With all the legal wrangling going on around our president I could easily turn this post into a rant about it all….not to worry…..this legal stuff has very little to do with our beloved Leader…..

A Federal judge had a ruling that many will disagree with especially if one is one the Right……the draft registration for women…….

Women may soon have a new ritual on their 18th birthday: signing up for Selective Service. A federal judge in Texas ruled Friday that the current system—which requires men age 18-25 to sign up—violates the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause of right to life, liberty, and property, the Times of San Diego reports. “Women are now allowed in combat, so this decision is long overdue,” says Marc Angelucci, an attorney for the National Coalition for Men, a men’s right’s group and plaintiff in the case. “After decades of sex discrimination against men in the Selective Service, the courts have finally found it unconstitutional to force only men to register.” Angelucci notes that men still face denial of federal loans, fines, and even prison time if they fail to register.

No man has faced prosecution for failing to register in decades, but a young Texan named James Lesmeister filed the lawsuit in 2013 anyway; a San Diego resident and the San Diego-based National Coalition for Men later joined in, per Military.com. In his ruling, Judge Gray Miller said “the time has passed” to debate women in the military and quoted the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage in opposing the draft’s gender restriction, notes USA Today. But his ruling is a declaratory judgment, not an injunction, so it doesn’t force the federal government’s hand—yet it does make a statement. “Either they need to get rid of the draft registration, or they need to require women to do the same thing that men do,” says Angelucci. America hasn’t had an actual draft since 1973, but young men are still expected to make themselves available for war.
No man has faced prosecution for failing to register in decades, but a young Texan named James Lesmeister filed the lawsuit in 2013 anyway; a San Diego resident and the San Diego-based National Coalition for Men later joined in, per Military.com. In his ruling, Judge Gray Miller said “the time has passed” to debate women in the military and quoted the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage in opposing the draft’s gender restriction, notes USA Today. But his ruling is a declaratory judgment, not an injunction, so it doesn’t force the federal government’s hand—yet it does make a statement. “Either they need to get rid of the draft registration, or they need to require women to do the same thing that men do,” says Angelucci. America hasn’t had an actual draft since 1973, but young men are still expected to make themselves available for war.

Next SCOTUS rule against police profiteering…..

 

The Supreme Court struck an extraordinary blow for criminal justice reform on Wednesday, placing real limitations on policing for profit across the country. Its unanimous decision for the first time prohibits all 50 states from imposing excessive fines, including the seizure of property, on people accused or convicted of a crime. Rarely does the court hand down a ruling of such constitutional magnitude—and seldom do all nine justices agree to restrict the power that police and prosecutors exert over individuals. The landmark decision represents a broad agreement on the Supreme Court that law enforcement’s legalized theft has gone too far.

Wednesday’s ruling in Timbs v. Indiana, authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is sharp and concise. It revolves around a single question of extraordinary importance. The Eighth Amendment guarantees that no “excessive fines” may be “imposed,” an ancient right enshrined in the Magna Carta and enthusiastically adopted by the Framers. But the Bill of Rights originally applied only to the federal government, not the states. After the Civil War, the 14^th Amendment was ratified to apply these rights to the states, which had engaged in grotesque civil rights violations to perpetuate slavery. The Supreme Court, however, slowly applied (or “incorporated”) these rights against the states one by one, not all at once. And before Timbs, it had never incorporated the Excessive Fines Clause—allowing states to exploit their residents for huge sums of cash and property.

(slate.com)

Next we go to the world stage…..the US has a base on the tiny Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia and the island made the news recently…..

A new ruling from the World Court may force Britain to revoke its lease of the island of Diego Garcia to the US military, with the finding that the British had unlawfully appropriated the island and expelled its indigenous population prior to the lease.

The court said Britain acted unlawfully in splitting the island off from the territory of Mauritius in 1965, and the presiding judge called on Britain to bring the administration to the end “as rapidly as possible.”

At the time of the split, Mauritius and Diego Garcia were both British colonies. Britain was just three years from granting Mauritius independence, however, and decided it was keeping Diego Garcia and the rest of Chagos in the process.

A few more years later, they wanted to lease out Diego Garcia, which involved evicting some 2,000 civilians from the island. Islanders have been fighting to be allowed to return since the 1970s, though Britain has said in the past they wouldn’t be allowed to.

(antiwar.com)

The US is not alone with legal stuff in the World courts……Chagos Island…..(related to the Diego Gracia news above)……

Britain must end its control of the Chagos islands “as rapidly as possible,” according to the UN’s highest court. The International Court of Justice said Monday that Britain had unlawfully carved up Mauritius, which the Chagos were a part of, when it agreed to end colonial rule in the late 1960s. The UK government reacted to the ruling by saying that it will look “carefully” at it, while stressing that the court’s view is “an advisory opinion, not a judgment.” But it’s one that carries weight since it came from the top UN court and could put significant pressure on London to act, reports the AP. The court said it concluded that even though Mauritius’ government agreed to split off the Chagos islands shortly before the country’s 1968 independence, “this detachment was not based on the free and genuine expression of the will of the people concerned.”

Britain evicted about 2,000 people from the Chagos archipelago in the 1960s and 1970s so the US military could build an air base on one of its atolls, Diego Garcia. As NPR’s Ari Shapiro put it, “They shipped the Chagossian people more than a thousand miles away to Mauritius, a former British colony, where the people lived in abject poverty.” Many resettled in the UK and have fought in British courts to return to the islands, which the Financial Times calls Britain’s “last colony in Africa.” The BBC reports the UK has previously said it would return the islands to Mauritius once it didn’t need them for defense, and the Foreign Office addressed that, saying they currently “help to protect people here in Britain and around the world from terrorist threats, organized crime, and piracy.” Mauritius has previously said the US can retain its base even if the UK relinquishes control.

More later….for now I need to let MoMo out so she can check on her kitty……