Quotulatiousness

March 5, 2011

Expanding the already expansive interpretation of the “Commerce Clause”

Filed under: Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:51

Rich Lowry explains why the recent court decision by Judge Gladys Kessler has such wide-reaching implications:

The easy-to-grasp distinction between an activity and inactivity is one of the most powerful legal arguments of ObamaCare’s opponents. But they hadn’t yet run up against a jurist as ingenious as Judge Kessler. She brushes aside the activity/inactivity distinction because not doing something is a choice and therefore “mental activity.”

Why hadn’t someone thought of this before? The sophists in Eric Holder’s Justice Department must be embarrassed that they didn’t themselves dredge up this killer rejoinder.

[. . .]

Kessler writes, “It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not ‘acting,’ especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something.”

[. . .]

Under the Kessler principle, there’s no nonconduct that the federal government can’t reach. Every day, most Americans engage in nonactivities that affect interstate commerce. If you decide not to buy a house, not to buy a Chrysler or not to buy a Snuggie, you’ve impacted interstate conduct through affirmative mental actions. We’ve gone from the Constitution giving Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes,” to regulating on the basis of the mental activities of individuals deciding not to do something.

If this precedent stands, the Commerce clause has effectively swallowed the bill of rights: there will be no sphere of human activity that the US federal government can’t regulate.

H/T to David Harsanyi for the link.

February 18, 2011

Red light cameras

Filed under: Government, Law — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

Some frightening footage of traffic accidents from a few years ago, posted to one of the mailing lists I’m moderately active on.

Note that most of these accidents would not be prevented by red light cameras: you can’t stop inattentive idiots from being idiots just by taking photos of the license plate on the vehicle. However, several of the accidents could have been avoided if the non-infringing drivers were a bit more attentive. Dennis Lippert responded to this video and the pro-red light camera fans thusly:

As usual, the majority of the crashes on the video probably would have been avoided if the “innocent” driver had been paying attention to his surroundings. Proving, again, that driving is not to be taken lightly… not to be done while texting… or talking… or doing anything else, really…

I’m all for this sort of camera… just a video overview of the intersection… which can be used to let law enforcement see what happened after a crash.

I’m staunchly against red-light-cameras as they’ve been implemented as revenue devices…. from which some 75% of the revenue comes from folks who innocently slipped thru a red-light a second or so after it changed… and before the cross traffic started into the intersection.

It has been proven that lengthening the yellow light by a second
decreases the incidence of red-light-running by something like 50%
per second of extra time…

Red-light-cameras will not stop the folks who simply aren’t paying attention at all… or who are wantonly disobeying. All they do is generate revenue from harmless slight-offenders.

Since they generally sent most of the profits to the company that
installs the system, rather than to the municipality, this makes
perfect sense. More tickets = more money. So the systems are designed for maximum revenue… not optimal safety.

As Dennis points out, red light cameras are like speed traps in that they’re revenue generators first and only public safety enforcement a distant second.

February 15, 2011

QotD: Don’t trust your government

Filed under: Britain, Government, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

Last week’s civil liberties bill was hardly perfect but it’s still a step in the right direction. And, frankly, it’s bonny and startling in equal measure to have a Deputy Prime Minister who says things like this:

“I need to say this — you shouldn’t trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government — full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good.”

I’m quite happy to oblige Mr Clegg. I don’t trust this government either. I think it’s intentions are often fine but I doubt whether it has the courage of those convictions. Government necessitates trimming and compromising but the troubling ease with which this crew can be blown off course does not bode well for stormier times ahead. It needs to make a proper — muscular, you might say — defence of its liberalism. Thus far it has been too wimpy by far and, for that matter, too content to try and blame everything on its predecessor. That dog won’t hunt anymore.

Cameron, Clegg, Clarke, Grieve, Gove, Alexander, IDS and so on are, on the whole, decent men with decent ideas. Their government still has a surprising amount of potential and the ability to do some good. But that doesn’t mean they can be trusted.

