Category Archives: Law

Law, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Lawsuit Update

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Tomorrow is the deadline for filing amicus briefs on our behalf. Judith Curry has filed another one. I haven’t read it yet, but I expect it to be good.

[Update a while later]

Reading through it, it would seem to make a strong case for her own defamation, though she’s above that.

[Update late morning]

Some thoughts on “alternate facts” in the climate debate:

My tweet asked the climate scientists on my feed whether they agreed with the statement specifically the use of the word “all”. My expectation was that a reasonable core of climate scientists would agree that Dr. Mann had overstepped the science. This was not the case. Instead, what I got was overwhelming support for Dr. Mann with not a single non-skeptic initially commenting negatively. It was as if Dr. Mann was the pope and the climate community his congregation. Nothing he said could be considered to be anything less than the truth, even if it took huge convolutions of logic to make it true. In the last couple weeks the term “alternative facts” has entered our lexicon. Well in the next few paragraphs I want to unpack Dr. Mann’s “alternative fact” and see if it is indeed defensible. Then I will go into what I feel this means for the climate change debate.

RTWT.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

First-Amendment Rights

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..of public employees: A quick cheat sheet.

What I found amusing about the tweets from Badlands National Park yesterday (which were cheered by the supposed fans of “science”) were how either they weren’t “scientific facts” (no, it is an opinion, not a fact, that last year was the “hottest on record”) or trivial and irrelevant chemistry (“A gallon of gasoline puts X pounds of carbon into the atmosphere when burned). But I was also amused at the concern that the employees who had done so had probably been fired.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the story for those who don’t know what I’m talking about.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Our Petition For Rehearing

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We’ve requested a rehearing en banc (that is, the full court) by the DC court of appeals on the mistaken ruling in December of a division of that court. Amici (and I’d expect at least as many as the last time) have another week to file.

[Late-morning update]

Cato has filed an amicus brief:

Political thinkers would certainly like to believe that historical analogies are integral to expressing their views on important political choices. Just in the last year, one candidate for office has been compared to Hitler, 21 Hitler, 22 Hitler, 23 Hitler, 24 and Mussolini. 25 Indeed, that public figure was so annoyed by this criticism that he threatened to “open up the libel laws” to prevent such speech in the future. Luckily for him, the division’s decision has done this work for him.

I don’t think they realize what a can of worms they opened.

[Later-afternoon update]

National Review has also filed a petition.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama’s “Scandal-Free Administration”

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As regular readers here know, it’s a myth:

All of these scandals were accompanied by a lack of transparency so severe that 47 of Mr. Obama’s 73 inspectors general signed an open letter in 2014 decrying the administration’s stonewalling of their investigations.

One reason for Mr. Obama’s penchant for secrecy is his habit of breaking rules—from not informing Congress of the dubious prisoner swap involving Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban, to violating restrictions on cash transfers to Iran as part of a hostage-release deal.

The president’s journalistic allies are happily echoing the “scandal-free” myth.

If it was “scandal free,” it was only because the anointed media refused to report it honestly.

Business, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Obama’s Drilling Ban

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Trump should immediately rescind it.

Yes. I hope he spends his first week doing nothing except reversing all these unlawful unconstitutional executive orders.

[Friday-afternoon update]

Obama’s midnight-regulation express:

Any action that is rushed is likely to be shoddy, especially if it’s from the federal government. The point is for Mr. Obama to have his way and to swamp the Trump administration with a dizzying array of new rules to have to undo. That diverts manpower from bigger and better priorities.

President Obama is hoping this work will prove too much and his rules will stand. He’d be making a good bet. George W. Bush promised to undo last-minute Clinton regulations. Yet a paper done in 2005 by Jason M. Loring and Liam R. Roth in Wake Forest Law Review found that a whopping 82% were left to stand.

Then again, a Republican Congress seems ready and willing to invoke the Congressional Review Act, which allows legislators to reject rule-making. More important, Mr. Trump and his team seem to understand that Americans are angry at Mr. Obama’s tendency to rule like an autocrat. They also surely know how damaging many of these Obama parting gifts (particularly energy rules) will prove to their own agenda.

A Trump administration could send a powerful message to future presidents and build public support by highlighting the “midnight regulation” phenomenon and then making it a priority to ax every final Obama order. Single them out. Make a public list. Celebrate every repeal. That would be as profound a rebuke to the Obama legacy—a legacy based on abuse of power—as any other.

Also a reminder that the Bush administration was terrible on regulations and small government. I don’t see why undoing all those would require much “manpower.” Getting rid of them would be a good start to “draining the swamp.”