Category: Courts and law
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Bari Weiss: “You are the Last Line of Defense”
by James C. Sherlock Video courtesy of the Free Press. See that link for a full transcript. I recommend it to everyone. Bari Weiss recently delivered a speech that will be long remembered. She offered eloquence in the service of experience, sorrow and determination. And defined the internal, and existential, threat to America. I will…
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Democrats, Judges, and Higher Taxes
from Liberty Unyielding For generations, Washington State had no state income tax, because of anti-income tax provisions in its state constitution. But the Washington state supreme court recently upheld a classic example of an income tax — a state tax on income from capital gains — by making the absurd argument that a capital gains tax…
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Judge Issues Surprise Marijuana Ruling
from The Republican Standard A federal judge in Northern Virginia rejected an attempt to block a new Virginia law that imposes stricter limits on hemp products containing intoxicating amounts of THC. The law aimed to crack down on delta-8, a hemp-derived marijuana alternative. The judge ruled that Virginia’s regulations do not conflict with federal law…
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Democratic General Assembly Would Be Much Softer on Crime
from Liberty Unyielding Democrats are slightly favored to win control of Virginia’s legislature in this year’s election, although the election will be very close. If they take over, the legislature will become much softer on crime than it is now, because incoming Democratic leaders are more left-wing than their mainstream liberal predecessors. For example, if…
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Crime and Punishment in Charlottesville
by James C. Sherlock UVa and Harvard are the two campuses most often cited by the national and world press as homes to the worst actors after October 7. It is easy work. I posted a column on Saturday making a series of recommendations for actions by the University of Virginia to protect its Jewish…
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No Parole for Killers, No Matter How Old
by Kerry Doherty Autumn, with its crisp temperatures, pumpkin spice and vibrant colors, seems to be everyone’s favorite season. Not Paige O’Shaughnessy’s. In fact, each year when the season changes she’s reminded of the hellish fall of 2000. That was the year her husband, Timothy O’Shaughnessy, 40, was murdered in his downtown Norfolk office. It…
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A Day in Court
by Dick Hall-Sizemore I spent some time today observing proceedings in Henrico County District Court. (No, I was not a defendant.) I recommend the experience to anyone interested in seeing how the criminal justice system works in real life. District court is the venue for hearing traffic offenses and misdemeanors. It also hears more serious…
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Sex, Lies and Virginia Law: The Susanna Gibson Case
Republished with permission from the Liberty Unyielding blog. “Susanna Gibson, a House candidate in Virginia, had sex with her husband in live videos posted online and asked viewers to pay them money in return,” notes USA Today. A recent video shows the Democratic candidate for Virginia’s House of Delegates doing sex acts. She allegedly also…
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Virginia Deserves a Parole Board that Puts Public Safety First
by Kerry Dougherty When Terry McAuliffe was governor he found a loyal Democrat lawyer to appoint to head Virginia’s parole board. That was Adrianne Bennett, a failed candidate for the House of Delegates in 2011 and undoubtedly the most controversial parole board chair in Virginia history. She was a success if you believe, as McAuliffe…
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Be Careful of What You Wish For
by Dick Hall-Sizemore For those on this blog who advocate the election of judges in Virginia, The Washington Post today has an article that should give you second thoughts. Courts cannot be isolated completely from partisanship, but it should be distressing for anyone, regardless of one’s partisan leanings, that a state supreme court, such as…
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The Sorry State of the ACLU of Virginia
by Hans Bader The communist activist Angela Davis advocated abolishing prisons in the U.S., while supporting the incarceration of political prisoners in totalitarian communist regimes overseas. The ACLU of Virginia has touted Angela Davis’s stances in the past, such as in an April 4, 2022 tweet quoting Davis. Now, the ACLU of Virginia has returned…
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Guns for Felons?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Virginia law prohibits a convicted felon from possessing or transporting a firearm. Is that unconstitutional under the provisions of last year’s Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen (597 U.S. ___; 142 S. Ct. 2111)? Background Before trying to answer that question, it is helpful to…
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Richmond’s 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Needs Better Judgment
by James C. Sherlock Federal judges are supposed to call balls and strikes in relation to the Constitution and the law. President Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act into law on June 3. Sec 324 of that law, Expediting Completion Of The Mountain Valley Pipeline, blocked any court from hearing cases about permits for the…
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Understaffed Nursing Homes and the False Claims Act
by James C. Sherlock Nursing home operators, paid by government insurance programs on a per diem basis for caring for their patients, make higher profits if they understaff than otherwise. The less staff they have, the higher their operating margins. The federal government, with much experience in such situations, tries to offset those incentives with…
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Miyares Loses in Court
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Our Attorney General has taken his lumps in court recently. First was a jury acquittal in a high-profile criminal case he engineered. Later, the Virginia Supreme Court unanimously ruled against an agency that had been administering a provision of the Code based on guidance from the Attorney General. The first case was…