Alex Massie, “Nick Clegg is Right. Again.”, The Spectator, 2011-02-14

February 10, 2011

Reason.tv responds to Hillary Clinton

Filed under: Economics, Law, Liberty, Politics, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:55

January 22, 2011

How Big Government fans cast their arguments

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:01

L.A. Liberty rounds up the rhetorical conventions of Big Government sympathizers:

With discussions of “rhetoric” in the air, I thought it timely to propose what I have observed — from online discussions, family get-togethers, and everything in between — as the archetypal rhetorical conventions of big government sympathizers (i.e. the left, generally, though not exclusively):

* deflections (altering or averting the basis of the discussion to a different but seemingly related topic),
* assertions of pathos (appeals to one’s emotions, usually in the form of a sad hypothetical or a specific personal account, intended to either pity a concession or portray the opposition as a monster; this could also take the form of fear mongering),
* assertions of ethos (attempts to find hypocrisy in the opposition’s position, either by alleging that a different position held by the opposition is counter to their opposition’s current position, or by simply alleging “You would sing a different tune if it were you [or other person you care about] who needed [said government program]”)
* ad hominem attacks (related to pathos, such an attack charges either the opposition or another person who shares the opposition’s position in order to render an argument invalid, this often takes the form of accusations of racism, sexism, or some other form of bigotry),
* straw men (absurd conclusions, ostensibly based on the opposition’s argument, created in order to be refuted)
and perhaps most common of all…
* non-sequiturs (similar to straw men, these are failures in logic that assume incorrect conclusions; often a form of reducto ad absurdum based on incomplete or incorrect data)

These conventions can be explained by what is arguably the greatest weakness of big government sympathizers: a lack of reasoned thought and creativity that is the result of their inability to look beyond the status quo. In other words, because government does it, they have a hard time envisioning how it could be done without government.

January 20, 2011

QotD: The ongoing retreat of freedom of speech in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:04

It used to be there actually had to be a violent protest before public institutions caved in and cancelled controversial events. That was unjustifiable, too. Police and officials should always seek to protect law-abiding speakers and organizers from the angry mob. Those who seek to disrupt events just because they disagree with the speakers should be the ones inconvenienced, not those exercising their constitutional rights.

Now, though, it seems the mere whiff of protest is enough for officialdom to bow to would-be protestors’ demands. Get together a group of unhinged radicals or zealots in someone’s rumpus room, make a couple of angry phone calls and — poof! — you can get your way and silence free speech and free assembly. Organizers, especially those connected with public institutions such as universities, museums and galleries, apparently care not a whit about free expression or individual choice. Their first instinct is to crater to protestors; let the forces of oppression and extremism have their way. Forget about preserving democracy and open debate, officials will act as the forces of censorship want.

Some of this has to do with the increased anger and vehemence of protestors, no doubt. In recent years, young lefties in particular have convinced themselves that only their positions are fact-based and only their positions can save the world. All other opinions are lies, as well as being threats to mankind and the planet. Therefore they are justified in any action they take to stymie opposing views, which they also believe are unworthy of free speech protection. They truly believe they are doing a public service when they shout down speakers or force the cancellation of events by smashing windows or jostling attendees outside the doors.

Lorne Gunter, “We’ve become a wimpy state, as well as a nanny state”, National Post, 2011-01-20

December 9, 2010

QotD: Ontario’s “restrictive, puritanical, liquor laws”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Law, Liberty, Quotations, Wine — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:20

Later in the trip we were at a Napa Valley winery. During our winery tour, the guide mentioned that if we filled out an order form we could have a case of wine delivered to home or office. Then she stopped, looked at my friend and me, and said, “Oh wait, not to Ontario. You guys are worse than Utah.” She proceeded to list all the countries they ship to, two of which have majority Muslim populations. But Ontario was too much trouble, so they gave up trying. We could buy the wine and bring it over the border ourselves, but if it were to be shipped across the border it would clearly be illegal.

Our restrictive, puritanical, liquor laws are not just limited to restricting products or preventing private stores from selling alcohol. On our trip it became a running joke to point out things that were banned in Ontario. Happy hour is illegal in Ontario. I pointed to a seasonal winter beer in at a convenience store with a cartoon picture of Santa Claus on the label and noted it would be banned in Ontario. There is cheap beer across the U.S. because of intense competition, but Ontario has a price floor of $1.07 per bottle.

So I pose the question that I was asked in the bar in San Francisco. Why are we so puritanical when it comes to alcohol?

Hugh MacIntyre, “Ontario’s liberalism dies at the brewery door”, National Post, 2010-12-08

December 6, 2010

QotD: Ignorance of the law is overwhelmingly common, and getting worse

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:07

The maxim “Ignorance of the law is no excuse” made sense back in the days when the only kind of acts that were illegal were genuine crimes that caused palpable harm to innocent victims: murder, rape, theft, etc.

