Whelp, it turns out that the aquarium swallowed the mall. The facility seems to be doing well, it's just that it used to be a mixed use entertainment/shopping venue (more for out-of-towners really), but now its just entertainment and dining. Aquarium was nice, but not Mall of America nice.
We're picking up our son from the St. Louis airport this evening from two weeks in Ireland/UK with a school group. We're going to the Union Station shopping mall which has a new aquarium that we'll check out. I have not been to the Union Station for a long time, and thought it might have been in decline in terms of shops. Beautiful old building, with lots of restaurants/bars, but suspect putting in an aquarium to add to foot traffic still meant fewer shops. But we wanted a place to hang out in the area given we're not sure if the planes are running on time. His plain left Heathrow on time despite a lot of articles about how its a mess there.
My own impression is that Steve's character changed (as did Nancy's) from Season 1, which is fine. I didn't like those characters or their storyline. With such a large cast though, inevitably there are multiple storylines of varying quality/interest and characters might be stuck in the wrong storyline for most of a season. This is probably most pronounced in Season 4 so far. Someone could probably go through and identify each character's peak storyline.
What she said was not illegal, and her apology should be accepted. But if she actually withheld Viagra for those reasons, she and her employer would almost certainly be violating civil rights laws. Hospitals are public accommodations required for centuries to take all comers. Part of the trade-off requiring special licensure to provide medical care is that this restraint on trade cannot be used for discriminatory purposes.
I think Phil misunderstands the cake cases, they aren't about religious liberty, but compelled speech. The state cannot compel a baker to make a cake with the words "God Hates Gays." Sometimes a cake is just a cake though.
I think part of the "credit" for her winning was that her predecessor surprised everyone by announcing he was retiring, publicly thought about reconsidering, and ultimately announced he would not reconsider. The candidates that appeared were all pretty minor for both parties.
Miller had never run for office before and within a couple of days of being seated in 2021 name-checked Hitler. Her spiel is that she is not a career politician. She's running this time against a career politician that has the support of almost all of the local Republican party bosses. His spiel is constituent services. It will be close.
I have a relative that lives in her current district and just thinks she's stupid as ****, and has a lot of stories to tell. But his big complaint was that she makes a big deal out of refusing federal money to the district. I told him I'm not sure she gets to decide that, but its a concrete policy proposal that doesn't require sifting through her hidden agendas.
The problem is that downstate is a series of Republican sinks in which the Republican will have a two-to-one advantage in the general election. The winner of the Republican primary will win with something like 15% of the vote total in the general election and win the general election in a landslide.
I don't think the dispute can simply be reduced to religion. The two dissenters from Roe were mainline Protestants: Rehnquist (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), and White (Episcopalian). I'm not sure whether Gorsuch is high Protestant or Catholic. Sotomayor is Catholic. None of the Justices were selected at random off a street corner somewhere, the majority were appointed by Republican Presidents, the minority by Democratic ones. Jews feature prominently on the Left of the Court currently, but one can find a number of Jewish legal thinkers at Volokh Conspiracy that (I think) don't / didn't support Roe.
I would put it this way: The 14th Amendment has three major components:
(1) First, it prohibits states from abridging any of the privileges and immunities of citizenship. This was supposed to establish national citizenship with a body rights attributable to it. For example, an established privilege of citizenship has long been the right to marry another citizen.
(2) States cannot deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. The Ambrose Bierce version of this is that the State can take any person's life, liberty and property so long as he is given a meaningful opportunity to pay a lawyer to put the State to the maximum effort.
(3) A State cannot deny to any person equal protection of the laws. This is the non-discrimination principle, the state cannot discriminate on the basis of race, gender or similar factors.
In 1873, the SCOTUS interpreted the privileges or immunities clause in such a narrow way that it immediately became dormant and removed from the Constitution. (Slaughter-House cases)
I don't think anything I've written is controversial. I don't think anybody defends the Slaughter-House cases these days. What Thomas has long believed is that substantive due process arguments are an inartful and non-transparent reinstatement of the privileges or immunities clause. He would prefer to overrule the Slaughter-House cases and deal with non-procedural issues directly as opposed to continuing the fiction of non-procedural process claims. So far, no other current Justice AFAIK has agreed to undertake this endeavor. Today's majority opinion recognizes the issue, but states that it is immaterial here.
