Decision of the court

It came down to this. Washington's primary law acts as an almost total bar to minor-party access to statewide general election ballots. Since the revision of Wash. Rev. in 1977, minor-party candidates have been, in the words of the Court of Appeals, "substantially eliminated from Washington's general election ballot. The Court of Appeals found that by 1984, only one minor-party candidate had been able to surmount the 1% barrier and earn the right to participate in the general election. Ibid. The legislation leading to this substantial elimination of minor parties from the political arena in Washington's general elections should not be sustained as a legitimate requirement of a demonstration of significant support.
Since Williams v. Rhodes, this Court has recognized that state legislation may not ensure the continuing supremacy of the two major parties by precluding minor-party access to the ballot as a practical matter. Yet here the Court sustains a statute that does just that. In doing so, the Court permits a State to pre-empt meaningful participation by minor parties in the political process by requiring them to demonstrate their support in a crowded primary election. The Court thus holds that minor parties may be excised from the electoral process before they have fulfilled their central role in our democratic political tradition: to channel dissent into that process in a constructive fashion. Respectfully, I dissent.

My own argument

I have an argument to pick on Justice White. He seems to be a bit unbalanced for a court Justice. Like my previous post on Reasoning. Another person wrote to Justice White and asked him if the 1962election had colored his attitudes. He actually wroteme a letter in response, but said he would just have to let his opinions speak for themselves. There has been some thought that White was hostile to minor party (bad news for the socialist workers) and independent candidates because he had beenclosely associated with President John F. Kennedy, and the entire Kennedy family had been upset when anindependent peace candidate (Professor H. SteuartHughes) qualified for the US Senate ballot in November 1962 in Massachusetts as an independent candidate,threatening the chances of Ted Kennedy, who was barely30 years old and who was famous in that campaign forhaving been caught cheating when he was a Harvardstudent (the public didn't know much else about him). I dont think this is the best time for the socialist workers to be in a court room. Espacially with Justice White.

Reasoning of the court

Justice Byron White wrote Munro v Socialist WorkersParty. He wrote all the ballot access decisions thatwere unfavorable to minor parties and independentcandidates between the years 1972 and 1993 (and thenhe left the Court). From a another bistanders view who have attended oral argument inStorer v Brown in 1973. White got very emotional atone point in the argument, when it appeared that theACLU attorney (Joseph Remcho) had identified a pointon which the state couldn't possibly win. Californialaw even said an independent candidate could not havevoted in the nonpartisan primary! White stammered andchoked and finally blurted out that this point wouldneed to be remanded to a state court (that didn'tactually happen, though).

Facts of the Case

Socialist workers party seek attorney's fees for challenging a Washington statute which was amended, mooting their action, before the case was heard. They confirm the district court's denial of their motion for fees.

I think the main issue in this case is whether the burden imposed on the minor parties' First Amendment rights are too severe to be justified by the State's interest in restricting access. The fact is that, prior to the 1977 amendments, virtually every minor-party candidate who sought a general election ballot position qualified, while after the amendments were passed, only one minor-party candidate has managed to make it onto the ballot.

Four Washington minor political parties1 (the minor parties) (Socialist workers party) challenged the constitutionality of a Washington statute2 which effectively prohibited members of minor political parties from voting in state primary elections.

Issue of the case

Going through the articles these past weeks, I have come to read that this case has
the conference has voted on this case being a tenative reversal. I think the opinion Justice White has circulated is basically acceptable, although I do have two concerns.

(quoted: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:EBLkDN2qh20J:electionlawblog.org/archives/munro-blackmun.pdf+munro+v.+socialist+workers+party&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)


There has been some "language" that Justice White has been showing throughout the case.
Some examples such as "on a showing of a modicum of voter support, or a significant modicum".
The the definition of "modicum" is "a small or moderate
amount or quantity, adding the word "significant" to that seems
slightly counter-intuitive.


