Let Local Government Compete!

Posted on September 5, 2014 by wellsdc

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has claimed that it has the authority to nullify state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that would prevent municipalities from creating their own broadband services if they “restrict competition.”

At issue are laws that are preventing the cities of Chattanooga, TN and Wilson, NC from building broadband networks that would compete with networks operated by private-sector companies. You can probably guess who supports these laws and opposes the FCC. Companies like Netflix are calling on the FCC to exercise its power:

The cities of Chattanooga, Tenn., and Wilson, N.C. — which have asked the FCC to invalidate state laws preventing their government-run Web services from expanding — “should not be hamstrung by state laws enacted at the urging of incumbent broadband providers seeking to maintain market dominance,” Netflix added.

***

Public interest groups have urged the agency to go ahead, but Web providers, the National Governors Association and some Republicans in Congress have warned it to back off.

Interfering with state laws would be a federal overreach, critics say, and regulators ought to respect the will of the states.

Let me get this straight: it would be “federal overreach” for the FCC to nullify state laws, but it’s okay for state laws to nullify municipal actions? Once again, business interests define “federal overreach” solely as things they don’t like.

What exactly is the problem with the two cities’ plans, anyway? They don’t appear to be placing any additional regulatory restrictions on the private broadband players. They’re just trying to enter the market—the free market, as I recall it being called. If government is so incompetent at everything it does, this should not be a threat to the private companies. Which is why the fact that they are obviously so terrified of a “public option” (see what I did there?) is so interesting.

You can submit comments to the FCC here and here.

The Unbearable Suckiness of PACER

Posted on August 28, 2014 by wellsdc

The Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system is rather terrible, as anyone who deals with federal court records as part of their job could tell you. No one seems able (or willing) to do the apparently simple things necessary to fix it. Here’s one theory as to why.

A Victory for Conservatives over the ACA May Have Ruined Originalism

Posted on August 28, 2014 by wellsdc

Over at Concurring Opinions, Gerard Magliocca observes a possibly unintended consequence of the Halbig decision, as it pertains to the doctrine of originalism. “Originalism,” of course, being the legal theory popular among certain conservative jurists (e.g. Scalia) that holds that the “original intent” of the drafters of the Constitution should be the primary (or only) consideration when interpreting or applying said document.

Part of the criticism of originalism involves the difficulty/impossibility of applying the views of men who lived in an 18th-century agrarian society to the issues of the 21st century. Defenders of originalism say we can resolve these issues by looking at context, other writings of the Founding Fathers, and so on. Magliocca writes: Continue reading →

Naked Cause of Action

Posted on August 22, 2014 by wellsdc

Jessie Nizewitz has sued Viacom and several production companies for failing to provide adequate pixelation of her genitalia during an episode of the VH1 show “Dating Naked,” on which she appears as a contestant, or whatever people on gimmicky destination dating shows are called. (“Failure to provide adequate pixelation” is my paraphrase of her claims, but isn’t that the greatest cause of action ever? Another good one I saw was “insufficient junk-blurring.”) It’s a pretty intriguing idea: what duty do the producers of a program that prominently features nudity—including in its title—have to protect the performers from actual nudity?

(If you simply must see the episode, here it is, queued up to her date with a dude named Keegan about 10:45 in.)

The New York Post apparently broke the story, but it doesn’t exactly have much legal analysis. The complaint isn’t up on the New York court system’s website yet, so I had to turn to Courthouse News to find out what Nizewitz is actually claiming:

She seeks an injunction, takedown, and punitive damages of more than $10 million for breach of oral contract, privacy invasion, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and gross negligence.

The breach of contract claim seems like the most obvious one to me. She claims, essentially, that she agreed to appear on the show on the condition that they blur her privates at all times: Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, August 19, 2014

Posted on August 19, 2014 by wellsdc

Don’t Give Special Rights To Anybody! Oh, Except Cops. That’s Cool. Ken White, Popehat, August 14, 2014

Cops and other public servants get special treatment because the whole system connives to let them. Take prosecutorial misconduct. If you are accused of breaking the law, your name will be released. If, on appeal, the court finds that you were wrongfully convicted, your name will still be brandished. But if the prosecutor pursuing you breaks the law and violates your rights, will he or she be named? No, usually not. Even if a United States Supreme Court justice is excoriating you for using race-baiting in your closing, she usually won’t name you. Even if the Ninth Circuit — the most liberal federal court in the country — overturns your conviction because the prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence, they usually won’t name the prosecutor.

And leaks? Please. Cops and prosecutors leak information to screw defendants all the time. It helps keep access-hungry journalists reliably complaint. But leak something about an internal investigation about a shooting or allegation of police misconduct? Oh, you’d better believe the police union will sue your ass.

Cops, and prosecutors, and other public employees in the criminal justice system have power. It is the nature of power to make people believe that they are better than the rest of us, and entitled to privileges the rest of us do not enjoy.

Wingnuts’ sad dream to be cool: Why they worship Reagan and the military, Heather Digby Parsons, Salon, August 18, 2014 Continue reading →

A Right to an Education

Posted on August 18, 2014 by wellsdc

One way to interpret the decision in El Paso ISD v. McIntyre is to say that the Texas Court of Appeals for the Eighth District held that home-school kids have a right to some basic level of education, or that parents who home-school their kids have an obligation to teach them something.

