 September 17, October 3 and October 5. Do you know if he heard from any witnesses, or is he simply hearing from either of the parties that may have shown up? I know she didn&apos;t show up, but — what&apos;s the basis for this opinion?
SCHWEITZER: I can&apos;t imagine this court making such a drastic change in custody without it having heard from some witnesses and having some really hard evidence.
VAN SUSTEREN: But you don&apos;t know it? But I mean, you can&apos;t help us out. You can&apos;t help us out.
SCHWEITZER: No. I can tell you this, though, looking at the minute order and reading Commissioner Gordon&apos;s (ph) statements, that he had to have learned of something that was drastic in order to make the change.
VAN SUSTEREN: Or otherwise, he&apos;s out of his mind, but we assume he&apos;s not out of his mind, right?
SCHWEITZER: That&apos;s right. And he&apos;s protecting the privacy of these parties, and so it&apos;s a little hard for us in the public to really determine what&apos;s happening there because he&apos;s respecting their privacy in a lot of ways. In the order, he talks about "my prior orders." He doesn&apos;t specify what those orders were.
VAN SUSTEREN: Everybody knows Gloria, I guess. She represents a client who is a bodyguard who worked — he&apos;s a former bodyguard, worked for Britney from March until May 17. And he&apos;s not seen her since, has no information since May 17. Would it be inappropriate or appropriate in making a custody order now for this judge to consider his declaration when it is stale in time, or ancient?
SCHWEITZER: Greta, I think that you know that a court has to weigh all the evidence, and it just depends on how much weight he&apos;s going to put on this gentleman&apos;s declaration. I would argue that, you know, it is remote and the court shouldn&apos;t consider it greatly, but it has to consider the evidence. This court has to consider all the evidence presented and make some determination. So it&apos;s not irrelevant.
SCHWEITZER: Let me explain this to you, Greta.
SCHWEITZER: Not in my mind. Not in my mind.
SCHWEITZER: I&apos;ve got some problems with the system. But I&apos;m telling you that&apos;s how it works in California.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Well — all right. Go ahead.
SCHWEITZER: In California, our family courts are so congested that the supreme court has allowed trial courts to make significant rulings based on declarations.
SCHWEITZER: A lot of us think that&apos;s wrong, and particularly in something like this, when there&apos;s a change of custody that&apos;s so dramatic.
VAN SUSTEREN: And I agree with you. So court congestion allows for something the rest of us think is probably not right, just sort of like your jails are overcrowded and your sheriffs make decisions on who can get out when (INAUDIBLE) You got an interesting system out there, Don.
SCHWEITZER: Don&apos;t blame me for the system, Greta. I just operate in it.
VAN SUSTEREN: I won&apos;t. I understand totally. I understand. Thank you, Don.can i make autonumber filed in oracle table. how?
Oracle doesn't support an autonumber column. It uses Sequences instead.
but my table is already created. how to make my field sequence?
The Sequence is not part of the table. It is created independently of the table. See the link I posted in my previous response.Justia › US Law › Case Law › Federal Courts › Courts of Appeals › First Circuit › 1992 › Erwin L. Rupert, Clergyman, Native American Church of Theu.s.a., Plaintiff, Appellant, v. Director,...
Erwin L. Rupert on brief pro se.
Barry M. Hartman, Acting Asst. Atty. Gen., Jacques B. Gelin, Peter Van Tuyn, Katherine W. Hazard, Attys., Dept. of Justice, Environment and Natural Resources Div., Michael Mason, Office of Sol., U.S. Dept. of the Interior, and Robin Lepore, Office of Regional Sol., U.S. Dept. of the Interior, on brief for defendant, appellee.
The question in this appeal is whether the federal government can, without violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, (a) prohibit the possession of eagle feathers, but (b) allow members of Native American tribes to use eagle feathers for religious purposes, and (c) refuse to extend that exemption to people who are not Native Americans but who also seek to use eagle feathers for religious purposes. We hold that, under these circumstances, the government can craft an exemption that is limited to Native Americans because such an exemption serves two important governmental goals.
The Bald Eagle Protection Act, 16 U.S.C. § 668 et seq., prohibits the possession of bald eagles and golden eagles, or of any parts of those eagles, such as their feathers. 16 U.S.C. § 668a, however, creates an exemption to the general prohibition; it authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to give permits for the possession of eagles or eagle feathers for, among other things, "the religious purposes of Indian tribes," whenever such possession is "compatible with the preservation of the bald eagle or the golden eagle." The Secretary has issued regulations that describe the criteria for obtaining a permit. They require that the applicant be "an Indian who is authorized to participate in bona fide tribal religious ceremonies." 50 C.F.R. § 22.22.
The appellant, Erwin L. Rupert, is the pastor of an "all-race" church which follows Native American religious customs, including the ceremonial use of eagle feathers. (The government does not, at least for purposes of this appeal, dispute the sincerity of Mr. Rupert's beliefs.) Mr. Rupert has also organized a "tribe" called the "Tribe of the Pahana," which means the tribe of "returned white brothers and sisters." It is clear, however, that Mr. Rupert does not descend from Native Americans and is not a member of any officially recognized Native American tribe. See 25 C.F.R. § 83.7 (in order to obtain recognition as an "Indian tribe," group must show that it "has been identified from historical times until the present on a substantially continuous basis, as 'American Indian', or 'aboriginal' ").
Mr. Rupert applied to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service for a permit to use eagle feathers. He asked the Service either to recognize his Tribe of Pahana as an "Indian tribe" within the meaning of Section 668a, or to grant him dispensation from the requirement that applicants for a permit be members of Native American tribes. The Service refused to grant his application, but passed it on to the Bureau of Indian Affairs as the agency best capable of deciding whether the Tribe of Pahana deserved recognition as a bona fide tribe. The Bureau refused to recognize Mr. Rupert's group as a tribe because it did "not consist of Native American Indian descendants who are descended from a specific historical tribe...."
Mr. Rupert then sued the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. He claimed that Section 668a, as the Director had construed it, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which commands that Congress shall make "no law... respecting an establishment of religion...." The magistrate-judge before whom the parties consented to proceed granted summary judgment to the defendant, and this appeal followed.
Mr. Rupert does not challenge the government's power to ban the use of eagle feathers for all purposes, including religious ceremonies. See Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 110 S. Ct. 1595, 108 L. Ed. 2d 876 (1990) (generally applicable, neutral criminal prohibition does not violate Free Exercise Clause even if it proscribes conduct that litigant's religion prescribes). But, he contends, once the government decides to create an exemption for religious purposes, it must do so even-handedly. An exemption for all who use eagle feathers for religious purposes would not be an impermissible establishment of religion, see Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 409, 83 S. Ct. 1790, 1797, 10 L. Ed. 2d 965 (1963) (general religious exemption "reflects nothing more than the governmental obligation of neutrality in the face of religious differences"), but an exemption that frees one religious group from the prohibition but leaves another bound by it offends the principle of neutrality that is at the core of the Establishment Clause. See Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 244, 102 S. Ct. 1673, 1683, 72 L. Ed. 2d 33 (1982) ("The clearest command of the Establishment Clause is that one religious