Archive for March, 2012

Supreme Court Watch: Decision on FAA v. Cooper

2
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

A pilot med­ical certificate

Editor’s Note: This arti­cle was sub­mit­ted by Max aka Bird­pi­lot. We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions from our readers.

Ini­tially, as a pilot myself, FAA v. Cooper looked to be a top pri­or­ity, high inter­est case. A pilot car­ries a much higher degree of respon­si­bil­ity than the aver­age cit­i­zen in the exer­cise of the priv­i­lege. Not only for them­selves, their pas­sen­gers and air­craft, but also for the peo­ple and prop­erty on the ground. If a pilot is going to be dis­hon­est in fol­low­ing the require­ments nec­es­sary for them to act as pilot in com­mand, it is rea­son­able to ques­tion what other “short­cuts” they might take, poten­tially endan­ger­ing those ele­ments I men­tioned above. But, as much as one would like to see the issue framed within that con­text, the mat­ter at issue before the Court is the applic­a­bil­ity of dam­ages per the Pri­vacy Act of 1974. (more…)

Open Mic March 30

85
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

Rich Counts in Mitt Romney’s world

This week, the Supreme Court heard argu­ments about the PPACA, and the nation tried to parse every word, try­ing to hand­i­cap the Act’s future. An ever-​​growing cho­rus of voices dis­cussed the death of Trayvon Mar­tin, and the cir­cum­stances lead­ing up to his shoot­ing. We dis­cov­ered that for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney con­tin­ues to exhibit tone-​​deafness, hav­ing cho­sen as his Dis­trict of Colum­bia cam­paign co-​​chair a man by the name of Rich Counts.

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

Employing Facebook Passwords

9
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

On Tues­day, I men­tioned how var­i­ous news sto­ries can gain trac­tion. In that case, it was the shoot­ing death of Trayvon Mar­tin in an Orlando, Florida, sub­urb. This month, another story has rapidly grown and recently reached crit­i­cal mass.

This time, the story is about Face­book. But, unlike the usual Face­book sto­ries, the com­pany had noth­ing to do with it. Rather, it’s about other com­pa­nies. On March 6, Bob Sul­li­van at MSNBC pub­lished an arti­cle describ­ing how col­leges and employ­ers have begun to demand access to appli­cants’ Face­book accounts. Not merely being “friended” — they demanded the appli­cants’ user­names and passwords.

This story got picked up by hun­dreds of web­sites within a day.

But the meta story of the spread of the Face­book story isn’t really the topic of this arti­cle. Rather, I’d like to exam­ine the bound­aries of accept­able demands on the part of employ­ers. (more…)

Supreme Court Watch: PPACA Day 3

79
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

To Sever or Not to Sever? That is the question.

Today is the third and final day of oral argu­ments in the epic Supreme Court law­suits cov­er­ing the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA, ACA or “Obamacare”).

There are two issues before the Court today, the last day of oral argu­ments in the case. The issue called “sev­er­abil­ity” will be dis­cussed for 90 min­utes in National Fed­er­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Busi­ness v. Sebe­lius and Florida v. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices. After a lunch recess, the Court will hear one hour of argu­ment on the Med­ic­aid expan­sion issue in Florida v. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices.

Most Court observers find the sev­er­abil­ity issue the more inter­est­ing one, and so I’m going to basi­cally ignore the Med­ic­aid expan­sion issue and talk about sev­er­abil­ity in this blog post. If you’re inter­ested in Med­ic­aid expan­sion, feel free to read up on this excel­lent analy­sis and then come back here to dis­cuss it.

What is sev­er­abil­ity? Sim­ply put, it’s the idea that Con­gress can pass a law that has an uncon­sti­tu­tional pro­vi­sion inside of it, but that does not nec­es­sar­ily inval­i­date the remain­der of the law. With a law that weighs in at 2,700 pages, deter­min­ing the sev­er­abil­ity of the PPACA will be a mon­u­men­tal task.

Sev­er­abil­ity is essen­tially an argu­ment for judi­cial restraint and sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers: the Supreme Court should respect Congress’s law­mak­ing author­ity and not do unnec­es­sary vio­lence to Congress’s cre­ations, even ugly ones like the PPACA. Remove the can­cer, the argu­ment goes, but don’t kill the patient. (more…)

Anatomy of a News Story

14
1 year ago
by Michael Weiss in

A cou­ple of peo­ple have expressed frus­tra­tion over the amount of press the Trayvon Mar­tin story has got­ten, when there are so many peo­ple killed by gun­fire every day in this coun­try. An exam­ple from Mule Rider ear­lier today:

It’s frus­trat­ing when some­thing like this soars straight to the front page or top of the news hour and drags out thou­sands upon thou­sands of peo­ple to protest the sup­posed injus­tice, but then some­thing like this flies waaaaay under the radar and there’s nary a peep of protest for the sup­posed injus­tices of the inno­cents that were hurt/​​killed dur­ing that spree of violence.

I’m sure Monotreme can speak more to the psy­cho­log­i­cal facets of this, but I’m address­ing this with a quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis. Research on the Inter­net isn’t that hard to do, and it’s worth doing before jump­ing to par­tic­u­lar conclusions.

Let’s start with the growth of the story. If you look at Google Trends, as shown in the graph above, you’ll see a clas­sic S-​​curve. So let’s see what was hap­pen­ing at the var­i­ous points along the way. (more…)

Supreme Court Watch: PPACA Day 2

12
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in
The United States Supreme Court, the highest c...

The United States Supreme Court. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week, the Supreme Court is hear­ing argu­ments about the Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA, ACA, or Oba­macare). Audio of Monday’s argu­ment can be heard here. It is fas­ci­nat­ing to lis­ten to the record­ing. The chance to hear a case as it is argued before the high­est court in the land is a treat not to be avoided. One gets a feel for the peo­ple behind the names, the voices and per­son­al­i­ties of a hand­ful of peo­ple (except for Jus­tice Clarence Thomas, whose voice is not heard) who decide some of the most vital issues of our day.  It sounds like a polite and eru­dite con­ver­sa­tion among witty but seri­ous peo­ple. Just like the com­ments on Log­a­rchism. On a good day, any­way. This is con­sti­tu­tional law at its finest. (more…)

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