I think Burt wrote a piece on this and if I find it, I'll link to it.
I think the dirty little secret is that a lot of pro-choice legalists think the Constitutional reasoning of Roe was very problematic. Granted many of these would anchor these issues (somehow) in the equal protection clause or simply preserve some form of the status quo for sake of stability.
OTOH, the Roe dissenters recognized that the Constitution protects the mother's life and health, but did not have occasion to ever set forth the due process requirements under that framework. In an alternative world in which the SCOTUS went down that path, I suspect that the nature of the interest and their narrow time frame would necessitate a broad protection. It would be similar to free speech protections which go beyond the speech itself, but address the chilling effect of restrictions. In this alternate world, the end result might be pretty close to a narrow application of Casey, like Roberts offers today.
Yeah, I agree. And given that Kavanaugh's concurrence is joined by the Chief Justice, it reads to me as the controlling opinion, written specifically to emphasize the unique context. Future litigants will focus on the swing justices even if they joined Thomas' opinion.
"In contrast, 43 States employ objective shall-issue licensing regimes. Those shall-issue regimes may require a license applicant to undergo fingerprinting, a background check, a mental health records check, and training in firearms handling and in laws regarding the use of force, among other possible requirements."
I don't think there is likely any problem, but I note that a number of provisions are conditioned on things like due process or convictions which are doing a lot of the lifting here.
Central Ohio is reaching high 90s with the power intentionally shut off yesterday around noon, expected not to return until Friday or Saturday. In the MISO power grid, running from Lafeyette Louisiana to Manitoba Canada, rolling blackouts have been announced for the Summer. Seems like everyone is going to need a backup generator if they can afford it.
On the mental health side, I start with the question of whether the records even exist currently. Primary purpose of note-taking for therapists is for the benefit of the therapist to help remember things discussed. In non-institutional settings there are probably a lot that are handwritten. In institutional settings there are drop-down menu-driven apps which provide little information not geared towards making sure the client is getting all of the services they may need. I assume that a mental health registry would need the creation of a federal form that all licensed therapists must fill out with each session or other event. Should the client sign the form before its entered into the database so that the contents cannot be reasonable questioned?
I assume gun owners will mostly be ok with a mental health registry because they are sturdy, self-reliant individuals who do not need mental health services and if they had any doubts before, they will be certain about it now.
Seems to me that if the employer is potentially concerned about a wrongful termination lawsuit, then the employer should definitely terminate in writing.
DV misdemeanors are already banned from gun ownership under Federal law since 1996, so I'm not sure what state law is doing unless it's to create a state specific framework for some reason.
That poses an interesting question. There are a lot of areas of research that ignore racial differences and end-up with skewed results because their sample is not representative of racial diversity. Some people here refer to ignoring racial differences as an example of unconscious bias. The study that the author believes is racist found that results had a "much lower predictive power in an African-American sample than in a European-ancestry sample." It goes on to encourage more study in this area.
And I think that's where the rub will be. Genetic studies of general intelligence are going on all around the world regardless of American religious objections and its unique racial history. Access to these studies will be available, but if the science is chased into the alley in America, it will be domestically inaccurate to some degree while still informing people on the internet.
I agree w/ both points. And one thing I would add is that the U.S. has always been more violent than its OECD peers. In the second half of the 18th century Pennsylvania had twice the murder rate of London. Other areas were not terribly far behind, but generally the explanation is that Pennsylvania, built upon the bones of Quaker idealism, was the freest of the free. The cost of high levels of freedom was violence from lack of cohesion and hierarchy in the large cities, as well as high levels of alcohol abuse. Really our only peers in this sense are in the New World.
The other divergence is that the U.S. has a history of African-American slavery and has never fully assimilated all of the descendants of slavery. High murder rates are occurring in cities with those descendants.
