January 8, 2018

By Doyle Rice

...The U.S. (click here) endured 16 separate weather and climate disasters with losses that each exceeded $1 billion last year, with total costs of about $306 billion, a new record for the country. It broke the previous record set in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina and other disasters caused $215 billion in damage to the U.S.

Last year's disasters killed 362 people in the U.S., including Puerto Rico, NOAA said. However, NOAA climatologist Adam Smith said the death toll could increase based on information that continues to come in from Puerto Rico.

It was also the most expensive hurricane season on record at $265 billion and the costliest wildfire season on record at $18 billion, Smith said.

The news comes only weeks after the House passed an $81 billion disaster aid package. The Senate did not take up the bill and is working on its own version.'

...Rainfall from Harvey caused massive flooding that displaced more than 30,000 people and damaged or destroyed more than 200,000 homes and businesses, NOAA said....

It looks as though 2018 is off to the same start. There is not a death toll listed for 2017.

The death toll for the USA will reach into the thousands when all are counted in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

January 9, 2018
By James Queally, Joseph Serna and Michael Livingston

At least eight people (click here) were killed Tuesday when a rainstorm sent mud and debris coursing through Montecito neighborhoods and left rescue crews to scramble through clogged roadways and downed trees to search for victims.

The deluge that washed over Santa Barbara County early Tuesday was the worst-case scenario for a community that was ravaged by the Thomas fire only a few weeks earlier. In just a matter of minutes, pounding rain overwhelmed the south-facing slopes above Montecito and flooded a creek that leads to the ocean, sending mud and massive boulders rolling into residential neighborhoods, according to Santa Barbara County Fire Department spokesman Mike Eliason

“It’s going to be worse than anyone imagined for our area,” he said. “Following our fire, this is the worst-case scenario.”

Eight people were killed and at least twenty-five were injured after a heavy band of rain struck around 2:30 a.m. causing “waist-high” mudflows, according to Kelly Hoover, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. She could not offer any specifics about the deceased, except that all eight had died in Montecito....

California did all they could to protect people. Mudslides follow wildfires.

January 9, 2018
By Darran Simon

Thousands of Southern Californians (click here) were ordered to evacuate Monday amid fears that heavy rainfall could trigger mudslides in regions charred by wildfires.

The wildfires, including several blazes last year, have burned acres of protective brush on hillsides, leaving little to no vegetation to prevent mudslides and debris flow, The first major storm of this rainy season was expected to drench Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and Los Angeles overnight Monday through Tuesday.

In Santa Barbara County, more than 6,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders, including residents in parts of Carpinteria, Montecito and Goleta, located below areas scorched by the wildfires over the past year and a half. Those fires included the massive Thomas Fire that started in December and is still not completely out, according to Gina DePinto, a county spokeswoman.

Voluntary evacuation warnings were in effect for another 20,000 people, including others in those same communities, she said.

Los Angeles County officials issued mandatory evacuation orders for residents of Kagel Canyon, Lopez Canyon and Little Tijunga Canyon, areas affected by the Creek Fire. Police and fire officials in Los Angeles helped with evacuations in areas damaged by the Creek and Fish fires, officials said....

It was handy having a black man on the court to write the dissenting opinion.

January 8, 2018

By the AP

Washington (AP) — The Supreme Court (click here) is giving a Georgia death row inmate whose execution was called off last year another chance to raise claims of racial bias on his jury.

The justices voted 6-3 Monday to order the federal appeals court in Atlanta to take up the case of inmate Keith Leroy Tharpe. A juror used a racial slur to describe Tharpe years after Tharpe was convicted of killing Jacquelin Freeman, his sister-in-law, 27 years ago.

Justice Clarence Thomas called the court’s unsigned opinion “ceremonial handwringing” in a dissent that predicted Tharpe ultimately would lose his appeal. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas.

The appeal stems from interviews Tharpe’s legal team conducted in 1998 with Barney Gattie, a white juror. Gattie freely used racial slurs and said his study of the Bible had led him to question “if black people even have souls,” according to court filings. Gattie signed an affidavit, though he later testified that he voted to sentence Tharpe to death because of the evidence against him....

Where are the strict constructionist now? It seems as though Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch prefer prejudicing the lower courts. Maybe they miss their old jobs?

September 28, 2017
By the AP

Atlanta -- Shortly before he thought he would be put to death, (click here) a Georgia death row inmate recorded an apology to the family of the woman he killed. 

Keith Leroy Tharpe was scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. Tuesday. But the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in, granting a temporary stay to give the justices time to consider whether to take up an appeal in which his lawyers argued his death sentence was tainted by a juror's racial bias.

Tharpe, 59, was convicted of murder and kidnapping in the September 1990 slaying of his sister-in-law, Jacquelyn Freeman.

The Georgia Department of Corrections allows condemned inmates to record a final statement in a holding cell at about 5 p.m. on the day they are set to be executed. They are then given another opportunity to make a statement, which is also recorded, in the execution chamber minutes before the lethal drug begins to flow.

