Arizona’s tough new immigration law was just hours away from taking effect when a federal judge issued an injunction today blocking key portions of the law from being enforced.

Among the provisions U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton put on hold are the “reasonable suspicion” section that would allow police to arrest and detain suspected illegal immigrants without a warrant and a provision making it illegal for undocumented day laborers to solicit or perform work.

Bolton also stayed part of the Arizona law requiring immigrants to carry federal immigration documents.

Based upon the likelihood that these provisions could be used by officers to wrongly detain legal residents.

Next steps? Arizona will likely appeal and lose that appeal at the 9th Circuit Court.  The final arbiter of course being SCOTUS if they decide to take the case upon any further appeals.

Legally speaking, it’s an interesting question.  Basically, one of the powers the federal government holds is over immigration status and therefore it can be legally argued that Arizona has overstepped its authority (regardless of whether legal citizens will be wrongly detained).  However, does this mean a state has no resource against illegal aliens if the federal government is doing a poor job at the very responsibility they are stating they have absolute authority over.

More interesting I think will be the upcoming round of debates on a continuing question:  What is judicial activism and who is and isn’t exactly against it?

& the question isn’t an easy one.   Two fairly recent decisions can illustrate the complexity.  For most of recent memory, conservatives have been leading the charge against judicial activism.  But take a case like Kelo v New London where conservative outrage notwithstanding, the court followed the restraint pattern by enforcing prior precedence.

Move forward to McDonald v the City of Chicago and whether conservatives think so or not, a federal decision has invalidated a law the citizens of Chicago seemed to agree (based upon the fact they have recourse through voting)…. this would be judicial activism.

In most people’s minds it seems judicial activism is only wrong when a law your side has passed met its end through the legal system, otherwise it’s always wise restraint or cautious interference.

But let’s call it what it is:  judicial activism is when the court system invalidates the will of the voters.  This is true whether they invalidate gun laws, marriage statutes or amendments, immigration laws, sodomy laws, marijuana laws, and on and on and on.

Let’s further assume no one is really against all judicial activism.  I think most reasonable people can agree that say if judges were to invalidate the intermittent of Japanese-Americans during WWII, it would’ve been both activist and morally correct.  Even if most people couldn’t agree on that, we can all envision unjust laws which should not stand.

If we can allow for that definition, the maybe we can change the question as well.  Instead of – are you for or against judicial activism – to – how and when should judges be activist; we might begin to move towards a more reasoned debate.

So let’s call this one what it is – judicial activism and ask, should it have been used?  Why/why not?

I for one want to see judicial activism to always err on the side of individual rights and freedoms, not collections, groups, NOGs, nor government agencies.  This case gives me pause either as I am supporting of Arizona’s rights, the freedom of those individual voters to enact the laws they wish, but also am against current immigration policy.  For now, the voters spoke and I would err on the side of those individuals.

Others of course will draw the line in different places.

What’s important however is that we understand the line exists, instead of continuing to pretend it moves based upon our wishes.

more here on the debate: Reason’s July Cover Story Conservatives v. Libertarians

Chris Cillizza’s Morning Fix reports new data from Gallup showing that independents now favor a generic Republican candidate for Congress over a generic Democrat by 12 points….

& as is continually the case with this congress, more bad news for freedom.  Via The Hill here:

The 30-second campaign ad could become a thing of the past for third-party groups if the Democrats’ campaign finance legislation becomes law.

Media strategists argue the new disclosure requirements would eat into the majority of their ad time….

& while we’re talking about lack of freedom…. what might Kagan do about this “disclose” act?  Via Reason.com here:

As solicitor general of the United States, Elena Kagan argued in front of the Supreme Court that the federal government had the constitutional authority to ban certain political pamphlets. She also strongly implied that some political books, if they were partisan enough, could also be censored…..

Does is matter that she’s against free political speech?  Unlikely…. via Yahoo News here:

…Kagan’s performance in the Judiciary Committee drew praise from Democrats and compliments even from some critics, putting her on a path to confirmation by the full Senate sometime in July.

“She will be confirmed. I believe she will be confirmed,” said Republican Orrin Hatch, a member of the Judiciary Committee, predicting there would be at least some Republican support…..

& least we forgot, there’s still an oil spill…. which is being screwed up by the same government that is promising to “fix” healthcare….  Via The Heritage Foundation here, all kinds of people are offering help, but we’re still considering it:

In total, there have been 27 countries and 5 international organizations offering boom, dispersants, skimmers, vessels, bird rehabilitation equipment as well expertise. Along with the other important action items for the administration to undertake, accepting international assistance must be a more urgent priority. The Department of State has a chart that lists the equipment and expertise sitting on the sidelines with most of the status orders “under consideration.” Owners of the equipment have been rapid in their response to government queries but the equipment remains idle. It simply needs to be better….