After the Civil War, Southern states passed (or revived) Black Codes that barred blacks from bearing arms, while forcing them back into involuntary servitude as unemployed vagrants. When protests were made, blacks were massacred by state militias or private paramilitary forces often with military arms from the War. Reports of these travesties were made to Congress who passed various Civil Rights laws and the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) with members of Congress expressly stating that it would protect the freemen's right to bear arms.
The refusal of Southern states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment led to Congressional Reconstruction and military imposition of new civilian governments, which repealed the Black Codes and ratified the 14th Amendment. But in 1873, around one hundred black men were massacred by a white paramilitary group armed with rifles and a small cannon. When federal charges were brought, the SCOTUS dismissed them stating that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee a right of peaceful assembly nor a right to bear arms against any by the federal government. Cruikshank (1876)
After that decision, violence against blacks increased, the Black Codes were reinstated and the Jim Crow period had begun. So there was clearly a point in time in which armed civilians could have used federal protection of their rights to preserve their freedoms. The SCOTUS did not want to though.
The student should complain to the school because this is primarily a discipline issue, but if it appears that mental health issues might be involved, the school can suspend the student until they've seen a therapist.
In the Virginia Tech case, campus police met with the shooter tell him about the complaint about stalking from a student. (The final straw was the shooter left a quote from Romeo and Juliet on a whiteboard outside her room) The student was not pressing charges, but that he should no longer have any contact with her. After the police left, the shooter texted his roommates that he was going to kill himself, which brought the campus police back to take him for an evaluation. This is not a criminal matter, he was temporarily deprived of his liberty for a narrow purpose, not to punish him.
Hopefully without repeating myself too much; I don't believe French accurately and fully describes the Virginia Tech situation.
In middle school, the shooter was diagnosed with “selective mutism” and “major depression: single episode.” The first means that he was painfully shy, its a social anxiety issue which is situational. He was prescribed an anti-depressant for the other until his mood improved. Are we really going to red flag mental health records of minors for what are fairly common, usually transitory issues?
In response to stalking complaints, a judge magistrate issued a temporary detention order for an evaluation of whether he was a danger to himself or others. The independent psychiatrist did not find him to be dangerous, but thought he should see a therapist. The attending psychiatrist shared that opinion. Neither diagnosed him with a specific mental illness, though he was taking an anti-anxiety drug on as-needed basis already. He was released with an order (request? suggestion?) that he see an outpatient therapist, which he did. French seems to bungle/ misunderstand the roles of the judge and the therapist, only one of whom is qualified to make a diagnosis. From a legal perspective, he was found not dangerous.
My main issue here is that if we are going to red flag people who a therapist notes are suffering depression or anxiety, there are going to be a lot fewer people seeing a therapist.
At the time of Heller, I believe Eugene Volokh opined that the Heller decision holding only implicated gun regulations in DC, Chicago and Illinois (because it was the only no-issue state). Illinois' carry ban was ruled invalid by the Court of Appeals and not appealed. I'm not sure at all what gun restrictions people think are popular in any given state that are banned by the SCOTUS.
My kids' schools use only one door for entry during school hours. The high school used to use two entrance doors on opposing sides of the building but after a student was stabbed to to death (at a different city high school), they put in metal detectors. Now students have to arrive 20 minutes early and wait in line outdoors in all weather.
I don't think that is an issue, gun manufacturers are strictly liable if they manufacture a defective product. As far as I know, these are successful if the gun malfunctions or does something reasonably unexpected without warning. Plaintiff's lawyers, keeping the world safe for Jeffersonian democracy.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Weekend Plans Post: The 4th of July and Stranger Things”
Whelp, it turns out that the aquarium swallowed the mall. The facility seems to be doing well, it's just that it used to be a mixed use entertainment/shopping venue (more for out-of-towners really), but now its just entertainment and dining. Aquarium was nice, but not Mall of America nice.
