Retired Justice says Supreme Court Likely to Uphold Health Care Law

Story found here.

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens said a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving medical marijuana provides legal support for President Barack Obama’s health-care law.

Stevens, now 91 and more than a year into retirement, said in an interview in Washington this week that he is skeptical about contentions that Congress lacked authority to pass the health-care measure, which requires Americans to either buy insurance or pay a penalty.

Stevens wrote the court’s opinion in the 2005 case, a 6-3 ruling that let the federal government ban marijuana even when the drug doesn’t cross state lines and is used only for medicinal purposes. As with health care, that case centered on Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.

“To the extent that the commerce clause is an issue in the case, it just seems to me very similar” to the medical marijuana dispute, said Stevens, who served on the court for 34 years. Stevens is holding interviews with reporters to promote his book, “Five Chiefs,” which describes his impressions of the last five chief justices and is scheduled to be released next week.

Stevens wore his trademark bow tie as he sat in his office at the court, which provides spaces for retired justices. The Chicago native’s chambers are adorned with sports memorabilia, including an autographed photo of basketball great Michael Jordan. Also on display is a scorecard from a 1932 World Series game Stevens attended, when Babe Ruth pointed toward the outfield seats before hitting a home run.

Stepping Down
Stevens said he made the right decision to step down from the court even though he could have continued to function effectively. He said he began thinking about retirement after he had trouble reading a summary of his dissenting opinion in a campaign finance case last year. Stevens splits his time between Washington and Florida and said he plays tennis regularly despite a bad knee.

Even in retirement, Stevens said he hasn’t stopped reading opinions and thinking about legal cases. He said he wasn’t troubled by the way courts handled the case of Troy Davis, whose Sept. 21 execution in Georgia was the subject of worldwide demonstrations and questions about his guilt.

Stevens was among the justices who ordered a federal trial judge to reconsider whether Davis was the triggerman in the 1989 shooting death of a Savannah police officer. The judge reviewed the evidence, including recantations by witnesses who testified against Davis at trial, and concluded in a 172-page opinion that he was guilty.

“It’s my understanding that the trial judge went back and did a very thorough hearing and came up with findings that really had to be respected by an appellate court,” said Stevens, adding that he hadn’t read the opinion.

Replaced by Kagan
Stevens wrote in a 2008 opinion that he believed the death penalty to be unconstitutional, even while saying he would respect Supreme Court precedents that allowed capital punishment.

Stevens, whom Obama replaced with Justice Elena Kagan, said Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees have become too much of a political event. His own 1975 confirmation hearing was the last not to be televised.

Stevens wrote in his book that he received no help from then- President Gerald Ford’s staff in preparing for the hearing. Stevens and his former law partner even had to hail their own taxi after leaving the session, he wrote.

“I would love to go back to the days when the nominee doesn’t need any coaching from the Department of Justice and the White House, and he just comes in and the senators ask him what they want to know and they get to the meat of things,” Stevens said in the interview. “I think it’s become much more of an exhibit or a spectacle.”

Health CareThe Obama administration this week signaled it will file a Supreme Court appeal on health care, saying it will forgo further appeals-court review in a lawsuit pressed by 26 states opposing the law. Stevens said he hadn’t read any briefs in the case.

The 2005 marijuana ruling will be a pivotal precedent when the justices consider the health-care law. In his opinion for the court then, Stevens pointed to a constitutional provision letting Congress enact laws “necessary and proper” for carrying out powers specifically mentioned in the Constitution.

The majority included Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, both of whom had voted to restrict Congress’s commerce- clause power in earlier cases. Scalia didn’t adopt Stevens’s reasoning, instead providing his own analysis in a concurring opinion.

Stevens suggested Scalia might be willing to uphold the health-care law even if he disagrees with its substance.

“I would expect that the merits wouldn’t have the slightest impact on his analysis of the constitutional issue,” Stevens said. “I’m sure he’ll approach it as a judge should approach it.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net.

courtsey of wesleychapel.org

Family Fined for Home Bible Study
City: San Juan Capistrano, CA
Date: 09/13/2011
Story from here.

A city in Southern California is demanding that a small home Bible study group stop meeting unless they obtain a cost-prohibitive permit.

The homeowners, Chuck and Stephanie Fromm, were fined $300 for holding the Bible study. Mr. Fromm appealed the ruling to the City of San Juan Capistrano, which was founded as a mission in the late 1700’s and is home to California’s oldest building still in use, a chapel where Father Junipero Serra celebrated mass. Fromm was told by a hearing officer that regular gatherings of more than three people require a conditional use permit. Officials also stated that further religious gatherings in the home would be subject to a $500 fine per meeting. The City eventually rejected the appeal and Pacific Justice Institute has taken the next step by appealing the decision to the California Superior Court in Orange County.

The Bible study group, which met on Sunday mornings, until the City threatened further fines, was perfectly suited for his home, said Chuck Fromm. There was no noise beyond normal conversation and quiet music on the home stereo system. They met inside their family room and patio area. Many neighbors have written letters of support, denying they were disturbed by the presence of the Bible study. The group is not affiliated with any particular church, nor is it seeking to establish a church in the home.

