Gotta love Montana. A column by former Nixon attorney, John Dean, called my attention to the importance of a Monntana Supreme Court decision issued at the end of last year. While the U.S. Supreme Court’s granting of personhood to corporations in the now infamous Citizens United v FEC case continues to reverberate, the Montana Supreme [...]
Tags:
Thanks to InverseCondemnation.com and Hawaii Reporter for information on the Reapportionment Commission’s latest moves, including dumping the deputy attorney general who defended the commission before the Hawaii Supreme Court, and having a new legal team ask the court to clarify and/or reconsider its recent unanimous opinion. But the new legal initiative raises questions about possible [...]
Tags:
The Office of Information Practices recently announced it had submitted two bills for inclusion in Governor Abercrombie’s administration package to be submitted to the 2012 legislative session. The text of the bills is not yet available, but OIP provided “detailed summaries.” The first bill, referred to by OIP as the Appeals bill, is the agency’s [...]
Tags:
Sunday’s post on the recent Supreme Court decision striking down the plan adopted by the Reapportionment Commission, and the resulting comments, drew this long and thoughtful response from Bart Dame, one of a handful of observers who carefully followed the commission’s work. Dame is a progressive Democrat and longtime political activist with an interest in [...]
Tags: Reapportionment
I just finished reading the Hawaii Supreme Court’s decision in the challenge to the 2011 Final Reapportionment Plan. It traces the background of the current constitutional language requiring exclusion of the nonresident population when drawing new legislative districts, and then examined how the reapportionment commission ended up adopting a plan that failed to comply. I [...]
Tags:
Okay, I admit it. I can’t stand to watch the GOP presidential hopefuls pandering to the farthest right in and out of their party. They give me a headache. So I don’t watch. Too painful. And so when Meda looked up yesterday morning and commented on Rick Santorum’s opposition to birth control, it took me [...]
Tags:
The Star-Advertiser reported today on Big Island resident Eric Lighter’s conviction on federal wire fraud and related charges. It’s a “premium” story, meaning you can’t read it without a subscription. You would think that means the story has some special value. Problem #1: He was convicted on December 20, almost two weeks ago, making it [...]
Tags:
It looks like there’s a new push underway to return to “closed” primary elections in Hawaii. In November, Oahu Democratic Party Chairman Tony Gill appealed to the board of the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, the faculty union, to support a federal lawsuit challenging Hawaii’s open primary. Gill, who also serves as UHPA’s legal counsel, [...]
Tags:
