The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged antonin scalia

Most of the Supreme Court’s conservative wing to skip State of the Union

By | 01.25.11 | 12:57 pm

Tonight’s State of the Union address will likely be full of many showy “bipartisan” moments. President Obama will likely make a number of statements about reaching across the aisle, and many Republicans and Democrats in Congress will sit with a member of the other party to break up the traditional More…

Koch-Led GOP Network Laying the Groundwork for a Post-Midterm Push

By | 10.20.10 | 9:04 am

The vast Koch Industries-led cabal of GOP donors, free-market ideologues and titans of industry is real, it turns out, and The New York Times has obtained the letter that proves it. Before the 2010 midterms are even over, the company led by Charles and David Koch has sent out More…

SCOTUS to Take Up ‘Vague’ Fraud Law

By | 12.07.09 | 10:56 am

The Supreme Court is set to hear three big cases charging that the anti-corruption laws are too vague and recent high-level prosecutions under them must be struck down.

The law at issue, an amendment to the Wire and Mail Fraud Act of 1988, makes it illegal for More…

Justice Scalia Thinks a Cross Is a Secular Symbol

By | 10.29.09 | 3:40 pm

Susan Jacoby in The Washington Post points out a largely overlooked exchange with Justice Antonin Scalia in that cross case heard by Supreme Court earlier this month. The case revolved around whether the government can keep a war memorial consisting of a solitary cross on public parkland. More…

A Push to Keep Guns From Foreign-Convicted Felons

By | 07.29.09 | 3:04 pm

Perhaps emboldened by a rare victory over the gun lobby last week, a group of liberal senators introduced legislation Wednesday to prevent people convicted of felonies overseas from owning firearms.

The proposal attempts to close a loophole created by a 2005 Supreme Court decision, which found More…

Surprise! No Surprises from Day One of Sotomayor Testimony

By | 07.15.09 | 8:54 am

That seems to be the consensus of just about every legal and political expert who watched the first day of the Supreme Court nominee ably fending off attacks and responding to both soft and hardball questions. As we already knew, Supreme Court nominees are careful not to say More…