It seems like they shouldn't at all. It seems, in fact, that they usually wouldn't even have clear boundaries, they'll just sort of blend into one another.
Meanwhile, a ton of people who base their whole self-conception on the idea that they are savvier and smarter than everyone else got played for fools, because the narrative played so perfectly into their assumptions.
As one-sentence summaries of human history go, this one ain't bad.
But non-government actors can violate speech rights (though there is lots of room for discussion about what actually constitutes a violation and what is more an imposed consequence).
For me, I think that as long as people are merely exercising their own rights (to freedom of expression, association, property, et c.) that no one's speech rights are being violated. It only becomes an issue when they step outside those bounds, and the government can (and should) address those cases when possible.
That obviously means enforcing the law when people commit crimes to silence speech they don't like, but it also includes (say) anti-SLAPP laws, which make it harder to use the resources and power of the state to chill speech by defending against spurious defamation suits (even though the First Amendment allows for defamation suits).
No, but consider, say, the jihadist lunatics who kill people for drawing cartoons (which are free speech). I'd say such lunatics are, in fact, violating people's rights to free speech[1], and that the state should treat such lunatics as a threat to free speech, even if the lunatics, being private actors, aren't and can't violate the First Amendment. I don't think this perspective actually commits someone to a government of any particular "size"; the so-called "Night Watchman" state favored by many libertarians does very little, but it provides protection against criminal violence.
The Bill of Rights are a starting point for liberty, not an ending point. The rest of the Constitution is a tool for going beyond that. I think they're a good starting point, because the aim to keep that tool from being turned against its proper purpose, and they focus on the ways that's most likely to happen.
[1] I think this view is especially compelling if you have a philosophy were natural rights exist independently of the state and the Constitution just recognizes them, which is commonplace.
We've gone from about 1.5 deaths per 100 million passenger miles to 1.1 deaths per 100 million passenger miles, but the fraction of motor vehicle deaths involving drunk[1] drivers in that time has been about 20% each year, which suggests to me that those safety gains are probably due to other factors than reductions in drunk driving (like safer cars). However, between 1980 and 2000, there was a huge drop, since about 35% of fatal crashes invoved drunk drivers. Some of that is attributable to stricter laws and better DUI enforcement, and some is attributable to demographic shifts[2].
There's been a huge reduction in the number of motor vehicle deaths over the course of the past generation, and fewer drunk drivers are a big part of why. It's one of the great unsung public health successes.
There's a long report on this at http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810942.pdf and http://nhtsa.gov has a ton of interesting information about the general topic of traffic deaths.
[1] Well, BAC > 0.08.
[2] Basically, a smaller fraction of drivers are young men, who drive drunk at a disproportionately high rate.
The way he conflates "metal detectors" with "every aspect of TSA procedures" is really dodgy. Metal detectors were being used in airports for decades before 9/11.
I commented a lot on the piece over at Popehat, but one of the points Mr White attempts (and IMO fails) to make is that the Constitution only recognizes negative rights, and argues that being protected from criminal violence isn't a negative right.
I don't think much of the post, which falls well short of his usual high standard IMO.
Which strikes me as exactly why you want a person who is not directly accountable to those people. The elected officials would continue to struggle between their desire for re-election and their need to right the ship.
I think the problem here is that, by appointing the EM, you're effectively saying, "Hey, voters of Flint, your interests are no longer worthy of political consideration!" without clearly saying that to anybody else. If the people of Flynt were the only people with a stake in the outcomes here, well, why have an EM law and appoint an EM at all?
The answer is that Flynt residents aren't the only stakeholders, so this seems to figuratively move their concerns to the bottom of the list. It hardly seems like a coincidence that they're the ones with lead in their water.
The first is that having one person in charge in a crisis certainly has benefits, but as crises go, this one was all about budgets. There were no hurricanes, earthquakes or forest fires to contend with, here, just a bunch of human beings with conflicting needs and interests that couldn't be sorted without a bunch of people eating variously-sized shit sandwiches.
