Archive for June, 2008
Candidates for Lieutenant Governor
By Randy Evans – All indications are the Lieutenant Governor, Casey Cagle, will be a candidate for Governor of Georgia in 2010. Governor Sonny Perdue is term limited, opening the door for Lieutenant Governor Cagle, Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, and others to seek Georgia’s highest office. With the rumors persisting that former Governor Roy Barnes is interested in getting his old job back, it could actually be a competitive race. If former Secretary of State Cathy Cox jumps in, it could be downright interesting in both primaries and the General Election. Yet, it could be the open Lieutenant Governor race that offers the most intrigue.
Unlike the President and Vice President, the Lieutenant Governor in Georgia runs on a separate ticket than the Governor. As a result, it is possible to have a Republican Governor (like Sonny Perdue) with a Democratic Lieutenant Governor (like Mark Taylor). If that was not odd enough, the Lieutenant Governor’s job (other than succeeding the Governor in the event of the Governor’s death) is to preside over the Georgia Senate. Yet, the Georgia Senate can be controlled by one party while the Lieutenant Governor is from a different party. Since the Georgia Senate can actually sets its own rules and picks its own committees (when it wants to), the Office of Lieutenant Governor has little meaning other than what the Governor and the Senate want to give it.
The Enemy Granted U.S. Constitutional Protection
By Randy Evans – CNN accurately reported the impact of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush on June 12, 2008 when it said: “The decision marks another legal blow to the Bush administration’s war on terrorism policies.” It is a blow to the war on terror.
The Boumediene decision involved whether terrorist aliens held at Guantanamo who have been designated as enemy combatants after being captured in Afghanistan or elsewhere abroad by the United States have the same Constitutional rights to habeas corpus protection as United States citizens. Seemingly oblivious to the implications, the Supreme Court held in a five to four decision that alien enemy combatants do have the same constitutional privileges of habeas corpus as American citizens. (Habeas corpus petitions are the procedure used to challenge criminal detentions in the United States.)
