Condescension…a winning strategy?

Gerard Alexander has a nice opinion piece in this morning’s Washington Post.

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

We’ve seen this before, of course…history repeats itself. The overreaching of the present legislative majority, though, and the acute tone deafness of the present administration, have exacerbated the situation. Let’s not leave the bloggers off the hook, either. While I can’t stomach more than a few minutes of the Daily Kos (which bravely carries the tag line “State of the Nation”) or the Huffington Post at a time; a browse of their comments section reveals the maturity and tenor of the discussion among the left’s cognoscenti.

I highly recommend reading the entire column….

Oral arguments set for McDonald v. Chicago

From David Kopel at Volokh Conspiracy: oral arguments in McDonald v. Chicago are set for 1000, Tuesday, 2 March 2010.

Expect to have local law school students, 2A supporters, and civil libertarians camping out on 1st Street, NE waiting for the doors to open. It's chilly here in early March, so camping out on the sidewalk is a sign of real interest and passion. There really isn't anywhere to get food nearby, and there isn't a place to stow your camping gear when you finally get in the door, so there are some logistics-related challenges.

I thought briefly about heading down to witness Heller v. District of Columbia first-hand last year, and I'll probably consider trying to see this case. The audio recording was good, but I would really appreciate getting the total experience. Hearing Alan Gura arguing to overturn the Slaughter-House Cases would be well worth the early morning chill.

McDonald v. Chicago oral argument scheduled

From David Kopel at Volokh Conspiracy: oral arguments in McDonald v. Chicago are set for 1000, Tuesday, 2 March 2010.

Expect to have local law school students, 2A supporters, and civil libertarians camping out on 1st Street, NE waiting for the doors to open. It's chilly here in early March, so camping out on the sidewalk is a sign of real interest and passion. There really isn't anywhere to get food nearby, and there isn't a place to stow your camping gear when you finally get in the door, so there are some logistics-related challenges.

I thought briefly about heading down to witness Heller v. District of Columbia first-hand last year, and I'll probably consider trying to see this case. The audio recording was good, but I would really appreciate getting the total experience. Hearing Alan Gura arguing to overturn the Slaughter-House Cases would be well worth the early morning chill.

Shooting stars

I just looked up and out the window (which looks north, to the Blue Ridge Mountains), and saw what must have been a pretty big meteor moving from east to west. It’s very dark here, and the leaves are off the trees, which gives a good view for very bright objects.

Jeffrey S. Flier, Dean of Harvard Medical School speaks out

In a WSJ opinion piece last week, the Dean of Harvard Medical School gives the current health care debate a failing grade.

Our health-care system suffers from problems of cost, access and quality, and needs major reform. Tax policy drives employment-based insurance; this begets overinsurance and drives costs upward while creating inequities for the unemployed and self-employed. A regulatory morass limits innovation. And deep flaws in Medicare and Medicaid drive spending without optimizing care.

Speeches and news reports can lead you to believe that proposed congressional legislation would tackle the problems of cost, access and quality. But that's not true. The various bills do deal with access by expanding Medicaid and mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost—and thus addresses an important social goal. However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.

…

So the majority of our representatives may congratulate themselves on reducing the number of uninsured, while quietly understanding this can only be the first step of a multiyear process to more drastically change the organization and funding of health care in America. I have met many people for whom this strategy is conscious and explicit.

H/T to Jonathan Adler at Volokh.com. As Professor Adler suggests, I recommend reading the whole piece.

McDonald v. Chicago amici briefs

David Kopel has provided links to some of the amici briefs over at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Cato

Academics

Congressional (58 Senators, 251 Representatives: a solid bipartisan majority by any measure)

Institute for Justice

Kopel

These briefs are very accessible, and provide important insight into the meaning and interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Applebees

Applebees had a Veteran's Day offer going yesterday, so I stopped by the Columbia, MD location last night after work. I hadn't anticipated the crowd -- the line was out the door, and the wait must have been at least an hour. I tried the Alexandria, VA location. (also on the way home) and it was the same story.

