The New Mexico Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that new Tea Party Governor Susana Martinez violated the state constitution when she prevented New Mexico’s democratically-approved rule reducing carbon pollution from being published as codified state law.

Essentially their supreme court said “no one is above the law.”

The lawsuit was filed by the environmental nonprofit New Energy Economy, and reflects growing claims that Gov. Martinez tried to suppress the rule in an attempt to appease major carbon polluters who contributed heavily to her gubernatorial campaign, and that her suppression was arbitrary and illegal. Preventing its publication was not discretionary, the court ruled. According to eyewitnesses, it seemed as if this New Mexico Supreme Court ruling took just 30 minutes to decide.

Since Governor Martinez is actually a former assistant state attorney, the illegality of her action brought up a question in my mind. I asked Mariel Nanasi, the Executive Director of NEE, wouldn’t she know that was illegal? Nanasi laughed as if this was obvious, saying; “pretty much any attorney in that position would know that this suppression was illegal.” Read the rest of this entry »

RALEIGH, N.C. — State Republican leaders are making good on campaign promises to fight the federal health care law.

Thursday a State House Judiciary Committee voted to block the federal government’s health insurance mandate that takes effect in 2014.

Titled “An Act to Protect the Freedom to Choose Health Care and Health Insurance,” the bill that would exempt North Carolinians from the law requiring most Americans to buy insurance.

“We’re going to debate this bill and we’re going to vote on this bill,” Committee Chairman and Johnston County Republican Leo Daughtry said.

The bill would also require North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to either join a lawsuit with more than 20 other states fighting against the insurance mandate or file a separate lawsuit for North Carolina.

“A state law that authorizes North Carolina citizens to violate federal law could be found to be unconstitutional,” Cooper said in a statement. “The federal health law is deemed constitutional…” Read the rest of this entry »

Denver—A federal judge has granted a request by the Direct Marketing Association to block a Colorado law requiring online sellers to divulge customer purchase information so the state could later pursue those customers for sales tax payments.

The law, HB10-1193, passed in March 2010, targets out-of-state e-commerce companies that don’t collect state sales tax on their online transactions with Colorado residents. In addition to divulging customer purchase information, online sellers are also required to provide the state with the names of those who spend more than $500 with them in a year.

Last year, the DMA filed suit against the state, saying the new law is an intrusion on consumer privacy, discriminates against interstate commerce and harms local businesses that are affiliates of the national online sellers. Meanwhile, DMA sought the preliminary injunction to block the law, which U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn granted on Wednesday.

The American Catalog Mailers Association also lobbied against the law, and is participating in DMA’s legal efforts.

Source

A committee in the Republican-controlled Legislature has voted to repeal a state law requiring gun permits.

The Star Tribune reported Wednesday that a House public safety panel voted to undo the requirement that gun buyers get a state permit before purchasing a handgun or semiautomatic assault weapon from a federally licensed dealer. The vote was 10-7.

Supporters say the state requirement duplicates federal law.

Rep. Steve Drazkowski (draz-KOW’-skee) says Minnesota is one of only 12 states to require state gun permits and that his bill would lift an unnecessary mandate on local governments.

Objections came from Democrats, gun control advocates and police groups. Democratic Rep. Joe Mullery of Minneapolis says the bill would result in an incredible change.

The bill now heads to another committee.

Source

North Chevy Chase Elementary School, with a demanding curriculum, strong faculty and high student test scores, meets nobody’s definition of a failure. Nobody’s, that is, except the federal government’s.

Last year, the Montgomery County school failed to make what the government calls “adequate yearly progress,” even though 91 percent of its students passed the state math test and 96 percent passed in reading. The school fell short for the first time because a handful of students with disabilities missed the target in math.

Confusion over the ratings of schools such as this one and thousands of others nationwide is fueling President Obama’s drive to rewrite the nine-year-old No Child Left Behind law. In his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, Obama called for a version that is “more flexible and focused on what’s best for our kids.”

Senior congressional Republicans and Democrats said Wednesday they would join forces with the president to fix what they call numerous flaws in the law.

No Child Left Behind, which launched an unprecedented expansion of standardized testing, was widely acclaimed when it was enacted in 2002 under President George W. Bush. There were pledges that schools would get serious about closing achievement gaps, while helping every single child reach grade level in reading and math.

Now, the United States may be on the verge of another cycle of reform as schools hit an achievement ceiling. Lawmakers are calling the law rigid, punitive and unrealistic.

