Suppose I were to tell you the following story:

A black couple and a white couple, both from out of State, were traveling together in the State of Alabama. They decided to stop at a motel somewhere inside the Yellowhammer State, and asked for two rooms. The manager of the hotel comes by later, saying, "We don't want you [the black couple] here."

The black couple protested, but the manger stood firm, citing a policy of not allowing blacks to stay on the property. The manager said that he had to appeal to the majority and the majority wouldn't want blacks to stay at the hotel. The manager decides to let the blacks stay one night, but had to leave the next morning and would not be compensated for the inconvenience.

Off the top of my head, that's a Federal civil rights case. The motel, in doing business with out-of-State customers, is a participant in interstate commerce. The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled previously that since there is an action in interstate commerce, Federal laws will apply and trump any State interest. Under the previously-settled jurisprudence, the motel cannot prevent the black couple from staying there.

Remember: Although the State may have a law which allows a business to discriminate in terms of who it serves, if the business trafficks in interstate commerce, Federal pre-emption overrides the State statute. After all, we won't stand for discrimination of any kind, right? Well, there's a bit more to it than that. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 05:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Full disclosure: I'm more in Richard Nixon's corner than not, and therefore am predisposed to loathe Richard Ben-Veniste from the get go.¹ I find him repellent, and have done so since I started reading about Watergate back in the very early 1990s. From what I understand, he's been a pest to Republicans since the days of the first big Democratic witch-hunt in Washington, i.e. Watergate.

Anyways. Ed Moltzen of Late Final has come up with a very interesting piece of information indicating that perhaps Mr. Ben-Veniste has not been as compliant with ethical standards as perhaps he should be.

The bottom line: His law firm (Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw) is representing claimants in the litigation over the collapse of the World Trade Center. Mr. Ben-Veniste just happens to have access to a lot of otherwise classified information that other parties would have to use the Freedom of Information Act and/or extensive discovery procedures to get at, if at all.

I do not mean to suggest that Mr. Ben-Veniste would act in any way contrary to the rules of professional responsibility, but we're using the New York Times standard of "appearance of impropriety", not any actual objective standard. Perhaps Mr. Ben-Veniste should recuse himself from the Commission, or perhaps his firm should withdraw from the suit?

I'll probably wind up asking one of my intelligent professors about this, since I'm always hazy on this part of the rules of professional responsibility. Since I'll probably never be asked to be on a commission like this or be in a giant firm, these concerns are not my problem.

Read the whole thing. Very interesting. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This is good news.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An Iraqi judge has issued a murder arrest warrant for a radical Shiite Muslim cleric, Muqtada Sadr, for the slaying of another Shiite leader shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of the country, coalition officials said Monday.

I had been wondering to myself (and overlooking the larger historical implications) "Who will rid us of this troublesome cleric?" Now, it appears that the Iraqi judiciary---hopefully it's a non-sharia court---has stepped up to the plate. At the same time, there is something of note here:

[Coalition spokesman Dan Senor] said the arrest warrant had been issued several months ago. He refused to say why Sadr had not been arrested earlier.

I suppose that the usual calculations went into the decision not to arrest Sadr earlier. These would probably include "Can we get him?", "Do we have enough evidence?", "Can we hold him?", "What will the repercussions be?" and so forth. It may be that, until the most recent clashes between Sadr's troops and Iraqi/Coalition forces, there may not have been appropriate isolation for him. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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