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As an affordable housing professional, I can tell you that Gov. Jim Pillen was right 鈥 affordable housing is a problem in Nebraska. Unfortunately, his tax plan would have directly increased the cost to build housing and pushed the price of new housing further out of reach for working families and seniors.
We need people in the Legislature who are not beholden to Pillen but who will do what鈥檚 right for everyday Nebraskans. That鈥檚 why I support Nicki Behmer Popp for Legislature.
She is a Realtor who understands housing needs, she voted against property tax hikes as an elected official, and she spoke out against Pillen鈥檚 crazy plan 鈥 unlike current Sen. Carolyn Bosn who was appointed by Pillen.
If we are serious about housing, we need leaders who understand the issues and cast their vote with the people not the powerful.
Ward Hoppe, Lincoln
I am writing as a concerned voter in the upcoming election. There are two ballot initiatives that have me quite concerned as they are making a change to the Nebraska Constitution. The state constitution has been amended a few times since our founding in 1867, but once amended by the citizens of Nebraska, it becomes difficult to take the amendment back. Nothing has ever been taken out of our constitution due to the extensive process to change it.
The Protect Women and Children Initiative (Initiative 434) is a more common-sense solution, protecting both women and children by upholding safety standards. It establishes scientific terms setting clear parameters for women and their physician and preserves parental notification. In the Declaration of Independence set forth by this country鈥檚 forefathers, it says 鈥淲e hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.鈥 Protect Women and Children gives those without a voice a right to life. Vote 鈥淔or鈥 434.
There is much on our ballot this election year. Please take the time to research what is on your ballot so you can go into the ballot box educated and well informed on how to vote. Vote 鈥淔or鈥 434, so we can continue to keep Nebraska鈥檚 common-sense protections.
Glenda Ward, Lincoln
As the former chair of the Legislature鈥檚 Judiciary Committee, I was puzzled to see Sen. Carolyn Bosn and her campaign touting her work protecting vulnerable children but not telling the full story.
While it鈥檚 true she was a prosecutor at one time, she turned her back on this experience and our most vulnerable citizens when she proudly led the fight against restoring access to justice for child sexual assault survivors. Despite Bosn鈥檚 filibuster the Legislature passed this long overdue measure 28-17 with strong bipartisan support, including from some of the most conservative state senators.
Passage of this bill finally delivered justice to families who sought to hold schools accountable when their children have been sexually assaulted. Gov. Jim Pillen vetoed this measure, vaguely citing some unrelated concerns about property taxes.
Bosn鈥檚 and Pillen鈥檚 actions came as a blow to impacted children and families, denying them justice necessary to access medical treatment and counseling services to cope with trauma. Voters need to ask themselves if they want a state senator who will fight to give special legal protections to big government wrongdoers, or do they want a state senator who will support our most vulnerable kids? Please vote for independent candidate Nicki Behmer Popp. She will side with child victims of sexual assault 鈥 not Pillen and his big government interests who want continued immunity when they have a role in hurting kids.
Steve Lathrop, Omaha,
former state senator
The article 鈥Competing initiative may lead to confusion鈥 was not very clarifying. I believe both initiatives 434 and 439 have divided both camps and can be simply explained.
The pro-life camp is divided because 434 puts abortion language into our state constitution for the first time, under the guise of protecting the unborn in the second and third trimester. So pro-life people who believe the life of a person begins at conception are torn whether to support 434.
The pro-choice camp is divided because 439 puts abortion in our state constitution using the language of 鈥減rotect the health of the pregnant patient,鈥 likely including physical, mental and emotional health, therefore has no limitation on when an abortion can occur. So pro-choice people who believe a woman has a right to abortion early in the pregnancy but aren鈥檛 supportive of abortion up to time of birth are torn whether to support 439.
Our state constitution says in Article 1 section 1 鈥滱ll persons ... have certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness ... and such rights shall not be denied or infringed by the state.鈥
Article 1, section 3 says, 鈥淣o person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.鈥 If either initiative passes, our state constitution will be changed and will be, by default, redefined for the unborn.
Charlotte Ralston, Lincoln
Noah Feldman
There are plenty of reasons to wonder why a sitting Supreme Court justice would choose to co-author a book called "Over Ruled" arguing that the U.S. has too many laws.
But the strangest aspect of Neil Gorsuch鈥檚 new volume is that it rests on a contradiction. The problem that most bothers Gorsuch is prosecutors using laws to charge people with crimes in ways that the laws鈥 authors never intended 鈥 and that is almost entirely the product of textualism, Gorsuch鈥檚 favorite method of interpreting statutes.
Textualism is a legal theory that says laws should be interpreted according to their words, not according to their common-sense purpose. For an example, consider the story behind the 2015 Supreme Court case of Yates v. United States, which Over Ruled discusses extensively in its first chapter.
Yates, a commercial fisherman, was criminally charged with catching undersized fish in the Gulf of Mexico, then destroying the evidence by throwing those fish away. A federal jury convicted Yates on two separate charges. One was unproblematic: destroying property to prevent seizure by federal agents. Yates had no basis to challenge this conviction, and he didn鈥檛.
