† Lower Tolerance For Zero Tolerance (fourth item): In an 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court held that AZ school officials violated the Fourth Amendment ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures" when they strip-searched 13-year-old honor student Savana Redding on a baseless suspicion that she had secreted ibuprofen in her underwear, reports The Wall Street Journal:

The opinion, by Justice David Souter, who is retiring at the end of this term, exempted the assistant principal who ordered the search from liability, finding that it might not have been clear to him that his action was unconstitutional. But the justices left open the possibility that the school district, in Safford, Ariz., could be liable for the violation.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito … joined Justice Souter's opinion, as did Justice Stephen Breyer.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have gone further still, upholding the federal appeals court ruling that left the assistant principal exposed to liability.

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas, as he has before, took the strongest position against student rights and in favor of school administrators' authority.

† Obama Doctrine Taking Shape: Last night, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded by Congress, bestowed its Democracy Award to five Cuban dissidents who spent decades in jail for promoting democracy. Bertha Antúnez, the sister of one of the dissidents, accepted the award on their behalf. During the Bush administration, the president would have also made time to meet with the award winner. But Barack Hussein Obama gave the endowment the cold shoulder, reports The Washington Post:

Carl Gershman, president of the endowment, said the organization asked two weeks ago whether President Obama could meet with [Antúnez] … Gershman said he never got a response. …

The endowment had also asked Obama to issue a message to the Cubans to accompany words of support from Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, dissidents who went on to lead the Czech Republic and Poland, respectively. The message from Obama arrived shortly before the ceremony began - after an inquiry by The Washington Post - with an apologetic note from a National Security Council staffer: "I had my dates confused." …

"I am disappointed, and also surprised since the President said in the campaign that Libertad would be the touchstone on his Cuba policy," Gershman said in an e-mail, using the Spanish word for "liberty." …

Antúnez, who moved to Miami a year ago, said she was disappointed not to meet Obama. "What I'd like is to have the opportunity to tell the president about the situation of the country . . . and tell him of the hope the Cubans have placed in him," she said in an interview. She added that she hoped Obama would not alter the traditional U.S. hard line on Cuba, because "any change could give strength to the government."

† Spitzer Makes Wife Stand On Ceremony: What do former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) have in common? Besides being philanderers, that is? Each of them faced the music alone – without his aggrieved, suffering wife by his side – when facing the media to own up to his marital transgression. Politico reports:

The solo confessional marks a recent shift in what had been a well-honed political playbook. …

The traditional rule book for adultery damage control always recommends something like this: cheating candidate confesses, sheds a tear if he can (and it has always been a he), and then pleads for mercy with a pained, tight-lipped wife standing mutely by his side.

That’s how Suzanne Craig handled it when her husband, then Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig, admitted that he pled guilty to disorderly conduct after he was arrested for lewd behavior in a men's bathroom stall. Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter came clean about his involvement in a Washington, D.C., prostitution ring with his wife, Wendy Baldwin Vitter, standing next to him. And a shell-shocked Silda Wall Spitzer, stood next to her husband, then-New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, after he was caught on a federal wiretap soliciting a high-priced prostitute. …

It was the experience of Silda Spitzer, say experts, that really changed apology attitudes. Although she stood next to her husband through two excursing press conferences, her agonized expression undid any political benefit he might have expected from having her by his side.

† First They Came For The Guns, Then They Came For The Knives (second item): The Obama administration plans to expand the 50-year-old ban on importing "switchblades" to include any pocket knife that can be opened with one hand, reports The Washington Times:

Critics, including U.S. knife manufacturers and collectors, the National Rifle Association, sportsmen's groups and a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill, say the rule change proposed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) would rewrite U.S. law defining what constitutes a switchblade and potentially make de facto criminals of the estimated 35 million Americans who use folding knives. …

The rule change would affect the interpretation of the Switchblade Knife Act of 1958, which defined a "switchblade" as any knife having a blade that opens automatically by hand pressure applied to a button or other device in the handle, or by operation of inertia or gravity. …

The bipartisan Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus, boasting one of the largest memberships on Capitol Hill, last week sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who oversees CBP, urging her to quash the proposed rule change. The letter was signed by 61 Republican and 18 Democratic lawmakers. …

In much the same way that gun rights issues have cut across the partisan divide in Congress, the threat of a government knife grab has especially rankled members from Western and Southern states, regardless of their party.

† States’ Rights Vs. The Feds: The Golden Gate Restaurant Association has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari to overturn an enbanc ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit upholding a law requiring businesses in San Francisco with 20 or more employees to provide health insurance to their employees, reports The National Law Journal:

[T]he 9th Circuit reversed a lower court decision, holding that the ordinance was not pre-empted by the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 because it dealt with contributions, not benefits.

The trade group’s attorney Jeff Tanenbaum tells The National Law Journal that the 9th Circuit ruling is at odds with the 4th Circuit, which came to the opposite conclusion about pre-emption regarding a similar law in MD. Tanenbaum also takes issue with the “novel” distinction the 9th Circuit made between a “contribution” and a “benefit.”

