Links tagged “SCOTUS”

@JamieDupree: SCOTUS no comment…

New York citizens now required to register ‘assault weapons’ with the state…

WorldNetDaily reported this weekend that a Kansas-based blog, MsPlacedDemocrat.com, has been frequented by someone at the Supreme Court:

[Nancy Armstrong] tracked the page to her recent commentary about Orly Taitz … 

Her commentary included Taitz’ recent interviews, on which WND has reported, with Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts.

[She] blogged:

“Dr. Orly Taitz, both a lawyer and naturalized citizen, has personally taken on the issue of Obama’s eligibility. There is nothing wrong with her questioning this issue because Obama has literally hidden every evidence of his past. What has he hidden? All school records, passport records, employment records (forget his stupid story about ice cream and an ice cream shop….I believe it is another one of Obama’s lies.) and his REAL birth certificate.

“Dr. Orly Taitz wouldn’t even have to question anything if Obama was transparent about his life, something he continues to fight with law firms all over the country. Transparency would end all issues, but we will never see that from Obama…,” the blogger continued.

“Dr. Taitz has been racing across the country, often times missing her three sons, to meet with Supremes….particularly Scalia and Roberts to further her ‘quo warranto’ case now at the door of the Supreme Court.” …

Armstrong told WND she was writing about the issue because a friend asked her to do it.

“I just happened to go in and check. I brought my husband in right away. He was dumbfounded. There was the Supreme Court,” she said. “It did surprise me.

“It may be that [Taitz] has checkmated the Supreme Court …. which means they are trying to dispense with her and her case,” she said.

Having done a “tracert” on 209.144.137.1 certainly does show this particular IP address to be originating from washington.savvis.net. Further, sitemeter.com — the “software” to which the article refers — is a very good web-based service used by many sites to track many different aspects of web traffic to and from one’s site. I have similarly just begun using sitemeter.com for this site, though I’ve been using my own internal, back-end WordPress plugins to track things as well as Google’s Analytics tool.

What I will caution my readers on, however, is that all that the IP confirms is that someone is using the Supreme Court’s account to look at web pages; we do not know, simply based on the above statistical analysis, whether or not it’s an actual Justice (which I highly doubt, for a number of reasons). Further, the last digit in the IP address is a “1,” and typically most PCs or Macs that use the Internet from within a given account are not assigned such a low number. In other words, this could very well be what’s known as a gateway or router into the SCOTUS offices or other facility.

All that being said, it is obvious that the Supreme Court’s offices are aware of what’s going on in the blogosphere.

Update: Yes, sitemeter.com does show a lot. For example, The Right Side of Life is being watched by the US House of Representatives:

This is the second such record I’ve seen that someone from “inside the beltway” via my stats tracking. It is difficult to tell of any others, since I’ve only started tracking things via sitemeter.com yesterday afternoon.

This time, there is a pound (“#”) sign that would otherwise represent the actual device (computer) accessing my site. Sitemeter.com doesn’t give a full explanation of what that means, so I’ll assume that the House uses DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol), whereby any given computer “leases” a specific IP address from behind the House’s firewall in order to receive network packets from off the Internet.

Incidentally, whomever this was had visited TenthAmendmentCenter.com first, came over to my Monday’s Headlines page, and then exited back out.

Either way, yup — we’re being watched!

-Phil

According to SCOTUSblog.com, there will probably be no scheduled Orders issued at all today:

As of 1:30 p.m., the Court has issued no other orders on pending cases. It thus appears that the next release of orders will come next Monday.

There are still plenty of things to consider for you, dear readers, over this weekend. Let’s get started:

• The President issuing an Executive Order to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility within a year of the EO’s effective date is prompting questions from at least one federal judge concerning the more than 600 prisoners in Bagram air base outside Kabul, Afghanistan. Not only this, but now the definition of “enemy combatant” is at issue once again, as “in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last June giving detainees a constitutional right to challenge their continued confinement, the ‘enemy combatant’ issue is a central question before each of the federal judges involved in deciding some 200 habeas cases.”
• Kerchner v. Obama has now been updated with the entire 40-page petition. Attorney Mario Apuzzo has put together quite the case in New Jersey Federal Court.
• Ankeny v. Daniels similarly has updated documentation: the petition, copy of the original story and an incredible Letter to the Editor concerning this case.
• RenewAmerica columnist Michael Bresciani has an excellent column that all opponents of eligibility should seriously consider: “Obama documentation activists -- not conspiracy theorists.”
• RedState shares how one Republican activist has “The right perspective on technology.“
• Lest we forget about Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) versus Al Franken, Hotair.com reports that “Franken loses in court, full contest to be heard.“
• Speaking of Senators, AmericanPower reports that Kirsten Gillibrand, the soon-to-be-appointed replacement for Hillary’s Senate seat is the “Left’s Blue Dog Nightmare” (note especially her 100% NRA voting record).
• On the other hand, regarding abortion, InvestigatingObama reports that “Obama to Escalate Worldwide ‘Abortion’ Holocaust, with Americans’ Confiscated Money.”

