From the Latin, it means, “When cut down, it grows back stronger.”
Duke University’s lacrosse team adopted that motto, and is back in action, after being forced off the field for a year because of the bulls**t charges which are still pending against some of the players. They beat Dartmouth 17-11 today with a full-capacity crowd cheering their every move.
I hope they ride that motto all the way to the NCAA Championship, as a “FRAK YOU!” message to both the disgraced DA and the person who leveled the charges.

This ruling is definitely going to get some people in the Great Lakes State mighty nervous, especially if they’ve been frakkin’ around on their spouses while breaking the law in a felonious matter:

The ruling grows out of a case in which a Charlevoix man accused of trading Oxycontin pills for the sexual favors of a cocktail waitress was charged under an obscure provision of Michigan’s criminal law. The provision decrees that a person is guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct whenever “sexual penetration occurs under circumstances involving the commission of any other felony.”
Charlevoix Circuit Judge Richard Pajtas sentenced Lloyd Waltonen to up to four years in prison after he pleaded guilty to two felony counts of delivering a controlled substance. But Pajtas threw out the sexual assault charge against Waltonen, citing the cocktail waitress’ testimony that she had willingly consented to the sex-for-drugs arrangement.
Charlevoix prosecuting attorney John Jarema said he decided to appeal after police discovered evidence that Waltonen may have struck drugs-for-sex deals with several other women.
Cox’s office, which handled the appeal on the prosecutor’s behalf, insisted that the waitress’ consent was irrelevant. All that mattered, the attorney general argued in a brief demanding that the charge be reinstated, was that the pair had sex “under circumstances involving the commission of another felony”—the delivery of the Oxycontin pills.

What this means, of course, is that until the Michigan State Legislature changes the law, if two people who are not married to each other, but married to other people, are involved in an adulterous relationship, they better not be robbing banks or swapping drugs or anything like that, or else it’s Hello Jackson!
I’m not sure whether to laugh or shake my head….whether that Legislature gets up off its a** and actually changes the law is another matter.

I’ve always had a snide nickname for community (2-year) colleges, instead calling them Communist, because they are designed for the masses. Of course, we all know how Communistic universities are, so maybe I hit the nail on the head a long time ago.
ANYWAY...this shouldn’t come as a surprise: three beret-wearing student leaders (either French, or Communist, or both!) ban the Pledge of Allegiance at their meetings. One student recites it anyway just to piss them off…and good for her! Oh, I should have mentioned a couple of sentences ago that the guy who proposed the ban is an atheist. I wonder if he’s setting that a**hole Michael Newdow up to challenge the Pledge again in front of the 9th Circus Court of Appeals. This will be one story to watch as the months progress.

I actually found out about this development in the Prop 200 Voter ID requirement yesterday afternoon while I was at work and my outward reaction was: YESSSSSSSS!
Oh, to be a Fly On the Wall in the hallowed halls of the Supreme Court…I’ll bet choice words were used in the conversation about the 9th Circus Court of Appeals once again. In its ruling, SCOTUS will take the matter up again after the election is over, when they can take a look to see if poor and elderly people really were disenfranchised.
I’ve got a pretty good feeling that they won’t find any such evidence, given that there were NO such claims during the primary. And besides, I know I’ve got nothing to worry about: I just got my early balloting material in the mail yesterday, so I can avoid the polls altogether! HA HA HA!

Three prosecutions…and three mistrials...against John A. Gotti, Jr., who just wants to move on with his life:

“It’s enough now. They got to let go,” Gotti told reporters as he talked at length about wanting to return to a quiet life at his Long Island home with his wife and six children before moving to the Midwest and attending college.
“If they let us alone, I’ll leave. I’ll take my family and I’ll go,” he said.

This time, the racketeering charge involved attacks on radio personality and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, who was left with “the most miserable feeling in the world” upon the declaration of mistrial. The jury deadlocked 8-4 on whether Gotti had quit the Gambino crime family in 1999.
Now the Feds have to decide whether to continue the prosecution of Mr. Gotti (and risk yet another negative outcome)...or to take him up on his offer to just go.