It’s not at all that straightforward, though (is it ever?) The court’s decision was largely based on procedural issues, with a considerable amount of attention given to whether the McIntyres had “exhausted their administrative remedies.” In plain English, people have to go through an administrative procedure before filing certain types of lawsuits, including a suit against a government entity. In this type of case, the process would require a complaint to a school administrator, followed by the superintendent, followed by the school board.

The school district asked the appeals court to rule that the trial court lacked jurisdiction over the case because the plaintiffs went to court before going through the required administrative process. The appellate court agreed.

The facts of the case, as depicted by the appellate court, make it tempting to hope that this decision will have a far-reaching impact on the more extreme forms of religious homeschooling. The McIntyres sound, uh, interesting: Continue reading →

Alleged Jaywalking

Posted on August 16, 2014 by wellsdc

Michael Brown will forever be an alleged shoplifter. And an alleged jaywalker. He will never be convicted of any offense, because an officer of the Ferguson Police Department killed him before he could ever stand trial.

Of course this won’t stop some people from assuming that Michael Brown is guilty of some offense. Cowards, fools, and racists will call Michael Brown a robber, or shoplifter, or “thug,” as if that somehow settles the matter.

The Ferguson chief of police did nothing today to alleviate the tensions that he did so much to create. All he did was make a pathetic effort to deflect criticism off of himself and his department, and onto the person that one of his officers killed. An officer who, let us not forget, had no idea about the suspected robbery or shoplifting.

I’d say that the Ferguson Chief of Police should be ashamed of himself, but I think we’re past that point now don’t you?

What I’m Reading, August 14, 2014

Posted on August 14, 2014 by wellsdc

The Domestic Cat Genome Has Been Fully Sequenced, and It’s Fascinating, Annalee Newitz, io9, August 11, 2014

Now that we have this complete, annotated genome sequence, scientists will be able to analyze cat genetics much more effectively. Cats suffer from many of the same diseases as humans, including versions of leukemia and AIDS, so the cat genome may help us understand the development of these conditions better. Don’t worry — that doesn’t mean scientists will be experimenting on kitties. It just means that we can compare their genomes to ours to see whether there are similarities that shed light on why we are vulnerable (or not) to the diseases.

Cats also have what biologists call “a highly conserved ancestral mammal genome organization,” which means that many stretches of their genome haven’t changed much over evolutionary time. Put simply, domestic cats haven’t changed much since they first evolved. This could allow us to understand mammal evolution better. It could also answer a question that remains a mystery: why did dog domestication change canines so much, whereas cat domestication didn’t change cats much at all?

As migrant children face backlash, communities mobilize to drown out hate, Laurie Smolenski, Waging Nonviolence, August 10, 2014 (via Yes! Magazine)

Continue reading →

This Is No Way to Do Law Enforcement

Posted on August 14, 2014 by wellsdc

One cop chooses to apply the “I know you are, but what am I?” theory of criminal justice:

A New Jersey police officer is under investigation after video is posted that shows him violating the rights of someone doing nothing more than videotaping a public building and justifying it by saying that since Obama has “decimated” the Constitution, he can too.

He apparently resigned after the story broke, which seems like the least he could do.

What I’m Reading, August 13, 2014

Posted on August 13, 2014 by wellsdc

The Rise of the Ironic Man-Hater, Amanda Hess, Slate, August 8, 2014

“Misandry”—literally, the hatred of men—is an accusation that’s been flung at feminists since the dawn of the women’s movement: By empowering women, critics argue, feminists are really oppressing men. Now, feminists are ironically embracing the man-hating label: The ironic misandrist sips from a mug marked “MALE TEARS,” frosts her cakes with the phrase “KILL ALL MEN,” and affixes “MISANDRY” heart pins to her lapel. Ironic misandry is “a reductio ad absurdum,” explains Jess Zimmerman, an editor at Medium and the proud owner of a “MALE TEARS” mug. (“I drink them to increase my strength,” she notes.) “It’s inhabiting the most exaggerated, implausible distortion of your position, in order to show that it’s ridiculous.”

On its most basic level, ironic misandry functions like a stuck-out tongue pointed at a playground bully: When men’s rights activists hurled insults at feminist writer Jessica Valenti on Twitter last month, she posted a picture of herself grinning in an “I BATHE IN MALE TEARS” T-shirt, and dedicated the message to the “misogynist whiners.” But ironic misandry is more than just a sarcastic retort to the haters; it’s an in-joke that like-minded feminists tell even when their critics aren’t looking, as a way to build solidarity within the group. “A lot of young feminists who I follow on Instagram and love this shit are teenagers,” Valenti says. (Search the tag #maletears and you’ll find dozens of young women—and a few young men—posed with a novelty mug.) “The feminism they grew up with was the feminism of snarky blog posts, and this is a natural extension of that.”

Logic and feeling, Ophelia Benson, Butterflies & Wheels, August 10, 2014 Continue reading →

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