From: sheriffcoltrane23x@gmail.com   
      
   JEALOUSY, SEX, POISON, AND THE 10TH AMENDMENT: THIS SUPREME COURT CASE HAS IT   
   ALL!    
   SUPREME COURT DISPATCHES    
   ORAL ARGUMENT FROM THE COURT.    
   FEB. 22 2011 6:34 PM    
   The Case of the Poisoned Lover    
   The Supreme Court gets its sexiest case ever, but all it wants to talk about   
   is standing.    
      
   By Dahlia Lithwick    
   A woman tries to poison her husband's lover; the court discusses vinegar and   
   goldfish. Click image to expand.    
   A woman tries to poison her husband's lover; the court discusses vinegar and   
   goldfish    
   When the Lifetime Channel casts the movie version of Bond v. U.S., it will   
   doubtless pit someone Valerie Bertinelli-ish against someone Judith Light-like   
   and leave all the good 10th Amendment stuff on the cutting room floor. That   
   would be too bad, since    
   the constitutional soap opera underpinning the case may prove to be the most   
   interesting part. Someone in the press gallery this morning at oral argument   
   even suggested the title for the Lifetime movie: The Burning Thumb.    
      
    Dahlia Lithwick    
   DAHLIA LITHWICK    
   Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate.    
      
   Carol Anne Bond was a microbiologist living in suburban Philadelphia who was   
   delighted to learn that her best friend Myrlinda Haynes was preg   
   ant--delighted, that is, until she discovered that the father of Myrlinda's   
   baby was Bond's husband of 14 years,    
   Clifford. (I'm thinking David Hasselhoff or some other generic '70s baddie).   
   Initially Carol sought her revenge against Myrlinda in standard    
   ifetime-movie-of-the-week fashion, slashing photos and threatening her over   
   the telephone: "I [am] going to make    
   your life a living hell" and "Dead people will visit you." She also tried to   
   get her best friend fired. The result of all this was a 2005 conviction in   
   state court for Carol Anne Bond for harassment.    
      
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   And that's around the time Bond made the jump from Lifetime to the Cartoon   
   Network. In a plot likened by Garrett Epps to something cooked up by Wile E.   
   Coyote, Bond next began smearing poisonous chemicals--including an   
   arsenic-based chemical, 10-chloro-   
   10H-phenoxarsine, which she had stolen from her work--on Haynes's car and   
   mailbox. * This happened 24 times between 2005 and 2007, and on one occasion   
   Haynes burned her thumb on the highly dangerous chemicals. When Haynes   
   reported the attacks to her    
   local police, they told her the white powder must be cocaine and suggested she   
   maybe clean her car more often. Luckily for her, her letter carrier leaped   
   into action and alerted the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which through   
   surveillance and good    
   detective work finally cracked the case. Bond was charged with a violation of   
   18 U.S.C. § 229, a statute that implements the 1993 Chemical Weapons   
   Convention. She pleaded guilty in federal court and received a six-year   
   sentence and nearly $12,000 in    
   fines and restitution.    
      
   Bond's lawyers contend that had her case been filed under state law in a   
   Pennsylvania court, her sentence would have been three to 25 months. The use   
   of a federal chemical weapons treaty to charge her was an impermissible   
   intrusion on state's rights,    
   they say, arguing that 18 USC §229 is unconstitutional under the 10th   
   Amendment, which provides that "[t]he powers not delegated to the United   
   States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved   
   to the States respectively, or to    
   the people."    
      
   In case you missed Fashion Week, I am here to tell you that everyone who is   
   anyone will be wearing the 10th Amendment this year. It is, at least for some   
   members of the Tea Party, this season's three-cornered hat, and it's been   
   invoked lately to    
   challenge everything from President Obama's health care legislation to   
   expansive federal criminal laws.    
      
   Everything that I have just revealed to you--salacious and const   
   tutional--might have made for a fine cable movie and an even better oral   
   argument. The problem is that the 3rd Circuit eventually ruled that Bond   
   lacked standing to challenge her conviction,   
    finding that only states, not individuals, can bring challenges under the   
   10th Amendment. So instead of debating the merits of trying to poison your   
   husband's lover or the scope of the 10th Amendment's reservation of power to   
   the states, all of oral    
   argument in today's case suffocates under an airless blanket of "standing   
   doctrine." And standing doctrine is where all interestingness goes to die.    
      
   Former Solicitor General (and Slate contributor) Paul Clement represents Carol   
   Bond this morning, and although it must be killing him not to talk about black   
   widows, broken promises, and villainous lovers in bad mustaches, Clement   
   sticks to the standing    
   question. The gist of his argument is perfectly reasonable: His client   
   "clearly satisfies" the court's "test for standing. Indeed, it is hard to   
   imagine an injury more particularized or concrete than six years in federal   
   prison."    
      
   Clement advances the argument that "the structural provisions of the   
   Constitution are there to protect the liberty of citizens." He explains that   
   the states should have authority to resolve their own criminal justice   
   matters, and "in this case the state    
   has a real legitimate interest in law enforcement."    
      
   He is interrupted by Justice Samuel Alito. "Doesn't that depend on the nature   
   of the chemical that's involved?" he asks. "Suppose the chemical was--was   
   something that people would normally understand as the kind of chemical that   
   would be used in a    
   chemical weapon? Let's say it's sarin." Sarin is a very, very bad chemical   
   that kills people.    
      
   "This isn't sarin," Clement replies. "There is something sort of odd about the   
   government's theory that says that 'I can buy a chemical weapon at   
   Amazon.com.' "    
      
   Justice Stephen Breyer challenges Clement on the fact that the one most   
   important case in this area is a 1939 decision that holds that even utility   
   companies, which are closer to being a statelike entity than to being an   
   individual, have no standing to    
   bring suits under the 10th  Amendment. Clement replies that the court should   
   acknowledge that it's not good law anymore.    
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)