Judiciary

As a deeply divided Supreme Court issued 5-4 rulings the past few weeks bouncing from liberal to conservative interpretations of the law, something was woefully missing from the coverage: journalists apologizing to the nation for regularly insinuating that the Court's December 2000 decision concerning Bush v. Gore was politically based.After all, for seven and a half years, a regular media meme…

With more fallout from the Supreme Court's latest 2nd Amendment ruling, the Chicago Sun-Times has published an op ed wagging a finger at the Supremes saying that the Heller decision will be a "tax on Chicago citizens," and that it is a tax to be "paid in blood and money." The Times scolds the Court with all sorts of dire warnings and worries that blood will flow in the city but, as with D.C.,…

Michael Smerconish is thinking of voting for Obama.  The Philly talk radio host let it be known while subbing for Dan Abrams on tonight's "Verdict" on MSNBC.  He actually did so, chatting with Ron Reagan, while criticizing Obama's flip-flops.  But the bottom line is the bottom line. SMERCONISH: I want to think big picture, and I want to do so by showing you a piece of that which was published in…

The ink was hardly dry on the June 26 ruling overturning Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban when Newsweek started the hand-wringing about how the city's political establishment would react.Rather than profiling D.C. resident Dick Heller, the victor in the lawsuit, or officials from gun rights groups on their next move in challenging other gun bans with yesterday's precedent, Newsweek sought to press…

It didn't take long for the Washington Post to weigh in on the wrong side of the Second Amendment issue, did it? The Post's Colbert I. King could not contain the disgust he feels for at least one part of the Constitution more in his response to the Supreme Court's Second Amendment ruling today. He flipped his top and went so far off the deep end that he seemed to imagine that Justice Scalia just…

It should prove interesting to see how many other reporters pick up on this.Barack Obama is scooting to the right on gun rights, notes ABC's Jake Tapper, in a June 26 blog post at his Political Punch blog.The ABC correspondent picked up on an exchange between the Illinois senator and a reporter from Pennsylvania, the land of bitter gun-clingers:Craig Layne, a reporter from WJET-TV in Erie, Penn…

In anticipation of the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of DC handgun ban on Thursday, CNN’s "Newsroom" program ran a report on both the sides of the gun case, in which the pro-gun control advocate was given twice the amount of air time as the gun rights advocate. The report, by CNN justice correspondent Kelli Arena, ran twice within 20 minutes; first, at the top of the 10 am…

By now, you have all heard of Wednesday's Supreme Court decision prohibiting the death penalty in cases of child rape. Having read several articles, the mainstream media's take on the case was mostly informational and understated. And that was to be expected. While the ruling could be considered a victory for civil libertarians, even the press understands that you can't do a victory dance when…

Remember the Boumediene decisions? The one where the Supreme Court ignored Congress' orders to strip them of jurisdiction? One of the major issues in this case was the fact that the Court trampled all over Congress' ability to determine the limits of judicial oversight. And virtually no mainstream 'news' organ picked up on that fact- nstead they universally trumpeted how the eeevil Bush…

CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin, when asked about the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling in the DC handgun ban case on Monday’s "American Morning," repeated the gun control lobby’s argument that "most federal courts and the Supreme Court has found is that really doesn't mean that you can possess a gun. It means that the military can possess a gun, that it's a collective right." She later made the…

In a Wednesday column decrying John McCain's condemnation of the Supreme Court's ruling giving Guantanamo detainees access to the courts, former Washington Post reporter and editor Ruth Marcus illustrated that no matter how unexcited conservatives may be about McCain liberals still see him as dangerous as she expressed fear of what McCain's efforts to appease conservatives will mean for the…

In case you missed it, the Supreme Court Thursday bestowed Constitutional rights to terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay.As my colleague Brent Baker reported hours ago, the broadcast evening news programs predictably saw this decision as a stinging defeat for the Bush administration that could prove tremendously embarrassing to the president.Almost prophetically, conservative radio talk…