Couple Sues AARP Over Health Plan Marketing

From The Blog of Legal Times comes a story about Texas couple James and Allison Halpern who are suing AARP in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging deceptive marketing of health insurance.

AARP is an insurance company that has also developed a knack for lobbying. AARP has also turned out to be an effective special interest group in the so-called “Health Reform” effort (which has now morphed into “Health Insurance Reform”, after AARP and the AMA figured out how to shift the debate from cost control to insurance).

John Allen Muhammad

Convicted terrorist, murderer, and conspirator John Allen [Williams] Muhammad should have reached the end of the line by the time I press “Publish” on this post. I was living in the DC area at the time, and recall the fear and disruption that spread across the region during this period. I remember watching the news in the evening, as each new shooting was reported.

He, and his accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, murdered people in California, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Maryland, DC, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. It was widely reported after the two were caught in Maryland (where most of the killings occurred), that Maryland and DC worked out a deal with Virginia to have them tried here because there was a possibility for the death penalty as a result of the terrorism charge (Muhammad was later convicted of six murders in Maryland, and received six consecutive life terms without possibility of parole). Muhammad earned lethal injection for killing Dean H. Meyers in Manassas, Virginia, while Malvo received life without possibility of parole.

Fwd: The Wall

Twenty years ago, the wall came down.

We have a whole generation, now, who have no direct knowledge of Soviet-style communism. Someday, perhaps, someone will be able to say the same about Cuba.

Are Lawyers A Productive Part of Society?

Thoughtful words from Justice Antonin Scalia, courtesy of Paul Cassell at the VC: Are Lawyers A Productive Part of Society?

David Kopel on incorporation

Travel put me a bit behind, so here's a belated link to David Kopel's blog entry at the Volokh Conspiracy yesterday, regarding the issue of incorporation of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution against the states. Incorporation is the central issue behind McDonald v. Chicago, and very important case that will be heard during this session of the U.S. Supreme Court.

I heartily recommend both the short version and the long version, at: Want to do it the easy way, or the hard way?

Nina Totenberg’s report re McDonald v. Chicago today

I’ll spare readers my usual quibbles with Nina. What I’m particularly pleased about, in this afternoon’s report, is the phone interview with chief conspirator Prof Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School. He was a nice counterpoint to the fellow from Brady, Paul Helmke.

Note the DC = federal enclave connection. That must have caused some tooth-grinding at the Wilson Building (and with the DC voting rights crowd). DC tried playing on both sides of that fence in 2008, between the proposed voting rights legislation and their claim in District of Columbia v. Heller.

Note also the subtle suggestion that Circuit Court Judge Easterbrook (a Reagan appointee) sided with Chicago; I read his decision in McDonald as being consistent with District of Columbia v. Heller, in that 2A incorporation has not been decided [yet] by the U.S. Supreme Court. We’ll know by June 2010 where this issue stands.

McDonald v. Chicago goes to the Supremes

The U.S. Supreme Court granted the plaintiff’s petition for certiorari today, so the case will be heard in the next term. Alan Gura, the attorney who successfully argued District of Columbia v. Heller, will be making another appearance before the court to argue this case.

More facts on the case here.

ACORN et. al v. Breitbart.com et. al

The long-awaited civil complaint in the latest ACORN scandal was filed in the Baltimore City Circuit Court today (thanks to Politico for posting the complaint). If this goes much further, expect the legal defense fund to start up pretty quickly.

There’s some nice analysis in the comment threads at Volokh.com.

More great analysis on this saga over at Popehat. My favorite quote?

“Moreover, the suit will allow the defendants — if they don’t get out on a motion to dismiss — to use the discovery process to rampage through ACORN’s records in an effort to prove that any reputational harm to ACORN was a result of ACORN’s actual bad behavior being revealed. Does ACORN really want to roll the dice and count on getting a judge who won’t let the defendants delve deeply into their practices and into the bases for their reputation?”

I feel sorry for the two young filmmakers for having to deal with the legal hassle, but their support network must be huge, so they’ll get through this just fine. The Google search phrase <o'keefe legal defense fund> serves up about 26,400 hits, so the game is on.