( to be continued)

Fakes vs Legits

On the personal note, I myself have been tricked with bootleged items. I sometimes am a band shirt collector so I go around Ebay looking around for rare band shirts. Around September I bought a shirt from Ebay thinking it was legit. Later I found out it was a fake. Now, im not sure if its illegal or not. This isnt copies from large franchises so the sellers could probably get away from it. Then again, it was made from an underground foreign company. Most of the shirts that this seller was selling were fakes.

Other then just clothing bootlegs, my main concern is medicine bootlegs. Other then doing nothing to the economy, it concerns me a lot because these dangerous items end up in either over the counter or persciption shevles mainly in latin America. I have grandparents living in Mexico at the moment and the country is a victim of getting these harmful medicines.

(To be continued)

Property owner rights vs Landlord

Lets start with the definition of property, Property is any physical or virtual entity that is owned by an individual or jointly by a group of individuals. An owner of property has the right to consume, sell, rent, mortgage, transfer and exchange his or her property. Important widely-recognized types of property include real property (land), personal property(other physical possessions), and intellectual property (rights over artistic creations, inventions, etc.), although the latter is not always as widely recognized or enforced.

What the former Batman star did in this movie was he just moved in without paying rent or security posit. Of course he is a con artist. He and changes the locks on all the doors. In short order, Hayes causes the Goodmans all sorts of trouble through scare tactics, verbal baiting and turning his own apartment into a dark cockroach-infested den. He's also always busy with his partner in crime doing some unknown construction within the apartment. The landlord does call the cops eventually but the cops are against him for cutting his power and water. Thats a big no no... So the focus is on the landlord now and that will buy Hayes some time for him to continue on his sneaky work.

Munro v. Socialist Workers Party

A some what brief discription of what was going on with Munro v. Socialist Workers Party

A Washington statute (§ 29.18.110) requires that a minor party candidate for office receive at least 1% of all votes cast for that office in the State's primary election before the candidate's name will be placed on the general election ballot. Appellee Peoples qualified to be placed on the primary election ballot as the nominee of appellee Socialist Workers Party (Party) for United States Senator. At the primary, he received less than 1% of the total votes cast for the office, and, accordingly, his name was not placed on the general election ballot. Peoples, the Party, and appellee registered voters then brought an action in Federal District Court, alleging that § 29.18.110 violated their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The District Court denied relief, but the Court of Appeals reversed, holding that § 29.18.110, as applied to candidates for statewide offices, was unconstitutional.

To be continued...

3's of me

Three Names I have been called: Art, Meio, Vampire

Three Jobs I have had in my life (include unpaid if you have to): Fields, School Custodian, Deli

Three Places I Have Lived: Los Herreras MX, Wasco CA, Las Vegas NV

Three TV Shows that I watch: Mad TV, Saturday night live, Family guy

Three places I have been: Mexico, Texas, Cali

People that e-mail me regularly Bri, Chris, Kat

Three of my favorite foods american, mexican, italian

Three cars I have driven: 1991 Chevrolet, mustang, malibu

Three things I am looking forward to: School, seeing someone, the future

Greed is Good?

Wall street and the economy is just rubbish in my opinion.

A lot of us think the world would be a better place if people were more caring and less greedy but unfortunately we take capitalism as far as we can to take as much money away from people.
I am a Socialist and I believe that we should all share the common ownership in todays bussinesses but the society we live in today isnt ready to work together unfortunately.
(TO BE CONTINUED AND POSSIBLY EDITED)

Bong Hits for Jesus?

Joseph Frederick was an 18-year-old senior at Juneau-Douglas High School , in Alaska , in January 2002. One morning that month a “Winter Olympics Torch Relay” was passing through town. The event was sponsored by corporations. Students were released from school to see it. Frederick never made it to school. He got stuck in the snow. But he did make it to a sidewalk across from school by the time the torch was passing through. When television cameras caught a glimpse of him and his friends, he unfurled a banner that read, “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” The school principal crossed the street, grabbed Frederick ’s banner, destroyed it destruction of property, anyone? and suspended him for 10 days.



