A three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit just issued a brief order lifting its stay of a decision striking down Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:

Appellee/cross-appellant’s motion to lift this court’s November 1, 2010, order granting a stay of the district court’s judgment pending appeal is granted. In their briefs, [the United States] do[es] not contend that 10 U.S.C. § 654 is constitutional. In addition, in the context of the Defense of Marriage Act, the United States has recently taken the position that classifications based on sexual orientation should be subjected to heightened scrutiny. [The United States] state[s] that the process of repealing Section 654 is well underway, and the preponderance of the armed forces are expected to have been trained by mid-summer. The circumstances and balance of hardships have changed, and [the United States] can no longer satisfy the demanding standard for issuance of a stay.

Perhaps most significantly, today’s order shows that the Department of Justice’s recent recognition that anti-gay laws are highly constitutionally suspect is producing results. The court expressly relied on this determination by DOJ in reinstating the injunction against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

At the same time, however, it does not necessarily follow that the panel would have also struck down DOMA or otherwise resolved a gay rights question on the merits. Today’s order dealt with the narrow question of whether or not a trial court decision striking down DADT must be stayed while the decision is still under appeal. Before issuing a stay, a court must consider factors such as whether a stay will “substantially injure” other parties and whether a stay is “in the public interest.” Today’s order concludes that these factors no longer weigh in favor of a stay now that DADT repeal is imminent and DOJ concedes its unconstitutionality.

Nevertheless, today’s decision is an important sign that the Obama Administration’s recognition that gay people are entitled to the same equal protection of the law as all other Americans is paying dividends, and it could be a sign of things to come on the Supreme Court. Today’s panel included Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, a former law clerk to Justice Kennedy who remains very influential with his former boss.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) plans to move forward with an execution on Thursday, despite the fact that this execution unambiguously violates the United States’ treaty obligations:

Humberto Leal Garcia, Jr. is a Mexican citizen who was sentenced to death by a Texas jury in 1994 for rape and murder. Texas provided Garcia with court-appointed lawyers, but at no point during his arrest or trial did the state inform him of his right to contact the Mexican consulate, which could have provided him legal aid. This right is guaranteed by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, signed by the U.S., Mexico, and 171 other nations. In its treatment of Garcia, Texas was in violation of international law.

It is important to note what, exactly, Texas is being asked to do here. No one questions Texas’ right to try, convict and punish Garcia, who appears to have committed an horrific crime. Nor does Texas have any obligation not to impose the death penalty on Garcia under the Vienna Convention — once Garcia is convicted using appropriate legal procedures, Texas may kill him without violating this treaty.

Rather, Texas is simply being asked to allow Garcia to speak to someone from the Mexican government before it tries and kills him, and even this is too much for Rick Perry.

Perry can get away with thumbing his nose at America’s treaty obligations because of a 2008 Supreme Court decision holding that, even though Texas’ treatment of foreign nationals such as Garcia violates international law, our treaty obligation is not “self-executing” and therefore is more or less unenforceable by the individuals it is intended to benefit.

But Texas’ refusal to honor this treaty places Perry in some very lonely company. North Korea honored the Vienna Convention when it took two American journalists captive in 2009. Indeed, Euna Lee, one of those two journalists, believes that her access to U.S. officials “protected me from any physical mistreatment by my captors.” Likewise, Iran allowed consular visits when it captured two American hikers, although its record on this issue has been spotty at best.

Because of Rick Perry’s decision to flout international law, other nations have little reason to honor the Vienna Convention when Americans are imprisoned abroad. Why should they afford us treatment that we refuse to give to their nationals in the United States? And if other nations decide not to honor this treaty, they are unlikely simply to refuse to honor it when Texans are incarcerated. No one in Iowa, California, Maryland, or Kansas got to vote for Rick Perry, but the whole national will suffer because of his recalcitrance.

The Lone Star state is famous for its own harsh brand of justice, but residents in one small town will soon be left to fend for themselves after budget cuts forced Alto, Texas to lay off its entire police force:

Alto, Texas is preparing for a crime wave, after the small East Texas town put its entire police force on furlough…

In an effort to save money, the city has laid off its police chief and four police officers for six months — longer if Alto’s finances don’t improve.

In the meantime, the county sheriff’s department will take over law enforcement duties for the town of 1,200, according to the AP. The sheriff’s department is already responsible for policing the nearby city of Wells, which laid off its sole police officer last year.

Alto residents have every reason to fear a rise in crime will follow the police force’s departure. The town’s per-capita crime rate is already above the state average. There were 66 crimes in Alto last year, compared to 51 the previous year.

“Everybody’s talking about ‘bolt your doors, buy a gun,’ ” said Monty Collins, Alto’s mayor, who opposed the City Council vote to furlough police officers.

Kelly Curry, the manager of an off-road-vehicle park, now carries two guns for self-defense. “The thought that we could be 35 or 40 minutes from getting the sheriff’s deputy here, depending on where they are in the county, is scary,” she says.

To close a historic $27 billion budget deficit, Gov. Rick Perry (R) and the Republican-controlled legislature have made draconian cuts to state services and have passed the buck to city governments across the state to make impossible decisions about which essential expenditures to cut. Alto, for instances, faces a $185,000 budget deficit.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the closure of small-town police forces “is part of a broader consolidation of services in communities across the U.S.” It’s a problem because like fire departments and other essential services, “keeping the peace is rarely a revenue-making operation.”

Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit not only held that a high school cheerleader had no legal case against the school district that required her to cheer for her alleged rapist, it also ordered her to pay more than $40,000 in legal fees to the school district. Half a year later, however, an outpouring of donors stepped forward to undo some of the damage from the court’s utterly indefensible decision:

An online campaign to help the former cheerleader’s family with the legal costs has gained momentum on Facebook and Twitter and collected more than $23,000. The family also has appealed in federal court the judge’s order for them to pay the school district’s legal costs after their lawsuit was dismissed.

“It’s really an awful statement to send on how you treat a teenage sexual assault victim,” said Alex DiBranco, whose petition on Change.org has gathered more than 94,000 signatures asking the school district to not to make the family pay the fees. DiBranco, a New York-based women’s rights advocate, got involved after reading about the case.

Sadly, the Fifth Circuit’s decision against this cheerleader is part of a much larger pattern of decisions hostile to ordinary Americans, but the three-judge panel that handed down this decision is a particularly radical panel on what is probably the most conservative court in the country.

Judges Emilio Garza and Edith Clement were both on President George W. Bush’s “short list” of potential Supreme Court nominees, and Clement serves on the board of the leading organization providing industry-funded junkets for judges. Garza, who recently suggested that undocumented immigrants have no right to be free from illegal searches and seizures, is best known as one of five Fifth Circuit judges who held that a death row defendant whose lawyer slept through much of his trial was not denied his constitutional right to counsel.

The third judge, Priscilla Owen, took thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions from Enron and then wrote a key opinion reducing Enron’s taxes by $15 million when she sat on the Texas Supreme Court.