supreme court rules

For this to happen in Kentucky is pretty amazing:

The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Baptist university can't keep $11 million awarded by state lawmakers some four years ago to open a pharmacy school.

The case, which involves the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, had been closely watched by advocates for other church-affiliated schools that have largely been excluded in the past from state funding for construction projects.

A trial court judge had ruled in 2008 that the appropriation to the private, church-affiliated university violates the state constitution. The university's attorneys appealed directly to the supreme court, skipping the court of appeals, in hopes of expediting a decision.

Lawmakers had appropriated $10 million in 2006 to build a pharmacy school on the southeastern Kentucky campus and an additional $1 million for scholarships for pharmacy students.

[SNIP]

The gay-rights group Kentucky Fairness Alliance filed the lawsuit in 2006 after the University of the Cumberlands expelled a gay student for posting comments about his sexual orientation and dating life on the Internet. Attorneys for the organization tried using the expulsion to bolster their arguments in the lawsuit that the school shouldn't receive funding from Kentucky taxpayers.

The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to take up a similar case in the near future. Hopefully the decision will go the same way.

Keith O. just reported it on the air - Kucinich will not be allowed in the debate tonight. Way to pick our leaders NBC!

From Today's Washington Post:

The Supreme Court made it harder Tuesday for whistle-blowers to share in the proceeds from fraud lawsuits against government contractors.

The court ruled 6-2 that James Stone, an 81-year-old retired engineer, may not collect a penny for his role in exposing fraud at the now-closed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver.

Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said Stone was not an original source of the information that resulted in Rockwell International, now part of aerospace giant Boeing Co., being ordered to pay the government nearly $4.2 million for fraud connected with environmental cleanup at the Rocky Flats plant.

Rockwell must pay the entire penalty anyway. The only question before the court was whether Stone would get his cut.

At first read this may appear as a bad ruling, but further analysis of it proves otherwise. Sure the people who whistle blow can't get money, but that now means whistle blowers should be taken more seriously. If they are risking their jobs and careers to expose wrong-doing, then we must consider that the facts they are laying out are truthful.