The child rape case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, may not be settled. I’m not learned enough to understand all of the nuances in the recent development. I am only speculating as an average citizen. The enclosed NY Times article hints that there might be a chance of overturning the recent SCOTUS abomination.

NOTE: I’m still waiting to hear some outrage coming from professional feminists. They sure as hell know how to make noise when it comes to infanticide. Perhaps the latest piece of news will move them.

The implications in the Kennedy v. Louisiana decision now involves the military. The Linda Greenhouse piece explains in detail. Based on her report I want to offer one possibility for the High Court’s terrible decision.

First let me put up this excerpt:

Not only did Congress add child rape to the military death penalty in 2006, but President Bush, in an executive order last September, added the new provision to the current version of the Manual for Courts-Martial.

It’s hard to believe that Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer did not know that the death penalty had been added to the military justice system.

Furthermore, it’s ludicrous to think that Supreme Court justices don’t know about UN peacekeepers engaging in rape. The only way they could not know is if they don’t read newspaper, don’t watch TV news, and don’t talk to anyone about the United Nations. Assuming the justices knew about UN peacekeepers who rape the women and children they are supposed to protect were the liberal justices cleverly trying to shield foreign rapists?

Let’s say that UN peacekeepers are tried in the International Criminal Court, a branch of the UN’s World Court. The World Court does not have a death penalty for any crime no matter how heinous. America taking the death penalty for rape off the table fits the World Court’s anti-death penalty agenda like a glove.

America’s highest court throwing out the death penalty for rape is one big bite out of the death penalty worldwide as well as saving the United Nations from future embarrassment. The ICC can now cite our Supreme Court when they give UN rapists a slap on the wrist. That is in the unlikely event they are ever brought to trial in The Hague.

I am not stretching my scenario too far because the five justices responsible for the Kennedy v. Louisiana decision are internationalists to the core. Their loyalty is to the United Nations not to America. Protecting UN peacekeepers had to be one of their priorities.

Correctly determining how the five liberals would vote opens another possibility. There is a good chance that President Bush’s Justice Department sandbagged the Supreme Court. Had the JD guessed wrong no harm would have been done. Sandbagging Supreme Court liberals is just too sweet to contemplate.

July 3, 2008
Justice Dept. Admits Error in Not Briefing Court
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON — In a highly unusual admission of error, the Justice Department
acknowledged on Wednesday that government lawyers should have known that Congress had
recently made the rape of a child a capital offense in the military and should have informed the
Supreme Court of that fact while the justices were considering whether death was a
constitutional punishment for the crime.

“It’s true that the parties to the case missed it, but it’s our responsibility,” the department’s
public affairs office said in a statement.

“We regret,” the statement said, “that the department didn’t catch the 2006 law when the case of
Kennedy v. Louisiana was briefed.”

In that case, decided June 25 by a vote of 5 to 4, the court ruled that the Constitution prohibits
the death penalty for the rape of a child. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion was
based in part on the conclusion that because child rape was a capital offense in only six states,
and not under federal law, the death penalty for the crime did not meet the “evolving standards
of decency” by which the court judges capital punishment.

Justice Kennedy’s conclusion about the absence of federal law was mistaken. Not only did
Congress add child rape to the military death penalty in 2006, but President Bush, in an
executive order last September, added the new provision to the current version of the Manual for
Courts-Martial.

The solicitor general’s office, which represents the federal government before the Supreme
Court, did not file a brief in the case, and none of the 10 briefs that were filed informed the
justices of the new federal law.

A civilian Air Force lawyer, Dwight Sullivan, mentioned the omission over the weekend on his
military law blog. The New York Times reported the oversight in an account that first appeared
Tuesday on its Web site.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday morning, the White House press secretary, Dana Perino,
said the administration “was disturbed by the New York Times report that the court’s decision
might be based on a mistake.” The Justice Department is looking into what happened and what
steps may now be taken, Ms. Perino said.

The Justice Department elaborated in its statement, which it issued in late afternoon. The
department informed the court of the omission “shortly after learning of the law” on Tuesday,
the statement said.

As the department’s statement noted, only parties to a case can ask the justices to reconsider
their decision. The department might ask the court for permission to provide its views if
Louisiana files a rehearing petition, the statement added.

Steve Wimberly, the first assistant in the Jefferson Parish, La., district attorney’s office, which
handled the case for the state before the Supreme Court, said in an interview Wednesday that
while no decision had yet been made, “we are strongly considering the option of asking the
justices to reconsider the case.”

Mr. Wimberly added that Gov. Bobby Jindal, who denounced the court’s ruling, was involved in
deciding how to proceed.

The Justice Department statement was carefully worded to avoid conceding that under the
reasoning of the Supreme Court decision, the military death penalty provision for child rape is
now unconstitutional.

The statement noted that in a 1996 decision, Loving v. United States, which upheld the
military’s general death penalty provision, the justices simply assumed, without deciding, that
the court’s death penalty jurisprudence was fully applicable to the military. Since no death
penalty prosecution has been brought since the military provision took effect, it is not clear how
or when its constitutionality may be tested.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/us...c=rss&oref=slo
gin

__________________

Flanders

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. It is the freedom to refrain, withdraw and abstain which makes a totalitarian regime impossible. Eric Hoffer

"I’m still waiting to hear some outrage coming from professional feminists."

Don't hold your breath. There was not a peep out of them over Bills sexual harrasment...among other things.