The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

Cohiba Cigars
Origin: Cuba Manufactured: Hand Made
Gauge: Thick Length: 124
Format: Robusto Ring: 50
Weight: 11,66 gr. Score: 8.6
Presentation: Slide lid box of 25

Cohiba Robustos Review:

This Cohiba vitola has made Robustos one of the most desired Habanos in the market. This one is a real piece of jewellery not to be confused with a simple thick cigar, one of the problems when it comes to define Robustos. There are only nine authentic Robustos and this one is the most complex, because of its strength and excellent joint.

Average user rating


Review #199: By far my favourite cigar in the world. The sweet aroma as it burns, the smoothness of the smoke, even my wife loves the smell! All in all the standard by which all Robustos are measured. - Submitted by luap on March 23, 2011

It begins when a judge can personally benefit from a ruling he or she makes.

A possible event that was, presumably, very important to Judge Walker was directly and favorably affected by the way he ruled.

I feel certain you would have little trouble understanding the concept if you disagreed with Walker's ruling. If a judge with considerable shares in Microsoft issues a ruling in a case against Microsoft; which preserved or increased the value of those share, I've no doubt you would be arguing he should have recused himself because of his obvious personal interest in the case.

n 2001, a conservative, corporate-aligned think tank called the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) gave Justice Clarence Thomas the gift of a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln. At the ceremony presenting Thomas with this very expensive gift, AEI president Christopher DeMuth explained that the bust was “cast in 1914 by the great neo-classical sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman.”

hiser on Jun 21, 2011 at 10:04 am

In 2001, a conservative, corporate-aligned think tank called the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) gave Justice Clarence Thomas the gift of a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln. At the ceremony presenting Thomas with this very expensive gift, AEI president Christopher DeMuth explained that the bust was “cast in 1914 by the great neo-classical sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman.” Watch it:

AEI, however, is not simply in the business of giving luxurious gifts to Supreme Court justices — it is also in the business of litigating before the United States Supreme Court. ThinkProgress uncovered three briefs that AEI filed in Thomas’ Court after Thomas received their $15,000 gift. Thomas recused from none of these three cases, and he either voted in favor of the result AEI favored or took a stance that was even further to the right in each case:

Riley v. Kennedy: AEI filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decision preventing a change in Alabama’s voting law from going into effect. Justice Thomas did not recuse, and he joined the Supreme Court’s decision reversing the lower court.

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1: AEI filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decisionupholding a local school district’s desegregation plan. Thomas joined the majority opinion reversing the lower court’s decision, and he filed a lengthy concurrence defending that result.

Whitman v. American Trucking Association: AEI joined a brief asking the Supreme Court to allow the EPA to consider the costs of implementing new air quality standards before it issued them. Thomas’ concurring opinion went much further than AEI asked him to go, suggesting that the law authorizing EPA to issue these standards is unconstitutional.

Although there is no evidence that AEI gave Thomas the $15,000 gift specifically to buy his vote in a particular case, Thomas’ decision to sit on cases where his benefactor has a demonstrated interest creates a very serious appearance of impropriety. No one would trust a judge to hear their case if they learned that someone on the other side of the case had given that judge a rare and expensive gift.

Finally, a sensible argument.

If Walker actually had no serious desire or intent to marry his partner when he ruled on the case, there would be no reason for him to have recused himself.

If the intent/desire could be proven would you agree Walker should have recused himself?

It's absurd to suggest that a gay judge who wants to get married to his gay partner is an equivalent situation to a woman judge who is happily married or single, but might benefit from her ruling ten years from now when she seeks a divorce or gets married and then seeks a divorce.

The hearing today took place in the courtroom of Chief Judge James Ware, who took over the Prop 8 case after Walker's retirement. Both were George H.W. Bush appointees. Ethics experts were quick and nearly unanimous in opining that this effort to overturn Walker's decision on the basis of his relationship is specious as well as desperate. No claim that a federal judge should have been barred from hearing a case because of race, gender, or religion has ever succeeded, a point made by California Attorney General Kamala Harris in her brief opposing the motion to vacate this ruling: "Just as every single one of the attempts to disqualify judges on the basis of their race, gender, or religious affiliation has been rejected by other courts, this Court should similarly reject Defendant-Intervenors' effort to disqualify Judge Walker based on his sexual orientation."

Still, just because a legal argument is degrading and futile doesn't mean nobody will make it. For as long as there have been bigots in America, litigants have tried to argue that women are too womanly to decide gender cases and that Jews are too Jewish to hear cases involving the first attacks on the World Trade Center. Like ProtectMarriage, these litigants also have tried to dress up their claims as something other than pure bigotry. They never prevail.

The federal recusal statutes provide that judges should be disqualified in cases in which they are actually biased, and also in cases in which their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. As Sherrilyn Ifill wrote in The Root, the effort to besmirch Judge Walker's integrity is eerily similar to earlier campaigns against black and female judges:

In the late 1970s and early 1980s—as a bumper crop of minority federal district judges appointed by President Jimmy Carter presided over employment-discrimination cases brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—recusal motions were filed by defendants seeking to remove black judges from hearing these cases. Black judges pushed back firmly against attempts to question their impartiality and framed what has become the universally accepted understanding among the bench and bar: that judicial bias cannot be assumed based on the racial, gender or other status of the judge.

In one of the most pathetic such efforts, cited by Ifill, litigants in 1975, representing the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, attempted to bounce federal district judge Constance Baker Motley off a suit brought by female lawyers at the firm alleging gender discrimination. The firm argued that Motley would be biased as a woman, an African-American, and a former civil rights litigator. Motley's response is as true for Walker today as it was for herself in 1975: "If background or sex or race of each judge were, by definition, sufficient grounds for removal, no judge on this court could hear this case, or many others, by virtue of the fact that all of them were attorneys, of a sex, often with distinguished law firm or public service backgrounds."

Federal District Judge Leon Higginbotham was faced at about the same time with a motion demanding that he too recuse himself from a case involving African-American plaintiffs claiming discrimination. He replied that "[white] litigants are going to have to accept the new day where the judiciary will not be entirely white and where some black judges will adjudicate cases involving race relations." Opponents of gay marriage will similarly have to accept the reality that gay judges are no more "biased" than heterosexual ones.

Opponents of gay marriage will similarly have to accept the reality that gay judges are no more "biased" than heterosexual ones.