The second objection is that it seems like the EM has very little accountability in this system. They're a political appointee, not even a directly-elected official, and they were appointed to run a heavily Democratic city by a Republican governor. Snyder seems to be a pretty decent governor, all things considered, but he was not really politically beholden to the people of Flynt in any way. That just seems to be a recipe for problems.
I think he is pretty damned doctrinaire about his rather strange point of view about constitutional issues. I generally get the sense that he comes closest, of all the Justices, to adhering to John Roberts' stated ideals of just "calling balls and strikes"[1], it's just he's calling them based on a rule book from an alternate reality where John C. Calhoun's face is on the five-dollar bill.
Being a real stickler for bizarre principles is in no way inconsistent with meeting high intellectual standards.
[1] I certainly think he comes closer than Roberts himself.
It does in the first paragraph, and then starts using the terms interchangeably:
The only thing unique about assault rifles is their menacing name and look, and it is these elements that make them such an appealing — if not particularly sensible — target of gun control advocates.
Jamelle Bouie has (IMO) a great post at Slate about this. The key point:
If there’s a question to ask on this score, it’s not why don’t they use violence, it’s why aren’t they more cautious with unarmed suspects and common criminals? If we’re outraged, it shouldn’t be because law enforcement isn’t rushing to violently confront Bundy and his group. We should be outraged because that restraint isn’t extended to all Americans.
If these nincompoops were occupying the building without their guns, I suspect roughly nobody would care. It's not like the civil rights activists were packing when they had a sit-in at the Woolworths lunch counter, you know?
I think Thomas is quite mad, but at least it's an interesting sort of mad. Scalia used to at least be entertaining, but increasingly he sounds like one of those guys who calls in to sports shows to yell about how the Illuminati are using fluoridation to keep the Cubs from winning the World Series.
Rather anecdotally, I have met some really idiotic engineers.
I'd bet a dollar at least one of them was a Creationist.
I've seen it in engineers, physicists, MDs, lawyers, economists, and so on. Arrogant, incurious gits can excel at pretty much any endeavor with talent, hard work and some good luck. It's the American dream!
Yeah, I'm not particularly vehement about opposing gun control in general, but "assault weapon bans" are, or should be, a textbook case on how not to craft public policy.
Also, I bet you'll appreciate this editorial, where a particularly confused law professor says that GCAs should give up on banning assault rifles.
Also, there's been lots more of it throughout the country, and it's happened along an overall decline in violent crime. There may be other social costs associated with single-parent families, but people shooting each other really doesn't seem to be among them.
I don't know how good an example DeBlasio is, since he was kind of an insurgent (against Quinn) himself. Then again, I'm not really sure I buy the overall argument that there's any sort of equivalency to the way Dems are getting annoyed at big city Democratic mayors with the distrust of the national level party that we're seeing in the GOP. That kind of frustration just feels too familiar to me to really qualify as a trend.
And it likely says something ugly about Americans that the obvious rejoinder to any learned or scholarly black man one disagrees with is the automatic assumption that, despite his accomplishments, said black man must be unintelligent.
Another example is the common assertion that Clarence Thomas is just a puppet for Antonin Scalia.
As for Carson's bizarre performance as a campaigner, the truism that politics isn't brain surgery cuts both ways. He's surely not an idiot, but being smart really doesn't preclude incuriosity, hubris or even being able to handle a political debate.[1] To indulge in a bit of stereotyping, at he's just running a political campaign into the ground; surgeons usually do that with private planes instead.
[1] There are good and even great politicians who suck behind the debate podium.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Paging Dr. Saunders… Paging Dr. Saunders…”
Maybe Paul LePage is the New England's answer to Tom Ford, and he's smoking crack in office. It would explain why he knows D-Money's routine so well.
On “Weekend!”
It seems like they shouldn't at all. It seems, in fact, that they usually wouldn't even have clear boundaries, they'll just sort of blend into one another.
On “Freddie’s Dishonor Roll”
As one-sentence summaries of human history go, this one ain't bad.
