American links
SF writer Michael Z Williamson’s things you have to believe to believe in gun control rant. 5 year old kills attacking alligator by shooting it in the head.
Since 1928, American Jews support for Democratic Presidential candidates has averaged 78%: review of a book frustrated by the political (US) liberalism of American Jews.
Not a good moment in Californian policing. The US Fisheries & Wildlife Service has its own SWAT team: one clearly needed to restrain two people in their 60s who sold orchids. There have been Congressional hearings on “over-criminalisation” of US Federal law. You think?
African-Americans can find visiting Africa particularly distressing:
For African-American students who expect their appearance to at last help them “fit in,” but find themselves still alienated, the experience can be especially distressing, Gearhart says.
Nate Silver on the importance of lack of nonwhite neighbours for being against a black candidate.
President Obama pushed Chicago’s Olympic bid as a way of restoring the US’s reputation as an open and welcoming society. Chicago eliminated in the first round of voting a sign of the US’s lack of standing in international sporting politics. The loss was a bolt from the blue for the Administration:
A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House. Only after the defeat did many advisers ask questions about the byzantine politics of the Olympic committee. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser and a Chicago booster who persuaded him to make the trip while at the United Nations last week, had repeatedly compared the contest to the Iowa caucuses.
But officials said the administration did not independently verify Chicago’s chances,
On the deep problems with the US’s Honduras policy. The Congressional Research Service report on Honduras undermines the basis of the Obama Administration's Honduras policy.
Camille Paglia sticking up for the libertarian 60s against the authoritarian 60s and wondering about the lack of critical thinking skills amongst her fellow liberal Democrats.
A video of kids in a public primary school singing President Obama’s praises and the school district’s response.
Poll finds government ethics have edged out the economy as voters’ top concern.
If you are going to have a doctor photo-op with the President, it is clearly important that they have white coats.
John Edwards public life is slowly coming to its conclusion.
About paternalism in Bloomberg’s New York and elsewhere:
The underlying left-right divide is not about whether government has the right to promote private virtue but, rather, about what kind of virtue it should promote. Republicans demand paternalistic policies that uphold morality or social order. In Indiana, where I recently spent my vacation, you can pick up fireworks or a handgun anywhere, but good luck buying a six-pack on Sunday. Democrats, by contrast, deploy paternalism for health and safety reasons, yielding a different set of absurdities. In California, pot is on the verge of becoming more permissible than cigarettes. Both left and right take pleasure in mildly persecuting those who fail to meet their civic ideals.
Because Democrats hold power at the moment, they face the greater peril of paternalistic overreaching. It would be wise for them to observe Sunstein's line. To exhort, nag, nudge, tax, and regulate people for the sake of diminishing purely self-destructive behavior is defensible. But to take choices away on the grounds that people should know better is infantilizing-and likely to hurt those who bear the cross of favoring more intrusive government. Liberals should show restraint, lest the right to be stupid go up in smoke.
A rather optimistic interpretation of Mr Justice Kennedy’s majority decision in Lawrence:
Eventually, the Court settled on limiting fundamental rights to those that could be grounded in our "history and traditions" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty."
The more specifically you define the liberty at issue, however, the more difficult a burden this is to meet - and the more easily the rights claim can be ridiculed. "Liberty" is obviously deeply rooted in our history and traditions. A right to use contraceptives is not. Nor is almost any particular exercise of liberty, especially if it was a practice unknown at the Founding. Whenever a particular liberty is specified, therefore, it is always subject to the easy rejoinder: "Just where in the Constitution does it say that?" even though the Ninth Amendment specifies that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
… Though he never acknowledges it, Justice Kennedy here is employing what I have called a "presumption of liberty" that requires the government to justify its restriction on liberty, instead of requiring the citizen to establish that the liberty being exercised is somehow "fundamental."
… More importantly, he never tries to justify the right to same-sex sexuality as fundamental. Instead, he puts all his energy into demonstrating that same-sex sexual freedom is a legitimate aspect of liberty - unlike, for example, actions that violate the rights of others, which are not liberty but license.
… Liberty is - and has always been - the properly defined exercise of freedom that does not violate the rights of others. Your right to liberty is not violated by restrictions on your freedom to rape and murder, because you have no such right in the first place.
… Recognizing a robust "presumption of liberty" might also enable the court to transcend the trench warfare over judicial appointments. Both Left and Right would then find their favored rights protected under the same doctrine. When the Court plays favorites with liberty, as it has since the New Deal, it loses rather than gains credibility with the public.