The corrections department on Thursday released a transcript of Tharpe's holding cell statement in response to an open records request from The Associated Press.

Tharpe starts his brief statement by apologizing to Freeman's family.

"You know because, uh, you know, me taking the life of her was very wrong and uh, I sincerely wish y'all would be able to be forgiving one day," the transcript reads. "You know and uh, like I say, I'ma say it again, I'm very sorry. And, uh, and, God bless y'all. That's all I can say."...

Textualism, there is nothing like giving the dictionary as much brevity as the USA Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The strict constructionist is an excuse for not thinking that lends itself exceptionally well to politics.

Scalia v. Scalia (click here)

Contents Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Textualism as a Response to the “Living” Constitution 
2. Textualism in Scalia’s Speeches and Extrajudicial Writings 
3. Interpreting a Clear Clause: The Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause 
4. Interpreting Competing Clauses: Mediating Religion between the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses 
5. When the Constitution Is Silent: Rejecting the Right to an Abortion Conclusion: Scalia’s Opportunistic Textualism 

Notes

Bibliography Index

Sample (click here)

Richard Nixon was the first candidate for president to use it. He promised to pick strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court. The opposite of strict constructionist is "broad construction" looks to what someone thinks was the "intent" of the framers' language and expands and interprets the language extensively to meet current standards of human conduct and complexity of society.

There is no such thing as "activist judges." I would think judges that don't practice within their license is impeachable.

Laws, when written, cannot foresee the future, ie: the digital age. Laws cannot be expected to carry brevity when the circumstances are hideous for the age we live in; ie: Carriage horses have the right of way of any automobile. That is an absurd example, but, there are still statues on the books that reflect such things. A better law is for requiring the Amish to put tail lights and turn signals when driving their carriages at dusk or later.

The hideousness of the a poor interpretation of requiring Amish horse driven carriages to proceed along their way without such modern adjustments would be irresponsible if upheld as a religious right to die on country roads because of the lack of warning lights.

Strict constructionists are ideologues that subject citizens of the USA to the enforcement of political dogma. It is ridiculous and Scalia was the king of it, always seconded by Thomas.

Saving lives and social programs are expensive.

There is a plutocrat in the Whtie House and his minions are Republicans that want to defund the government by 2020.

200 hundred thousand people are a city. They could have grown a city with an economy in the USA and they would be welcome to stay.

There is no compassion and Americans are taking for granted all but the Whtie people that are descendants of the Mayflower will be allowed to be citizens. Maybe the descendants of the revolution of 1776, too. Soldiers and junk like that.

Donald Trump is German on his father's side. His mother Scottish. The only American born wife he has had is Marla Maples. That makes his children, except for Tiffani, Boarder Babies to the Czech Republic and Slovenia.

Sorry, that gives all his children other than Tiffani a dual citizenship,  not boarder babies. They were born in the USA. I am sure the calculation to that was realized before the births.

Ya know, dual citizenships in Russia are costly. The dual citizen Russian has to declare (not branded with a branding iron to that fact, yet) and pay annual fees to maintain their dual citizenship. Otherwise, the Russia that may very well be its diaspora recruited to return to Mother Russia, has to give up the dual citizenship where parents probably live.

I am sure the recruitment for the return of the Russia diaspora was to balance the dropping Russian birth rate. Who wants to bring children into a world that victimizes them as an asset to the country. Who needs it?

Yes, while Vladimir Putin is the strong man everyone loves to vote for, the facts are plain, his Russia is not producing the kind of happiness, security and comfort a married couple needs to want a family.

My guess is that Trump's America will dissolve all dual citizenships and send everyone possible to their other country of origin.

Trump does all this dumb stuff and doesn't stop to realize the future looks dim for his family, except for Tiffani. This level of racism masked as a hostile funding act, will only build in crescendo in the future. THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING TO WHITTLING DOWN the people allowed to stay in the sovereign USA.

HELLO. Trump and the Congress are already treating Puerto Rico as a foreign country.

The law doesn't have to be signed when the Ruling Party has already declared a decree. There is an overwhelming TREND to limit the ethnic footprint of the USA. They call it peaceful genocide. Remember? This is simply more of the same that has gone on for over a year now. Sorry, nearly a year; it simply seems longer.

January 8, 2018
by Miriam Jordan

Los Angeles — Nearly 200,000 people (click here) from El Salvador who have been allowed to live in the United States for more than a decade must leave the country, government officials announced Monday. It is the Trump administration’s latest reversal of years of immigration policies and one of the most consequential to date.

Homeland security officials said that they were ending a humanitarian program, known as Temporary Protected Status, for Salvadorans who have been allowed to live and work legally in the United States since a pair of devastating earthquakes struck their country in 2001.

Salvadorans were by far the largest group of foreigners benefiting from temporary protected status, which shielded them from deportation if they had arrived in the United States illegally. The decision came just weeks after more than 45,000 Haitians lost protections granted after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, and it suggested that others in the program, namely Hondurans, may soon lose them as well. Nicaraguans lost their protections last year....