“What about the Bill of Rights and freedom of speech?” Frederick asked her. Forget it, the principal replied, saying the banner “violated the policy against displaying offensive material, including material that advertises or promotes use of illegal drugs.” But the banner hadn’t been displayed on school property.


Even if he wasn’t, who’s the school, who’s anyone, to judge what he was doing and why so long as he’d done nothing to impede school business? If anything, it was the torch-passing that had disrupted school, and the exposure of students to soft-drink propaganda and products that was the more questionable message that day: Pound for pound, soft drinks wreck the health of far more Americans, children included, than marijuana does.

Freedom of speech should be inforced no matter what. Its in the constitution..

What I think about Lawyers

I tend to think of them the way I think about programmers or authors; they tend to be specialized in a field that requires excellent language skills, reading, writing, etc, and have to deal with overly long documents at times (where search/replace may be a big factor). The general public tends to underestimate the skills needed to deal with such documents and the hard work put in to get the job done. I do think some lawyers are overpaid however, compared to the other similar job types. I can't say much about their ethics, that seems to vary from person to person.


There is a general impression that lawyers today are not held in high regard. There is enough evidence in film and media to suggest that the view of lawyers as 'dishonest, arrogant, greedy, ruthless buckets of slime' may cause some anti comfort for people in the profession. The abundance of movies and television series’ portraying a cut-throat lawyer who does anything for his next ‘score’ doesn’t help with this image.


When lay people are asked about lawyers the general consensus is that they are losing confidence in their professional knowledge and training. This suggests that there is a concern that professionals are not what they used to be - well-trained, ethical people committed to serving the public. This could be due a number of factors. The number of legal practices has increased substantially over the past couple of decades, which drives up the competition to sign potential clients. In today's day and age where the allure of earning more money is evident in our everyday lives, ethics can take a ‘back seat’. Ethics is concerned with deciding what is the right or wrong thing to do. In deciding what to do and how to be, ethics requires lawyers to look for coherent reasons for their actions and character that show why it may be right or wrong to act according to our financial interests, or to do what others expect in certain situations; The right or wrong action.


It seems to be one of life's mind boglers that law defends its status as a profession based on ethical commitments, and yet lawyers are often conceived as a bunch of salesmen like characters with no moral values (ethics). People have started to question whether they can trust the legal system to sort out issues of truth and justice.

Crime

Bribery- Crime
Illegal Gambling- Crime
Illegally tampering with evidence- Crime
Fake contract- Tort
Vandalism- Tort
Purgery- Crime
Sexual harassment- Tort
Under aged driving- Crime
No seatbelts- Crime
Vehicles not registered- Crime
Assault- Tort
Unlicensed driving- Crime
Possession of firearms- Crime
Speeding- Crime
Reckless driving- Crime
Reefer- Crime
Evading arrest-Crime
Littering- Crime

What I think about the American Laws

I for one think that the laws in America are quite fair. America has one of the best Human rights laws on this planet. One of Americas flaws is that you can adjust it even to this day. It wasn’t made to be perfect. The citizens have the right to question the laws and most of the time, the results are that the law gets a rewritten a little for the better. The laws are different throughout the states because of the need of the laws. Living in one state and not having the advantages or disadvantages of a law in another state would not be that unfair or unequal. This is true because if you don’t like a law in your state you could always fight it and try to change it or you could always move out of that state and go to one that has the laws that you like.

American laws do have their fair share in the loony world. Here are some examples why, California; Wearing a sweatshirt inside-out is deemed a "threatening misdemeanor" in Half-Moon Bay. For Nevada, In Eureka men who wear mustaches are forbidden from kissing women and last but not least, in Texas, In San Antonio, it is illegal for both sexes to flirt or respond to flirtation using the eyes and/or hands. These laws may not be enforced but skeptics still wonder why they are in the books.

One thing that I think is outrageous is the housing system for the inmates. I don’t approve of the fact that we house dangerous criminals alongside with their companions. I strongly disapprove of the system letting them have weight training sessions during their social hours. Most of these criminals are there for many dangerous felonies and deserve to be treated as if they have minimal rights. Serves them right for what they have done.