On “Another Post I Wish I’d Written”
@Kazzy said:
But non-government actors can violate speech rights (though there is lots of room for discussion about what actually constitutes a violation and what is more an imposed consequence).
For me, I think that as long as people are merely exercising their own rights (to freedom of expression, association, property, et c.) that no one's speech rights are being violated. It only becomes an issue when they step outside those bounds, and the government can (and should) address those cases when possible.
That obviously means enforcing the law when people commit crimes to silence speech they don't like, but it also includes (say) anti-SLAPP laws, which make it harder to use the resources and power of the state to chill speech by defending against spurious defamation suits (even though the First Amendment allows for defamation suits).
"
No, but consider, say, the jihadist lunatics who kill people for drawing cartoons (which are free speech). I'd say such lunatics are, in fact, violating people's rights to free speech[1], and that the state should treat such lunatics as a threat to free speech, even if the lunatics, being private actors, aren't and can't violate the First Amendment. I don't think this perspective actually commits someone to a government of any particular "size"; the so-called "Night Watchman" state favored by many libertarians does very little, but it provides protection against criminal violence.
The Bill of Rights are a starting point for liberty, not an ending point. The rest of the Constitution is a tool for going beyond that. I think they're a good starting point, because the aim to keep that tool from being turned against its proper purpose, and they focus on the ways that's most likely to happen.
[1] I think this view is especially compelling if you have a philosophy were natural rights exist independently of the state and the Constitution just recognizes them, which is commonplace.
"
We've gone from about 1.5 deaths per 100 million passenger miles to 1.1 deaths per 100 million passenger miles, but the fraction of motor vehicle deaths involving drunk[1] drivers in that time has been about 20% each year, which suggests to me that those safety gains are probably due to other factors than reductions in drunk driving (like safer cars). However, between 1980 and 2000, there was a huge drop, since about 35% of fatal crashes invoved drunk drivers. Some of that is attributable to stricter laws and better DUI enforcement, and some is attributable to demographic shifts[2].
There's been a huge reduction in the number of motor vehicle deaths over the course of the past generation, and fewer drunk drivers are a big part of why. It's one of the great unsung public health successes.
There's a long report on this at http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810942.pdf and http://nhtsa.gov has a ton of interesting information about the general topic of traffic deaths.
[1] Well, BAC > 0.08.
[2] Basically, a smaller fraction of drivers are young men, who drive drunk at a disproportionately high rate.
"
The way he conflates "metal detectors" with "every aspect of TSA procedures" is really dodgy. Metal detectors were being used in airports for decades before 9/11.
"
I'm planning on it; I appreciate the commentariat here. :)
"
I commented a lot on the piece over at Popehat, but one of the points Mr White attempts (and IMO fails) to make is that the Constitution only recognizes negative rights, and argues that being protected from criminal violence isn't a negative right.
I don't think much of the post, which falls well short of his usual high standard IMO.
On “A Tragedy with Many Fathers”
I think the problem here is that, by appointing the EM, you're effectively saying, "Hey, voters of Flint, your interests are no longer worthy of political consideration!" without clearly saying that to anybody else. If the people of Flynt were the only people with a stake in the outcomes here, well, why have an EM law and appoint an EM at all?
The answer is that Flynt residents aren't the only stakeholders, so this seems to figuratively move their concerns to the bottom of the list. It hardly seems like a coincidence that they're the ones with lead in their water.
"
@notme:
Well, it's a good thing the the voters were punished for voting incompetent folks into office by having an incompetent dude appointed to take over!
"
I have a several objections to this argument.
The first is that having one person in charge in a crisis certainly has benefits, but as crises go, this one was all about budgets. There were no hurricanes, earthquakes or forest fires to contend with, here, just a bunch of human beings with conflicting needs and interests that couldn't be sorted without a bunch of people eating variously-sized shit sandwiches.