Not to mention the economic killing impact the asinine moratorium is having:

Meanwhile, the Gulf continues to suffer. It’s not just government incompetence when it comes to the environmental cleanup; the administration’s policy decisions are making the economic harm much worse – especially the offshore drilling moratorium. Although the ban was only meant to affect those rigs operating in water 500 feet or deeper, it has led to a de facto ban on shallow water drilling….

Butler said that only one of his four drill rigs are operating; all four were drilling before the spill. Spartan has six contracts that would put his entire fleet back to work, but he can’t get going until the permits come through, he added. The week before last, Butler said he had to lay off 72 employees. Come Tuesday he’ll have to let another 140 go. “That’s 140 families, is how I look at it,” Butler said….

Not only incompetence in the clean-up, idiocy in quickly implemented, but poorly thought out regulations (DA post here), The Atlantic takes all this and poses an interesting moral question here:

In this video from Climate Desk partner Need to Know, Atlantic correspondent and oil expert Lisa Margonelli talks to Jon Meacham about halting drilling in the Gulf. She explains her view that Americans don’t have a right to drive cars and use gasoline unless we’re willing to drill for it in our own backyard….

For good news – research conducted on parents and children in reference to video games demonstrates that most parents actually don’t need government help.  Via The Technology Liberation Front (here):

• 93% of the time parents are present at the time games are purchased or rented
• 64% of parents believe games are a positive part of their children’s lives
• 86% of the time children receive their parents’ permission before purchasing or renting a game
• 48% of parents play computer and video games with their children at least weekly
• 97% of parents report always or sometimes monitoring the games their children play
• 76% of parents believe that the parental controls available in all new video game consoles are useful

It might be scary to those in government who are continuing to try to push more laws concerning how parents raise their children as it discounts the need for those laws, but for us normal folk – it gives us what we see everyday:

Once again, these findings illustrate that parents are parenting!

]]> http://detailedabstractions.com/2010/07/01/infinite-monkey-theorems-20100701/feed/ 2 http://detailedabstractions.com/2010/06/21/white-house-to-freedom-youre-just-sooooo-1800/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=white-house-to-freedom-youre-just-sooooo-1800 http://detailedabstractions.com/2010/06/21/white-house-to-freedom-youre-just-sooooo-1800/#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:56:54 +0000 Michael S. Langston http://detailedabstractions.com/?p=1073 It should be no surprise to those who watch, but just know:  the tide against freedom is continuing.

Today – it’s the DISCLOSE Act, meant to remove the freedom enhancing SCOTUS decision earlier this year (via the Atlantic here):

…The DISCLOSE Act, aimed at addressing the Supreme Court’s Jan. Citizens United v. FEC ruling by requiring additional campaign finance disclosures from outside organizations that can run political advertisements, ran into snags last week….

What is this wonderful legislation you ask (here via ABC News)?

…A pending piece of legislation known as the Disclose Act would require the heads of companies, unions and nonprofit groups to personally appear in any sponsored political ads and endorse the message. It would also require them to reveal the names of the top five donors who helped foot the advertising bill….

Which seems like a solution a Senator might have picked up from visiting an elementary school, but the reality is the Disclose act is an incredible move against free speech.  There are some complaints about the political nature that are indeed worth noting:

…But House Democrats, eager to pass the bill and avoid a fight with one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies, have agreed to exempt from the new rules a small but highly influential group of organizations that most notably includes the NRA….

Obviously excluding certain, influential lobbying groups for tighter rules is a no-no, but the real danger is losing the idea of anonymity with reference to free speech.

The objections come from the usual sources – Cato (here).  They note that while proponents of the bill claim to resolve these ills:

Rep. Price cites three harms from such speech: “the opportunity for corporations, unions and associations to dominate the playing field, intimidating public officials and drowning out the candidates’ own messages.”…

That in reality:

…Notice that these alleged harms are caused by the speech itself and not by the fact that the speech might be anonymous….

Yes indeed, what Senators and the White House is claiming is that by knowing exactly who wrote message X, or even who funded message X, that you now understand more about message X than you would’ve otherwise.   Which works well on a micro level, say arguing on the play ground & when you start losing you can just yell out “liar” or “stupid”, but in real life – for those seeking the best we can hope for, the messenger is less important overall than the message itself.

Don’t misunderstand – pointing and laughing at hypocrites who tell us what to do when they refuse to do so is funny, amusing, and a good waste of time, but ultimately irrelevant to whether the points they made were indeed true.

