From the Texas Tribune: An Inquest Into the Texas Way of Death

The lack of an autopsy, plus that fact the county judge mad a decision about the cause of death without  seeing the body, raises questions about how death is handled in Texas.

- Click here for the article.

About two dozen states including Texas, use a local coroner system under which someone is elected or appointed to verify that a deceased individual is, well, dead.

In Texas, the coroner's role falls to the 817 elected justices of the peace, The JPs marry couples, handle small claims disputes and come when called, usually by law enforcement, to verify death when someone doesn't die in a hospital or when a doctor cannot — or will not — sign a death certificate.

"I'm the coroner, and everything," explained David Beebe, one of the two justices of the peace in Presidio County who were called on Saturday to come to Cibolo Creek Ranch, 28 miles southwest of Marfa, after Scalia, a guest of the resort's owner, was discovered dead in his room.

But both Beebe and Presidio County's other JP, Juanita Bishop, were too far away, so the Presidio County Sheriff's Office contacted the county's chief executive, or county judge, Guevara.

What happened next speaks to the remoteness of Texas geography and the nation's haphazard system of managing death.

Thea Whalen, an attorney who trains JPs at the Texas Justice Training Center in Austin, said the state's size and population distribution is something many fail to grasp.

From the Houston Chronicle: Scalia's death could affect outcomes of Texas cases

As we discussed in class, Texas has multiple cases before the Supreme Court, and they could all be affected by Scalia's death.

- Click here for the article.

For more than a decade, the major fault lines in American politics - abortion, states' rights, affirmative action, gay marriage - have reliably erupted in the red state of Texas, been challenged in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and finally brought to chambers of the Supreme Court, where conservatives had a friend in Justice Antonin Scalia.

For more on the subject:

- Justice Scalia’s death could impact four Texas cases currently under review by SCOTUS.
- Scalia’s death could affect five Texas cases.
- Seven Ways Scalia's Death Will Impact the Supreme Court.

From the Houston Chronicle: Visualizing the country's fifth largest city Unincorporated Harris County may soon bypass Houston's population

Lot's of people live in the unincorporated part of Harris County. This raises interesting questions about the relative wisdom of the complex way that local governments are designed in the state.

Should the Houston and Harris County be consolidated?

- Click here for the article.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett and his colleagues frequently note that if the unincorporated parts of the county were a city, it would be the second largest in Texas and the fifth most populous in the United States. Patched together, these unincorporated areas have more residents than 12 U.S. states.

The population in unincorporated parts of the county is ballooning at record pace. Since 2000, 87 percent of the county's population growth has occurred in this unincorporated area. The unincorporated portion now accounts for 42 percent of the county's residents.

This map, based on data from the county engineer, illustrates how much of the county's growing population lives north and west of the downtown hub. If no further annexation occurs, the county budget office anticipates the population in the green area will surpass Houston's population by 2020.

Having an urban population skew this way makes governance complicated and difficult, said Stephen Klineberg, author of yearly population and attitudinal studies at Rice University's Kinder Institute.

Greater Houston has evolved into a multi-centered metropolitan region, he said, with unincorporated sections governed by municipal utility districts that provide "very uneven degrees of governance."

This reality, according to Klineberg, "puts a strain on all the things government tries to deal with -- affordable housing, traffic, park land, crime control."

"It affects the central role of government in improving quality of life and helping urban areas operate," he said.

While some municipal utility districts contract with constables, the unincorporated areas rely on the county for a variety of services including law enforcement, road maintenance, park trails and indigent medical care, said Commissioner Steve Radack.

From Atlas Obscura: THE MANHATTAN BURIAL CRISIS OF 1822 MAKES EVERY CEMETERY TODAY SEEM AMAZING

For 2306, as we start to take a more in-depth look at local governments and their functions.

We don't think of the management of cemeteries - and the general disposal of dead bodies - as a function of local government, but it is. An important one too. Here's a look at how the issue developed in New York City.

- Click here for it.

The development of New York continued without pause for the dead, even in times of epidemic. Greenwich Village, still very much a village in the early 19th century, became a destination for Lower Manhattanites fleeing the “infected districts” during outbreaks of yellow fever. Nonetheless, as the population soared and available space shrank, residents and local leaders alike knew that the city needed to address the bodies, ceaselessly piling up. In the burgeoning metropolis, even Manhattan’s underground was quickly becoming a real estate commodity.

