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disentabulation
Apr. 15th, 2015 11:19 pma few things which have caught my eye lately that i haven't had time to post about:
Cities Don't ♥ Us, or urbanism and its discontents. i agree and disagree with the author: he's got some valid points, but he seems to have used those to become hypersensitive to things i think aren't so bad. i think some of his objections are specifically to NYC, which i agree is a hellhole, but it's not a general case of hellhole.
california's top-two open primaries aren't working as desired. voters don't want to color inside the lines.
or at least primary voters don't. nationally, primary turnout is sad:
california turnout is little better. so it may just be that influencing the handful of existing voters is too hard, and figuring out to get other people to the polls is the answer. (or maybe the hack is just the wrong solution; i have my own pet solution, of course.)
surprise! it turns out randomly stopping people on the street and searching on the off chance they might be terrorists reveals... they aren't terrorists. it appears that the reason this illegal search scheme wasn't struck down immediately by the courts is that the government owns the el, so it can demand people be searched or get out. perhaps letting the government control the transportation infrastructure isn't such a hot idea, since it lets them do otherwise unconstitutional things.
for example, the department of injustice has decided it will tell americans why they're on the no-fly list... unless they don't want to. they're still claiming they'll do so only "to the extent feasible, consistent with the national security and law enforcement interests at stake". as the article mentions, the ACLU is already crying foul on that claim. (the feds don't actually own the airports, just subsidize them, so they can't apply the same logic as chicago was.)
the national security exemption is the supremes' creature, and i think they need to shorten its leash, if not kill it outright. i think there's abundant proof that the government is attempting to use "national security" as a magic word to get around that pesky bill of rights, and the supremes should smack them for that. forcing them to disclose evidence to random federal judges (not the star chamber) would be a good start.
Cities Don't ♥ Us, or urbanism and its discontents. i agree and disagree with the author: he's got some valid points, but he seems to have used those to become hypersensitive to things i think aren't so bad. i think some of his objections are specifically to NYC, which i agree is a hellhole, but it's not a general case of hellhole.
california's top-two open primaries aren't working as desired. voters don't want to color inside the lines.
or at least primary voters don't. nationally, primary turnout is sad:
california turnout is little better. so it may just be that influencing the handful of existing voters is too hard, and figuring out to get other people to the polls is the answer. (or maybe the hack is just the wrong solution; i have my own pet solution, of course.)
surprise! it turns out randomly stopping people on the street and searching on the off chance they might be terrorists reveals... they aren't terrorists. it appears that the reason this illegal search scheme wasn't struck down immediately by the courts is that the government owns the el, so it can demand people be searched or get out. perhaps letting the government control the transportation infrastructure isn't such a hot idea, since it lets them do otherwise unconstitutional things.
for example, the department of injustice has decided it will tell americans why they're on the no-fly list... unless they don't want to. they're still claiming they'll do so only "to the extent feasible, consistent with the national security and law enforcement interests at stake". as the article mentions, the ACLU is already crying foul on that claim. (the feds don't actually own the airports, just subsidize them, so they can't apply the same logic as chicago was.)
the national security exemption is the supremes' creature, and i think they need to shorten its leash, if not kill it outright. i think there's abundant proof that the government is attempting to use "national security" as a magic word to get around that pesky bill of rights, and the supremes should smack them for that. forcing them to disclose evidence to random federal judges (not the star chamber) would be a good start.
