A Stitch in Haste

Time to clean out the aggregator —

ITEM: House Way and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel faces yet another real estate scandal. This time he appears to have committed outright and unambiguous income tax evasion. My previous post on his having unarguably broken New York State law on the use of rent-regulated apartments here.

ITEM: The ACLU has decided to appeal the latest decision in the (seemingly perpetual) “Mount Soledad Cross” litigation. At issue is whether the government can (disingenuously) claim that a 40-foot cross is a “war memorial” rather than the religious symbol that it represents in nearly every other context. Previous post here.

ITEM: Meanwhile, the ACLU of Kentucky has announced that it will seek attorney fees of nearly $400,000 against McCreary County and Pulaski County, which unconstitutionally displayed Decalogues in courthouses. I have noted previously the “attorney fees” burden on taxpayers when theocrat legislators flagrantly ignore First Amendment proscriptions against violating the separation of church and state.

ITEM: A panel of the Third Circuit has held that the “border search” exception to the Fourth Amendment does not apply to cruise ship cabins and that border agents require at least “reasonable suspicion” to search such cabins. The court held that such searches are “non-routine” and therefore at least some individualized suspicion is required for a search. Whether this rare “exception to the exception” could somehow weaken the increasingly controversial rule that laptops and cellphones enjoy no Fourth Amendment protection at the border is unclear. U.S. v. Whitted, No. 06-3271 (3rd Cir., September 4, 2008) (PDF – 29 pages)

Filed under: Updates