I am totally pissed off by this 5-3 ruling...Justice Kennedy sides with the liberals, while Chief Justice Roberts (properly) recuses himself. As a result, we have, in effect, given Geneva Convention protections to al Qaeda. I’ll bet Osama is laughing his a** off right now.
Time for President Bush to break out the Executive Order pen and publicly announce that THIS RULING WILL BE IGNORED.

UPDATE (1850 MST): After some extensive research into the issue, I’m going to change my view a slight bit. In lieu of Congress going back to the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and specify that NO court at all may hear cases dealing with terrorists…then all Sailors, Soldiers, Airmen, and Marines (and the Coast Guard too!) who now encounter terrorists on the field of battle should not take prisoners at all. Simply KILL! THEM! ALL! ANNIHILATE THEM! and let GOD (not Allah) sort ‘em out.

Here’s an issue which caught my eye as soon as I saw the headline….
Kevin Thompson, a high school physics teacher in Massachussetts, gets frakked over in the family court system of the Bay State. He decides to write a book reaming the system, naming names, including the name of the person who initially frakked him over to begin with…and then said court system prohibits the man from selling his book in Massachussetts! If you go to the preview for the book, you’ll find this little ditty…from an attorney no less:

Most readers may disagree, but as an attorney, I found the author’s personal story the most fascinating section of the book because it gave substance to the “all-too-real” claims expressed in the early chapters. A piece of free legal advice, Mr. Thompson. If you haven’t already done so, DO NOT pay the mother’s attorney fees. I examined your briefs carefully and it is crystal clear that the appeals court committed fraud when they called your appeal “frivolous with no basis in law or fact.” Since this shocking response is an egregious betrayal of public trust and the laws of the land that these justices have sworn to uphold, it is also an act of treason against the country. File for injunctive relief in federal court and good luck to you!

This fight may take some time, and I hope this guy wins! Then, court systems such as the one in Massachussetts, or even Cook County in the Народный Социалистический Город-Государство Чикага* will sit up and take notice.

* - People’s Socialist City-State of Chicago

I sure hope so!
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that any university which accepts Federal funding must allow military recruiters on campus, even if the university does not agree with the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The only justice who did not participate in the ruling was Justice Samuel Alito, who was not present when the case was heard.
Now, we shall soon see if Yale and Harvard will follow through with their policies against the military…and in so doing, lose a bunch of money, which in turn would mean tuition hikes to cover the lost revenue.

HAT TIP: Stop The ACLU

It doesn’t matter what type of job one has…whether it’s doing sanitary engineering or Supreme Court Justice. It’s not good to fall asleep on the job.
I’m sure Justice Ginsburg is receiving a lot of flak for doing this during oral arguments for the Texas redistricting case. It’s a good thing this can’t directly make the late night show circuit, according to Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank:

“It’s lucky for Ginsburg that the Supreme Court has so far refused to allow television in the courtroom, for her visit to the land of nod would have found its way onto late-night shows.”

Yes, that reminds me of an old kids’ rhyme:
“Order in the court! The monkey’s asleep!
Whoever laughs now is the monkey of the week
STARTING NOW!”
I’m not laughing….

Well well well…for once, the Dems’ threat of a filibuster fizzles, and by noon today (Eastern Time), Samuel Alito will be sworn in as the nation’s 110th Justice of the Supreme Court, so that by the time President Bush delivers his State of The Union speech tonight, JUSTICE Alito will receive a warm welcome from the President.
And I say, hear hear!
Granted, he isn’t going to get as many affirmative votes as Chief Justice Roberts did. For that bygone era of true bipartisanship, we have the Donks to thank once again. And if the debate yesterday didn’t demonstrate once and for all the irrelevance of Ted Kennedy’s arrogance…then I don’t know what will.
Now, to retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor: THANK YOU for serving our country. Now, go home and take care of your family.