But with the growth of the regulatory state, every individual is now subject to thousands of pages of densely written federal, provincial and municipal statutes and regulations. The law is also embodied in innumerable judicial decisions. And it’s all in continual flux: Regulations are passed without parliamentary debate, and courts release new judgments daily.

There is probably not a single law professor, judge or legislator in Canada who has even a passing familiarity with, let alone full comprehension of, all the laws we are required to obey. The average joe doesn’t stand a chance. We are all potential offenders every day, no matter how law-abiding we might wish to be.

Given this welter of law, how should those responsible for enforcing it conduct themselves?

Karen Selick, “Drop that pig and put your hands in the air”, National Post, 2010-12-06

British parents unable to say no, may get Nanny(state) to do it for them

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:34

Apparently, British parents are so fearful of the disapproval of their own children that they’re afraid to say “no”:

Retailers selling sexualised products aimed at children could face new restrictions under plans being considered by the government.

An inquiry to explore whether rules should prevent the marketing of items such as “Porn star” T-shirts or padded bras to children has been set up.

A code of conduct on “age appropriate” marketing and a new watchdog are among plans being considered by the review.

Children’s Minister Sarah Teather said parents faced a tidal wave of pressure.

She said: “Parents often find themselves under a tidal wave of pressure, buffeted by immense pester power from their children for the latest product, craze or trend.

“I want this review to look at how we can equip parents to deal with the changing nature of marketing, advertising and other pressures that are aimed at their children.”

Parents need the government to step in and protect them from “pester power”? Pathetic.

November 17, 2010

Nuclear ghouls unmasked

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

Tabloid headline is in this case completely justified:

Organs of nuclear workers secretly harvested for 40 years, report finds
The families of scores of nuclear power station workers whose hearts, lungs and other organs were secretly stored and tested over a period of almost 40 years were let down by the authorities, a report said yesterday.

Relatives were seldom told that their loved ones’ organs were to be removed, and as a result families buried or cremated incomplete bodies.

In many cases the truth that their organs had been illegally removed and then destroyed in the testing process emerged only many years later.

The three-and-a-half year investigation conducted by Michael Redfern, QC, covered events spread over almost four decades.

This is the sort of thing that retroactively justifies some of the weird paranoias of the last fifty years. It becomes more difficult to dismiss worries that “they” are doing shady and unethical stuff when it turns out that that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.

November 16, 2010

A child protection service with too many failures

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:18

Christopher Booker says that Britain’s bureaucracy to look out for the interests of children is badly off-mission:

For parents who fall foul of this system, often on no more evidence than malicious hearsay, the first shock is to find themselves treated like dangerous criminals. To seize children, social workers seem able to enlist the unquestioning support of the police, who arrive mob-handed, six or eight at a time, beating down doors, tearing babies from their mothers’ arms, holding parents in custody for up to 36 hours while their children are removed into foster care.

The parents must then wrestle with a Kafka-esque system rigged against them in every way. They find themselves in courts where every normal principle of British justice has been stood on its head. Social workers may give written evidence to a judge which the parents aren’t allowed to see. The most outrageous hearsay evidence may be accepted by the court without the parents even being allowed to cross-examine on it.

A key part is played by evidence from supposed “experts”, psychiatrists or paediatricians who may be paid up to £35,000 for their reports, and who receive regular work from the social workers involved. Parents are forbidden to call their own independent experts to challenge a case made against them. They are, all too often, pressured into being represented by lawyers who, again, work regularly for the council, who fail to put their case and who turn out to be just part of the same system.

Parents may be forbidden to testify on their own behalf, but must listen for hours, even days, to everyone else involved — including their own lawyers — putting what amounts to a case for the prosecution. The guardian appointed to represent the interests of the child may never have met the child and merely endorses whatever the social workers say.

Not surprisingly, these bizarre practices are so geared to the interests of a corrupted system that, in the latest year for which we have figures (2008), of 7,340 applications for care orders made by social workers, only 20 were refused.

Meanwhile, the children themselves are handed over to foster homes, which receive £400 a week or £20,000 a year for each child, and where many are intensely unhappy and not infrequently abused. Foster carers and social workers routinely conspire to tell bewildered children that their parents neither love them nor want them back. Children and parents meet at rigorously supervised “contact sessions”, where any expression of affection or attempt to discuss why the children have been taken from home may be punished by termination of the session or denial of further contact.

