Last March, Jack Dunphy noted an L.A. Times article that consulted legal experts on the all-important question of whether Justice Thomas would be allowed to have a wife who is a political activist. (The experts said yes.) Dunphy noted that the editors seemed to have no similar concern over the liberal Stephen Reinhardt, whose wife heads up the local ACLU. Now Reinhardt has refused to recuse himself in a case where his wife’s ACLU signed on to an amicus brief in the very same case — arguing that it is hunky dory because the brief was filed in the trial court, while he is sitting on the appellate court, which is totally different . Because, after all, what relationship does an appellate court have to the trial court? All he’s doing is deciding whether the trial court got it right . . . by ruling the way his wife urged them to do in a brief. See? No connection at all! So I ran to the L.A. Times to see what the experts had to say about this . And, oddly, it appears that Carol J. Williams’s article on the Prop. 8 rulings yesterday totally fails to mention Reinhardt’s recusal denial . It’s almost as if a double standard is at work.
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L.A. Times Article on Prop. 8 Rulings Omits Mention of Reinhardt’s Pathetic Defense of His Refusal to Recuse Himself
Last seen trying (unsuccessfully) to get me fired for calling him on his lies, Brad Friedman resurfaces today (no links for liars!) to mischaracterize yesterday’s decision on ACORN funding: The appellate court determined that Congress can target a specific group for punishment . . . Oh, really?! The appellate court approvingly quoted a past decision saying the precise opposite : We therefore hold that corporations must be considered individuals that may not be singled out for punishment under the Bill of Attainder Clause. What the court actually said was that defunding ACORN does not constitute punishment: [W]e doubt that the direct consequences of the appropriations laws temporarily precluding ACORN from federal funds are “so disproportionately severe” or “so inappropriate” as to constitute punishment per se. . . . In sum, the plaintiffs have failed to show that the appropriations laws constitute “punishment” under the functional test. . . . Nor is the legislative record sufficient to demonstrate “punishment” cumulatively with the historical and functional tests of punishment analyzed above. If one did not have Friedman’s history of deception as a guidepost , one might call Friedman’s mischaracterization a mistake, born of some combination of laziness and poor reading skills. But we do have that history. So there you go.
Continue reading here:
Brad Friedman’s Latest ACORN Falsehoods
