Category Archives: Law

The Disappointing Libertarian Ticket

I agree with Tim Carney; they seem to be running against conservatives more than in favor of liberty:

Weld and Johnson held their first post-nomination joint interview on Tuesday, on liberal network MSNBC. “We’ve never bought into this anti-choice, anti-gay…sense of the Republican Party,” Weld said, as his first comment to the national television audience.

The message was clear: We don’t need those backward Christian Right bozos as much we need as you MSNBCers.

Johnson has sent similar signals, suggesting that his love of liberty is second to his revulsion to religion. In January, for instance, Johnson said he would make it a federal crime for women to wear the Burqa, the full-body covering worn by women in certain strains of Islam. Johnson recanted a day later, while continuing his warnings about the threat of Sharia — Islamic law — in the U.S.

This spring, Johnson pushed aside freedom of conscience. When asked in an Oregon about laws and lawsuits requiring caterers to participate in gay weddings, Johnson took the big-government side — for coerced baking in the name of gay rights. When later asked about this anti-liberty view, Johnson made the standard liberal conflation between selling off-the-shelf cupcakes to a gay customer (which is straight-up discrimination against a person) and refusal to participate in a ceremony (which is a freedom of conscience issue, a freedom of association issue, and often a free speech issue).

The dress-code libertarianism and bake-me-a-cake libertarianism Johnson has embraced isn’t libertarianism at all — it’s left-wing social engineering enforced at gunpoint. Coming from Johnson and Weld, it reeks of raw identity politics. The only consistent theme is that religious people are bad.

Yes. It’s disgusting. This sort of thing is why I’ve never been a Libertarian, despite the fact that I’m generally libertarian.

In A World Of Self-Driving Cars

…we’ll still need the Miata.

Yes. Two counterpoints, though.

First, I don’t think I’d be able to read or write while being driven; in my experience that can make me car sick. I have to be in control.

Second, I very much fear that in a world of self-driving cars, it will be considered socially irresponsible and dangerous to drive yourself, and probably made illegal.

The Obama Justice Department

…acted in bad faith on immigration, and has finally gotten a comeuppance for it:

These accusations aren’t even the most audacious aspect of the court’s 28-page order. In a decision that will be studied in legal-ethics classes for decades to come, Judge Hanen placed many of the lawyers at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. — known as “Main Justice” — under his personal supervision. This relief is reminiscent of federal courts that placed recalcitrant school districts under supervision to ensure compliance with desegregation orders. Or more recently, this relief is akin to judges who placed deficient police departments under federal oversight to ensure they reduce police brutality or other offenses. What is remarkable here is that Main Justice will now be required to report to Judge Hanen’s authority for the next five years to improve its ethics.

Of course, when has this administration ever acted in good faith? It just usually gets away with it. “Improving their ethics” would seem to be an effort in futility.

Hillary

…and the problem of statutory qualifications:

“Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”

She has essentially publicly admitted to doing this when she described deleting emails from the server.

And her aides, including Huma, were finally interviewed by the FBI, who probably had a perjury trap set up for them, thanks to Pagliano’s cooperation.

John Roberts

How he gave us Donald Trump.

That was certainly a huge factor. That ObamaCare decision was a legal atrocity.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Trump has shown that conservatism doesn’t really matter to the GOP.

I think we sort of figured that out with the first President Bush (that Veep pick was probably one of Reagan’s most damaging decisions). This is just the natural culmination of the process.

I was noting this morning on Twitter that Rush Limbaugh must be kicking himself to realize how easy it is for a wealthy communicator to have taken over the party. I’d have happily supported him.