9 Unbelievable Facts You Didn’t Know About Federal Courts

Don

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Agorism FTW!
"Justice For All," it ain't.

BuzzFeed has the story. I'll list the facts, but you'll have to read the article for the specifics of each case.

What's your favorite?
1. Barely any laws are declared unconstitutional
2. Regulations can be totally useless and still be constitutional
3. The government doesn’t need to show a law is necessary or even helpful in any way
4. Cats marooned on an island count as “interstate commerce”
5. Federal judge thought government could license florists because dirt might be dangerous
6. Federal court says crony capitalism is OK since everybody does it
7. Car wash counts as entertainment
8. Your Home or Business Can Be Bulldozed and Given to Politically Connected Property Developers
9. Growing marijuana and giving it to someone in the same state counts as “interstate commerce”
I think mine is #6, (big surprise, right?) supported by this quote concerning the decision, including a quote from the decision that's simply priceless.
In the most jaw-dropping passage of its decision (a decision you really must read to believe), the Tenth Circuit held it’s perfectly legitimate for the government to pick winners and losers in the marketplace by sandbagging some people with arbitrary regulations.

Those judges even compared crony capitalism to baseball. Seriously: “…while baseball may be the national pastime of the citizenry, dishing out special economic benefits to certain in-state industries remains the favored pastime of state and local governments.”
Political graft institutionalized. How cool is that?
 

clintl

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Well, #1 makes perfect sense, because only the Supreme Court can declare something unconstitutional. A lower federal court can not. (If I remember my Civics class correctly, though that was 25 years ago...)

That's not actually true. Lower courts do it, too, but the Supreme Court has the final say.
 

shadowwalker

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Once I read the explanations, they all made sense.

Yeah, I agree. Of course, one has to look a little further than the article's 'explanation' of the reasoning, because that was a little hackneyed (to "prove" their point, I suppose). The dirt thing - depending on where it comes from, it can contain toxic materials, so I don't see that as ridiculous. Or the folks trying to sell discount caskets - who wants a cemetery with decomposing bodies leaking into the ground water?

Yes, the Supremes make some bass-ackward decisions - but it only takes one idiot (or smart dude, depending on whether one agrees with them or not) to make a majority decision.
 

Diana Hignutt

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Yeah, I agree. Of course, one has to look a little further than the article's 'explanation' of the reasoning, because that was a little hackneyed (to "prove" their point, I suppose). The dirt thing - depending on where it comes from, it can contain toxic materials, so I don't see that as ridiculous. Or the folks trying to sell discount caskets - who wants a cemetery with decomposing bodies leaking into the ground water?
.

There are a lot worse things then decomposing bodies leaking into groundwater--fracking chemicals come to mind...but because of #6...that shit is fine...
 

regdog

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7. Car wash counts as entertainment

If you're an Autobot or Stunticon it's porn.
 

Vince524

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- who wants a cemetery with decomposing bodies leaking into the ground water?

There are a lot worse things then decomposing bodies leaking into groundwater--fracking chemicals come to mind...but because of #6...that shit is fine...

Mix these two together, it seems you may have the recipe for the zombie apocalypse. Which, depending on the day, may or may not seem like a bad thing. To me at least.

If you're an Autobot or Stunticon it's porn.

It can be entertainment for us humans as well, depending on who's washing the car and how!

*slo-mo*

*cue porn bass*

Ya baby!