Detailed Abstractions » SCOTUS

Infinite Monkey Theorems

Michael S. Langston — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:06:57 +0000

: Infinite Monkey Theorems

Headlines

Worth Reading

….or at least pondering and forgetting…..

From the First Amendment Center, the new Alabama governor displays amazing religious intolerance and arrogance. I thought this was 2011….. (whole thing here):

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley told a church crowd just moments into his new administration that those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior are not his brothers and sisters, shocking some critics who questioned yesterday whether he could be fair to non-Christians.

“Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother,” Bentley said Jan. 17, his inauguration day, according to The Birmingham News.

From the Obama Administration: Remember Obamacare? Which was going to add 39 million previously uninsured people to the status of insured (here via CBO)?

Well, here we are in 2011 – a time when Obamacare is *not* implemented and the provisions that have gone into effect only went into affect on January 1, 2011.

Apparently that’s a very long time though….. as according to the WhiteHouse via the Department of Health and Human Services, repealing Obamacare will put 129 million insured at risk (here via HealthCare.gov).

Seriously? I wonder if DHHS is still accepting information on those (here via DA) dealing in misinformation with regards to Obamacare?

From Wired, a meaningless, and based upon presented evidence, a false headline [emphasis added] Supreme Court Upholds Intrusive Government Background Checks.

The actual article?

The Supreme Court ruled that private contractors working for the government cannot be shielded from background investigations based upon a right to privacy. That government contractors can in fact, by virtue that they are basically government employees, be treated just as any other federal employee.

Maybe it’s just me, but subjecting yourself to a background check that resembles the exact same background check of others you work with doesn’t seem to be intrusive.

Which is irregardless for Wired anyway, as even *if* this decision could be argued logically as intrusion, the article doesn’t even attempt to offer proof of such an assertion.

From eScience News, US Office of Naval Research announces big news on the “Cool Things That Kill” front (here):

Scientists at Los Alamos National Lab, N.M., have achieved a remarkable breakthrough with the Office of Naval Research’s Free Electron Laser (FEL) program, demonstrating an injector capable of producing the electrons needed to generate megawatt-class laser beams for the Navy’s next-generation weapon system.

Artist's Rendering "PHALANX WITH LASER CANNON" Source: Raytheon

To put a little context into what megawatt means (1,000 kilowatts), Scientific American reports in July 2010 (here):

In a grainy, black-and-white video that looks like a home movie of a UFO attack a sleek aircraft streaks through the sky one minute, only to burst into flames the next and plummet into the sea….

Using a 32-kilowatt laser (article cont’d):

The defense contractor says it depicts part of a test conducted in May during which the U.S. Navy used a solid-state laser to shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles over the Pacific Ocean….

& Lastly – ESO’s Hidden Treasure Contest reveals winner (here):

M78 for ESO Processing contest. WFI camera on 2.2m telescope

Hidden Treasures gave amateur astronomers the opportunity to search ESO’s vast archives of astronomical data for a well-hidden cosmic gem. Astronomy enthusiast Igor Chekalin from Russia won the first prize in this difficult but rewarding challenge….

More amazing astronomical artwork here: Top 100 from ESO

Infinite Monkey Theorems

Michael S. Langston — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:00:14 +0000

Zimbabwe: Agree with us or we’ll steal your capital investments (here)

Wired reports on Darpa – that agency which built the internet, now wants a new mathematical language to describe everything (here):

The very first step? Create a unified mathematical language for everything the military sees or hears.

The armed forces are overwhelmed by all the data its various sensors are sniffing out. They want a single data stream that combines drone video feeds, cell phone intercepts, and targeting radar. Darpa’s solution, found in the brand-new Mathematics of Sensing, Exploitation, and Execution program is to design an algorithm that teaches the sensors how to interpret the world — how to think, how to learn and what data, accordingly to collect.

The Economist debates: This house believes that restricting the growth of cities will improve quality of life (here). An interesting topic, with the debate revolving around whether size is a problem and if so, forcing a certain size or giving individuals freedom to choose. Research, not (yet at least) discussed, has been attempted in the past to find the perfect size for a city; meaning how large does a city get before standard city services such as garbage collection or policing become less effective with the addition or each new citizen.

Either way, I’m still for free choice.

SCOTUS Blog on an upcoming Supreme Court arguments about corporate “person hood” (here):

At 10 a.m. Tuesday, the Court will hear one hour of oral argument on a government appeal arguing that business corporations do not have a right of of “personal privacy” that shields from compelled public disclosure the records they turn over to federal agencies.

From Stratfor, especially needed in light of gun control regulation based upon a single incident, Separating Terror from Terrorism. The piece concludes with this:

Recognizing that terrorist attacks, like car crashes and cancer and natural disasters, are a part of the human condition permits individuals and families to practice situational awareness and take prudent measures to prepare for such contingencies without becoming vicarious victims. This separation will help deny the practitioners of terrorism and terror the ability to magnify their reach and power.