Changes

After 31 years of military and public service, I started work in the private sector this morning. The last private sector job I had was in 1977 as a computer programmer while I was in college.

Some things are the same, and some are different, but I appreciate both. I had some great time off this summer to really be retired and to enjoy a lot of great time with my kids and my wife, and I was able to get Lorraine packed off on her business trip with everything she needs.

I’ll be working with a lot of old (and new) friends in my new job, and will be able to continue to work to solve the problems to which I’ve devoted the past 16 years of my life. I’m also back in an industrial facility, where real products roll off an assembly line, which I’ve missed since leaving Pomona in the late 80’s. It’s nice to be able to walk from my office to see people working with their hands to build mechanical and electronic assemblies.

Office of Thrift Supervision on AIG

Scott M. Polakoff, Senior Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer, Office of Thrift Supervision testified before the U.S. Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on 5 March 2009. For whatever reason, his testimony didn't get much play in the so-called mainstream media. I prefer to think that because his easy-to-read and easy-to-follow testimony is so far from the "failure of government regulation" narrative, that the only alternative is to bury the story.

Congress is burying the story, also. The very committee before which Mr Polakoff testified flat-out dropped the ball, either from inattention, incompetence, or, most likely, by letting political and other concerns outweigh the public benefit.

"Consistent with changing business practices and how conglomerates then were managed, in late 2003 OTS embraced a more enterprise-wide approach to supervising conglomerates. This shift aligned well with core supervisory principles adopted by the Basel Committee and with requirements adopted by European Union (EU) regulators that took effect in 2005, which required supplementary regulatory supervision at the conglomerate level. OTS was recognized as an equivalent regulator for the purposes of AIG consolidated supervision within the EU, a process that was finalized with a determination of equivalence by the French regulator, Commission Bancaire."

So, how do individuals in the Congress (such as the grandstanding Sherrod Brown (D-OH), member of the very same U.S. Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committee) conclude that AIG was unregulated?

“At AIG, it was not enough to insure lives or property or health,” Brown said today at the hearing. “A largely unregulated corner of the company decided it would make enormous bets on exotic financial arrangements—providing insurance where there were no actuarial tables and almost no actual experience. You would think that such a colossal miscalculation would lead to contrition. In the world of Wall Street, you would be wrong.”

Senator Brown, AIGFP didn't, actually, live in "a largely unregulated corner of the company", according to the testimony of the U.S. agency charged with supervision and regulation. But you already knew that, based on Mr Polokoff's testimony 12 days earlier. Also, actuarial tables are appropriate for life insurance, not for other forms of insurance (such as credit default swaps).

Also, Senator Brown, I wouldn't "think that such a colossal miscalculation would lead to contrition", I would think that such a colossal miscalculation would lead to reorganization of the company under U.S. bankruptcy laws. Why didn't we take that step? It sure would have saved a lot of money. In the end, we're going to wind up reorganizing AIG anyway, it'll just be after a previously unbelievable amount of taxpayer wealth has been squandered by a profligate administration and congress.

Nunchaku

I can't help but think of Rainn Wilson's character Dwight Schrute in NBC's The Office, whenever I hear about nunchaku.

Eugene Volokh brings us, today, the story of Maloney v. Cuomo, a Second Amendment case concerning the state of New York's 1974 ban on nunchaku. Mr. Maloney, the petitioner in this case, seeks to appeal his case to the SCOTUS, which provides an opportunity to incorporate the 14th Amendment against the states.

Interesting reading...start here:

The Volokh Conspiracy - Kirkland & Ellis Will Ask Supreme Court To Consider Incorporation of Second Amendment, in the Second Circuit's Nunchaku Case:

Personal and economic freedom in the United States: a study

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler posts a link to Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom, recently published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University (here in Northern Virginia).

See the data behind the study here.

I'm heartened that Virginia ranks [relatively] high on personal freedom (relative, that is, to many other states) and also relatively high on economic freedom.

Passenger rail economics (and subsidies)

Over at Cato @ Liberty, a piece on Crédit Mobilier as a Model for High-Speed Rail.

Why, if we have such large subsidies for Amtrak, do we think that high-speed rail is affordable? What's changed?