Archives for April 2012

By Jonathan Peters Follow me @jonathanwpeters on Twitter. Your tweets are no different from bank records, a New York judge ruled Monday.  Prosecutors had subpoenaed an Occupy protestor’s tweets after he was arrested in the fall during a Brooklyn Bridge protest.  The judge was ruling on the protestor’s motion to quash the subpoena, which sought “user information, including email address,” and three months of tweets from the protestor’s Twitter feed. As Adam Martinwrote in The …

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By Mark Wilson So we’ve got a federal health care law, the federal government arguing for exclusive federal authority in immigration, and statutes that allow for federal prosecution of basically any crime if that crime involved using the mail or transmitting anything over a wire. Whither federalism? …

Continue Reading about States’ Rights . . . to Do What, Exactly? →

by Billy Corriher Last week, Marcus Robinson was on death row. Now, he has been given a chance at life. His death sentence was overturned because the judge found that black jurors were systematically excluded in his trial. Judge Gregory Weeks issued an order overturning the sentence under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, which gives death row inmates the right to challenge racial discrimination.  Republicans in the state legislature recently tried to repeal the law, only to face a veto from …

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By Tom Watts Elizabeth Warren has, during her Senate campaign, become known as a remarkable communicator.* Last year, one of her speeches went viral for being so clear, so crisp, and so effective an expression of basic progressive values that it had popular appeal immediately. Many on the left have been struggling for a way to articulate the need for investment in education and infrastructure, and Professor Warren, in about a minute, did as well as anyone has in a long time. * Full disclosure: …

Continue Reading about Framing Infrastructure Investment →

By Najah Farley In the wake of Tarek Mehanna’s conviction on April 12, 2012, I think that many progressive attorneys must have considerable questions about prosecutions for aiding and abetting terrorism and freedom of speech. Mehanna was convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to 17 ½ years in prison. Based on the prosecution’s evidence, Mehanna went to Yemen on a training trip and when he returned translated Al Qaeda promotional material and posted videos glorifying suicide bombings and …

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By Billy Corriher After Massey Energy Co. spent enormous sums of money to influence elections for the West Virginia Supreme Court, the state created a pilot public financing program to free judicial candidates from outside influence.  Only one candidate (out of eight) in this year’s election has accepted public funding.  Republican Allen Loughry, a longtime clerk at the court, only needed to raise 500 small campaign contributions to receive $350,000 for the general election.  Loughry said the …

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