The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Venti Pike Place coffee cost her about $2.50. It ended up costing Starbucks about 40,000 times that.

From the ABA Journal, an Ohio lawyer is appealing a five-day contempt sentence for refusing to remove her Black Lives Matter pin in court.  Debra Cassens Weiss wrote the rather interesting story.  Apparently violating the separation of church and state (see First Amendment) would be acceptable to Judge Milich, but the wearing of a political pin was not.

Story quoted here:

“Municipal Judge Robert Milich of Youngstown found lawyer Andrea Burton in contempt of court and sentenced her on Friday, report WKBN and the Youngstown Vindicator. Burton tells the Youngstown Vindicator she won’t wear the button in court while the appeal is pending.

“Burton was handcuffed and taken to the city jail after refusing to remove the button, but she was released after an appeals court granted a stay sought by NAACP lawyers.

“Milich cited the case Berner v. Delahanty in which the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a decision upholding a judge’s ban on political buttons in the courtroom. A lawyer had challenged the ban after being forced to remove a pin supporting a referendum banning discrimination against gays. (A summary of the case by the First Amendment Center is here.)

“I have to follow the law,” Milich told the Vindicator.

“Milich says he believes the Black Lives Matter pin expresses support for a political movement. “There’s a difference between a flag, a pin from your church or the Eagles and having a pin that’s on a political issue,” Milich told WKBN.

“Mike Brickner, senior policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, told WKBN he didn’t know enough about the particular case to comment. But judges generally are given wide latitude to decide what can be worn in court, he said.”

As reported on CNN, the Supreme Court’s decision to let stand Connecticut’s assault weapons restrictions, is the latest indication that courts recognize that common sense life-saving gun laws are fully compatible with the Second Amendment.  This time, the Supreme Court got it right.

Today, Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter, reported that The Supreme Court declined today (6/20/2016) to take up a constitutional challenge to a Connecticut gun law passed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.  The law bans certain semi-automatic assault weapons and large capacity magazines.

Appellate courts can act very affirmatively even by doing nothing.  By declining to review the Connecticut law, it essentially said we are not ready to rule that the gun ban law is wrong.  The only stronger statement would be for the Supreme Court to accept the appeal, and affirm the law.  With an eight person Court, perhaps the risk of a tie was in the minds of the Justices.

To me, the inquiry is not whether there is a right to own (“bear”) weapons.  It is one of what kinds of weapons fall under the guarantees of the Second Amendment.  That amendment does not say one may bear arms of any type whatsoever.  In 1939, the Supreme Court ruled that the amendment allows the federal government and states to limit weapon types not having a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.”  United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174.  That means tanks and cannons can be outlawed.  The 2008 Supreme Court case of District of Columbia v. Heller guaranteed the right to possess not only military type firearms, but personal (e.g. hand guns) types as well.

It would seem common sense that the United States, with its outlier rate of gun deaths amongst the developed world, needs to pull back the reins on its out of control gun usage.  Nobody is even debating the right to possess the rifle of the type the National Rifle Association (NRA) was formed to protect.  The NRA should change its name, as it spends the vast majority of its efforts and lobby funds on the right to possess assault rifles, large capacity “banana” clips and hand guns.

Perhaps there will be some movement in Congress on this issue this week – in light of the Orlando (Florida) massacre.  But I doubt it. It isn’t that “American loves its guns.”  Because it really doesn’t.  The June 13/14 CBS News Poll shows 57% of Americans would like stricter gun laws.  It is that America’s politicians currently are not leaders; they seek self-preservation, and preservation of Party.  So we look to the less political body ~ The US Supreme Court for leadership on this issue, as we have throughout our history, such as during the civil rights movement.

In a recent blog article by Matt Kaiser, the author argues that former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was wrongly sentenced at his recent hearing for hiding financial payouts as hush money ($3 Million in fact!).   When he was a wrestling coach and a high school teacher before he was a member of Congress, and then Speaker of the House, he touched kids he coached. They asked for money from him to keep quiet and he paid it. In the course of paying it, he structured the payments to avoid federal bank reporting laws.  Mr. Kaiser thinks the sentencing Judge asked and allowed evidence that was beyond what was appropriate at a sentencing hearing.  The author is correct – justice was not served – Hastert got off way too easy and deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Of course, there is a much broader backstory here.  As Eric Boehlert wrote a year ago,

During the 1990s, Hastert remained a firm advocate of impeachment, at one point condemning the president for his “inability to abide by the law.” Hastert stressed, “The evidence in President Clinton’s case is overwhelming that he has abused and violated the public trust.”

Of course it was the impeachment imbroglio that elevated Hastert, indirectly, to his lofty position of speaker of the House; a position he later leveraged into millions by becoming a very wealthy lobbyist.

The background: Former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich was forced to resign in 1998 after the impeachment-obsessed GOP faced disastrous midterm losses. (Gingrich later admitted he was engaged in an affair with a Congressional aide at the time.) Up next was Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA), chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee. “One of the loudest of those calling for the House to impeach Clinton over an extra-marital affair,” noted the National Journal, Livingston was soon ousted after he was forced to publicly confess to committing adultery “on occasion.”

Into that void stepped Hastert.

That means all three Republican House leaders who pursued Clinton’s impeachment have now confessed or been accused of sexual and moral transgressions themselves. Those were the people the D.C press took its cues from during the impeachment charade?

At sentencing, it is normal for additional information to be presented by both sides, which may or may not normally admissible at trial (on the issue of guilt).  The reasons that the money was paid in the first place, i.e., as hush money for child molestation, is certainly fair game in my opinion.  Sometimes the wheels of justice do not turn predictably, but in this case the ultimate result was just.

Jacob Gorshman wrote a short blog in the Wall Street Journal today, in which he discussed the recent legal showdown between Apple and the FBI arising out of the San Bernardino terrorists’ iPhone.  I hear the iPhone in question was an older model that was even less secure than the current iPhone 6s model.  In any event, after claiming the terrorists’ iPhone could not be accessed without having it’s auto delete system destroy it’s information, the FBI then miraculously found a way to “get in.”  Weird.  Why did it go public with its blame game against Apple?  Probably because it found a “good” case in which to make a case that technology security has gone too far (who can argue in favor of terrorists’ right to privacy, after all?).

I cannot believe that this entire issue could not have been worked out in private between the US Government and Apple, which has a proven track record of cooperating with the Government when asked to do so.

I think the privacy rights of citizens trumps the Government’s power to listen in.  Isn’t that one of the reasons this Country was formed over 200 years ago?  The prevention of terrorism is not going to hinge on surveillance of people; it is going to require the closing the tap of of young, deranged, mentally ill, powerless, antisocial types joining the movement.  A change of attitude is what will be required, making the terrorist group unpopular among those who would consider joining such a movement.

Cutting off the head is where to start, just as the Southern Poverty Law Center did with Richard Butler, the Aryan Nations Idaho racist.  Taking the fight to those at the top is the way to prevail.  What is your opionion?