Since 1928, American Jews support for Democratic Presidential candidates has averaged 78%: review of a book frustrated by the political (US) liberalism of American Jews.
Not a good moment in Californian policing. The US Fisheries & Wildlife Service has its own SWAT team: one clearly needed to restrain two people in their 60s who sold orchids. There have been Congressional hearings on “over-criminalisation” of US Federal law. You think?
African-Americans can find visiting Africa particularly distressing:
For African-American students who expect their appearance to at last help them “fit in,” but find themselves still alienated, the experience can be especially distressing, Gearhart says.
Nate Silver on the importance of lack of nonwhite neighbours for being against a black candidate.
President Obama pushed Chicago’s Olympic bid as a way of restoring the US’s reputation as an open and welcoming society. Chicago eliminated in the first round of voting a sign of the US’s lack of standing in international sporting politics. The loss was a bolt from the blue for the Administration:
A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House. Only after the defeat did many advisers ask questions about the byzantine politics of the Olympic committee. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser and a Chicago booster who persuaded him to make the trip while at the United Nations last week, had repeatedly compared the contest to the Iowa caucuses.
But officials said the administration did not independently verify Chicago’s chances,
On the deep problems with the US’s Honduras policy. The Congressional Research Service report on Honduras undermines the basis of the Obama Administration's Honduras policy.
Camille Paglia sticking up for the libertarian 60s against the authoritarian 60s and wondering about the lack of critical thinking skills amongst her fellow liberal Democrats.
A video of kids in a public primary school singing President Obama’s praises and the school district’s response.
Poll finds government ethics have edged out the economy as voters’ top concern.
If you are going to have a doctor photo-op with the President, it is clearly important that they have white coats.
John Edwards public life is slowly coming to its conclusion.
About paternalism in Bloomberg’s New York and elsewhere:
The underlying left-right divide is not about whether government has the right to promote private virtue but, rather, about what kind of virtue it should promote. Republicans demand paternalistic policies that uphold morality or social order. In Indiana, where I recently spent my vacation, you can pick up fireworks or a handgun anywhere, but good luck buying a six-pack on Sunday. Democrats, by contrast, deploy paternalism for health and safety reasons, yielding a different set of absurdities. In California, pot is on the verge of becoming more permissible than cigarettes. Both left and right take pleasure in mildly persecuting those who fail to meet their civic ideals.
Because Democrats hold power at the moment, they face the greater peril of paternalistic overreaching. It would be wise for them to observe Sunstein's line. To exhort, nag, nudge, tax, and regulate people for the sake of diminishing purely self-destructive behavior is defensible. But to take choices away on the grounds that people should know better is infantilizing-and likely to hurt those who bear the cross of favoring more intrusive government. Liberals should show restraint, lest the right to be stupid go up in smoke.
A rather optimistic interpretation of Mr Justice Kennedy’s majority decision in Lawrence:
Eventually, the Court settled on limiting fundamental rights to those that could be grounded in our "history and traditions" or "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty."
The more specifically you define the liberty at issue, however, the more difficult a burden this is to meet - and the more easily the rights claim can be ridiculed. "Liberty" is obviously deeply rooted in our history and traditions. A right to use contraceptives is not. Nor is almost any particular exercise of liberty, especially if it was a practice unknown at the Founding. Whenever a particular liberty is specified, therefore, it is always subject to the easy rejoinder: "Just where in the Constitution does it say that?" even though the Ninth Amendment specifies that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
… Though he never acknowledges it, Justice Kennedy here is employing what I have called a "presumption of liberty" that requires the government to justify its restriction on liberty, instead of requiring the citizen to establish that the liberty being exercised is somehow "fundamental."
… More importantly, he never tries to justify the right to same-sex sexuality as fundamental. Instead, he puts all his energy into demonstrating that same-sex sexual freedom is a legitimate aspect of liberty - unlike, for example, actions that violate the rights of others, which are not liberty but license.
… Liberty is - and has always been - the properly defined exercise of freedom that does not violate the rights of others. Your right to liberty is not violated by restrictions on your freedom to rape and murder, because you have no such right in the first place.
… Recognizing a robust "presumption of liberty" might also enable the court to transcend the trench warfare over judicial appointments. Both Left and Right would then find their favored rights protected under the same doctrine. When the Court plays favorites with liberty, as it has since the New Deal, it loses rather than gains credibility with the public.