Michael Weiss

Michael Weiss

(6350 comments, 335 posts)

Michael is a jack of many trades, and master of a few. His varied background includes government and private businesses, both large and small. His experience in the financial services and computer industries has led him to computer security.

Home page: http://logarchism.com

Posts by Michael Weiss

Supreme Court Watch: Watershed Decision

0
2 days ago
by Michael Weiss in

This week, the Supreme Court issued a unan­i­mous, water­shed deci­sion. In eval­u­at­ing Tar­rant Regional Water Dis­trict v. Her­rmann, a case I cov­ered in late April, the Court opted to avoid the fig­u­ra­tive water­shed in favor of the lit­eral one.

As I noted before, Texas and Okla­homa, the states involved in the dis­pute, are “prior appro­pri­a­tion” states, whereby water is allo­cated based on per­mits issued to those who make “ben­e­fi­cial” use of the resource. In this case, the water in ques­tion flows down the Red River, which marks much of the Texas-​​Oklahoma bor­der. The Tar­rant Regional Water Dis­trict (serv­ing an area of Texas around Fort Worth) wanted to directly access water from within the state of Oklahoma.

Okla­homa law pro­hib­ited such diver­sions, which is why Tar­rant imme­di­ately sued in fed­eral court after fil­ing the diver­sion request with the Okla­homa Water Resources Board. Tarrant’s argu­ment was that fed­eral law (in the form of the Red River Com­pact) trumps state law, and — even if it doesn’t — the Constitution’s Com­merce Clause pre­cludes a state from dis­crim­i­nat­ing against inter­state com­merce with respect to water resources.

The Court sided with Okla­homa (specif­i­cally Rudolf John Her­mann, who rep­re­sented the state). But, in doing so, the Jus­tices side­stepped the con­sti­tu­tional ques­tions brought forth by Tar­rant. (more…)

HOPE and Change

9
6 days ago
by Michael Weiss in

As a soci­ety, Amer­i­cans aren’t big on sub­tleties or com­plex inter­ac­tions; we tend to look at sim­ple, sin­gle cause-​​effect rela­tion­ships, despite the few instances in real­ity where an action has but one reac­tion. This makes us an odd bunch when it comes to the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Allow me to explain.

Crim­i­nal sen­tenc­ing serves five pur­poses: ret­ri­bu­tion, inca­pac­i­ta­tion, deter­rence, restora­tion, and reha­bil­i­ta­tion. Here’s what those terms all mean:

  • Ret­ri­bu­tion: this is revenge, basi­cally. The crim­i­nal hurt soci­ety, so soci­ety will hurt the crim­i­nal. An eye for an eye.
  • Inca­pac­i­ta­tion: by lock­ing the per­son up, that per­son can­not con­tinue to com­mit crimes. It’s hard to rob a con­ve­nience store from within a prison.
  • Deter­rence: if you know you’re going to be pun­ished for doing some­thing, the pun­ish­ment should be suf­fi­ciently severe as to keep you from doing it.
  • Restora­tion: make the crim­i­nal lit­er­ally pay for the crime. For exam­ple, some­one con­victed of graf­fiti can be required to repaint the wall, and pay for the mate­ri­als nec­es­sary to do it.
  • Reha­bil­i­ta­tion: change the crim­i­nal so that per­son won’t com­mit the crime again in the future.

While it serves all five pur­poses, sen­tenc­ing tends to be viewed dif­fer­ently by lib­er­als than by con­ser­v­a­tives. (more…)

The Match Game

1
1 week ago
by Michael Weiss in

Ear­lier this week, I dis­cussed the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Mary­land v. King. I focused my atten­tion at the time on the way that the state used DNA to go on a fish­ing expe­di­tion to find poten­tial crimes the defen­dant may have com­mit­ted, though they were unre­lated to his arrest.

Today I’d like to delve deeper into what it means to build a national data­base of DNA for the pur­poses of “identification”.