November 10, 2010

Pat Condell: Free speech in Europe

Filed under: Europe, Law, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

November 3, 2010

Will it really be a big change in Washington?

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

Liberty: consistency matters

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

James Delingpole, after suddenly discovering a man-crush on Marco Rubio, outlines how the Tea Party can still succeed:

[. . .] I’d suggest that the key lesson of yesterday’s mid-terms is this: it is simply not enough to stick a Tea Party label on any old candidate and hope that the US electorate’s growing antipathy towards Big Government will take care of the rest. Christine O’Donnell was more than proof enough of that. Not only did her candidacy allow the liberal MSM to tar the entire Tea Party movement as the natural home of anti-masturbation ex-witches and other fruit loops. But it demonstrated a worrying complacency and ignorance within the Tea Party movement about what it stands for and what it ought to stand for.

Christine O’Donnell puzzled me . . . if she’d actually been a witch, then her anti-masturbation activities made no sense. I’ve met lots of witches, and it’s hard to imagine any of them being anti-sexual in that kind of dogmatic manner. I didn’t follow the story, but I assume that she lost on the basis of both accusations influencing different voting groups.

So, if O’Donnell and other marginal candidates can’t depend on just wearing the “Tea Party” label to get elected, what do they need to do?

The Tea Party does not stand for: banning lesbian or sexually active single women from teaching at schools; discouraging onanism; banning abortion; keeping drugs illegal; God; organised religion generally; guns; or, indeed, Sarah Palin.

The Tea Party stands, very simply, for small government. So long as it understands this, a presidential victory in 2012 is guaranteed. If it forgets this — or doesn’t understand it in the first place — then hello, a second term for President Obama, and bye bye Western Civilisation.

In other words, Delingpole is calling for the Tea Party to be true to a minarchist vision: the least possible government to get the job done.

If you are against Big Government, you are for liberty. If you are for liberty you are also for free citizens’ right to choose whether or not they get out of their trees on cannabis, or indeed whether or not they have the freedom to terminate unwanted pregnancies or never, ever, go to church and in fact worship Satan instead.

Liberty is not a pick and mix free-for-all in which you think government should ban the things you don’t like and encourage you things you do like: that’s how Libtards think. Libertarianism — and the Tea Party is nothing if its principles are not, at root, libertarian ones — is about recognising that having to put up with behaviour you don’t necessarily disapprove of is a far lesser evil than having the government messily and expensively intervene to regulate it.

November 2, 2010

James Delingpole: “Thank God for the Tea Party!”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

James Delingpole clearly wishes he could vote in today’s American elections:

Arriving back at Heathrow late on Sunday night I felt — as you do on returning to Britain these days — as if I were entering a failed state. It’s not just the Third World shabbiness which is so dispiriting. It’s the knowledge that from its surveillance cameras to its tax regime, from its (mostly) EU-inspired regulations to its whole attitude to the role of government, Britain is a country which has forgotten what it means to be free.

God how I wish I were American right now. In the US they may not have the Cairngorms, the River Wye, cream teas, University Challenge, Cotswold villages or decent curries. But they do still understand the principles of “don’t tread on me” and “live free or die.” Not all of them, obviously — otherwise a socialist like Barack Obama would never have got into power. But enough of them to understand that in the last 80 or more years — and not just in the US but throughout the Western world — government has forgotten its purpose. It has now grown so arrogant and swollen as to believe its job is to shape and improve and generally interfere with our lives. And it’s not. Government’s job is to act as our humble servant.

What’s terrifying is how few of us there are left anywhere in the supposedly free world who properly appreciate this. Sure, we may feel in our hearts that — as Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe put it in their Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party manifesto — “We just want to be free. Free to lead our lives as we please, so long as we do not infringe on the same freedom of others”. And we may even confide it to our friends after a few drinks. But look at Australia; look at Canada; look at New Zealand; look at anywhere in the EUSSR; look at America — at least until things begin to be improved by today’s glorious revolution. Wherever you go, even if it’s somewhere run by a notionally “conservative” administration, the malaise you will encounter is much the same: a system of governance predicated on the notion that the state’s function is not merely to uphold property rights, maintain equality before the law and defend borders, but perpetually to meddle with its citizens’ lives in order supposedly to make their existence more fair, more safe, more eco-friendly, more healthy. And always the result is the same: more taxation, more regulation, less freedom. Less “fairness” too, of course.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress