Big news from the Supreme Court this week ( Read more... )

Things that have been going on in my life lately:

• Far too many amazing holiday parties
• Shopping for gifts
• Snow, lots of snow
• Reading group at work, making our way through AntiPatterns
• A few large refactoring projects at work

But work is done for the moment. Julie and I left town yesterday to visit her folks for Christmas. We'll be back in Boston on the ( Read more... )

A few stories of interest:

The NYC AG has demanded a bunch of user data from Airbnb about those renting out units through the site, presumably as a prelude to some sort of crackdown. Seems like a disaster for Airbnb. They're fighting it as an overly broad request, but also publicly acting as if they assume it's just a crackdown on particularly ( Read more... )

I said before I left for camp that I'd discuss current events, but didn't do so on my return. So I'll briefly discuss some of that now.

The Voting Rights Act Case (Shelby v. Holder) - The Supreme Court declared the formula for requiring certain jurisdictions to get federal clearance for changes in their election laws unconstitutional. ( Read more... )

Sure has been a while since I did one of these, but here are a few recent tidbits.

Teach A Kid to Argue: On why teaching kids good argument skills is a better idea than you might think.

The Upside of Ugly: On plastic surgery and technological solutions to social problems.

Jay-Z’s "99 Problems," Verse 2: A Close Reading With Fourth Amendment ( Read more... )

Annotated ruling here. The law was upheld (with minor tweaks to the bit about Medicaid, the government can't cut off funds to get states to go along with the Medicaid expansion ( Read more... )

A few interesting things to share:

A post on why marriage bans are sex discrimination and thus subject to intermediate scrutiny (must further an important government interest in a way that is substantially related to that interest). The argument is logically rock solid. If two people are in court and changing the gender of one of those people ( Read more... )

Very interesting!

The 9th District Court of Appeals has issued a 2-1 panel ruling affirming the lower-court ruling that overturned CA's Prop 8. The full ruling is quite long, I haven't been able to get into it yet, but here are the key points from the summaries I've read ( Read more... )

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the decision overturning Prop 8 until the appeal is complete. Not sure what their reasoning on that is, the order does not say. It merely lays out a relatively fast schedule for the trial (opening brief by September 17, answering brief by October 18, reply brief by November 1). Oral arguments are ( Read more... )

Bit late on this one, but since I mentioned Judge Walker's decision before, I should mention that he refused to stay his ruling overturning Prop 8. However, he did extend the temporary stay to Wednesday so that the court of appeals can have their chance to issue a stay before the ruling goes into affect. A few interesting things about that. From ( Read more... )