The second objection is that it seems like the EM has very little accountability in this system. They're a political appointee, not even a directly-elected official, and they were appointed to run a heavily Democratic city by a Republican governor. Snyder seems to be a pretty decent governor, all things considered, but he was not really politically beholden to the people of Flynt in any way. That just seems to be a recipe for problems.
On “Broken Elephants, Part II: Ben Carson, Frank Gaffney, and The Way to Make Your Mark in Today’s GOP”
I think he is pretty damned doctrinaire about his rather strange point of view about constitutional issues. I generally get the sense that he comes closest, of all the Justices, to adhering to John Roberts' stated ideals of just "calling balls and strikes"[1], it's just he's calling them based on a rule book from an alternate reality where John C. Calhoun's face is on the five-dollar bill.
Being a real stickler for bizarre principles is in no way inconsistent with meeting high intellectual standards.
[1] I certainly think he comes closer than Roberts himself.
On “Gun Violence: A Cultural Study”
It does in the first paragraph, and then starts using the terms interchangeably:
Emphasis mine.
On “Broken Elephants, Part II: Ben Carson, Frank Gaffney, and The Way to Make Your Mark in Today’s GOP”
Seriously, dude, I have no idea what you're talking about, and I suspect nobody else does either.
On “What If…?”
Jamelle Bouie has (IMO) a great post at Slate about this. The key point:
On “Broken Elephants, Part II: Ben Carson, Frank Gaffney, and The Way to Make Your Mark in Today’s GOP”
Preposterous political career (and beliefs) aside, I think he legitimately is an inspirational figure. People are more than one thing.
"
The robot is actually controlled by a surgeon; it isn't wholly automatic. Neat technology, but not cheap. Oh no.
On “What If…?”
If these nincompoops were occupying the building without their guns, I suspect roughly nobody would care. It's not like the civil rights activists were packing when they had a sit-in at the Woolworths lunch counter, you know?
On “Broken Elephants, Part II: Ben Carson, Frank Gaffney, and The Way to Make Your Mark in Today’s GOP”
I think Thomas is quite mad, but at least it's an interesting sort of mad. Scalia used to at least be entertaining, but increasingly he sounds like one of those guys who calls in to sports shows to yell about how the Illuminati are using fluoridation to keep the Cubs from winning the World Series.
"
@Morat20:
Rather anecdotally, I have met some really idiotic engineers.
I'd bet a dollar at least one of them was a Creationist.
I've seen it in engineers, physicists, MDs, lawyers, economists, and so on. Arrogant, incurious gits can excel at pretty much any endeavor with talent, hard work and some good luck. It's the American dream!
On “Gun Violence: A Cultural Study”
Yeah, I'm not particularly vehement about opposing gun control in general, but "assault weapon bans" are, or should be, a textbook case on how not to craft public policy.
Also, I bet you'll appreciate this editorial, where a particularly confused law professor says that GCAs should give up on banning assault rifles.
"
Also, there's been lots more of it throughout the country, and it's happened along an overall decline in violent crime. There may be other social costs associated with single-parent families, but people shooting each other really doesn't seem to be among them.
On “Broken Elephants, Part II: Ben Carson, Frank Gaffney, and The Way to Make Your Mark in Today’s GOP”
I don't know how good an example DeBlasio is, since he was kind of an insurgent (against Quinn) himself. Then again, I'm not really sure I buy the overall argument that there's any sort of equivalency to the way Dems are getting annoyed at big city Democratic mayors with the distrust of the national level party that we're seeing in the GOP. That kind of frustration just feels too familiar to me to really qualify as a trend.
"
Another example is the common assertion that Clarence Thomas is just a puppet for Antonin Scalia.
As for Carson's bizarre performance as a campaigner, the truism that politics isn't brain surgery cuts both ways. He's surely not an idiot, but being smart really doesn't preclude incuriosity, hubris or even being able to handle a political debate.[1] To indulge in a bit of stereotyping, at he's just running a political campaign into the ground; surgeons usually do that with private planes instead.
[1] There are good and even great politicians who suck behind the debate podium.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.