By Sam Sewell, Aristotle the Hun, The Rev. Big Goon and Good Shepherd Sam “Se non è vero, è ben trovato.” Note: It will quickly be obvious to the reader why details have been obscured, omitted or fictionalized in this fascinating narrative of events that began nearly forty years ago. Preface: Years ago I regularly […]
Archives for December 2012
Update on Religious Liberty Battle: Appeals Court Rules for Colleges and New Cases
On December 18, 2012, an appeals court ruling in the battle for religious liberty opposing imposition of an Obamacare contraception mandate favored the religious colleges opposing the mandate. With the December 14 filing of a suit by Domino’s Farms and Thomas Monaghan, the number of federal lawsuits around the country has grown to 42. The […]
Plea Bargaining in Criminal Cases
If every criminal case went to trial, the criminal justice system would effectively shut down. The answer developed to address this problem is the plea bargain. A “plea bargain” is an agreement between the prosecutor, the defendant’s attorney and the defendant. In return for the defendant entering a plea of guilty to a criminal charge, […]
A Mom’s Note, A Son’s Vote and the Nineteenth Amendment
Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution guaranteed the right to vote for women across the United States. Constitutional studies usually focus on the Supreme Court and its opinions. This approach often loses the personal stories of the real people behind the Constitution’s every word. The tale of Febb Ensminger Burn and her […]
Amendment I to the US Constitution: An Overview
The US Constitution grants enumerated powers to the central government. The drafters believed enumerating the powers limited the government. This was the argument Federalists made based upon an accepted rule for interpreting legal documents: Expressio unius est exclusio alterius (“the express mention of one thing excludes all others”). With that principle in mind, the government could not […]
Arrest Warrants Issued in the United States
A judge commanding law enforcement officials to bring a wanted person before the court to answer to criminal charges issues an arrest warrant. The Fourth Amendment[1] to the US Constitution commands that the following conditions exist for an arrest warrant to issue: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons … against […]
Separation of Powers in the US Constitution: 1800 Years of Thought
All American schoolchildren are taught about the three branches of the federal government: legislative, executive and judicial. The Constitution’s establishment of these branches came from over 1800 years of political thinking. Most of the Founding Fathers were well educated and had studied classical political philosophy. The American government’s structure did not spring miraculously from the […]
DUI Breath Testing and Criminal Prosecutions
A driver with a blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 or higher is presumed to be intoxicated. Blood tests are more trustworthy, but breath tests are commonly used. The breath test is simpler to perform and administered by non-medical personnel with quicker results. Many situations exist that impair breath tests as a precise calculation of BAC. […]
How to Create a Crisis and Steal a Nation: Part Two
By Sam Sewell, Aristotle the Hun, The Rev. Big Goon and Good Shepherd Sam The Cloward-Piven Strategy (CPS), Saul Alinsky and the concept of clergy as undercover intelligence officers were introduced in Part One. What follows is from a former colleague drawing from his experiences in the 1970’s to explain how CPS was employed to […]