This is a crit­i­cal topic. In essence, we are mov­ing to a world where our DNA becomes our sig­na­ture. Osten­si­bly, it’s more reli­able than a writ­ten sig­na­ture, or a fin­ger­print. How reli­able? Well, in Math on Trial, we find out that a jury was told that the DNA mark­ers found at the crime scene appear in only one in 1.1 mil­lion peo­ple. So what does this mean when we have a national data­base of DNA?

Let’s go through a thought exper­i­ment. (more…)

Supreme Court Watch: Mistaken Identity Edition

14
1 week ago
by Michael Weiss in

What they don’t know can hurt you.

Yes­ter­day, the Supreme Court issued a deci­sion in Mary­land v. King, deter­min­ing whether it is accept­able for law enforce­ment offi­cers to col­lect DNA sam­ples from peo­ple arrested for “seri­ous offense[s]”. We cov­ered the case when it was argued before the Court. In a nar­row 5–4 split, the Court con­cluded that it is accept­able because DNA col­lec­tion is not fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent from mug shots and fin­ger­prints, which have long been col­lected by law enforce­ment agen­cies at the times of arrests.

What’s remark­able about this case is how the Jus­tices stacked up. While Jus­tices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Chief Jus­tice John Roberts pre­dictably sided with law enforce­ment, and Jus­tices Ruth Bader Gins­burg and Elena Kagan sided with the crim­i­nal defen­dant, two votes were sur­pris­ing. Jus­tice Stephen Breyer joined the con­ser­v­a­tive wing, and Jus­tice Antonin Scalia joined the lib­er­als. Jus­tice Anthony Kennedy, as is typ­i­cal, cast the decid­ing vote and wrote the major­ity opin­ion.  (more…)

Senator Frank Lautenberg Dies

19
1 week ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

Sen­a­tor Frank Laut­en­berg (D-​​NJ) died this morn­ing at the age of 89. With a DW-​​NOMINATE score of approx­i­mately –0.5, he was sig­nif­i­cantly more lib­eral than the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­tic aver­age of about –0.36. That score put him in the com­pany of such sen­a­tors as Bar­bara Boxer (D-​​CA), Sher­rod Brown (D-​​OH), and Shel­don White­house (D-​​RI). Amer­i­cans for Demo­c­ra­tic Action said that he voted on the lib­eral side 94 per­cent of the time.

Laut­en­berg was notable for his attacks on the tobacco indus­try, includ­ing ini­ti­at­ing the ban on smok­ing on com­mer­cial flights, and his sup­port of Amtrak. He was also the last Sen­a­tor to have served in the mil­i­tary dur­ing World War II.

Beyond his pub­lic ser­vice, Laut­en­berg was one of the founders of pay­roll giant ADP.

Gov­er­nor Chris Christie will appoint Lautenberg’s suc­ces­sor, which prob­a­bly means the seat will be filled by a Repub­li­can. While it is unlikely that Christie’s choice will be in the mold of red-​​state Repub­li­cans, it is cer­tain that the junior Sen­a­tor from New Jer­sey will be sig­nif­i­cantly more con­ser­v­a­tive than Laut­en­berg. This mat­ters in terms of over­all Sen­ate vot­ing, as the Democ­rats lost a reli­able vote.

Related arti­cles

 

You Can’t Imprison Dead People

2
2 weeks ago
by Michael Weiss in

Pres­i­dent Obama, giv­ing his dron­ing speech

Pres­i­dent Obama wants to shut the prison at Guan­tanamo Bay. He’s made that clear since his cam­paign in 2007, and has not wavered from that stance. I sup­port that, and applaud him for it. But he’s been imple­ment­ing a pol­icy that may well be worse, and that’s bad for all of us.

I alluded to this in some of my responses to dcpetterson’s arti­cle ear­lier this week. But it’s worth delv­ing deeper to under­stand the source of my con­cern, and look at it in per­spec­tive. So I’m devot­ing my arti­cle today to that subject.

Let’s look at what the Pres­i­dent has pub­lished on the topic. On May 23, he released a “fact sheet”, out­lin­ing the poli­cies and pro­ce­dures for deal­ing with ter­ror­ists that are nei­ther in the United States, nor in “Areas of Active Hos­til­i­ties” (e.g., Afghanistan).  (more…)

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