UPDATE (0923 MST): JUSTICE Alito is CONFIRMED by the Senate. The final tally was 58-42. It’s Over Folks!

After yesterday’s 10-8 party-line vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee to recommend confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, I shook my head in acknowledgement of the fact that the nomination process is broken.
Who do we have to thank for that? That’s an easy question to answer: the Democrats in general, and Senator Ted Kennedy in particular; his participation in the breakdown goes all the way back to 1987, when he led the process to defeat Judge Robert Bork’s nomination by President Reagan…and in so doing, led to the addition of a verb to the English lexicon.
One of the proposed solutions in the Fox News article by Jane Roh involves mucking with the Constitution, and taking away from the President the privilege of nominating Justices to the Supreme Court. Figures…they want to especially deprive any Republican President the ability to reshape the Court the way the people want it to be reshaped. That’s one of the main reasons why President Bush was re-elected in 2004. Sadly, the Democrat Senators no longer look solely at a nominee’s rulings during his/her tenure on the court level they are currently in. Instead, what it all boils down to is that they want to know how that nominee is going to rule on a single issue: abortion, and to Hell with everything else.
Alito’s going to be confirmed…but it’ll be by another razor-thin margin, but not as thin as it was for Justice Clarence Thomas back in 1991. There’s also a very high probability that Justice John Paul Stevens, who was named to the Court by President Ford in 1975, will likely retire before President Bush’s second term ends in 2009, so if that happens, get ready for yet another fireworks display.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me whenever a case goes to the Supreme Court and they find the appeals court messed up in striking down an entire law just because of a single provision that doesn’t agree with the Constitution, they unanimously slam the decision and send the case back to the lower court. That is what happened with Ayotte vs. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.
The offending part of the New Hampshire law was a lack of an exceptionary provision for the case of endangered health to the pregnant girl. Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the opinion:

“We try not to nullify more of a legislature’s work than is necessary, for we know that ‘[a] ruling of unconstitutionality frustrates the intent of the elected representatives of the people.’
“The lower courts need not have invalidated the law wholesale. So long as they are faithful to legislative intent, then, in this case, the lower courts can issue a declaratory judgment and an injunction prohibiting the statute’s unconstitutional application.”

So in this case, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals gets a do-over…and so does the New Hampshire legislature; if they insert that exception into the law, then they should be good to go. Except, of course, for those pro-abortion advocates. Please, get it right next time if you’re gonna protest again!

...turn ever so slowly, so the saying goes.
The United States has been trying to deport John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker, since the 1970s. He was extradited to Israel in 1986, tried there, found guilty of being “Ivan the Terrible” from the Treblinka death camp, and was about to hang when new evidence surfaced which pointed to someone else being Ivan. Demjanjuk was released in 1993 and sent back here, where he got his citizenship back…which was revoked once again in 2002.
All this back-and-forth bulls**t banter between the government who’s trying to deport him, Demjanjuk’s lawyers who claim that he would be tortured if sent back to Ukraine, and the Israelis is making me dizzy. Fact of the matter is…the man LIED on his original immigration papers back in 1951! That ALONE is enough to deport the guy right there, and don’t give me this “anchor family” bulls**t argument either! But NOOOOOO!
I have a feeling the ACLU will somehow get involved and drag it out even more to the point where Demjanjuk dies, making the whole case moot. After all, they love defending Communists and Nazis!

[Chris Tucker]
“Go clean yourself up. You Dead.”
[/Chris Tucker]

GOOD JOB CALIFORNIA!

At last, this one’s for all you GTA Fans out there and you know who you are! The Constitution of the United States prevails in the Народная Республика Ильиной* as the law banning video game sales to minors is struck down. As the Federal judge issuing the ruling wrote:

“In this country, the state lacks the authority to ban protected speech on the ground that it affects the listener’s or observer’s thoughts and attitudes.”

The authority to shape those young minds’ thoughts and attitudes rests with the parents to raise their children so they don’t have to worry about their kids buying this stuff…until said children turn 18.

* - People’s Republic of Illinois