Commenter Archive

538 had Trump w/ 28.6 % chance of winning, which as a baseball fan is an above average chance for a batter to get a hit at any given at bat. Vastly different from the 1.8 % HuffPost gave, but its not about predicting the likely winner, its all the vitriol directed at Nate SIlver for giving Trump such a high probability.

I doubt Nate SIlver lost any cred; it was the Huffington Post writer and his/her supporters that claimed that SIlver was intentionally making the race look closer than it actually was for clickbait.

Is China a foreign dictatorship?

"Chinese officials deny any role in the cyberattacks, but U.S. experts say the 2008 attack was a "wake up call." NBC's Michael Isikoff reports."

Chinese hacked Obama, McCain campaigns

I think it's all sideshow; the electors will play their role; Clinton's part is over, though she will work the crowd a bit more to keep her fans from booing her.

touché

Remember when the electoral college was bad because it was anti-democratic?

There is a relatively recent paper on this: THE COMPLEXITY OF IMMIGRANT GENERATIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR ASSESSING THE SOCIOECONOMIC INTEGRATION OF HISPANICS AND ASIANS (pdf)

By the second generation, however, non-negligible rates of ethnic attrition emerge (7 percent for Hispanics and 21 percent for Asians), with particularly high rates for Salvadorans (28 percent), Indians (24 percent), and Japanese (32 percent). Attrition rates are much higher for third-generation children (18 for Hispanics and 42 percent for Asians), with rates for specific national origin groups ranging from 12 percent for Mexicans, 19 percent for Dominicans, and 24 percent for Puerto Ricans to 35 percent or more for the remaining groups (including rates exceeding 50 percent for Salvadorans and Japanese and well over 60 percent for Indians.

Attrition rate largely comes from intermarriage, but education is significant, though probably because it impacts marriage. Part of the significance of this is that there are studies showing poor education / English language skills among second and third generation immigrants, particularly Latinos in Southern California, but that fails to take into account that successful immigrants tend to stop identifying as Latino or Asian.

Our city's farmer's markets have some sort of permitting system paid for by exhibition fees that is supposed to enforce the locally produced requirement, but I don't know how effective it is.

C1: Should Trees Have Standing? This is not a new question, it was raised at least 44 years ago in a law review article that was cited at the time by a dissenting Supreme Court justice. This lawsuit is going nowhere, and don't be confused by the question, trees don't talk, they don't have bank accounts or lawyers. The question is whether guardians should be selected to represent the interests of non-humans or ecosystems. In this particular lawsuit, it appears the self-styled guardians want to require the President to take action to prevent climate change.

It would be as if a group representing workers who've seen their wages diminished due to immigration petitioned the Court to order Obama to take action. Not going to happen. One should expect 9-0 reversals at the SCOTUS for this type of intrusion on democracy. (Justice Garner was not even willing to order the federal government to process a permit to dispose of nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain as required by law, because he didn't want to interfere with executive functioning)

Basically, 5% of highway funds was de minimis. Losing all Medicaid funding was not. Now we have the boundaries, we can try to find the line that lies between them.

I more meant that most counting changes don't seem to carry much impact because the current partisan breakdowns are such that both parties have large and small states in their tent. Switching to electoral votes being awarded on the basis of Congressional districts would have given Gore the win in 2000 though.

The irony here though is that Lessig's argument is that WTA violates the equal protection clause, which IMHO would most likely result in voting by districts crafted by political parties, but those districts are already subject to equal protection review.

I never thought about proportional; that's an interesting link. Getting rid of winner take all does not appear to change much because disenfranchised California Republicans are roughly equal in numbers to disenfranchised Texas Democrats, and so on down the line.

I think if the Equal Protection argument was actually pressed, the point would be made that the "original intent" (TM) was that electoral votes would be tabulated at the district level, similar to how Maine and Nebraska do it. The problem will be that Hamilton and Madison proposed a Constitutional Amendment to undo state WTA laws that never went anywhere.

The WaPo article may be more "facty," but the skit gets to the deep emotional truth at the heart of the American experience.

I don't know how much the process of passing the ACA influenced popular perceptions of the law itself, but at least the point was being made that majority views of legislators were being passed.

There is a Saturday Night Live skit that disagrees with you.

Have you ever heard of a party passing major legislation through reconciliation?

I don't think Obama would ever do any of this, but if he did, it would almost certainly be someone from previous short lists for the SCOTUS. He was able to select Garland within 30 days because he had previously been vetted and interviewed for the two previous vacancies.

I don't want to spoil Dan Brown's research he is set to publish.

This and the Garland discussion point to the problem that poisoning the well of political discourse is one issue. The other is whether the independence of the federal judiciary could withstand it.

It is true that in the forgotten Federalist papers, Publius argued the merits of setting aside a "backwards time," where the minority could pass legislation without majority approval, as a meet and just recourse against the antagonisms of factions and to instill a spirit of fair play by turnabout. This of course was just a ruse, as the real purpose was to await the time when a Catholic monarchy could be installed. All copies of this article were burnt and the original concealed in the Vatican Necropolis.

There is no rule or norm that the Senate must confirm any nominee? My only point is that it is debatable about whether there was an agreed precedent on having a vote, and that itself involves a lot of issue framing. The majority frequently exercises the power not to vote.

This proposal is about a design to disenfranchise elected Senators and the states they represent.

The precedent on the first one is entirely debatable. A majority choosing not to vote on an item happens a lot.

34 Senators passing legislation while the majority and the states they represent are momentarily disenfranchised has no precedent.

There is a difference between a majority of the Senate deciding not to vote on something, and a minority passing legislation through a brief rift in the space-time continuum.

Are these new features really popular, or do manufacturers believe a bunch of shiny new-electronic / computerized features will sell more cars at a fairly small increase in price?

I don't want a backup camera on anything other than an SUV; I can see better without them in regular cars.

My kids, the oldest now taking driving lessons, have never admitted to knowing Santa isn't real, nor have we asked. So, this is going to be another year where I'm assembling Santa gifts in the basement and hauling them upstairs at 2 in the morning. If it wasn't fun, I would do it, but the fun is a little more absurdist now, and I'm wondering when they move out, if I'll have to get an extra key so I can pop in on Christmas Eve.