Judicial Review

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harlow-giles-unger/silence-in-the-court-why-_b_6078220.html


It is arguably the most important question concerning judicial review today. Should judges require the government to offer an honest, reasoned explanation every time it restricts individual liberty, or just some of the time? In a provocative two-part critical review of Damon Root's book, overruled, Professor Kurt Lash argues for the latter view, making an original case for broad judicial difference to assertions of government power that do not implicate textually enumerated constitutional rights. Drawing upon his own extensive study of the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause, Lash argues that that the clause only secures secures rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution. He thus praises the New Deal Court for "deferring on matters involving unenumerated rights" while "remaining actively engaged when it came to those rights explicitly enumerated in the Constitution."

This raises valid questions about the difficulty of evaluating the legit actions of the government that difficulty is important to interpreting and applying a written Constitution informed by a broad understanding of individual liberty. Neither the Framers of the original Constitution or the Reconstruction Amendments thought that liberty could be reduced to a handful of protected activities. Consistent judicial engagement in every case involving abuses of government power is required.We do not have a principled jurisdiction, one that protects only enumerated rights and denies the existence of any others, or one that protects all peaceful exercises of individual freedom, in keeping with the comprehensive understanding of liberty held by the Framers. 

This is important because we are learning about the judicial branch and Judicial Review.

Executive Branch

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/executive.html

The Senate's 6,700 page, $40M report on the CIA's participation in torture has apparently never been read by a single member of the Executive Branch of the US Government, because the Department of Justice has ordered them all to stay away from it. Why does the Department of Justice want to keep the Executive from finding out about the CIA's use of torture? Because Senate documents are not subject to the freedom of information requests, but Executive documents are, and the Department of Justice is so deathly afraid of the public discovering official wrongdoing that they have banned anyone from touching the document, so therefore it becomes a subject to clear rules.

I believe that appropriate Department of Justice and FBI officials must read the full 6,700-page Senate Intelligence Committee Study of the CIA's Detention and interrogation program in order to understand what happens and to hopefully draw appropriate lessons. This is exactly what Director Comey promised when he said he would choose FBI officials to read the full, final version of the Committee's Study and consider the lessons that can be learned from it. Director Comey also acknowledged that former FBI Director order FBI agents not to participate in the CIA program. Unfortunately as the executive summary of the study makes clear, the Department of Justice was among those parts of the Executive Branch that were misled about the program, and DOJ officials' understanding of this history is very important to its institutional role going forward.

This is important to what we are learning in class because it teaches me what the executive branches role and how important they are to us. 

Planned Parenthood/Affordable Care Act

URL: http://www.npr.org/2015/12/02/458127720/senators-move-to-tighten-visa-waiver-program-concede-issues-still-exist


Senate Republicans are expected to achieve two goals on Thursday that have long eluded them — they'll pass a bill that defunds Planned Parenthood and repeals the Affordable Care Act. The House has managed to vote more than 50 times to repeal all or part of the health care law, but it's always been tougher in the Senate, where Republicans don't have the  votes needed to pass bills Democrats oppose. This year, they'll have a special procedure at their disposal to get around that. Let's make it very clear — nothing that happens on the Senate floor this week will ever actually become law, because any bill that repeals the Affordable Care Act and defunds Planned Parenthood is going to get vetoed by the president. So, some might ask, what is the value of this exercise? "The value is to let him know and others that there's a big division in this country, and a lot of us don't like it, and the American people don't like it," said Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama.

"Some Republicans say that maybe by holding these symbolic votes THIS week, they'll satisfy their constituents, and that could ease passage of a government spending bill next week."That's the thing about conservative voters: you don't have to actually do anything for them to fall in line. All you have to do is keep them focused on a woman who wants an abortion or the gay guys kissing and they will support you even as you shake the change from their pockets. I have always liked the "it's both sides that are to blame" position. However, at this point in our history, a segment on the right has "gone off the rails". If you follow the problems facing our current legislators

This is valuable information to what we are learning in class right now because we are learning about the House and the Senate. More importantly how they get bills to the floor and how this process goes.