The other charge, the one that reached the Supreme Court, was a serious reach. Federal prosecutors charged Yates with violating a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that criminalizes the destruction of 鈥渁ny record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation 鈥 of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States.鈥 According to the prosecutors, the 鈥渢angible objects鈥 in question were the fish.
Gorsuch and his co-author, Janie Nitze, are perfectly correct to see this charging decision as mistaken. The relevant provision of Sarbanes-Oxley, passed in the aftermath of the Enron scandal, was clearly aimed at document destruction, not throwing dead fish overboard.
And the Supreme Court was right to overturn that part of the conviction. In an opinion written by liberal lion Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court explained why it made no sense to interpret the words 鈥渢angible object鈥 outside of the context of Sarbanes-Oxley and its focus on documents. To bring the point home, Ginsburg quoted a 1932 Supreme Court precedent explaining that 鈥渕eaning well may vary to meet the purposes of the law.鈥 That meaning could 鈥渂e arrived at by a consideration of the language in which those purposes are expressed, and of the circumstances under which the language was employed.鈥
In other words, the purpose of the law matters. What the prosecutors got wrong was that they ignored the purpose of Sarbanes-Oxley and looked only at its words.
Here鈥檚 the catch (if you will): If Neil Gorsuch stands for any idea in his time on the Supreme Court, it is that purpose must not matter in interpreting statutes. Neither should context. Only the words count.
In fact, textualism was behind the dissent in the Yates case, written by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by most of the court鈥檚 conservatives. It鈥檚 not hard to imagine that if Gorsuch had been on the court at the time, he would have voted to uphold Yates鈥 conviction.
So long as judges insist on reading statutes without reference to their purpose or context, prosecutors will 鈥 understandably 鈥 charge defendants according to the literal words of the statute. Gorsuch鈥檚 pet theory is the reason prosecutions like Yates鈥檚 happen at all.
If, however, judges look to a law鈥檚 purpose, it follows that prosecutors won鈥檛 have the same incentive to try to stretch statutes to cover cases that fall within their literal words but not their obvious purpose.
That sensible point of view has recently been expressed in a different book. Earlier this year, retired Justice Stephen Breyer 鈥 who joined Ginsburg鈥檚 opinion in Yates 鈥 published "Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism." The title may be a bit clunky, but the main point is a sensible one that Breyer has been making for many years: Textualism is a terrible idea because it ignores statutory purpose. To be 鈥減ragmatic,鈥 in Breyer鈥檚 sense, is to use common sense and consider purpose and context in interpreting the law.
The upshot of all this is that Gorsuch is part of the problem he claims to want to solve 鈥 a big part. There鈥檚 a simple, low-cost solution to the problem of prosecutorial overreach: Interpret the law according to its purpose, not its literal words.
Gorsuch鈥檚 textualism amounts to judicial endorsement of the idea that prosecutors should charge based on words, not common sense. That鈥檚 the idea that should be overruled.
Noah Feldman writes for Bloomberg Opinion.
In the first seven months of the state prison system's new medical director's tenure, a troubling trend has emerged.
Under Jerry Lee Lovelace Jr.'s watch, the denial and deferral rate of medical consult requests in the Nebraska Department of Corrections was about 15 times higher during his first seven months on the job than during the past 25 months of his predecessor, according to data from January 2021 to June 2024 that the York News-Times reported on earlier this month.聽
The denials and deferrals included critical cancer screenings like colonoscopies and mammograms and orthopedic and dental care, spanning nearly all of the department's facilities and rightfully leading to questions and concerns from both incarcerated individuals and advocates.
Incarcerated individuals seeking to see prison medical staff must first submit a form to a nurse, who may refer the individual to the facility's health provider. If the health provider deems outside medical care is needed, a "consult" request, thousands of which are sent to the prison system's medical director.
Lovelace, who was appointed in October 2023, has said the review process for consult requests is 鈥渂ased on medical necessity, community standard of care and InterQual criteria 鈥 evidence-based guidelines used by health care organizations to assess the appropriateness of clinical care.鈥 Such requests get four assessments:聽approval, partial approval, need additional information or an alternative treatment plan.
While this may indicate that not every deferral or denial is the end of the story, the rate at which such requests are handled certainly raises questions at a time when the state's prisons are over capacity. At the very least, incarcerated individuals under the state's care should receive treatment when they need it, so that when and if they reenter society, they can expect to have their health intact.聽
The Journal Star editorial board concluded its endorsements Sunday with its pick in the presidential race (Vice President Kamala Harris). The board also endorsed in the 1st and 2nd Congressional District races (Rep. Mike Flood and state Sen. Tony Vargas), the paid sick leave measure (for), medical marijuana (for) and Referendum Measure 435 (to repeal LB1402, which gave state money to private schools). While the Senate races and competing abortion issues are of vital public interest, we were unable to endorse in those races before Monday鈥檚 deadline for letters to the editor. We view our editorial board endorsements as the start 鈥 or at least part 鈥 of the conversation, so we chose not to endorse in those races because we could not give readers time to respond to our endorsement.
鈥 Dave Bundy, editor
