Bookmarking meta-post.

This post is really just for me.  I am under the probably delusional belief that if I actually say I am going to write about something, I will. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

I have written about several cases that were pending before the Supreme Court.  I have been remiss in reading SCOTUSBLOG the past several months, and have not written about the outcome of those cases (or other just as interesting cases).

I need to read and write about the outcome of the Stolen Valor Act case (if the decision came down, I didn't catch it in my haphazard scanning), Golan v. Holder (zombie copyrights -- the Court decided rights can be revived by Congress), the Montana navigable waters case (Montana lost), and one more case I have not written on, Blueford v. Arkansas.  This last was a recent decision, which I know only from the New York Times' article on the case.

The Court decided in Blueford that a person can be retried on all charges even if the jury has has decided to acquit on the most serious if the jury hangs on lesser charges. I need to read the case to see if my immediate and visceral outrage over this is warranted. It was a 6-3 decision, with Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Kagan dissenting. I find it interesting that the ideological break in this case coincided with a break along gender lines as well.  I wonder how many times that has happened since Kagan joined the court.

On its surface -- and an online news article is almost definitionally superficial -- it seems basically unfair.  It reads like the majority was bending over backwards to give the prosecutors what they wanted. Why was it so important that the defendant be convicted on murder charges -- as opposed to negligent homicide?

Was it a technical matter? Does it imply a devotion on the Court to technicalities that favor prosecutors regardless of the impact on fairness or justice? If so, how do I feel about that?  I can see ways in which this might be far less of a major deal than it seems on the surface (other than to Alex Blueford, of course).

But instead of reading and researching these posts (or working on the six other posts from the past month that lie around waiting to be finished) I am sitting at my Starbucks of choice, listening to Latin music, reading Facebook and contemplating .... nothing, really.  I thought of writing a post about the color of the sea to go with "Sky Blue," but am currently being too lazy. I did the research, however, with a little jaunt out to Pescadero State Beach this afternoon.

Time to pack up and go home.

Have a good Memorial Day, everybody.