giant steps towards that idea of "liberty and justice for all"...

this illegalist has long been a proponent of the notion that it is unjust to deem someone acting to fulfill acute survival needs guilty of premeditated, harmful activity. i know that there are many who'd disagree with me, but thankfully this week, Justices Thomas, Alito, and Scalia definitely agreed with me.

the supreme court has spoken: the federal identity theft laws can no longer be used against illegal immigrants who use false SSIDs to get jobs.

from the NYT:

“The court’s ruling preserves basic ideals of fairness for some of our society’s most vulnerable workers.... An immigrant who uses a false Social Security number to get a job doesn’t intend to harm anyone, and it makes no sense to spend our tax dollars to imprison them for two years.

"Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said in a concurring opinion that a central flaw in the interpretation of the law urged by the government was that it made criminal liability turn on chance....

"Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in his opinion for the court, said the case should be decided by applying “ordinary English grammar” to the text of the law, which applies when an offender “knowingly transfers, possesses or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person.” The government had argued that the “knowingly” requirement applied only to the verbs in question. Justice Breyer rejected that interpretation, saying that “it seems natural to read the statute’s word ‘knowingly’ as applying to all the subsequently listed elements of the crime.”