As always, check back here at The Right Side of Life for updates.

A current listing of eligibility lawsuits can be found here.

-Phil

The 1st Amendment of the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,  or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [emphases mine]

Regardless of what any Supreme Court Justice, President, Representative or Senator does or says, we see a “beyond the shadow of a doubt” guarantee that no law in America shall keep the concerned citizen from being able to petition a case in which they have reason to believe that the same government — tasked with upholding all tenets of this document — is overlooking even the smallest part thereof. In the case of the President-Elect’s eligibility, the question of his credentials is always an open one; if by no other grouping of citizens, then certainly by we, the People.

I have heard much opposition on this blog and many other places across the blogosphere and in the media (where it’s actually a consideration) that the mere questioning of a politician’s eligibility for the office of the presidency is met with rank disdain, in almost taboo fashion. I have to wonder: what’s the fear in asking questions? Is this not a classically liberal proposition? Are we not all to hold those who govern us accountable to — at the very least — the basic, fundamental document that is our highest law of the land? To wit…

We await judicial action on the following dates:

• Wednesday, January 21: The Supreme Court is set to release its disposition of Berg v. Obama, whereby the Justices will decide whether or not to grant one of two types of injunctions against the Electoral College. The results are expected around 10am ET on the Supreme Court Orders page.
• Thursday, January 22: The 368th Judicial District Court in Texas is expected to hear Brockhausen v. Andrade, where Plaintiff pro se Jody Brockhausen, among other things, asks the Court for various paperwork confirming the President-Elect’s eligibility.
• Friday, January 23: Dr. Orly Taitz‘ case, Lightfoot v. Bowen, goes to Conference, essentially asking the Justices for an emergency stay to keep California’s Electoral College Electors from voting. If the Justices make a decision on this day, the Orders would likely be released between 2 and 3pm ET. This is the first case to reach the Supreme Court where the Plaintiffs include an Elector and a candidate for the vice presidency; theoretically, these two classes of citizens could overcome the standing hurdle.
  • The docket officially shows that Dr. Taitz’ suggestion for all Supreme Court Justices to recuse themselves from being involved with the President-Elect’s inauguration has been received.

Other noteworthy links include the following:

• Congratulations to Dr. Orly Taitz for becoming both a member of the Bar and an officer of the United States Supreme Court.
• Excellent letter to the editor of the Washington Times questioning (gasp!) the President-Elect’s eligibility.
• UbiReVera blog similarly believes eligibility is certainly not a frivolous issue.
• As RedState points out, isn’t the incoming Administration at least going to vet its inaugural religious leader invite list for Ingrid Mattson, who is suspected of ties to Hamas?
• Maybe you, too, can get free LASIK surgery if you’re similarly named, “Barack Hussein Obama!” It’ll require a birth certificate though!

A current listing of eligibility lawsuits can be found here; currently known State-based electoral reform initiatives can be found here.

-Phil

Yesterday’s oral arguments were about the “individual mandate,” as stipulated within the ACA.

SCOTUSBlog.com featured a post-analysis of the argument in Plain English: “Will the mandate squeak by?”

According to emails from Georgia’s Attorney General Sam Olens, the Supremes are expected to issue their decision by the end of June, 2012.

The GA GA also referenced HealthCareLawsuit.us as a great site from which to get more info.

-Phil

phil [at] therightsideoflife [dot] com

WorldNetDaily reported yesterday that Dr. Orly Taitz, attorney for Plaintiffs in Keyes v. Bowen, Keyes v. Obama and Lightfoot v. Bowen, will soon be filing a motion to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to compel him to produce records of a private meeting that 8 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices had with then-President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama and Vice President-Elect Joe Biden:

But of the Supreme Court’s actions now may become the subject of further questions, because Obama visited with the justices in their private chambers in a meeting closed to the public just before his inauguration. Taitz said a defendant in a legal action meeting with the judges who are deciding the case without have a representative from the other side is unprecedented – and unacceptable.

“I will file a motion to the chief justice to compel the records of this private meeting, that was held only a few days before my case was supposed to be heard,” Taitz said in a posting on her website.

