Give me a break!

[No Elephants]

This may be the first time in at least ten years that I am on the side of the Supreme Court.

This case involved a love triangle that led to a clumsy attempted murder, the quintessential state crime. For some reason, the D of J decided to make a federal case out of it, literally.

Married couple. Enter wife's best friend, who becomes pregnant by husband. Wife puts poison on friend's door and other places outside the friend's home. Friend gets a rash from touching the door and warns, among others, mailman. USPS uses hidden cameras, which nail the wife. D of J prosecutes the wife for violating international treaty banning chemical weapons. Well, not the treaty per se, but a US statute implementing the treating.

Supreme Court skeptical about use of chemical weapons treaty in charging wife

The Supreme Court heard a case Tuesday involving the prosecution of a Pennsylvania microbiologist who used toxic chemicals to try to settle a personal score. Federal prosecutors charged the woman with using 'chemical weapons.'

By Warren Richey, Staff writer / November 5, 2013

The Obama administration’s top constitutional lawyer warned the US Supreme Court on Tuesday to tread lightly in a case involving the international treaty banning chemical weapons.

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told the justices that any effort to narrow the administration’s expansive interpretation of its powers under the treaty could make it harder to enforce existing treaties and negotiate future accords at precisely the time when sensitive efforts are under way in Syria.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2013/1105/Supreme-Court-skeptical-about-use-of-chemical-weapons-treaty-in-charging-wife




The story says that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan seem to be siding with the D of J's right to prosecute this woman. Much as I love Justice Ginsburg, if she finds in favor of the D of J, that will only be more proof that the Republican judges are not the only ones who make political, rather than judicial decisions.

Clearly, the Constitution was never intended to give the feds jurisdiction over purely local crimes, amply covered by state law. Nor should an international treaty, designed to control use by nations of chemical weapons in warfare, reach a lover triangle.

The mail carrier was clearly not the intended victim. Even if he were, the attempted should have been prosecuted under a federal attempted murder statue, not one implementing an international treaty.




Between things like the above and the Un-Patriot Act, with its Homeland Stasi, we are coming close to posse comitatus. The fault with the posse comitatus act, of course, is that it applies only to military personnel, not to the federal government in general. For that, we have to rely on the Constitution and the general scheme intended initially, namely, a federal government of limited powers.

The Posse Comitatus Act is the United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) that was passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction and was updated in 1981. Its intent (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) was to limit the powers of Federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce the state laws.

The Act, as modified in 1981, refers to the Armed Forces of the United States. It does not apply to the National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor. The United States Coast Guard, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security, is also not covered by the Posse Comitatus Act, primarily because the Coast Guard has both a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency mission.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act




The Schiavo case should never have been a federal matter. Neither should marriage.

People like me have little enough control over government as it is, even, in major cities like Boston, over purely local government. If everything becomes federalized, we are totally lost. Even in the comparatively tiny nation of 1789, people knew that, which is why they feared the federal government and (thank God Almighty) made the Framers add the amendments that we call Bill of Rights to the Constitution.

How did they make them do it then? IMO, they made them do it by very recently having fought a Revolution to overthrow a government.

[Enthusiast]

1. I understand your concerns.

:)