Senate: Arizona: “In Arizona’s race for the Senate, two candidates are separated by about 16,000 votes with approximately 75 percent of results in. Republican Rep. Martha McSally was leading her Democratic opponent Rep. Kyrsten Sinema by less than 1 percent in the race to fill outgoing Republican Sen. Jeff Flake’s seat.” The last I read […]
Ian Millhouser correctly denounces not only Trump’s assault on the 14th amendment but also reporters who print absolutely false assertions. The issue is Trump’s clearly false claim that he can eliminate birthright citizenship by executive order. In fact “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens […]
A Federal Court cleared the way for students who have been defrauded by for-profit institutions (I hesitate to call them schools). “This court ruling is a major victory for thousands of students across the country who were defrauded by predatory for-profit colleges taking advantage of our broken student loan system. We commend Attorney General Maura […]
After instituting a $1.5 trillion tax cut and after signing off on a $675 billion Defense budget, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday, Tuesday, October 16, 2016; “The only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.” More McConnell: “It’s disappointing but it’s […]
The Susan Collins Excuse I listened very carefully to Senator Collins as she detailed her excuses for letting Brett Kavanaugh become a Supreme Court Justice. Two aspects of her speech were particularly absurd and kind of appalling. Her claims that Kavanaugh is a moderate akin to Justice Stevens were beyond absurd. The most appalling aspect of […]
As I write, Brett Kavanaugh is not yet a Supreme Court Justice. I assume he will be one soon. I am going to argue that this is the best of the bad possible outcomes. Yes this is making the best of a bad situation and pathetic motivated reasoning. Yes Collins’s speech drove me into an […]
My understanding is that Bret Kavanaugh presents himself as a textualist, following Antonin Scalia he argues that words in the constitition and laws should be interpreted using their conventional meanings when they were written. This is in contrast to the different approach based on considering legislative history (which is impossible for the main body of […]
A Weak Defense of Citizen United: Ownership v. Control Many thanks to Peter Dorman for highlighting Citizens United As Bad Corporate Law. I guess we had to endure this comment, which is a really weak rebuttal: Corporate shareholders are most definitely owners; they alone have the authority to sell their shares or the company’s assets. Their rights are […]
Citizens United, Thoroughly Debunked I admit I haven’t paid too much attention to debates over Citizens United, since I regard the direction taken by regulation, control over who may contribute to political campaigns and how much they can put up, to be misguided. I would like to see comprehensive control over how much money can […]