This is bit of a surprise:
Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court and a swing vote on abortion as well as other contentious issues, announced her retirement Friday. A bruising Senate confirmation struggle loomed as President Bush pledged to name a successor quickly.
Plenty of links and analysis at the SCOTUS Blog: start here.
Kevin Drum has this right though he does not go quite far enough:
I have an idea to fix this: don’t take three days to unfreeze the report. In fact, I have a better idea: by default, personal credit reports should never be shown to anyone until the credit reporting agency contacts the consumer independently and receives permission to do so. This could be by phone, internet, or mail.
I proposed something related but more generalized a while back:
No institution or business, government or private, can be allowed to collect or distribute, for free or for fee, any information about an individual without that individuals specific consent on a per incident basis and if the distribution is for a fee then that individual must be compensated at a rate agreeable to the individual.
We must give back control of personal information to the owner of that information: the involved individual. Right off the top I can’t think of any acceptable exception to this.
In the other direction and something I did not address in the earlier post:
Individual consumers of goods and services may disclose evaluative and price information about their transactions with individuals and entities who regularly offer goods and services to consumers. Individuals and businesses engaged in commercial activity may disclose price and evaluative information about their activities as long as this information can not be related to an individual connsumer. Private institutions or businesses may collect and disseminate this information for free or for fee except as noted above.
Thus you can evaluate and provide pricing information about your doctor, lawyer, service station, hardware store, etc., by name but not vice versa.
The general principles here are: 1) individuals own information specifically related to them; 2) therefor individuals can not be prevented from releasing seller specific evaluation or information so long as that information is truthful and non-libelous; and 3) for these purposes corporations, partnerships or other commercial associations of individuals are not individuals.
In Gonzalez V. Raich the US supreme court ruled in favor of the federal thugs, justice department and congress, who would deny individuals living in the land of the supposedly free the authority to grow and use marijuana for medical purposes.
They had an opportunity to fix years of misapplication of the commerce clause and to reaffirm the concepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as they recently did in Lawrence. They failed.
There is more The Volokh Conspiracy, How Appealing, Scotus Blog and I’m sure all over the media and blogosphere as the day goes on. The full decision is here (PDF).
Update: Information on using so-called democratic means as called out in the opinion can be found at the Marijuana Policy Project site.
Update2: Zombyboy has a somewhat less radical reaction than the above and concludes with:
What we get today is two irrational decisions rolled up in one: the decision to expand commerce control over increasingly non-commercial endeavors and the decision to continue to insist that marijuana is a more dangerous drug than any of the opiates that are commonly prescribed to relieve pain. Sorry, but I just don
Indonesia demonstrates that, like most other modern governments, its laws, its government do not deserve the respect of its citizens or others around the world:
Accused Australian drug smuggler Schapelle Corby has been found guilty by an Indonesian court of importing marijuana into Bali.
Interfering with the consensual exchange of goods and services between individuals is not a legitimate governmental function.
In this case it looks like the victim might not even have been involved in the drug trade.
Or, at minimum, getting away with involuntary manslaughter:
“I have come to realize what I did was wrong”
Thus spoke Spc. Brian E. Cammack, who was sentenced to three months in prison over the beating death of a prisoner in Afghanistan. Cammack plead guilty to charges of assault and two counts of making a false statement. In accepting a plea bargain, prosecutors decided not to pursue a charge of maltreatment (I guess manslaughter wasn’t on the list of possibilities).
A manslaughter charge certainly is a possibility in a military court.
This pat on the butt plea bargain could be the a result of at a couple different things: 1) The guy really is giving up good info that will lead to more severe penalties for others (don’t hold your breath) and 2) this administration and its military still don’t think anything wrong has occurred and believe that too severe sentences in these cases will dampen ongoing behavior in the inquisition centers.