"
We're picking up our son from the St. Louis airport this evening from two weeks in Ireland/UK with a school group. We're going to the Union Station shopping mall which has a new aquarium that we'll check out. I have not been to the Union Station for a long time, and thought it might have been in decline in terms of shops. Beautiful old building, with lots of restaurants/bars, but suspect putting in an aquarium to add to foot traffic still meant fewer shops. But we wanted a place to hang out in the area given we're not sure if the planes are running on time. His plain left Heathrow on time despite a lot of articles about how its a mess there.
"
My own impression is that Steve's character changed (as did Nancy's) from Season 1, which is fine. I didn't like those characters or their storyline. With such a large cast though, inevitably there are multiple storylines of varying quality/interest and characters might be stuck in the wrong storyline for most of a season. This is probably most pronounced in Season 4 so far. Someone could probably go through and identify each character's peak storyline.
On “Monday Morning Dobbs in America”
What she said was not illegal, and her apology should be accepted. But if she actually withheld Viagra for those reasons, she and her employer would almost certainly be violating civil rights laws. Hospitals are public accommodations required for centuries to take all comers. Part of the trade-off requiring special licensure to provide medical care is that this restraint on trade cannot be used for discriminatory purposes.
I think Phil misunderstands the cake cases, they aren't about religious liberty, but compelled speech. The state cannot compel a baker to make a cake with the words "God Hates Gays." Sometimes a cake is just a cake though.
"
Election day and here is a nurse doing get out the vote for Mary Miller.
On “Maybe Some More Than Others”
I think part of the "credit" for her winning was that her predecessor surprised everyone by announcing he was retiring, publicly thought about reconsidering, and ultimately announced he would not reconsider. The candidates that appeared were all pretty minor for both parties.
Miller had never run for office before and within a couple of days of being seated in 2021 name-checked Hitler. Her spiel is that she is not a career politician. She's running this time against a career politician that has the support of almost all of the local Republican party bosses. His spiel is constituent services. It will be close.
"
Ah, but Miller is from Dupage County, born in Oak Park, graduated from Naperville.
"
I have a relative that lives in her current district and just thinks she's stupid as ****, and has a lot of stories to tell. But his big complaint was that she makes a big deal out of refusing federal money to the district. I told him I'm not sure she gets to decide that, but its a concrete policy proposal that doesn't require sifting through her hidden agendas.
The problem is that downstate is a series of Republican sinks in which the Republican will have a two-to-one advantage in the general election. The winner of the Republican primary will win with something like 15% of the vote total in the general election and win the general election in a landslide.
On “Roe v Wade Overturned: Read the Dobbs Decision For Yourself”
I don't think the dispute can simply be reduced to religion. The two dissenters from Roe were mainline Protestants: Rehnquist (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), and White (Episcopalian). I'm not sure whether Gorsuch is high Protestant or Catholic. Sotomayor is Catholic. None of the Justices were selected at random off a street corner somewhere, the majority were appointed by Republican Presidents, the minority by Democratic ones. Jews feature prominently on the Left of the Court currently, but one can find a number of Jewish legal thinkers at Volokh Conspiracy that (I think) don't / didn't support Roe.
"
I would put it this way: The 14th Amendment has three major components:
(1) First, it prohibits states from abridging any of the privileges and immunities of citizenship. This was supposed to establish national citizenship with a body rights attributable to it. For example, an established privilege of citizenship has long been the right to marry another citizen.
(2) States cannot deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. The Ambrose Bierce version of this is that the State can take any person's life, liberty and property so long as he is given a meaningful opportunity to pay a lawyer to put the State to the maximum effort.
(3) A State cannot deny to any person equal protection of the laws. This is the non-discrimination principle, the state cannot discriminate on the basis of race, gender or similar factors.
In 1873, the SCOTUS interpreted the privileges or immunities clause in such a narrow way that it immediately became dormant and removed from the Constitution. (Slaughter-House cases)
I don't think anything I've written is controversial. I don't think anybody defends the Slaughter-House cases these days. What Thomas has long believed is that substantive due process arguments are an inartful and non-transparent reinstatement of the privileges or immunities clause. He would prefer to overrule the Slaughter-House cases and deal with non-procedural issues directly as opposed to continuing the fiction of non-procedural process claims. So far, no other current Justice AFAIK has agreed to undertake this endeavor. Today's majority opinion recognizes the issue, but states that it is immaterial here.
