely that you will ultimately win the case, would have completed the highest of civic duties, and will be held in the highest of esteem for finally exposing a person who has committed a terrible fraud, not only to the election process, but also to the federal judicial system, and ultimately going as far as perpetrating that fraud up to and inc;luding the Supreme Court.

I laud you in advance for having the fortitude for persuing this, and look forward to saluting you as well all of of the other American people, for performing the highest civic and patriotic duty that one ever could. It's people like you, that never give up, and get to the bottom of such an important situation. You are the true American heroes.

Now, if we can just all survive until January 20, 2008, without another war or false flag attack on our nation, there may be some hope for the future.  Until then, Bush is still President and still a very dangerous man.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/08/obama-birth-certificate-c_n_149229.html

July 2008

In a stinging blow to the Bush administration, the Supreme Court has ruled prisoners in Guantanamo Bay can challenge their detention in civilian federal courts. The ruling marked the third time in four years the Supreme Court has ruled against the Bush administration concerning the rights of Guantanamo prisoners.

You don't want EQUALITY in religion.  You want yours to be SUPERIOR to all others.  You want to force your narrow and specific religious beliefs down the throats of every single American.  You can't get them into your religion willingly so you'll FORCE them to fall in step with you via government if you have to.

You couldn't stop abortion by killing abortion doctors, so now you'll do it through the Supreme Court.  And your God on earth just happens to be a president who wants the same things that you do, and so he's willing to throw the Constitution out the window (in violation of his Presidential oath) in order to replace it, not just with the Christian Bible, but with his own personal clone who will legislate her own narrow evangelical Christian views that don't even agree with the less radical, quieter forms of the Christian religion.

Government, schools and universities don't fall into the same categories.

There already ARE religous schools and universities.  Isn't THAT enough for you?

And what about all those many, MANY buildings with crosses and other religious symbols on them throughout this nation where people of like-minded beliefs congregate to worship the God of their CHOICE?  I believe they're called CHURCHES.  Isn't THAT enough for you, either?

Nope.  You're not going to be happy until you can be *superior.*

The sad fact is that in a country with freedom of religion, you never WILL BE, whether you like it or not. You can put 9 THOUSAND justices on the Supreme Court, you still won't be SUPERIOR, and I believe God, who is all knowing, knows that as well!

Hunting blind - only in Texas

Fort Worth Star Telegram - Dec 12, 2006

House Bill 308 would allow Texans who are blind to go hunting. With guns. With real bullets... 
Perhaps Dick Cheney's hunting performance inspired the bill. Cheney is apparently blind and he is permitted to hunt birds in Texas.

80R1572 SGA-F

By:  Kuempel                                      H.B. No. 308

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED

AN ACT

relating to the use of laser sighting devices by hunters who are legally blind.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:

SECTION 1.  Section 62.005, Parks and Wildlife Code, is amended to read as follows:

Sec. 62.005.  HUNTING WITH LIGHT.  Except as provided by Section 62.0055, no [No] person may hunt a game animal or bird protected by this code with the aid of an artificial light that casts or reflects a beam of light onto or otherwise illuminates the game animal or bird, including the headlights of a motor vehicle.

SECTION 2.  Subchapter A, Chapter 62, Parks and Wildlife Code, is amended by adding Section 62.0055 to read as follows:

Sec. 62.0055.  HUNTING WITH LASER SIGHTING DEVICE BY LEGALLY BLIND HUNTER.  (a)  In this section, legally blind has the meaning assigned by Section 62.104, Government Code.

(b)  A legally blind hunter may use a laser sighting device during regular hunting hours when assisted by a person who is not legally blind.

(c)  The legally blind hunter must carry proof of being legally blind.

SECTION 3.  (a)  Not later than January 1, 2008, the Parks and Wildlife Commission shall adopt rules that prescribe what is acceptable as proof of being legally blind under Section 62.0055, Parks and Wildlife Code, as added by this Act.

(b)  The Parks and Wildlife Department may not enforce Section 62.0055(c), Parks and Wildlife Code, as added by this Act, until the rules adopted under Subsection (a) of this section take effect.

SECTION 4.  This Act takes effect immediately if it receives a vote of two-thirds of all the members elected to each house, as provided by Section 39, Article III, Texas Constitution.  If this Act does not receive the vote necessary for immediate effect, this Act takes effect September 1, 2007.

I think it is like the old saying; you can take the person out of Texas but you can't take Texas out of the person.  LOL  I miss the BBQ most I think.

We must be in the same age group, 'm.........arg.........65.  Unfortunately I didn't know a lot about my family, didn't get interested in genealogy until most of the older members of my family had passed, small family to begin with.  I only remember bits and pieces of stories they told.  I found it interesting that my G-G-grandfather freed his slaves before the War, yet my G-grandfather fought and died to preserve the rights of slave owners.  One can find out some interesting things.  I go back to one G-G-grandfather who was born in VA and then moved to TN before moving to AR in 1830.  Everyone searching that family branch comes to a dead end with him.  It is said that there was some kind of family scandal about the time of his birth but either no one knows or they aren't sharing what the scandal was.  He doesn't match DNA with any of the other branches of the family.  Strange indeed.

Maybe we should continue this discussion in email?  I've taken us way off topic haven't I?

I hope Texas does secede -- I'd leave this sinking ship in a heartbeat, right ahead of the rats.

From his speech today:  He also said if the demonstrations didn't stop there might be chaos and bloodshed, and that rival candidates calling for protests would be blamed.  See link for full details.

This is going to get really, really bad.

Hannity's America, FNC.  It's on now, but will be repeated at 11PM (CST, I think).

Flame all you want, but can you refute it?  Seriously?

I saw (but didn't read) a post in passing about Alaska and its meth labs.  Shoot, I grew up in Nebraska, and back in the 70s it was totally out of control.  Rural areas seem to be magnets for them, regardless of who's in office, so in my opinion neither party who is in control at this time or another can't and won't stop it.  It's sad, but true.

The author stated Lincoln suspended the right of habeus corpus and the constitution to justify his causes....so maybe this is why O is following along those lines.

Hope it's not on late. I can't stay awake past 8:30 anymore.