“I would like to get information about what was discussed,” she told WND in an interview. “It’s unheard of for the Supreme Court to meet with [one] party when a case is pending.”

Multiple reports confirmed Obama met in private with eight of the nine justices. Justice Samuel Alito was absent.

The meeting, wrote Taitz, was “only a few days before my case was supposed to be heard, where the plaintiffs state that Mr. Soetoro-Obama is illegitimate for [the] presidency due to the fact that his father was a foreign subject and there is no evidence that Mr. Obama was really born in Hawaii, since the state of Hawaii statute 338 allows foreign born children of Hawaiian residents to obtain Hawaiian certification of live birth and such certification can be obtained based on an affidavit of one relative only.” …

“We believe that Mr. Obama has spent over $800,000 on numerous attorneys to keep his original birth certificate sealed, because the original vault birth certificate does not provide any corroborating evidence from any hospital about him being born there,” Taitz said.

“Additionally, Mr. Obama has immigrated to Indonesia as a child with his mother and stepfather Lolo Soetoro and his school records from Indonesia show his legal name to be Barry Soetoro, citizen of Indonesia,” she said.

Taitz said the meeting isn’t the only suspicious activity at the Supreme Court. One day after Obama’s inauguration, all of the docketing information about her case suddenly was deleted from the court’s website.

While it eventually was restored, there has been no explanation of the deletion, she said.

“I will be demanding from the Chief Justice John Roberts an immediate full investigation as to how the information about a case of national and world importance … disappeared from the docket of the Supreme Court,” she said.

-Phil

Update: The docketing system now correctly shows dockets of eligibility cases (see my “Supreme Court Info” widget on the sidebar for links). Hopefully this was an honest mistake by some IT person somewhere.

Let’s hit the hot issue first (as is being covered by FReepers, Investigating Obama, and, of course, Dr. Taitz).

As of this posting, it would appear that all eligibility-related dockets (see my “Supreme Court Info” widget on the sidebar for links) except for Berg’s original docket are pointing to missing pages. Further, a search on the docketing system for cases related to “Lightfoot” show fine.

For the record, I officially do not subscribe to conspiracy theories unless and until an intent to conspire can be evidenced. Nevertheless, the following points are factual:

• Bandwidth (the ability to serve pages) has never been an issue for SCOTUS, as while there have been times that a given docket has been flooded with page requests, they have always come up
• The vast majority of SCOTUS cases dealing with eligibility have been denied a hearing
• This could still have been the result of an innocent operator error in SCOTUS’ IT (information technology) office (the intentions thereof are a different issue)

In either case, this situation needs to be watched and perhaps the IT folks at SCOTUS ought to be alerted over the simple fact that the docketing system at the very least is most certainly behaving strangely. Hopefully this situation has been nothing more than an operator error.

On another note, Dr. Taitz has formally issued a plethora of subpoenas per former President Bush’s final executive order:, presumably for her newest case, Keyes v. Obama…

As per Executive Order: Granting Reciprocity on Excepted Service and Federal Contractor Employee Fitness and Reinvestigating Individuals in Positions of Public Trust, see attached, please provide copies of any and all records in regards to level of character and conduct necessary pertaining to Barack H. Obama, a/k/a Barack H. Obama, II a/k/a Barry Obama, a/k/a Barry Soetoro. These documents have direct relation to holding a Position of Public Trust.

Documents to include:

Certified copy of original long vault birth certificate
Certified copies of any and all passports and passport applications held in the U.S., Indonesia, Great Britain and Kenya. 
Certified copies of any and all school applications, school registrations, grant or student loan applications or funding received for Occidental College, Columbia University, Columbia College, Harvard University
Certified copies of any U.S. Port of Entry Records
Certified copies of any documentation pertaining to Social Security. Documentation showing multiple social security numbers being held
Certified copies of documentation showing a social security number being applied for in the state of Connecticut
Certified copies of immigration and naturalization records
Certified copies of any records showing legal name and name change

Orly also sent subpoenas to the Social Security Administration, Department of Education, Department of State, Department of Defense, CIA, Office of Personnel Management, Department of the Interior, IRS, Department of Health and Human Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Secret Service.

Update: PDFs of the above subpoenas can be found here and here.

