From: Jim Burnes <jim.burnes@ssds.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 02:17:03 +0800
To: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
Subject: Re: Report on UN conference on Internet and racism
In-Reply-To: <199711190422.XAA14960@users.invweb.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.971119103908.23634C-100000@westsec.denver.ssds.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>    at 06:28 PM, Jim Burnes <jim.burnes@ssds.com> said:
> 
> >Interesting.  I was under the opinion that schooling and "social
> >services" were no more constitutional rights then, say, free food or a
> >pot to piss in.
> 
> Well I have done some more research on this.
> 
> Seems that there is a SC decision in Plyler v Doe 1982 in which the courts
> have ruled that a child (citizen or not) has the *right* to public
> education. This comes out of a Texas case not too differnt from Prop 187
> in California.

Either the SC has a different definition of "right" than the one I 
was taught in civics class in 1973, you misread the decision or
I have the honor of declaring the SC wrong (again).

(I know...how can a lowly citizen like me -- not even a lawyer
have the gall do declare this?  Because I don't get my opinions
from the SC.)

> I'll keep searching but if anyone has a pointer to where this info can be
> found it would be appreciated.
> 
> OK I found Plyler v Doe at:
> 
> http://caselaw.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=457&invol=202
> 

OK.  I'll read this.  To tell you the truth I don't hold a lot of hope for
the SC.  They are the ones that refused to hear the case of the little
girls in public school who were repeatedly strip searched by teachers 'cuz
they might have been hiding 5 dollars. 

All the courts up the the SC ruled that the it was just a case of
"poor judgement".  This reminds me of the Orange County Donald
Scott affair, where the prosecuting attorney of OC, after refusing
to prosecute the government agents involved, said they "lost their
moral compass".  Of course, after having said this, the prosecuting
attorney did not allude to where the agents involved could go to
find their moral compass.

I'm sure some citizen units have an idea.
> 
> It seems that this case is one of the main attacks against Prop 187 which
> AFAIK is still in the courts.
> 

I thought this was recently ruled on by our friends in the SC and 
Prop 187 was found constitutional.

Pretty screwy if you ask me, but the court system doesn't have to
make sense.  Since court decisions seem based on case law and not
any semblance of morality(?) or constitutional contractual 
obligation judges seem free to find the exact bit of case law
that defends their decisions.

Much like some sort of perverse argument between fundamentalists
each basing their reasons on selected excerpts from the bible.
If you have ever had the priveledge to witness this kind of
battle of the mentally unarmed, you know what I mean.

Then again sometimes a judge just pleasantly suprises the hell
out of me.

go figure...


jim