The odd part about this… it’s likely to die solely because of the exemptions and not because it’s an attack on free speech… but in case it does contain longevity, here’s the ACLU’s thoughts as well (via Reason.com here):

1. The DISCLOSE Act fails to preserve the anonymity of small donors, thereby especially chilling the expression rights of those who support controversial causes….

2. The DISCLOSE Act would chill not only express advocacy on political candidates, but also issue advocacy….

3. The DISCLOSE Act imposes impractical requirements on those who wish to communicate using broadcasting messages….

4. The DISCLOSE Act imposes unjust restrictions on contractors, TARP participants and corporations with minimal foreign participation.

…[In Rwanda] Dialysis is “generally unavailable.”  As are many treatments for cancer, strokes, and heart attacks, making those ailments “death sentences” more often than in advanced nations.  Life expectancy at birth is 58 years, compared to 78 years in the United States.  Rwandan children are 15 times more likely to die before their first birthday (7 vs. 107 deaths per 1,000 live births) and 25 times more likely to die before turning five (8 vs. 196 deaths per 1,000 live births) than U.S.-born children.  (If you want to meet some Rwandan kids struggling to make it to age 5, read my friend’s blog, Life of a Thousand Hills.)  And yet, the saddest thing is a healthy-but-uninsured American college student…..

But the NY Times isn’t alone in their idiocy (as usual).  Via Reason.com (here), they wonder how a floating grocery store can possibly be a bad thing?

Nestle has put together a floating supermarket barge, and on Friday it sailed the product-laden boatmarket (superboat? grocerybarge?) into brave new Amazonian emerging markets…

My first reaction: Neat!…

Apparently that reaction is not shared by all. At Alternet, Michele Simon, a public health lawyer and author of Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, calls this an “especially disgusting news item” about which “writing about it is the only way I know to release my outrage. My version of screaming from the rooftop.”…

Yes, apparently many pundits from around the world are working tirelessly to keep all the options they have out of the hands of lesser people… for their own good of course.  As reason writer Ms. Mangu-Ward summed it up:

…Nestle is sending its boat into the hinterlands precisely because those hinterlands are now full of people who might be able to swing the purchase of the occasional chocolate bar, something well outside the scope of their financial lives just a few years ago. Hardly the sort of thing that makes me want to take to the rooftops–or the Internet–to express my outrage….

Arlen Specter….you remember, the guy who was going to lose his Senate seat so changed parties from Republicans to Democrats…. only to be soundly defeated in the primary?  Well, if you care, you can see an example of the last, desperate gasp of a man losing all of his power (via Politico here).

Good news on the medical front.  Via Bloomberg, Stem Cells From Own Eyes Restore Vision to Blinded Patients, Study Shows:

Patients blinded in one or both eyes by chemical burns regained their vision after healthy stem cells were extracted from their eyes and reimplanted, according to a report by Italian researchers at a scientific meeting….

WordPress, the blogging software that powers The Big Picture along with 11 million other blogs and has 256 million unique visitors to its hosted sites, may not be as revolutionary as movable type but it is a crucial element in what has made it possible for blogging to grow from a hobby into a major threat to the mainstream media….

Via Reason.com – In England it’s so bad, cops rob you! (here):

Police in Exeter, England, say some residents make life too easy for burglars, and to prove it, they’ve burgled around 50 homes themselves. The police look for places with unlocked doors or open windows, and then they slip inside and put valuables into a bag for the owners to find.

Via Cato – Cisneros, the Clinton Administration’s head of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) explains how the government had little to do with the housing crisis – Cato responds (here):

In a recent speech to real estate interests, former Clinton HUD secretary Henry Cisnerospreposterously claimed that the recent housing meltdown “occurred not out of a governmental push, but out of a hijacking of the homeownership process by some unscrupulous interests.”

The only criticisms Cisneros could muster for the government’s housing policies over the past 20 years were that regulations weren’t tough enough and it should have focused more onrental subsidies.

Imagine that… government officials acting as if they  weren’t effecting anything even though their entire intention was to affect the housing market.  Their entire reason for being is to affect the housing market.

Seems oddly similar to recent reports from the White House on the oil spill.  Listen carefully and you’ll hear this:  ”We have been in charge since the incident occurred, but everything that is happening is someone else’s fault.”

Speaking of which, Obama’s approval rating down (here via Gallup).  In late January of this year, 66% approved, only 19% disapproved.  The latest figures show 49% approval, 44% disapprove.  That was quick…

Lastly, but certainly not least – great pictures of the birth of a star (here via Yale):

New Haven, Conn. — Astronomers have glimpsed what could be the youngest known star at the very moment it is being born. Not yet fully developed into a true star, the object is in the earliest stages of star formation and has just begun pulling in matter from a surrounding envelope of gas and dust, according to a new study that appears in the current issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

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