And, if you can believe it, President Obama was re-sworn in (per Drudge newsflash):

OBAMA RE-SWORN IN 

At 735 pm, Roberts administred the oath of office again to obama in the map room. Robert gibbs said the wh counsel, greg craig, believes the oath was fine Tuesday, but one word was out of sequence so they did this out of a “an abundance of caution.” “We decided it was so much fun…” Obama joked while sitting on a couch. Obama stood and walked over to make small talk with pool as roberts donned his black robe. “Are you ready to take the oath?” Roberts asked. “I am, and we’re going to do it very slowly,” obama replied. Oath took 25 seconds. After a flawless recitation, roberts smiled and said, “congratulations, again.” Obama said, “thank you, sir.” Smattering of applause. “All right.” Obama said. “The bad news for the pool is there’s 12 more balls.”

-Phil

Oral arguments began today at the Supreme Court over the long-awaited ruling on the Affordable Care Act, affectionately known by some as ObamaCare.

SCOTUSBlog.org has an excellent summary of today’s arguments.

Basically, the arguments centered around the applicability of the Tax Anti-Injunction Act of 1867, where the main crux of the argument for this Act is based on the idea that since ObamaCare won’t have full tax enforcement (or penalty enforcement, depending on your legal perspective), the Supremes cannot therefore rule against something which has not yet taken effect.

So far, at least according to the tone of oral arguments, the Justices don’t seem to completely buy into TAIA as being an insurmountable issue.

Arguments over the individual mandate may be heard tomorrow, followed by discussions over severability.

-Phil

phil [at] therightsideoflife [dot] com

According to today’s Supreme Court Orders, Dr. Orly Taitz’ case, Lightfoot v. Bowen, has been disposed of accordingly:

08A524

LIGHTFOOT, GAIL, ET AL. V. BOWEN, CA SEC. OF STATE

The application for stay addressed to The Chief Justice and referred to the Court is denied.

This case marks the last of the known cases being actively considered at the Supreme Court. It is possible, however, that certain other cases could be making their way to the high Court, including Mr. Stephen Pidgeon’s case, Broe v. Reed; this case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning that the Plaintiffs could file a subsequent petition if they so desired.

There are also currently two cases actively seeking a sponsoring attorney at the federal level — one requiring a formal petition for court (Ms. Cris Ericson’s Ericson v. Obama) and another having been dismissed in Florida but willing to go further (Mr. Spencer Connerat’s Connerat v. Browning).

Further, in Indiana, a currently pending lawsuit should see some activity by the end of the month – Ankeny v. Daniels. And Dr. Taitz is in the process of getting a military-Plaintiff-based lawsuit together (currently said to have 50 petitioners, one of whom is said to be a blood relative of the President) and filed.

There is also rumored to be a number of other actions occurring across America. These and other information can be found on my current listing of eligibility lawsuits, here.

Also, the Oklahoma State Legislature is coming into session where Rep. Mike Ritze (R-Broken Arrow) is one of a growing number of States offering initiatives to reform the electoral process.

Update: Dr. Taitz is planning on filing a petition for a writ of Certiorari:

For immediate press release
01.26.09.
Dear fellow Americans and Patriots,
as you probably know, in my case Lightfoot v Bowen I filed a petition for emergency stay and asked it to be treated as a writ of certiorari based on Bush v Gore 2000 precedent. The Supreme Court has logged this petition as an application for stay pending filing a writ of certiorari. Since they denied the emergency petition today, it gives me an opportunity to file immediately the actual Writ of Certiorari and it will be done within a few days.

-Phil

According to today’s Supreme Court Orders, the second Conference disposition of Berg v. Obama for injunctive relief has been denied:

08A505

BERG, PHILIP J. V. OBAMA, BARACK, ET AL.

(08-570)

The application for stay addressed to Justice Scalia and

referred to the Court is denied.

Tomorrow and Friday will bring about events on two additional lawsuits (as I originally covered for this week), Brockhausen v. Andrade and Lightfoot v. Bowen. It should again be noted that Lightfoot will be the first eligibility-based lawsuit reaching the Supreme Court that includes among the Plaintiffs an Electoral College Elector as well as a candidate for the vice presidency. We shall see if this variable is any kind of determining factor that persuades the Justices in any way.

A current listing of eligibility lawsuits can be found here.

Update: Ballot-Access.org also covered this case, though I disagree with their analysis: “Phil Berg has been the nation’s most energetic proponent of the idea that the Courts should examine President Obama’s qualifications.” Rather, I think a commenter there is helping to point the publisher in the right direction:

– next case up (Lightfoot) is this Friday. Standing issue should not be available to provide political cover for SCOTUS.

I think it’s a toss-up between who’s been more energetic: Phil Berg versus Dr. Orly Taitz!

Update: Speaking of the dear doctor, check out this posting.

-Phil