“We need to get away from Washington announcing whether schools are passing or failing,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). Read the rest of this entry »

A state lawmaker on Wednesday filed a bill that would crack down on illegal immigration in Georgia and that mirrors some provisions in a controversial law that took effect in Arizona last year.

The “Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011″ was filed by Rep. Matt Ramsey, a Peachtree City Republican who co-chaired a legislative study commission on illegal immigration in the fall.

The Georgia legislation would require law enforcement officers to, when enforcing other laws, try to determine an individual’s immigration status if an officer “develops reasonable suspicion” that the person is an illegal immigrant, according to a copy of the bill provided to The Associated Press. Upon confirming that such a person is an illegal immigrant, the officer would be authorized to arrest that person and take him or her to a federal jail.

The bill would also impose penalties on people who encourage an illegal immigrant to come to Georgia or who transport or hide illegal immigrants once they’re in the state.

A federal judge blocked similar provisions in a law enacted in Arizona last year after the federal government filed a lawsuit.

Ramsey said he believes the Georgia bill is written in such a way that it should not provoke a federal lawsuit.

“We believe it’s drawn up in a way that’s constitutional, but there may be people in the Obama Justice Department who don’t agree,” he said. “I would hope they will focus more on securing the border than on suing states.” Read the rest of this entry »

President Barack Obama will nominate Deputy White House Counsel Donald B. Verrilli Jr. to be U.S. solicitor general, the lawyer who likely will defend the new health-care law when a challenge reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.

Verrilli, 53, would fill a position that has been formally vacant since Obama picked Elena Kagan to join the Supreme Court last year. Neal Katyal has been serving as solicitor general on an acting basis since Kagan’s nomination in May.

As a private attorney at Jenner & Block in Washington, Verrilli represented the music and movie industries, winning a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that lets them press copyright suits against Internet file-sharing networks.

Verrilli also argued for limits on the death penalty, as in 1998 when he unsuccessfully urged the Supreme Court to bar the three-drug method of lethal injection used across the country. He told the justices that the second of the three drugs might “inflict an excruciating, burning pain as it courses through the veins.”

The solicitor general post, which requires Senate confirmation, would be Verrilli’s third in the Obama administration. He previously served as associate deputy attorney general, focusing on domestic and national security policy issues, including questions of state secrets. He worked on health care among other issues while in the White House. Read the rest of this entry »

It goes without saying that law enforcement is dangerous work. But in the past two days at least 10 officers and one U.S. Marshal were shot in five states. In St. Petersburg, Florida: two officers were killed today in a firefight with a fugitive who was also killed. In Detroit yesterday, a man opened fire inside a police station, wounding four officers before he was shot dead.

These incidents and the tragedy in Tucson have focused new attention on the need to keep guns away from those with a history of violence or mental illness. Today, the families of shooting victims demanded Washington enforce existing laws. CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric reports.

Thirty-four: that’s the number of people killed by gun violence every day. That’s also the number of people who told their stories today alongside New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Martin Luther King III – whose father was shot and killed 43 years ago this April.

“I would like to think that between my dad’s assassination and Senator Robert Kennedy’s assassination at least began the process of Congress thinking about putting some legislation on the books,” King said. Read the rest of this entry »

Taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, infuriating lawmakers who want to know why taxpayers are footing the bill for heads of agencies that have already cost Americans at least $150 billion.

According to The New York Times, the bulk of those legal expenses — $132 million — went to pay for the defense of former top executives named in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud and in various securities suits and government investigations into accounting irregularities that occurred years before the subprime lending crisis erupted.

Of the payments, $24 million went to defend former Fannie CEO Franklin Raines and two other executives.

Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas, chairman of the House Financial Services oversight subcommittee, told Fox News that he wants to know why the U.S. would defend executives who were fired from the lenders. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a new SB 1070 on the block, and this one comes out of Mississippi. On Tuesday the Mississippi State Senate passed SB 2179, a measure that allows law enforcement officers to check a person’s immigration status during a traffic stop or while enforcing other laws. In doing so the state became the first legislature to make good on its talk of passing a law that mimics Arizona’s SB 1070.

SB 2179’s chief backer is Sen. Joey Fillingane, a Republican in a majority Democrat chamber.

The Clarion-Ledger reports that Fillingane considers SB 2179 an improvement over SB 1070 because law enforcement officers are allowed to inquire about a person’s status only while in the course of enforcing other laws, making such a check a “secondary status.”

“We did not want anyone to go out and start picking on or racial profiling people,” Fillingane told the paper. Read the rest of this entry »