Daily News - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

Supremes Consider the Limits of Warantless Searches

It's October, which means that the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court have dusted off their robes and are heading back to the court room for a few months of work.First up on the docket today, Oct. 6 – the opening day of their October 2008 term – was a drug case, but regarding the legal kind, that is: cigarettes. (The question there, in case you're curious, is whether state-law challenges to descriptions of "light" cigarettes – that they contain less tar and, thus, are perhaps less damaging, for example – that were authorized by the Federal Trade Commission are thus pre-empted by federal law. Sounds technical, sure, and perhaps boring, but the outcome could effect the ability of states to enforce their deceptive trade practices laws.)But just this first day will pass before the Supremes get down to considering the drug war, with two cases that will ask them to weigh in on the Fourth Amendment and limits of police search powers.In the first case, Arizona v. Gant, the court will have to decide whether a warrantless search of a car, made after the occupant was arrested and in handcuffs, violates the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure. In the second case, Herring v. U.S., the court will have to decide if it is a violation of a defendant's Fourth Amendment rights to use evidence obtained by one police agency during a search that was based on erroneous information provided by another law enforcement agency.Stay tuned to Reefer Madness for more on these two cases.

Ott Trims List From 38 to Eight...Err, Seven

On Friday, City Manager Marc Ott announced the eight finalists for the top job at the Austin Fire Dept., five months after former Chief J.J. Adame resigned the job. (Adame had been in the hot seat since March, when he received a less than stellar job performance evaluation. He came to Austin from Corpus Christi in 2006.)The list of eight – honed from 38 total applicants, according to firefighterhourly.com – quickly became a list of seven after Longview Chief Michael Pruitt withdrew his name.The remaining finalists come from across the country, with just two plucked from Texas departments: Randy Bruegman, Fresno, Calif., chief; Jimmie R. Bryant, chief in Monroe, La.; Niles Ford, chief of Lincoln, Neb., Fire and Rescue; Richard Garcia, deputy chief of Fire and Rescue support services in Las Vegas; Noel Horan, assistant chief in San Antonio; Rhoda Mae Kerr, chief of the Little Rock, Ark., FD; and Raul Reyes, chief of the Greenville, Texas FD.The remaining candidates will be interviewed by local officials and a group of City Hall-selected community members, and then will host Austin city officials who will visit them on their home turf for a little look-see – a process not unlike that which last year brought us our new top cop, APD Chief Art Acevedo.Publicly, at least, Ott seems rosy about process thus far, and the challenge facing the finalists: "The Austin Fire Department has proven itself one of the leading departments in the nation," he said in a press release. "These candidates know that they will be expected to uphold its traditions of fire safety effectiveness and community responsiveness."

Obama Goes There (Updated)

The over-the-weekend announcement from the John McCain campaign that the gloves are off between him and Barack Obama (what, so practically accusing Obama of wanting to molest your kids is just beanbag?) has already reaped odious rewards – see the media attention lavished on Sarah Palin's ignominious announcement that Obama's taken to "palling around with terrorists," a reference to his acquaintance with Bill Ayers, former member of the Weather Underground, a radical group that did some bombings back when Obama was eight years old. But Ayers and others, like former pastor Jeremiah Wright, are old hat. These names were gurgling up back during the Dem primary – and look how that turned out. But there's one name that hasn't really surfaced yet – one that unquestionably speaks to a candidates darkest, most shameful moment in his career. That candidate, however, is John McCain, and that name is Charles Keating.Keating oversaw the Lincoln Savings and Loan back in the 1980s, and like our current financial crisis, he used his customers' investments to bet on risky financial instruments that ultimately went belly up. The non-FDIC insured deposits were lost, wiping out tens of thousands of accounts, and costing the taxpayers billions. Again, like today, deregulation was responsible for the horrible financial mess – and it was John McCain who advocated for less and less oversight of his pal, investment partner, and donor Keating.Sure, I could lay it out more for you, but Obama can do it better. Over the weekend, he launched KeatingEconomics.com, which witheringly lays out McCain's intervention on Keating's behalf. This is a dark page in McCain's career that he'd prefer to turn. But if McCain's talking about Obama's distant associates, can't Obama talk about Keating, who flew McCain on his private jet nine times, donated $166,000 to his campaign, and whose greed and shoddy accounting directly parallels our current market meltdown?Here's a trailer for the Keating documentary Obama's assembled: UPDATE: Here's the whole 13 minute documentary.