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US Supreme Court Upholds Indefinite Confinement
An anonymous reader points out the news that the US Supreme Court today upheld a law that allows the federal government to keep prison inmates behind bars beyond the end of their sentences, if officials determine they may be "sexually dangerous" in the future. The case involves one Graydon Comstock, who was certified as "dangerous" six days before his 37-month federal prison term for processing child pornography was to end. The vote was 7 to 2. Three of the justices who concurred with the decision raised an objection to the broadness of the language used in the majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy.
Irony? The two who are most often right are right about this one as well. That's not even surprising.
Idiot.
this ruling, at worst, is two inches in the direction of tyranny. emphasis: TWO INCHES. for a 200 mile trip to the destination you call "liberty dies". pffffffffft. law is not static. it dithers this way and that like a tree in the breeze. every little perturbation shouldn't send you into hysterical overreaction
you're just a drama queen if you see your government sway slightly this way or slightly that way and you declare its the end of the world, pure tyranny, pure orwell, "liberty dies! OMFG!" ...zzz...
look:: a lot of people point at the hysteria of "someone please think of the children!" well, there's a lot of hysteria here about the true meaning of these rulings. they are not instant gateways to an unstoppable slippery slope to our eternal slavery. overreactive bullshit. they are wanderings, meandering. really!
if you are going to fight the good fight for liberty, know your true enemies. if you can't identify your true threats from your mosquitoes, then you're no help to the defense of liberty at all. your'e a spastic child who doesn't even understand the concepts.
learn it: reaction proportional to threat
threat: a guy with a high chance of recidivism for sexual crimes
proportional reaction: **YAWN**
really, drama queens
you may now castigate me and accuse me of the worst of abuses of freedom. go on, spastic twits, you know you want to do it
zzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Couldn't have said it better myself.
the same time the supreme court made this ruling today, they made another ruling:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/us/politics/18court.html
which says that juveniles cannot get life sentences for nonhomicides. that sounds like progress to me, no?
so that's two inches in the win column, which means it's just as i say: fluttering in the breeze, two inches here and there
my advice to you is to save your ammunition for the REAL slides in liberty, such as the post-9/11 bullshit. but if you insist on having a heart attack every time something sounds like a vague few inches in a direction you dislike, you're simply a drama queen. liberty needs defending, not hysterics over mosquitoes
but don't let me stop you from whining and moaning. for some people, that seems to be the only point
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Murder is embodied in state law. As is rape. Where does the Federal government (and SCOTUS) think it gets the authority to do this? There is nothing in the Constitution that would bestow this kind of power on them. And that includes the general welfare and interstate commerce clauses.
The geek forgets the American Civil War - the six hundred thousand dead - which profoundly and permanently altered the relationship between the states and the federal government.
The geek forgets the constitutional amendments which gave those changes the force of fundamental law.
The Fourteenth Amendment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, binds the power of state governments to essentially the same limits as the federal Bill of Rights. Incorporation of the Bill of Rights, Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
The USA is a failed experiment in democracy. In the same way that it seems that communism inexorably leads to dictatorship, it seems that democracy leads to fascism.
Ironically, the only way to avoid this is to have a political system only weakly based upon ideology, leading to so many compromises that the system cannot organise itself well enough to become subverted.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
Now do a list like that for all other countries. You can.
I take it you don't like the decision?
Then you'd better hope we get more justices like the dissenters... Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, dissented in the case... (FTFA)
Yeah, I totally hope we get more justices who believe it's constitutional to execute the innocent and that the First Amendment's freedom of religion only applies to monotheists. Not to mention that the interests of the candidates in a disputed presidential election outweigh the interests of the electorate in selecting the candidate they voted for. Yeah, let's hope for more of that.
A judge's record is bigger than any single case; we'd be wise to keep that in mind.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Sorry, no. "Ex post facto" has nothing to do with increasing the punishment after conviction. It refers specifically to declaring something illegal, then prosecuting somebody under that law based on conduct that occurred before the law was passed. Regardless, punishment is increased after conviction and sentencing all the time. Violate the terms of your probation? Straight to the slammer. Start a fight in prison? You get sent to solitary. And so on.
Let's address some of the other things you may be misinformed about. This is not a bill of attainder, because it doesn't address specific people or groups of people. And no, the "group" of people who are in prison doesn't count, because potentially ANYBODY could be in prison for some other crime. If the bill stated that it only applied to black people, or people named Steve, then it would not be permissible. It's also (arguably) not a due process violation, because since it is a civil punishment and not a criminal one, the standard is lower than what is necessary to convict a person of a crime and send him to prison. You still need to convince a judge under this law, so there is still a due process issue. But the Supreme Court specifically did not address that in this case.
What's at issue here is ultimately whether the United States, given the authority to imprison somebody for a crime, can indefinitely extend that time under a civil statute based on a showing to a judge that it is necessary. This is not legally any different from the authority to put somebody in solitary confinement, or deny access to privileges based on behavior. I'm not comfortable with the ruling in this case, and I agree with Justices Thomas and Scalia that this is an inappropriate extension of government power. But please get your facts and legal terminology straight before going off half-cocked based on your limited legal understanding.