Cultivated Compendium

Here is some news from my hometown region: The Solicitor General plans to make arguments in a US Supreme Court case challenging the constitutionality of having prayers led mostly by Christian pastors before the start of town meetings in Greece, NY (Suburb of Rochester). The Obama administration argued in an amicus brief there is a long-standing tradition of legislative prayer in the United States and such prayer does not violate the constitutional clause barring governmental establishment of religion. There is a circuit split on the issue with the Second Circuit ruling the predominance of Christian prayers before the Greece meetings did violate the establishment clause, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported.

Immigration reform is another victim of the lack of bipartisan legislative action in Congress, and immigration-reform proponents have been pushing for President Obama to halt the 1,000 or so deportations of undocumented/illegal immigrants taking place every day in case Congress does not enact immigration reforms. But the Washington Post reports the president says unilateral action on the deportatons is not possible. The Post also reported "House Republicans have refused to vote on a Senate-approved plan that features a 13-year path to citizenship for the undocumented, choosing instead to focus on piecemeal bills dealing with increased border security and workplace visas."

Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas civil court records are not available to the public on-line once trials start out of the concern that jurors will access information they shouldn't know about, like settlements with other defendants, while sitting on cases, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. The dockets are instead available at the judges' chambers. The Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association told the Pittsburgh paper that other methods should be used to control juror misconduct.

Monsignor William J. Lynn was the first Catholic Church official in the country to be convicted of a crime related to the sexual abuse of youth who were directly abused by other clergy, not Lynn. Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Joseph A. Slobodzian reported on the Pennsylvania appellate arguments challenging Lynn's conviction on the grounds that the crime Lynn was convicted of--endangering the welfare of child crime--could not apply to him because the statute was written to criminalize the failures in the direct supervision of kids. Defense lawyer Tom Bergstrom also argued that Lynn's conviction can't stand under the amended version of the endangering statute because he was no longer supervising children at the time the law was changed.

Some words from Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, assistant professor of law at the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law, on the US Constitution this Constitution Day: "The rule of law that structures almost every aspect of our lives – from criminal codes to capital punishment – finds its development and enforcement in the institutions created by the Constitution. The key, of course, is to re-imagine these ordinary parts of our lives as actually connected to our constitutional system." Ferguson also has five ideas on how to connect with the U.S. Constitution:

1. Read it.

2. Vote.

3. Find constitutional heroes in your local area.

4. Give credit to the constitution in your daily life.

5. Teach it.

The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto asks tongue-in-cheek if Russia President Vladimir Putin would be a journalist under the definition set out in the journalist federal shield law pending in the U.S. Senate. Covered journalists would include those with a considerable amount of freelance work in the last five years. Taranto then wrote last Friday: "To answer the question our headline poses, at least the definition is not so broad as to encompass this week's most prominent newspaper writer, Vladimir Putin. His Thursday contribution to the New York Times--which he himself wrote, according to a spokesman for his PR firm in an email to BuzzFeed--was not his first. In a 1999 piece he defended his own government's effort to put down a violent rebellion in Chechnya. But since that's more than five years ago, it wouldn't count toward the 'considerable amount of freelance work' threshold."

Rather than expanding Medicaid to cover more Pennsylvanians when the mandate to have health insurance kicks into effect, Pennsylvania Tom Corbett proposed yesterday that funds for the expansion instead be used to help state residents get private health insurance. The pitch will need federal approval.

When the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the insurance mandate under Congress' taxing power, the court separately rejected making the expansion of Medicaid mandatory upon the states. Some Republican governors have accepted the expansion, while others like Corbett have not.

 The Harrisburg Patriot News editorial board welcomed Corbett's efforts to expand insurance coverage for poorer Pennsylvanians but said requiring participants to look for work in exchange for coverage and imposing a modest co-pay might make the plan unworkable. Read the full piece here: http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/09/corbett_rolls_the_dice...

In closing the board said: "The insurance gap remains one of the most pressing public policy questions of our time. The first and only priority should be closing that gap. Ideology, if it is a factor at all, should finish a distant second."

The city of Philadelphia is close to changing its model of providing lawyers to criminal defendants and family-court litigants too poor to afford their own lawyers and for whom the Defender Association of Philadelphia is conflicted out of representing. Currently, individual attorneys take those appointments, but the city is contemplating having one for-profit law firm do the bulk of the work. But The Legal Intelligencer reports one of the main attorneys behind the leading bid to get the work not only has a disciplinary record but made questionable postings on social media, including sharing a posting by another page titled "American White History Month 2," whose avatar reads, "Never Apologize for Being White." The attorney told The Legal that the posting was sent to him by someone else and that he shared it from his iPhone without realizing that it originated on the "American White History Month 2" page or that it was directed at Muslims.

After Governor Chris Christie vetoed legislation passed by the New Jersey Legislature to approve same-sex marriage last year, a poll shows he is getting middling reviews on his handling of the issue. Thirty percent think Christie has been above average in handling the issue and 31 percent think he has been below average on the issue.  The governor is up for reelection and leading in the polls. The Asbury Park Press reports proponents of same-sex marriage are trying to pass legislation to override taking the same-sex marriage issue to a public referendum, which Christie favors.

As the stage is set for a US Supreme Court ruling on whether the governmental capture of metadata violates the Fourth Amendment's protections against unlawful search and seizures, the Foreign Policy has a gripping profile of  National Security Agency Director and Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander. One source told FP that, '"Alexander tended to be a bit of a cowboy: 'Let's not worry about the law. Let's just figure out how to get the job done.'" Plus: his base of operations is based on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise!