On January 11, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Palmer v Waxahachie Independent School District, no. 09-409. The issue was whether the Constitution protects the ability of a student at a public high school to wear a T-shirt to school that contains a campaign message. In this case, the student wanted to wear a T-shirt promoting John Edwards for president. The U.S. District Court and the 5th circuit had both ruled against the student, and the case is now over. See this story.
The Hill of January 9 has this story on how the U.S. Defense Department is working to protect the ability of overseas military voters to cast a vote in 2010 that counts.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton will hold oral arguments on Monday, January 11, at 11:30 a.m., in Arizona Green Party v Bennett, 2:09-cv-2412-MHB. The Courthouse is at 401 W. Washington Street in downtown Phoenix, for anyone who may be near there and wishes to watch. The hearing is in room 502.
The issues are: (1) whether the Constitution protects the ability of out-of-state circulators to work on a petition to qualify a previously unqualified party; (2) whether due process demands that the new petition deadline to qualify a new party should not be in effect in 2010, because that change (from March 2010 to February 2010) was not in effect until October 2009, after the Green Party had already planned its timeline strategy for getting the 20,449 needed valid signatures.
This article, and the poll data it describes, suggests that the Green Party of Great Britain is likely to elect its first member to the House of Commons, at the next election. As the story says, Britain is the only major central or western European nation that has never had a Green in its national legislature.
On January 9, Tom Condit died at the age of 72. See this blog post from the Peace & Freedom Party’s blog. Condict lived in Berkeley. He had run for partisan office eight times on the Peace and Freedom ticket, in 1978, 1980, 1988, 1990, 1994, 1996, 2004, and 2006. In 2006, he had been one of the two PFP statewide candidates who polled over 2% of the vote, keeping the party on the ballot. Thanks to John Crockford for the link.
His best showing had been in 2004, when he polled 5.40% for State Senate, in a race that also included a Republican and a Democrat.