Infinite Monkey Theorems 20100713

Michael S. Langston — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:46:17 +0000

Come on…. we can’t find any good justices to nominate to SCOTUS? This is what… the third (including the previous administration) uninspired justice nominated in just 5 years.

For such a prestigious and life long appointment, we should expect much better (via Cato here):

Elena Kagan, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, seemed to shock many people when she dodged questions about the Declaration of Independence during her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee…

DA posts here & here

Via Freakanomics here, which will hopefully put to rest the idea that nurses go on strike to “help” patients, from the NBER paper:

…Controlling for hospital-specific heterogeneity, patient demographics and disease severity, the results show that nurses’ strikes increase in-hospital mortality by 19.4% and 30-day readmission by 6.5% for patients admitted during a strike, with little change in patient demographics, disease severity or treatment intensity….

Robert Reich via Salon.com here demonstrates once again how much politics effects his economic analysis. According to him, this whole economic mess, including a potential backslide can be blamed solely on deregulation:

…starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It increased the cost of public higher education and cut public transportation. It shredded safety nets…

Which he believes is causing greater wage disparities:

…We’re back to the same ominous trend as before the Great Recession: a larger and larger share of total income going to the very top while the vast middle class continues to lose ground….

Because with deregulation, of course, companies can become EVIL:

…Companies were allowed to slash jobs and wages, cut benefits and shift risks to employees (from you-can-count-on-it pensions to do-it-yourself 401(k)s, from good health coverage to soaring premiums and deductibles)….

I submit what Mr. Reich fears is freedom – freedom of business owners to hire and fire as they wish, freedom of employees to change jobs easily (401K allows this, pension does not), just freedom.

Secondarily, you can see in his writing that the only thing the government has ever done wrong, is by not getting involved enough. He doesn’t mention government meddling, deficit spending, enormous new health care expenses, entirely new federal agencies which more money will be needed, idiotic regulations like a moratorium on all oil drilling due to one company’s failure….

Nope, for Mr. Reich, it’s all because the government hasn’t taken enough control over the little people.

Via Cato here, more news on the Obama Administration’s transparency:

The Social Security’s trustees’ annual report is, by law, supposed to be published by April 1. This year, however, the trustees have postponed its release indefinitely. The program’s financial condition continues to remain hidden from public view — and by many accounts will continue to be so until the end of the fiscal year….

Wonder if Reich views this as an issue?

Infinite Monkey Theorems 20100701

Michael S. Langston — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:10:58 +0000

More bad news for Obama & the Democrats for 2010 elections. Via The Atlantic here:

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!

Kagan’s Nomination

Michael S. Langston — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:52:56 +0000

SCOTUS pick made….now here comes the fun. From CBS, Obama stated, among other things:

“one of the nation’s foremost legal minds.”

a “trailblazing leader.”

“She has won accolades from observers across the ideological spectrum,” Mr. Obama said today, “not just for her intellect and record of achievement, but also for her temperament.”

For full disclosure, I’m a veteran of the United States Army, but it seems to me…. when Ms. Kagan, decided, as Dean of Harvard law school to ban military recruiters from campus due to “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy implemented, she did so knowing she was legally in the wrong.

To be fair, she did follow the law in that she only banned recruiters after some appeals courts stuck down the Solomon Amendment as unConstitutional, but I think the facts suggest she was knowingly following bad law because it suited her beliefs.

Now, as I frequently say, I’m no lawyer, but it seems the appeals courts which struck down the Solomon Amendment, did so without any real legal basis. I can say this easily with confidence now as SCOTUS upheld the amendment unanimously, but even without hindsight it seemed unlikely the amendment was unConstitutional.

For over 90 years, the federal government, with lots of backing from SCOTUS, has pushed policies and even laws on recipients of federal money. It began with a highway bill to the states, but again and again SCOTUS has stated firmly that if the federal government gives you money, they can take that money away if your group/entity/state does something with which they disagree.

I’m probably in the minority on this view, but when the Dean of Harvard Law School pushes a policy with which the United States Supreme Court unanimously rejected, she likely shouldn’t be on the court. Think about it – her beliefs and legal reasoning was unanimously rejected by the exact same court makeup that she will be joining…

But this is only the beginning and we truly know very little so far. I’m still inclined to keep an open mind as this is only one incident and I could see an argument about following school policy as valid, but for analysis sake.

At this time it doesn’t seem even a unanimous rejection of her ideas by SCOTUS will deny her entry into a life long position from which she can help shape the American legal system for years to come.

The likely scenario is that her opponents don’t find anything truly damaging, mainly due to her complete lack of experience (less than that of Harriet Miers), and politicians scared of being called hateful or mean, never question her with the ferocity intended. Not because she’s a woman, but because our politicians are fearful and will only risk a “meanie” tag once a firm majority is already behind them.