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TROOPS COME HOME TO FIND THEIR CHILDREN GONE
MSNBC - [An unknown number] among the 140,000-plus single parents in
uniform fight a war on two fronts: For the nation they are sworn to
defend, and for the children they are losing because of that duty.
A federal law called the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is meant to
protect them by staying civil court actions and administrative
proceedings during military activation. They can't be evicted. Creditors
can't seize their property. Civilian health benefits, if suspended
during deployment, must be reinstated. And yet service members' children
can be - and are being - taken from them after they are deployed.
Some family court judges say that determining what's best for a child in
a custody case is simply not comparable to deciding civil property
disputes and the like; they have ruled that family law trumps the
federal law protecting servicemembers.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18506417/?from=rss
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SOME LIBERAL LAWYERS NOW DEFEND SECOND AMENDMENT
ADAM LIPTAK, NY TIMES - In March, for the first time in the nation's
history, a federal appeals court struck down a gun control law on Second
Amendment grounds. Only a few decades ago, the decision would have been
unimaginable. There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial
consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of
the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists รข€”
thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading
liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the
Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns. . .
Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said he had come to
believe that the Second Amendment protected an individual right. "My
conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome
surprise," Professor Tribe said. "I have always supported as a matter of
policy very comprehensive gun control."
Several other leading liberal constitutional scholars, notably Akhil
Reed Amar at Yale and Sanford Levinson at the University of Texas, are
in broad agreement favoring an individual rights interpretation. Their
work has in a remarkably short time upended the conventional
understanding of the Second Amendment, and it set the stage for the
Parker decision.
The earlier consensus, the law professors said in interviews, reflected
received wisdom and political preferences rather than a serious
consideration of the amendment's text, history and place in the
structure of the Constitution. "The standard liberal position,"
Professor Levinson said, "is that the Second Amendment is basically just
read out of the Constitution.". . .
If only as a matter of consistency, Professor Levinson continued,
liberals who favor expansive interpretations of other amendments in the
Bill of Rights, like those protecting free speech and the rights of
criminal defendants, should also embrace a broad reading of the Second
Amendment. And just as the First Amendment's protection of the right to
free speech is not absolute, the professors say, the Second Amendment's
protection of the right to keep and bear arms may be limited by the
government, though only for good reason. . .
Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian
group that supports gun rights, and a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the
Parker case, said four factors accounted for the success of the suit.
The first, Mr. Levy said, was "the shift in scholarship toward an
individual rights view, particularly from liberals."
He also cited empirical research questioning whether gun control laws
cut down on crime; a 2001 decision from the federal appeals court in New
Orleans that embraced the individual rights view even as it allowed a
gun prosecution to go forward; and the Bush administration's reversal of
a longstanding Justice Department position under administrations of both
political parties favoring the collective rights view.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html?ei=
5090&en=816e0e717146dc51&ex=1336104000&partner=
rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
WHY AMERICANS SHOULDN'T BOW TO THE QUEEN
MARC FISHER, WASHINGTON POST - Inside the Virginia Capitol -- a
building designed by the American revolutionary Thomas Jefferson -- the
majority leader of the House of Delegates, Morgan Griffith, paused
before ushering the queen into the House chamber and then bowed his
head. The hype and hoopla over the royal visit has driven too many of us
to forget who we are. "We are Elizabeth's subjects and she our monarch
for a day," editorialized the Virginian-Pilot newspaper.
No. We are no one's subjects. We do not bow to kings and queens. When we
forget this, we sully ourselves. . . Our revolution was not against King
George III so much as the concept of the monarch, the notion that power
and status are inherited from one generation to the next. Paine called
this idea "unwise, unjust, unnatural -- an insult and an imposition on
posterity."
Every word of Paine's booklet applies as much today as it did in 1776,
when he warned that people who believe they are born to be in charge of
others "are early poisoned by importance. . . . The world they act in
differs so materially from the world at large that they have but little
opportunity of knowing its true interests."
Today, as we enter the eighth consecutive presidential campaign
involving a Clinton or a Bush on the ticket -- a span of 28 years -- it
is sad to see Americans bowing and curtsying to a monarch, a descendant
of the very king against whom we fought a revolution. . .
"The idea that anybody should bow to anybody is beyond me," says Graham
Smith, campaign manager for Republic, a British political group that
pushes to replace the monarchy with an elected head of state. "Americans
wouldn't bow to George Bush. But they think that's what people do over
here." Smith says the democracy inherent in the digital revolution --
electronic voting, blogs, the ability to use the Internet to foil
powerful governments -- has finally lifted the taboo against discussing
elimination of the British crown. The American reverence for the queen,
he says, is nothing more than "untainted celebrity worship," a quest for
a fairy tale to believe in.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/
AR2007050500985_pf.html
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
TROOPS COME HOME TO FIND THEIR CHILDREN GONE
MSNBC - [An unknown number] among the 140,000-plus single parents in
uniform fight a war on two fronts: For the nation they are sworn to
defend, and for the children they are losing because of that duty.
