How Appealing



Sunday, October 21, 2007

“Say What You Like, Just Don’t Say It Here”: Monday’s edition of The New York Times will contain the new installment of Adam Liptak’s “Sidebar” column, which begins, “The American commitment to free speech is the most robust in the world. But these days that tolerance stops at the border.”

Posted at 11:00 PM by Howard Bashman



“High drama of appeals at new supreme court may go out on television”: Monday’s edition of The Times of London contains an article that begins, “Cameras will be allowed to broadcast hearings before Britain’s highest court when the new supreme court opens for business, The Times has learnt. Judges say that Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is keen to permit cameras into the court as part of the aim to make it more transparent. The move could see some of Britain’s most high-profile appeals being shown on television. Such appeals have included the legality of detaining terror suspects without trial, whether the deaths of six Iraqis at the hands of British soldiers was covered by the Human Rights Act, and the extradition of General Pinochet.”

Posted at 10:55 PM by Howard Bashman



“Procedural point gets pedophile’s case to high court; A Minnesota man convicted of sex abuse wants the Supreme Court to intervene because he never got to confront his accuser”: The Minneapolis Star Tribune on Monday will contain an article that begins, “Stephen Danforth has followed a twisted legal path from disbarred Minnesota attorney to test case for the right to confront an accuser. From the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minn., where he is serving a 26-year term for sexually abusing a 6-year-old boy, he will follow a Supreme Court case he launched in his new incarnation as a jailhouse lawyer. His case, Danforth vs. State of Minnesota, will be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court later this month.”

Posted at 10:50 PM by Howard Bashman



“A Court Decision Elbows a Village in Favor of Religious Rights”: The New York Times today contains an article that begins, “It all began with an Indian who wanted to eat peyote. His name was Alfred Smith. He belonged to the Klamath tribe in Oregon and was a member of the North American Church, whose sacramental rites included ingesting peyote buds.”

Posted at 10:17 PM by Howard Bashman



“Justice Says Law Degree ‘Worth 15 Cents'”: The Associated Press provides a report that begins, “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has a 15-cent price tag stuck to his Yale law degree, blaming the school’s affirmative action policies in the 1970s for his difficulty finding a job after he graduated.”

Posted at 7:00 PM by Howard Bashman



“Was a Passage Omitted from a Recent Second Circuit Opinion for ‘Security’ Reasons — Or to Cover Up Material Embarrassing to the FBI?” Patterico has this post today at his blog, “Patterico’s Pontifications.”

Posted at 5:38 PM by Howard Bashman



Blog server issues: Both yesterday afternoon and again right now, this blog’s usual web server was and is offline. As a consequence, documents that I’ve previously uploaded to the web (which resides on the blog’s usual server) are temporarily unavailable. Some additional posts that I made last night were also temporarily unavailable overnight although they’ve been restored from back-up now. Eventually, everything will return to normal (as it did for a time last night), or so we can hope.

Update at 11:44 a.m.: This blog’s usual web server appears to be up and running once again, so all documents previously uploaded to the web should once again be accessible.

Posted at 8:37 AM by Howard Bashman



“Justice Thomas landed the right job for himself — and America”: Columnist Jim Wooten has this op-ed today in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Posted at 8:33 AM by Howard Bashman