"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."
-- Proverbs 29:18, King James Bible (KJV)

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Immigrant Children and Parents Separated at the Border Are Largely Reunified

Via Reuters U.S. Legal News and Dan Whitcomb we read the headline regarding U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw and the case(s) of immigrant children and parents forcibly separated at the border that Judge says government on track to reunify families split at border.

We posted about this at LawPundit previously at The Trump Administration and the Red Line of Going Too Far: You Do Not Separate Children from their Parents.

Sunday, July 08, 2018

A "Monumental" Video of Grand Central Terminal in New York City (as once saved by a U.S. Supreme Court decision on NYC Landmarks Law) (or) Choose Your Justices Wisely

"... the historical and cultural foundations of the Nation should be preserved as a living part of our community life and development in order to give a sense of orientation to the American people," [emphasis added by LawPundit]

In retrospectively assessing the goodness of U.S. Supreme Court Justices, Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978) is an interesting precedential case on regulatory takings ...

Excerpt from a Grand Central Terminal video transcript (as cited below) .... :

"The preservation battle to keep [Grand Central Terminal] standing was extremely important in the history of historic preservation generally. It was a Supreme Court decision that upholding New York City's Landmarks Preservation Law kept the terminal standing."

Read about the U.S. Supreme Court decision at the New York Times at Tower Over Grand Central Barred As Court Upholds Landmarks Law
and
Watch the Grand Central Video at Architectural Digest ....

The "good guys" who saved Grand Central Terminal from private property greed and doctrine and from sheer architectural folly were majority Justices
Justice Brennan, Justice Stewart, Justice White, Justice Marshall, Justice Blackmun, and Justice Powell.

The majority opinion was written by Justice William J. Brennan Jr.,whose opinion footnotes 1 and 2 (here excerpted) read as follows:

"[Footnote 1]

.... Congress has determined that "the historical and cultural foundations of the Nation should be preserved as a living part of our community life and development in order to give a sense of orientation to the American people," [ "hear, hear !" emphasis added by Lawpundit] National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, 80 Stat. 915, 16 U.S.C. § 470(b) (1976 ed.), and has enacted a series of measures designed to encourage preservation of sites and structures of historic, architectural, or cultural significance....

[Footnote 2]
Over one-half of the buildings listed in the Historic American Buildings Survey, begun by the Federal Government in 1933, have been destroyed. [emphasis added by Lawpundit] See Costonis, The Chicago Plan: Incentive Zoning and the Preservation of Urban Landmarks, 85 Harv.L.Rev. 574, 574 n. 1 (1972), citing Huxtable, Bank's Building Plan Sets Off Debate on "Progress," N.Y. Times, Jan. 17, 1971, section 8, p. 1, col. 2. 


The "bad guys" in the case were Justice Rehnquist in dissent, as joined by Chief Justice Burger and Justice Stevens.

"Conservative" well-meant intentions, especially regarding the "proper" extent of "property" rights, do not always lead to good results.

In this case, it was the liberal wing of the Supreme Court who saved the wondrous architecture of U.S. traditional past for posterity, not the right wing.

One must be careful in choosing Supreme Court Justices. The Justices must protect the rights of all, not just the rights of the few.

As a political centrist, we are " Just sayin' ".

Monday, July 02, 2018

The Trump Administration and the Red Line of Going Too Far: You Do Not Separate Children from their Parents

We are political centrists and we favor a number of things that the Trump administration is doing to get America back on track again,
but the red line of going too far has been crossed in separating children from their immigrant viz. migrant parents, even if the parents are in the United States illegally.

One of the unwritten rules of humanity is that humans do not forget that same humanity in their daily dealings with others, whoever they may be, wherever they may be.

We are 7+ billion human beings on this teeming, overpopulated planet and we all have an obligation to do our part, however small it may be, to help move the world in an improved direction.  Leading by good example is one option.

It is true that most of us follow our own subjective, selfish interests in our daily affairs -- but that is not the ultimate solution to our planet's problems. Where able, we must improve the world, not make it worse.

"Better, YES, worse, NO." That is a slogan worth following.

There are few valid legal or other justifications for separating children from their parents. Politically motivated child separation is not such a justification. If solutions to immigration overload are to be found, they should be sought elsewhere. Leave the children out of this dirty business.

The Trump administration has erred grossly in condoning government separation of children and their parents -- the "family" being the bulwark of human society everywhere -- and Trump should be doing everything in his power to correct these "inhuman" separations as soon as possible.

We refer to a New York Times Opinion by Brad S. Karp, chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and Gary M. Wingens, managing partner of Lowenstein Sandler. See The Law Did Not Create This Crisis, but Lawyers Will Help End It.

As Donald Trump should know only too well, if you have the best lawyers in the country against you, your odds of "winning" are greatly reduced. Let's stay in the winner's circle and do the right thing.

You can't have unlimited immigration -- the world population is too large --
but you can have limited immigration guided by the rules of humanity.

We owe that much to ourselves and to others, and to human dignity.

Hat tip to Brian Sogol.


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