Supreme Court Expands Government Powers on Sexual Predators

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A really bad precedent. So that Bonnie and Kagan can feel safer, we can now be held beyond our sentence ( life anyone? ). I wonder how long it will be before sentences are all "sort of till we feel safe", that could be a heck of a long time. The Supreme Court seems to have lost track of their job - Bork was right, they are intellectually not up to the task.

gg of VT 3:15PM May 20, 2010

Only a communist with no knowledge of our Contsitution, Declaration, Common and Natural Law would write such an article.

Rapists and Child Molesters should get the SAME sentence as murderers, Life or Death according to their state. It's the liberals and statists like Erbe/Kagan/Obama who promote their evil behavior by enacting light punishments.

It is a miscarriage of justice that once a person serves their criminal sentence to society to then still be suject to the whimes of society without having committed another crime. Once they serve their time, let them go. If they do it again, execute them. But then, that would hurt the Democrat Party!

Bonnie, turn from the darkness of Satan and Statism and look to the light of Truth provided by Christ Jesus.

Socialism in ANY form is immoral and EVIL!

swathdiver of FL 3:14PM May 20, 2010

Reading Erbe's pathetic attempt at a hatchet job made me angry. As a rape survivor, I find it offensive that the left wing media tries to exploit the subject for agenda, while ignoring actual examples of sexual predators, for the same agenda.

It was bad enough when the media ignored the NAMBLA endorsed molestation and murders of two young boys, by separate gay males, who felt encouraged to stalk, kidnap, brutally rape and murder 2 young boys one in Massachusetts, Jeffrey Curley, and another in Kentucky back in the '90s, but in 2003, when Patricia Ireland was employed by the YWCA, and sought to exploit that position to promote NAMBLA's sister organization, one for lesbian pedophile predators, selling their offensive t-shirts in YWCA's and was fired when this was exposed, the media refused to report this.

Ms Erbe is a disgrace, and anyone, male or female who pays heed to her twisted rhetoric is no better.

Jenny of RI 10:25PM May 19, 2010

US News's Erbe Suggests Justices Thomas, Scalia Soft on Sexual Predators

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2010/05/19/us-news-contributor-erbe-suggests-justices-thomas-scalia-are-soft-sexu

StewartIII of MD 8:27PM May 19, 2010

Obama checklist for Kagan:

RADICAL....... .......check

feminist............. check

anti-baby..... ...... check

pro-lezbian...........check

anti- white male......check

fanatical liberal.....check

ideologue.............check

hyper partisan........check

ACLU drone............check

anti military.........check

obama worshipper......check

And to think that the indepedants in this country actually fell for "Obama the great" when he campaigned on the promise that he was a uniter not a divider. Kagan is an extreme, feminist, hack, who offends an overwhelming majority of this country, much like Bonnie Erbe does with her drivel. Thanks Obama, for representing mainstream America as you promised. I assure we will not forget come Nov 2010 or 2012.

steven of MD 3:53PM May 19, 2010

Conservatives only care about the Constitution when it benefits them and their ideology otherwise that's a lie. Like allowing a President to go into war without congress. Like not allowing protestors outside of the Republican convention in NYC in 2004.

It's the same as their lies about "big government" -- they only care about big government when it's the opposing party in power.

It's the same with Majority rule. As in Bush didn't have a majority of the vote in 2000 instead letting a conservative supreme court decide the election.

Since the day I was born when Eisenhower was in office the hyprocrisy (do as I say not as I do) of the Republican party was evident in people like McCarthy and Nixon - both criminal voices of the Republican party. Then we moved on to the Oliver Teflon North Reagan white house.

Then there are the conservative posters here and like all conservatives get preachy about Patriotism until they lose power but then advocate REVOLUTION! As with the poster from California and his/her patron saint Ms. Palin.

The conservatives tout family values while playing in men's rooms or engaging prostitutes.

They scream about patriotism as Cheney, Bush 43 and Gingrich but never had the cajones to actually serve their country in the military or at least stare down the barrel of an enemies gun.

GOP and Conservatives - the party of no, the party of hypocrites and draft dodgers (and I only mention the draft dodgers because those same people in some cases were war mongers!

But what they have proved to be are masters of spin and deception and playing the conservative lower and middle classes like fiddles!

Thanks to the conservatives we have two wars, a enormous deficit, high unemployment for which they never took any accountability and still don't. They blamed everything that happened during the Bush years on Clinton and now their blaming everything they did on a nascent administration.

All that they do they do while getting paid by MY tax dollars which I would rather see go to feeding and housing the needy then fattening the pockets of any more politician right or left.

David Bronx of NY 10:08AM May 19, 2010

On just what Conservatives think:

"What's interesting about this ruling is that the two dissenters were arguably the most conservative on a majority conservative court: Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. One would think that law and order conservatives would be more concerned about keeping sexual predators away from the public than about a very minor expansion of federal powers. Apparently not."

Conservatives are concerned about making sure that the Constitution applies equally to all, and that the government does not get the power to arbitrarily incarcerate those whom its deems "undesireable", with the term being undefined.

Unfortunately (if that's how you wish to look at it), this desire to make sure that all people are treated equally (in this case meaning that they have served the sentance they were handed for their unlawful activity) will sometimes mean that some very undesireable people are let loose out on the street.

Unfortunate, but that's one of the prices we must face if we are to remain a free society.

enzo of IN 9:11PM May 18, 2010

While I admit that I haven't read the dissent in its entirety, it seems that for Justice Thomas it came down to strict interpretation of the Constitution. That is pretty consistent with his track record. While most people think it's fine and dandy to lock up sexual predators and throw away the key, this is potentially a dangerous precedent.

All Americans, regardless of political leanings, should be cautious about abandoning principles of liberty and justice out of fear.

A. M. of CA 6:31PM May 18, 2010

Obviously, it is dangerous to deny Constitutional protection to anyone. Incarceration for an "indefinite" period - determined by government fiat is a dangerous precedent.

I'm also more than a little uncomfortable with Obama and Holder talking about stripping rights away from those, whom the government determines, are members of a terrorist organization. The potential for "political prisons" - like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Castro and the current Chinese government maintain is obvious.

I'm more than a little ashamed of Roberts and Alito - They should know better.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 2:20PM May 18, 2010

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Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.

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