I think Burt wrote a piece on this and if I find it, I'll link to it.
"
I think the dirty little secret is that a lot of pro-choice legalists think the Constitutional reasoning of Roe was very problematic. Granted many of these would anchor these issues (somehow) in the equal protection clause or simply preserve some form of the status quo for sake of stability.
OTOH, the Roe dissenters recognized that the Constitution protects the mother's life and health, but did not have occasion to ever set forth the due process requirements under that framework. In an alternative world in which the SCOTUS went down that path, I suspect that the nature of the interest and their narrow time frame would necessitate a broad protection. It would be similar to free speech protections which go beyond the speech itself, but address the chilling effect of restrictions. In this alternate world, the end result might be pretty close to a narrow application of Casey, like Roberts offers today.
On “Bipartisan Gun Legislation: Read It For Yourself”
Yeah, I agree. And given that Kavanaugh's concurrence is joined by the Chief Justice, it reads to me as the controlling opinion, written specifically to emphasize the unique context. Future litigants will focus on the swing justices even if they joined Thomas' opinion.
"
Kavanaugh's concurrence:
"In contrast, 43 States employ objective shall-issue licensing regimes. Those shall-issue regimes may require a license applicant to undergo fingerprinting, a background check, a mental health records check, and training in firearms handling and in laws regarding the use of force, among other possible requirements."
I don't think there is likely any problem, but I note that a number of provisions are conditioned on things like due process or convictions which are doing a lot of the lifting here.
On “On a Hot Day”
Central Ohio is reaching high 90s with the power intentionally shut off yesterday around noon, expected not to return until Friday or Saturday. In the MISO power grid, running from Lafeyette Louisiana to Manitoba Canada, rolling blackouts have been announced for the Summer. Seems like everyone is going to need a backup generator if they can afford it.
On “Senate Reaches “Framework” Deal on Gun Legislation”
On the mental health side, I start with the question of whether the records even exist currently. Primary purpose of note-taking for therapists is for the benefit of the therapist to help remember things discussed. In non-institutional settings there are probably a lot that are handwritten. In institutional settings there are drop-down menu-driven apps which provide little information not geared towards making sure the client is getting all of the services they may need. I assume that a mental health registry would need the creation of a federal form that all licensed therapists must fill out with each session or other event. Should the client sign the form before its entered into the database so that the contents cannot be reasonable questioned?
I assume gun owners will mostly be ok with a mental health registry because they are sturdy, self-reliant individuals who do not need mental health services and if they had any doubts before, they will be certain about it now.
On “From CNN Business: The Washington Post suspends reporter David Weigel over sexist retweet”
Seems to me that if the employer is potentially concerned about a wrongful termination lawsuit, then the employer should definitely terminate in writing.
On “Racism Under The Banner of Science”
DV misdemeanors are already banned from gun ownership under Federal law since 1996, so I'm not sure what state law is doing unless it's to create a state specific framework for some reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Hayes
"
That poses an interesting question. There are a lot of areas of research that ignore racial differences and end-up with skewed results because their sample is not representative of racial diversity. Some people here refer to ignoring racial differences as an example of unconscious bias. The study that the author believes is racist found that results had a "much lower predictive power in an African-American sample than in a European-ancestry sample." It goes on to encourage more study in this area.
And I think that's where the rub will be. Genetic studies of general intelligence are going on all around the world regardless of American religious objections and its unique racial history. Access to these studies will be available, but if the science is chased into the alley in America, it will be domestically inaccurate to some degree while still informing people on the internet.
On “Mini-Throughput: What the Data Say About Guns”
I agree w/ both points. And one thing I would add is that the U.S. has always been more violent than its OECD peers. In the second half of the 18th century Pennsylvania had twice the murder rate of London. Other areas were not terribly far behind, but generally the explanation is that Pennsylvania, built upon the bones of Quaker idealism, was the freest of the free. The cost of high levels of freedom was violence from lack of cohesion and hierarchy in the large cities, as well as high levels of alcohol abuse. Really our only peers in this sense are in the New World.