Deputy City Attorney Vince Chhabria adds that the issue of federal pre-emption of state laws under ERISA may soon be moot because of proposed congressional legislation that would require employers to provide health care coverage: “Why would the court want to waste its time on a complicated ERISA preemption issue that could become moot?”

† Prince Charles Is Carbon Neutral. Now We Are (ROTFL) Amused. (third item): The Washington Post reports that Britain’s Prince Charles, the err-to-the-throne, overstepped the bounds of his ceremonial role to meddle in a construction project, setting off a debate on whether royals should be seen and not heard:

The battle between the outspoken heir to the British throne and Richard Rogers, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect of such iconic buildings as the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Millennium Dome in London, centered on an ultra-modernist design by Rogers's firm for the redevelopment of a former army barracks in West London.

Qatari Diar, the investment arm of Qatar's royal family, which owns the site, had plans for a multibillion-dollar housing project and favored Rogers as the architect. But at some point, according to British news reports, Prince Charles sent the Qatari ruler a letter suggesting - royal to royal - that the family consider a more traditional design. …

The scuttling of the project led Rogers to call for an official inquiry into the powers of the prince, whose behavior he has called "unacceptable" and "totally unconstitutional." It has also sparked a broader public debate between royalists and republicans on the role of the monarchy, and of the prince of Wales in particular, in the 21st century. …

Ten prominent architects, including Norman Foster and Frank Gehry, signed a public letter in April accusing Prince Charles of abusing his royal position in the matter. …

Last month, Prince Charles told a group of architects, "In another 25 years, I shall very likely have shuffled off this mortal coil, and so those of you who do worry about my inconvenient interferences won't have to do so anymore."

Then, with a little smile, he added: "Unless, of course, they prove to be hereditary."

Doctor Guillotin’s drastic cure effectively rid the French of their parasitic royals. Of course mass murder is quite rightly frowned upon nowadays, but for republicans the question remains: What will it take before the Brits pull off a bloodless revolution in England? Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, How Did We Get From A Knowledge Economy To An Unskilled And Illiterate Economy?): Now that the unemployment rate has soared to 9.4 percent, skilled workers are hot commodities, reports The New York Times:

[E]mployers are begging for qualified applicants for certain occupations, even in hard times. Most of the jobs involve skills that take years to attain.

Welder is one, employers report. Critical care nurse is another. Electrical lineman is yet another, particularly those skilled in stringing high-voltage wires across the landscape. Special education teachers are in demand. So are geotechnical engineers, trained in geology as well as engineering, a combination sought for oil field work. … And with infrastructure spending now on the rise, civil engineers are in demand to supervise the work. …

For these hard-to-fill jobs, there seems to be a common denominator. Employers are looking for people who have acquired an exacting skill, first through education - often just high school vocational training - and then by honing it on the job. That trajectory, requiring years, is no longer so easy in America, said Richard Sennett, a New York University sociologist.

The pressure to earn a bachelor’s degree draws young people away from occupational training, particularly occupations that do not require college, Mr. Sennett said, and he cited two other factors. Outsourcing interrupts employment before a skill is fully developed, and layoffs undermine dedication to a single occupation. “People are told they can’t get back to work unless they retrain for a new skill,” he said.

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Empire State Repubs Rise Again): In a failed bid to compel the state senate to attend to the people’s business, Gov. David Paterson (D) threatened to sic the fuzz on them and to withhold their paychecks. Senate Dems spent all of five minutes in session on Wednesday (Repubs were no-shows). And with both sides questioning the legality of a special session Paterson called for Thursday, Dems held a session that lasted about four minutes – one minute more than the session held by their Repub counterparts.

In the latest development, The New York Times reports, the two parties “appeared close to a power-sharing deal” Thursday evening that could result in “a normal legislative session by Monday.”

Meanwhile, the two-week stalemate will hit unemployed NYers - 8.2 percent statewide in May, 9 percent in NYC - where it hurts most, reports the paper:

A campaign to increase New York’s unemployment benefits for the first time in a decade has been sidetracked by the political stalemate in Albany - possibly for the rest of the recession.

Despite having the support of the governor, labor leaders and advocates for the unemployed, a bill to raise weekly jobless benefits on July 1 and close the gap in the state’s unemployment trust fund was not addressed by state lawmakers before their regular session ended this week.

The maximum benefit, which had been $405 a week for about 10 years until the federal economic stimulus program temporarily added $25 a week, is significantly smaller than those available to residents of New Jersey and Connecticut. New Jersey’s maximum is $584 a week; Connecticut’s is $576.

The issue was not among those taken up by the Assembly in the final hours of the session that ended early Tuesday, nor was it on the governor’s list of measures to be considered by the Senate in special sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Assembly is not currently scheduled to convene until January.

Well, maybe the state legislature can address the disparity in regional unemployment compensation by the time Paterson loses his job.

† Updates To Previous Posts (Deconstructing Obama’s Cairo Speech):

 [Hat Tip: Image courtesy of Free Us Now. Thanks, BettyJean!]