Law

Law, Interpretation, Code, Checks

by

Many people in government–including President Trump and several Congresspeople–have expressed dismay about the ‘stimulus’ checks sent to organizations such as Harvard University and Shake Shack.  I haven’t observed much curiosity, though, about why these checks got sent out in the first place.

Was the CARES act so written as to require money to be sent to such organization?  I haven’t read through this very large document, but here it is if anyone feels inspired to do so.

Was the language of the law so ambiguous that it was interpreted by the detailed implementers as requiring such funding, even though that was not Congressional intent?

Was it simply a matter of a coding error in a program that had to be written or modified very hastily in order to send out millions of checks?

I’m curious about the lack of curiosity re this matter.

Schumer’s Threats, in Context

by

Democrat Charles Schumer, speaking to “protestors” outside the Supreme Court: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

This statement was clearly a threat, but what kind of threat? Perhaps a direct physical threat, but more likely, I think, a threat to subject the two justices to the kind of orchestrated slander campaign that was already unleashed against Justice Kavanaugh; a slander campaign the would result in great emotional pain to the Justices and their families and great disruption to the operations of the Court.

The crowd to which Schumer was speaking is typically referred to as “protestors” in news reports, but what are they protesting? No decision has been made in this case. Evidently they are protesting the willingness of the Court to even consider the arguments made by the two sides in this case.

I’d call them a mob. Judge Andrew Napolitano, who does not believe Schumer’s statement violated any laws, nevertheless called the statement  an “effort to  politicize the court, to make  them look like they can be  intimidated by a mob outside of  the courthouse.”

The present-day Democratic Party together with its media/academic/activist archipelago has become quite friendly toward mob action and mob intimidation. One especially appalling event was the attempt to shut down law professor Josh Blackman’s talk at the City University of New York law school. When Blackman said the way to deal with a law you don’t like is to change the law…

A student shouted out “[expletive] the law.” This comment stunned me. I replied, “[expletive] the law? That’s a very odd thing. You are all in law school. And it is a bizarre thing to say [expletive] the law when you are in law school.” They all started to yell and shout over me.

There has been an awful lot of this sort of thing, and it seems to have been increasing exponentially over the last several years.

Read more

Seth Barrett Tillman: Conlawprof and Climate Change

by

Interesting observations:

On August 18, 2019, on Conlawprof, Professor BBB wrote:
 

Your note reveals a common misunderstanding of the predictive models. First, the models tend to under-predict. That is, the observed macro-effects exceed what the models predict. The models and reports also tend to under predict global temperatures. (The IPCC noted that “the [observed] level of warming in 2017 was 0.15 °C0.35 °C higher than [predicted] average warming over the 30-year period 19882017.”) [citing: ]

 
I note that Professor BBB adds the word “predicted”. It is not in the original quotation. I checked the original quotation in IPCC5, and it struck me—generalist though I am—that he had inadvertently inverted the meaning of the quoted material. But not being expert, and realizing that different minds might reasonably disagree about such things, I promptly wrote my friends at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Secretariat…

Seth links to a paper he wrote whose abstract includes this passage:

Legal academics and the public are fascinated by both constitutional text and the processes by which it is interpreted. The precise role for legal academics in the interpretation of such charters is controverted. Doctrine and case law as established by the courts remain the core of academic legal discourse. Case law is, after all, the object about which doctrine is based, built, and extended. But the interpretation of constitutional text through case law comes with costs — it seems to lack democratic legitimacy, and where unconnected to text and history, it has a tendency to fence out (even the well-educated) the public. On the other hand, when legal academics shift to text and history, their work gains populist credentials, but, at that point, the legal academic risks his privileged position. For the legal academic has no monopoly, or even highly developed expertise, with regard to textual exegesis or the best use of historical materials…

Substitute “scientists” for “legal academics”, and “climate data” for “text and history”, and there might be some kind of parallel here.

Jeffrey Epstein’s Death in Federal Custody, the Suicide of Federal Government Credibility

by

The announced “death by suicide” of Pedo-Pimp to the Powerful Jeffrey Epstein in Federal government custody while;

  1. On a 24/7 suicide watch,
  2. After his first “suicide attempt,”   in late July, and
  3. Before there was any time for a real autopsy…

…is such utter horse manure as to utterly destroy any shred of credibility of the Federal government.

That Federal Attorney General Barr first called for an FBI investigation of Epstein’s death — to deafening loud round of public rasp-berry’s.

Then he followed that credibility destroying knee jerk response near seconds later by saying the Department of Justice Inspector General would conduct the investigation — given the non-prosecution of so many in the DoJ & FBI after the IG caught them red handed leaking FISA surveillance sources and methods to the press — amounts to an “Eff-U” slap in the face to the General Public.

This is pure “Pravda Reporting on Chernobyl” territory.   It’s all about elite posturing and “Face” while the radioactive pile burns.

America functions on the consent of the governed.   This requires the government be credible through elite replacement by elections as well as the fair administration and enforcement of justice for both the powerful as well as the least of us.

The circumstances of Mr Epstein’s death are such that I’ve completely lost any faith in the concept of “Justice” that in any way involves the institutional FBI or Department of Justice.

I hate saying that because it leaves us here:

“Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.”

That Rubicon has now been crossed. G-d help the people of these United States.

Please comment and tell me I’m wrong.   I’m in the mood to be lied too.