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Saturday, June 30, 2012

http://fuckinghomepage.com/websites some useful pages
http://www.slashfilm.com
episode 57 of the Tobolowsky files went online yesterday.

# posted by gt @ 03:27

Friday, June 29, 2012

National Review: supreme court "pretended" mandate was constitutional

By at 11:06 pm Thursday, Jun 28 


billstewart
 Yes, but there are nine judges on the court, and it's very rare that decisions are 9-0.  They're typically 5-4 or 6-3, and there are currently five judges that Americans consider to be conservative, four that we call liberal (Europeans would probably call them "not quite as rabidly right-wing") and most of the partisan kinds of decisions follow the couple of people in the middle.    (And the Republican Party has been very aggressive about trying to appoint conservative judges when they're in power, preferably young ones because the Supreme Court members serve for life.  The current chief judge is a recent Bush appointee, and while he's not a right-winger, he strongly believes that the President and Executive Branch should almost always be allowed to do anything they want.) 
And just because their opinions are Official, that doesn't mean they're always correct, or even vaguely close to correct.  (Also, they usually try to decide whether an issue is constitutionally permissible, as opposed to whether it's a good idea or not, which they view as Congress's job.)  Traditionally the right wing in the US complains bitterly if the courts do anything that increases individual civil liberties, and applaud loudly if it upholds the power of Republican presidents. 

arbitraryaardvark
Probably by this point no one's reading the thread.
 There are several ways it would be fair to say that the court "pretended" to find the mandate a tax.
A: the president says it's not a tax, but his lawyers, using a legal fiction, say it is, and the court will go along with that pretense.
B: Roberts says, translated into plain english, this doesn't look much like a tax, but there's a presumption of constitutionality, so we will -interpret- it here as a tax, in order to uphold the statute.
C: Now I personally think Roberts believed what he wrote, but stategically it's brilliant. Marbury v Madison may have gotten the facts wrong about which papers were on whose desk, but strategically the case gave the court an important new power. Roberts gives the liberals a minor win by upholding Obamacare (less the state medicare aspect based on federalism), but scores a victory by finding 5 votes to limit the commerce clause, changing the dynamic between court and congress.
That assumption of power would have been called activist and partisan, if he hadn't conceded on the tax issue. He comes off as a statesman not a hack.
The next point I want to address is Rand Paul and who gets to decide what is constitutional. The government has three coequal branches. Each of them has a role as a protector of the constitution. Rand can vote to repeal unconstitutional statutes. Obama can veto unconstitutional bills, and maybe choose not to enforce unconstitutional statutes. The court can declare statutes unconstitutioanal, if they get a case or controversy, although unfortunately they have made up a rule about presumptions of constitutionality. The health of the republic depends on all three branches doing their job well. Rand is correct to have his own views. There is a similarity here with the protestant v roman catholic worldview. For protestants, jesus speaks to them through prayer and the bible, not just through a pope. When I swore to uphold the constitution, as a state employee and as a lawyer, my oath was to what the constitution means, not just what this court today says it means.

# posted by gt @ 21:56


the annual running of the journalists. journalists at the supreme court yesterday running to report the healthcare decision.

# posted by gt @ 12:20

Thursday, June 28, 2012

House Votes Holder in Contempt of Congress, 255-67.

# posted by gt @ 16:23
Recommended Citation: Randy Barnett, A weird victory for federalism, SCOTUSblog (Jun. 28, 2012, 12:56 PM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/06/a-weird-victory-for-federalism/

# posted by gt @ 16:05
opencola

# posted by gt @ 05:00

Thursday, June 21, 2012

oracle CEO ellison, 6th richest man in the world, buys lanai, one of the hawaiin islands.
i have seen lanai from maui, where i have family, but never been there.
it used to be a pineapple farm owned by the folks who raise sugar cane on maui.
my thoughts about lanai include that it would be a great place to do banana research.
one of these days the black slime is going to wipe out the cavendish banana, the cultivar most of you know as a banana, and the world needs to be ready with a replacement.
the other thing is that the previous owner reserved the rights to have a wind farm,and i should put him in touch with a guy in knew in school who builds wind farms. i was whale watching off maui and was very impressed by the one windmill they have there. otherwise to get electricty in hawaii they burn diesel, which is expensive and  smoky. with windmills, during the night when there's not much electric being used, you can pump ocean water up the volcano, and then around noon release it to drive generators.





# posted by gt @ 15:22

Monday, June 18, 2012


# posted by gt @ 05:34

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Rebecca Krauss, a clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, spent a year delivering medicines on horseback in India and caring for orphaned elephants in Sri Lanka before she met her now husband at the base of Mt. Everest.

the elect

# posted by gt @ 10:46

Saturday, June 09, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SncapPrTusA

bruce lee plays ping pong
update: tyler cowan says it's fake.

# posted by gt @ 13:52

Wednesday, June 06, 2012


man bites dog

# posted by gt @ 08:22

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

word for the day:  antidisestablishmentarianistically
http://volokh.com/2012/06/05/disestablishment-of-norways-church/#disqus_thread


# posted by gt @ 15:49

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