The City of San Juan Capistrano is insisting the home Bible study is not allowed because it is a “church,” and churches require a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) in residential areas. Pacific Justice Institute represents the Bible study participants and will fight the city’s decision. In other cases, PJI has represented larger churches that have been required to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of the CUP process, such as engineering and traffic studies, architectural designs and seismic retrofits. CUP’s require public hearings and can be denied outright or granted with numerous limitations.

“Imposing a heavy-handed permit requirement on a home Bible study is outrageous,” said Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute. “In a city so rich with religious history and tradition, this is particularly egregious. An informal gathering in a home cannot be treated with suspicion by the government, or worse than any other gathering of friends, just because it is religious. We cannot allow this to happen in America, and we will fight as long and as hard as it takes to restore this group’s religious freedom.”

Obama And Reagan-No Comparison

David Winston from National Review Online Reports:

Since Barack Obama took the oath of office, inside-the-Beltway Democrats have spent the first Friday of every month trying to answer one simple question, “Where are the jobs?” It’s becoming increasingly difficult to defend what is arguably one of the worst presidential economic records in modern history and put a positive spin on the president’s reelection prospects.

Democrats’ optimistic view of President Obama’s reelection chances seems to be based on the false notion that the president’s current dire political situation is analogous to President Reagan’s at this point in his presidency. As they try to conjure up a second round of hope, this time for 2012, their mantra has become, “Not to worry. Reagan’s unemployment numbers were this bad or worse in his first two years in office and he was reelected.”

They like to point to the fact that on election day, 1984, unemployment was at 7.2 percent; if President Obama can start to bend the unemployment figures down toward 8 percent, they figure, he stands to win a second term. 

But this logic is based more on wishful thinking than economic or political reality. What they know is that Reagan, like Obama, inherited a terrible economy suffering from stagnation and high unemployment.

But that’s where the comparison ends, because Obama’s response — to embrace a Keynesian economic policy — bears no resemblance to the supply-side approach of Ronald Reagan. In fact, the two policies are mirror opposites, and so are the results. 

Comparing the two presidencies at identical moments in their first terms is a contrast in style and substance. In September 2011, President Obama has just announced yet another plan for job growth before a joint session of Congress. Last month, his economic plan managed to create zero jobs.  At this same moment in 1983, Ronald Reagan’s policies were about to create 1.1 million jobs in the month of September alone, the biggest one-month job gain since the Bureau of Labor Statistics officially began keeping track back in February 1939. 

So much for comparisons. Obama’s failed unemployment record is stark. In fact, by a wide margin, the unemployment rate has been higher under this president than his 11 predecessors. People seem to have forgotten that while there were admittedly large job losses in 2008, in January 2009, the month Obama took office, unemployment was 7.8 percent. 

Since then, unemployment has never been under 8 percent, despite Obama’s promise that passage of the 2009 trillion-dollar stimulus bill would ensure unemployment stayed below that level. Instead, in 26 of the last 28 months, unemployment has actually been 9 percent or higher. 

Reagan is the only other president to come close to Obama’s record, with 19 months of 9 percent or higher unemployment during his eight years in office. Gerald Ford was third in the record books with just one month of 9 percent unemployment. Since 1948, the country’s monthly unemployment average has been 5.8 percent, with six presidents doing a better than average on job creation and six doing worse. 

Three Democrats — Johnson, Truman and Clinton — beat the average along with three Republicans — Eisenhower, Nixon and (surprisingly, to some in the world of political punditry and certainly to Democrats) George W. Bush.  While the records of most of these former presidents are within a reasonable range of one another, President Obama’s 9.4 percent average puts him in a league by himself. What reelected Ronald Reagan was the strength of his economic policies – lower taxes and less regulation. They worked. They produced growth, the key to real recovery and significant job gains. That is the glaring difference between these two presidents. 

After two-and-a-half years of Reaganomics, by this time in 1983, second-quarter growth had hit an astounding 9.3 percent and would be followed by three more quarters of 8 percent or higher growth. In contrast, Obama’s second-quarter growth this year was an anemic 1.0 percent, with no light at the end of the tunnel.

The CBO recently revised its 2011 growth rate downward to a weak 1.5 percent for the year, while the president’s own economic advisors had forecast a 2.8 percent rate. Whichever ends up closer to reality, either projection falls far short of Reagan’s extraordinary growth rate for the same third year of his presidency. 

The lesson Democrats ought to take from this dismal comparison is simple: Keynesian policies simply can’t produce the growth that supply-side economics can. Yet this president and his supporters cling to the notion, as evidenced by his latest jobs bill, that higher taxes and more spending is the way out of the economic wilderness and toward victory in 2012.

Ronald Reagan earned a second term because he answered the question, “Where are the jobs?” by producing an extraordinary record of growth that voters understood would lead to jobs and did. When it comes to the economic records of Reagan and Obama, there is no comparison.