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Breyer knows best that holding a person on death row for 33 years violates the Eighty Amendment.

But haven’t the delays been attributed to the numerous appeals and challenges to his sentence by the defendant?

It might be argued that Valle, not the State, is responsi- ble for the long delay. But Valle replies that more than two decades of delay reflect the State’s failure to provide the kind of trial and penalty procedures that the law requires. Regardless, one cannot realistically expect a defendant condemned to death to refrain from fighting for his life by seeking to use whatever procedures the law allows.

It might also be argued that it is not so much the State as it is the numerous procedures that the law demands that produce decades of delay. But this kind of an argu- ment does not automatically justify execution in this case. Rather, the argument may point instead to a more basic difficulty, namely the difficulty of reconciling the imposi- tion of the death penalty as currently administered with procedures necessary to assure that the wrong person is not executed.

Combine this with lethal drones and we got a situation.

One would arm drones with facial recognition software that can remember faces so targets can’t disappear into crowds. The other sounds far more unsettling: a human behavior engine capable of stacking informant info against intelligence data against other evidence to predict a person’s intent. That’s right: the act of determining whether you are friend or foe could be turned over to the machines.

Judge O’Scannlain concurred separately in the panel opinion finding moot the district court’s opinion finding DADT unconstitutional.

In the end, careful application of the Supreme Court’s “established method” in substantive due process cases shows that Lawrence did not establish any fundamental right—let alone any right relevant to the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in the military.

“[J]udicial self-restraint requires” federal courts “to exer- cise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground” in the field of substantive due process. Flores, 507 U.S. at 302 (internal quotation marks omitted). This note of caution is especially important in cases such as this one, where moral and personal passions run high and where there is great risk that “the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause [will] be subtly transformed into the policy prefer- ences” of unelected judges. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 720. The Constitution entrusts to “public debate and legislative action” the task of identifying and protecting rights that are not rooted in our constitutional text, history, or traditions. Id. This case involves precisely such a right, and legislative action achieved the goals pursued in this lawsuit. That was the proper resolu- tion: although Log Cabin had every right to bring this suit, only Congress—not the courts—had the authority under our Constitution to vindicate Log Cabin’s efforts here.

In this highly charged area, we constitutionally inferior courts should be careful to apply established law. Failure to do so begets the very errors that plagued this case. That fail- ure culminated in a ruling that invalidated a considered con- gressional policy and imposed a wholly novel view of constitutional liberty on the entire United States. The Supreme Court’s cases tell us to exercise greater care, cau- tion, and humility than that. Indeed, our constitutional system demands more respect than that. When judges sacrifice the rule of law to find rights they favor, I fear the people may one day find that their new rights, once proclaimed so boldly, have disappeared because there is no longer a rule of law to protect them.

O’Scannlain went out of his way to hold that the district court did not properly apply Lawrence v. Texas, failed to apply Washington v. Glucksberg, and should not be relied upon by anyone. No one else joined his opinion. So I guess the district court opinion can be relied on by others?

Funny also because in Nordyke v. King (2009 version), O’Scannlain wrote an opinion finding a right to keep and bear arms through substantive due process. I guess those rights are ok.

From the WSJ:

A generation of science fiction visionaries has been proved wrong. They imagined the advance of information technology, computers and robots would enable man to go more places, make more things, and do more things in the physical world. The factories staffed with robots exist, but nobody cares about them. It turns out that what people want to do when liberated by technology is consume media, which we’d say is a subset of communicating with each other. A Star Trek episode once sneered at a civilization so advanced that its members were giant passive noggins that needed humans to give them thrills. Star Trek may have accidentally hit upon the truth: The real thrill is to be a giant, passive head plugged into everything.

I like that imagery.

Mr. LaHood, who was also angry at Mr. Christie, demanded that New Jersey repay all of the $271 million in federal money that had gone toward the early stages of building the tunnels. The governor responded by declaring, “We are not paying the money back.”

In April, Mr. LaHood threatened to use tough methods to recoup the government’s investment if Mr. Christie would not agree to “a workable payment schedule.” Taking a characteristically combative stance, Mr. Christie hired a prominent Washington law firm, Patton Boggs, to argue that the state should not have to reimburse the federal government.

That effort failed to convince federal officials, though it cost the state about $1.2 million in legal bills. All the while, interest and penalties were accruing on the $271 million debt.

So, the $95 million settlement disclosed on Friday amounted to a compromise. In a statement, Mr. LaHood said the settlement would cover all of the $51 million in federal money that came from a program for new transit projects. The balance, he said, would amount to almost half the money that the project received through President Obama’s economic stimulus program.

But Mr. Christie framed the agreement as a victory for New Jersey taxpayers. He said the state would pay back the $95 million over five years and expected to recover more than $100 million from insurance companies in prepaid liability premiums on the canceled project.

“This represents a fraction of the federal government’s initial claim and won’t cost New Jerseyans any additional money,” Mr. Christie said.

The Governor of New Jersey refused to pay back $270 million to the Feds for refusing to participate in the construction of tunnels between Manhattan and the Graden State. After some negotiations using the law firm as an intermediary, at the cost of $1.2 million, the parties reached a settlement, and only had to pay back $95 million. Pay $1 million, save $170 million. Seems like Patton Boggs did a good job here!