A federal law called the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is meant to
protect them by staying civil court actions and administrative
proceedings during military activation. They can't be evicted. Creditors
can't seize their property. Civilian health benefits, if suspended
during deployment, must be reinstated. And yet service members' children
can be - and are being - taken from them after they are deployed.
Some family court judges say that determining what's best for a child in
a custody case is simply not comparable to deciding civil property
disputes and the like; they have ruled that family law trumps the
federal law protecting servicemembers.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18506417/?from=rss
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SOME LIBERAL LAWYERS NOW DEFEND SECOND AMENDMENT
ADAM LIPTAK, NY TIMES - In March, for the first time in the nation's
history, a federal appeals court struck down a gun control law on Second
Amendment grounds. Only a few decades ago, the decision would have been
unimaginable. There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial
consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of
the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists รข€”
thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading
liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the
Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns. . .
Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said he had come to
believe that the Second Amendment protected an individual right. "My
conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome
surprise," Professor Tribe said. "I have always supported as a matter of
policy very comprehensive gun control."
Several other leading liberal constitutional scholars, notably Akhil
Reed Amar at Yale and Sanford Levinson at the University of Texas, are
in broad agreement favoring an individual rights interpretation. Their
work has in a remarkably short time upended the conventional
understanding of the Second Amendment, and it set the stage for the
Parker decision.
The earlier consensus, the law professors said in interviews, reflected
received wisdom and political preferences rather than a serious
consideration of the amendment's text, history and place in the
structure of the Constitution. "The standard liberal position,"
Professor Levinson said, "is that the Second Amendment is basically just
read out of the Constitution.". . .
If only as a matter of consistency, Professor Levinson continued,
liberals who favor expansive interpretations of other amendments in the
Bill of Rights, like those protecting free speech and the rights of
criminal defendants, should also embrace a broad reading of the Second
Amendment. And just as the First Amendment's protection of the right to
free speech is not absolute, the professors say, the Second Amendment's
protection of the right to keep and bear arms may be limited by the
government, though only for good reason. . .
Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian
group that supports gun rights, and a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the
Parker case, said four factors accounted for the success of the suit.
The first, Mr. Levy said, was "the shift in scholarship toward an
individual rights view, particularly from liberals."
He also cited empirical research questioning whether gun control laws
cut down on crime; a 2001 decision from the federal appeals court in New
Orleans that embraced the individual rights view even as it allowed a
gun prosecution to go forward; and the Bush administration's reversal of
a longstanding Justice Department position under administrations of both
political parties favoring the collective rights view.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html?ei=
5090&en=816e0e717146dc51&ex=1336104000&partner=
rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
WHY AMERICANS SHOULDN'T BOW TO THE QUEEN
MARC FISHER, WASHINGTON POST - Inside the Virginia Capitol -- a
building designed by the American revolutionary Thomas Jefferson -- the
majority leader of the House of Delegates, Morgan Griffith, paused
before ushering the queen into the House chamber and then bowed his
head. The hype and hoopla over the royal visit has driven too many of us
to forget who we are. "We are Elizabeth's subjects and she our monarch
for a day," editorialized the Virginian-Pilot newspaper.
No. We are no one's subjects. We do not bow to kings and queens. When we
forget this, we sully ourselves. . . Our revolution was not against King
George III so much as the concept of the monarch, the notion that power
and status are inherited from one generation to the next. Paine called
this idea "unwise, unjust, unnatural -- an insult and an imposition on
posterity."
Every word of Paine's booklet applies as much today as it did in 1776,
when he warned that people who believe they are born to be in charge of
others "are early poisoned by importance. . . . The world they act in
differs so materially from the world at large that they have but little
opportunity of knowing its true interests."
Today, as we enter the eighth consecutive presidential campaign
involving a Clinton or a Bush on the ticket -- a span of 28 years -- it
is sad to see Americans bowing and curtsying to a monarch, a descendant
of the very king against whom we fought a revolution. . .
"The idea that anybody should bow to anybody is beyond me," says Graham
Smith, campaign manager for Republic, a British political group that
pushes to replace the monarchy with an elected head of state. "Americans
wouldn't bow to George Bush. But they think that's what people do over
here." Smith says the democracy inherent in the digital revolution --
electronic voting, blogs, the ability to use the Internet to foil
powerful governments -- has finally lifted the taboo against discussing
elimination of the British crown. The American reverence for the queen,
he says, is nothing more than "untainted celebrity worship," a quest for
a fairy tale to believe in.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/
AR2007050500985_pf.html
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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