The Supreme Court Cuts the Exxon Valdez Verdict by 80%...

...and YOU should be glad!

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court cut Exxon-Mobil’s verdict FROM $2.5 BILLION to $500 MILLION.

In 1989 punitive damages of $2.5 BILLION were awarded against Exxon-Mobil over the Exxon Valdez disaster.

The court ruled that victims of the worst oil spill in U.S. history may collect punitive damages from Exxon Mobil Corp., but not as much as a federal appeals court determined.

Supreme Court Justice David Souter wrote for the court that punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses, about $500 million compensation.

Exxon asked the high court to reject the punitive damages judgment, saying it already has spent $3.4 billion in response to the accident that fouled 1,200 miles of Alaska coastline.

A jury decided Exxon should pay $5 billion in punitive damages. A federal appeals court cut that verdict in half.
The reason YOU and I should be happy is that those punitive damages amount to a “cost of doing business,” for Exxon-Mobil and that cost, as ALL such costs are passed onto the consumers – that includes YOU and I.

So far, I have the U.S. Supreme Court at two and two – they got two (nixing the D.C. gun ban and slashing the Exxon Valdez punitive damages) RIGHT, and two (giving foreign terrorists access to U.S. courts and nixing the death penalty for child rapists) WRONG.

U.S. Supreme Court Throws a Bone to Child Rapers...

...Nice!

On the heels of their decision to extend access to U.S. courts to foreign terrorists, the U.S. Supreme Court handed child rapists a victory, by claiming, in a 5-4 vote, that the law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in cases of child rape violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Yes, the “Kelo Justices” (Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Souter and Stevens), the same core that brought us the ill-conceived Kelo Decision that has sparked a wave of anti-Eminent Domain statutes across the country has handed foreign terrorists the right to be heard in American courts and now apparently bows to the all important NAMBLA lobby.

A Glaring Example of The Illogic of Liberalism

In writing the dissent over the recent Decision that struck down the D.C. gun ban, Justice John Paul Stevens posited:

that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

He stated further that such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

Apparently Justice Stevens isn’t familiar with the wording of the 2nd Amendment, as the very last fourteen words of that Amendment say exactly what Justice Stevens claims there is no evidence of;
“...the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

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There's nothing to INTERPRET about ANY of the first ten Amendments (Our Bill of Rights). Most of them are quite clearly written and are NOT open to much interpretation. For those who'd wish to re-interpret those Amendments, it stands to reason that America's Founders own views (clearly spelled out in such documents as The Federalist Papers) make those abundantly clear.

The Supreme Court’s Vile Left-wing

It’s amazing how much damage four activist Justices can wreak on this country. The same core justices (Breyer, Ginsburg, Stephens, Souter and Kennedy) that inflicted the Kelo decision on America (the decision that allowed Municipalities to use Eminent Domain to take private citizens homes for businesses that might generate higher property taxes) also inflicted the recent Guantanamo decision that gave terrorists the right to be heard in American criminal courts, and the recent decision against Capital Punishment for child rapists.

Four members of that same core (Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stephens) have been in the dissent on very positive decisions like the recent one striking down D.C.’s gun ban.

George Carlin – Counterculture Comedian RIP

*THIS COUNTRY IS FINISHED* GEORGE CARLIN ON COUNTDOWN*

George Carlin died Sunday of heart failure.

Carlin authored and delivered some legendary satire. His comparison between baseball and football is a classic, as is his “Seven Dirty words” bit.

But there was also a darker side to Carlin, who became a 9-11 Truther and a bitter old man who never seemed to mature beyond that youthful idyllic libertinism that most folks go through in their teens, as seen in this clip he did with Keith Olbermann.

And Yet ANOTHER LIE, errr Flip-Flop...

A lot’s been made of Barack Obama’s recent reneging on his promise to abide by the current public financing system.

He’s the first general election candidate to do that since the system was set up.

But overlooked in most of the stories about Obama’s reneging on that earlier promise is the long litany of such uh-huh “changed” views.

After bashing Hillary Clinton for her vote to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, he changed his view AFTER Clinton conceded that point, saying that he NOW accepts that definition.

Back in October, he claimed to support Free Trade and the expansion of NAFTA, but in March, while campaigning in Ohio, he called for renegotiating that trade agreement. NOW he says that NAFTA has had a very positive impact on the U.S. economy.

After months of claiming he’d meet with the leaders of rogue, terror-supporting states “without preconditions” he NOW has outlined a number of, yes, preconditions for such meetings and has said that he sees no reason to meet with Iran’s Ahmadinejad as, “He’s not the most powerful person in Iran.”

Late last week, after publicly signaling opposition to nuclear power, he told Democratic Governors that he’s willing to consider expanding our nuclear generator program.

On the whole, he’s taken to moderating his positions when confronted on them, which is good – supporting free trade and expanding NAFTA, supporting nuclear generation of electricity and putting preconditions on any meetings with terror-supporting states are all positive steps, from this view, although the penchant to say one thing and mean another is troubling, to say the least.

Yet Another MSM Ooooops!!!

Way back in 1986, Newsweek magazine ran a cover story that heralded that it was more likely that single women over 40 were to be killed by a terrorist than to find a husband.

Newsweek apologized and retracted that story in 2006, and yet despite the apology and the retraction the myth still lives.

Of course that was not nearly even close to the truth. In FACT, a woman's chances of marrying over the age of 40 are closer to 40 percent and the chances of being killed by a terrorist on American soil? That’s less than one-hundredth of one percent.

That's some bad math eh?

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Not that that's the only such pernicious myth that's plagued us lately. Remember the ubiquitous, “There are more black men in prison than in College.”

Remember when Barack Obama repeated that inane canard that John Kerry and Jesse Jackson had previously used back in 2004?

Well, in fact, it seems that there are more than twice as many African Americans in COLLEGE than in JAIL.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2000): African Americans in college: 2,224,181

While according to the U.S. DoJ Office of Justice Programs: "Prison and Jail Inmates at MidYear 2003" (p.11):

"Table 13. Number of inmates in state or federal prisons or local jails" -- Black Americans in jail: 899,200.

Ooooops!