The other divergence is that the U.S. has a history of African-American slavery and has never fully assimilated all of the descendants of slavery. High murder rates are occurring in cities with those descendants.
On “Mass Shootings, Rampages, And Cascades of Failure”
After the Civil War, Southern states passed (or revived) Black Codes that barred blacks from bearing arms, while forcing them back into involuntary servitude as unemployed vagrants. When protests were made, blacks were massacred by state militias or private paramilitary forces often with military arms from the War. Reports of these travesties were made to Congress who passed various Civil Rights laws and the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) with members of Congress expressly stating that it would protect the freemen's right to bear arms.
The refusal of Southern states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment led to Congressional Reconstruction and military imposition of new civilian governments, which repealed the Black Codes and ratified the 14th Amendment. But in 1873, around one hundred black men were massacred by a white paramilitary group armed with rifles and a small cannon. When federal charges were brought, the SCOTUS dismissed them stating that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee a right of peaceful assembly nor a right to bear arms against any by the federal government. Cruikshank (1876)
After that decision, violence against blacks increased, the Black Codes were reinstated and the Jim Crow period had begun. So there was clearly a point in time in which armed civilians could have used federal protection of their rights to preserve their freedoms. The SCOTUS did not want to though.
On “How to Stop the Next Uvalde”
The student should complain to the school because this is primarily a discipline issue, but if it appears that mental health issues might be involved, the school can suspend the student until they've seen a therapist.
In the Virginia Tech case, campus police met with the shooter tell him about the complaint about stalking from a student. (The final straw was the shooter left a quote from Romeo and Juliet on a whiteboard outside her room) The student was not pressing charges, but that he should no longer have any contact with her. After the police left, the shooter texted his roommates that he was going to kill himself, which brought the campus police back to take him for an evaluation. This is not a criminal matter, he was temporarily deprived of his liberty for a narrow purpose, not to punish him.
"
Hopefully without repeating myself too much; I don't believe French accurately and fully describes the Virginia Tech situation.
In middle school, the shooter was diagnosed with “selective mutism” and “major depression: single episode.” The first means that he was painfully shy, its a social anxiety issue which is situational. He was prescribed an anti-depressant for the other until his mood improved. Are we really going to red flag mental health records of minors for what are fairly common, usually transitory issues?
In response to stalking complaints, a judge magistrate issued a temporary detention order for an evaluation of whether he was a danger to himself or others. The independent psychiatrist did not find him to be dangerous, but thought he should see a therapist. The attending psychiatrist shared that opinion. Neither diagnosed him with a specific mental illness, though he was taking an anti-anxiety drug on as-needed basis already. He was released with an order (request? suggestion?) that he see an outpatient therapist, which he did. French seems to bungle/ misunderstand the roles of the judge and the therapist, only one of whom is qualified to make a diagnosis. From a legal perspective, he was found not dangerous.
My main issue here is that if we are going to red flag people who a therapist notes are suffering depression or anxiety, there are going to be a lot fewer people seeing a therapist.
On “Mass Shootings, Rampages, And Cascades of Failure”
At the time of Heller, I believe Eugene Volokh opined that the Heller decision holding only implicated gun regulations in DC, Chicago and Illinois (because it was the only no-issue state). Illinois' carry ban was ruled invalid by the Court of Appeals and not appealed. I'm not sure at all what gun restrictions people think are popular in any given state that are banned by the SCOTUS.
"
My kids' schools use only one door for entry during school hours. The high school used to use two entrance doors on opposing sides of the building but after a student was stabbed to to death (at a different city high school), they put in metal detectors. Now students have to arrive 20 minutes early and wait in line outdoors in all weather.
"
I don't think that is an issue, gun manufacturers are strictly liable if they manufacture a defective product. As far as I know, these are successful if the gun malfunctions or does something reasonably unexpected without warning. Plaintiff's lawyers, keeping the world safe for Jeffersonian democracy.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.