While the odor of decaying bodies was unpleasant enough, New Yorkers also worried that the smell was quite literally making the people of the city sick. When the city suffered its five outbreaks of yellow fever between 1798 and 1822, the cause of the disease was still unknown. (Not until the late 19th century would doctors prove mosquitoes to be its carrier). In a desperate attempt to locate and stop the source of the 1822 epidemic, prominent New York doctors and city leaders noted that the fever’s first case was but a block away from Trinity on Washington and Rector streets. And until the outbreak ended with the first frosts of November, the disease would remain mostly concentrated in the neighborhood just west to the graveyard. Miasma, or polluting vapors that might arise from filth or decay, was long thought to be the cause of disease. The decaying bodies in Trinity churchyard, many of which belonged to victims of yellow fever, and the “noxious air” they produced, might very well be sickening local residents. Manhattan’s burial crisis became a public health crisis too.

From Scotusblog: How the politics of the next nomination will play out

Here's a look at the interests behind and motivating the individual who have the power to check and balance each other.

- Click here from the article.

This post substantially revises and supersedes my earlier one on how the political parties will likely approach the Scalia vacancy, in which I had concluded that Ninth Circuit Judge Paul Watford was the most likely nominee. On reflection, I think that Attorney General Loretta Lynch is more likely. I also think that the Republicans will eventually permit the nomination to proceed on the merits and reject it on party lines.

In thinking about how to respond to the vacancy on the Supreme Court, the administration has two priorities. First, fill the Scalia seat by getting a nominee confirmed. The stakes could not be higher: the appointment could flip the Supreme Court’s ideological balance for decades. Second, gain as much political benefit as possible and exact as heavy a political toll as possible on Republicans, particularly in the presidential election. Precisely because of the seat’s importance, this is the rare time that a material number of voters may seriously think about the Court in deciding whether to vote at all and who to vote for.

Those priorities reinforce each other. The Republican Senate leadership has staked out the position that no nomination by President Obama will move forward. Because Republicans hold the Senate majority, they have the power to refuse to hold confirmation hearings before the Judiciary Committee and/or a floor vote on the nominee. So, any effort to replace Scalia is dead on arrival unless the political dynamic in the country forces Republicans to change their minds and allow the nomination to proceed.

Not surprisingly, Republican priorities are the exact opposite. Fundamental conservative legal victories over the past two decades hang directly in the balance. To take just one example, Ted Cruz is exactly right to say that a more liberal replacement for Justice Scalia is very likely to overturn the Supreme Court’s recent recognition of a Second Amendment right to possess firearms or at least render it a nullity as a practical matter. There are dozens of other examples. Conversely, a Republican appointee would not only preserve those victories but continue the Court’s steady move to the right.

From the NYT: Before Scalia’s Death, a Clash Between G.O.P. and Obama Over Appellate Judges

Checks and balances, and the struggle over the future of the Judiciary.

- Click here for the article.

The vow by Senate Republicans to block whomeverPresident Obama nominates to fill the sudden vacancy on theSupreme Court presages a prolonged election year struggle, but the clash is less a new front against the White House than an escalation of a battle that had begun at the appeals court level before Justice Antonin Scalia died.

Since Republicans took control of the Senate in January 2015, the process that would enable Mr. Obama to fill vacancies on the 12 regional federal courts of appeal has essentially been halted. Mr. Obama has managed only one appointment because Republican senators have refused to sign off ahead of time on nominees for judgeships in their states — a traditional step before a president makes a nomination.
In the weeks before Justice Scalia’s death, influential conservativegroups and commentators called on Senate Republicans to ensure that Mr. Obama appointed no more appeals court judges.

Among those commentators was Ed Whelan, a former clerk to Justice Scalia and a prominent commentator. He said in an interview Monday that conservatives could not compromise over any appointments to the upper ranks of the judiciary — including the appeals courts, which get the last word on matters the Supreme Courtdoes not review and often serve as a breeding ground for future justices.

A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law Antonin Scalia

One article on Scalia argues that this book marks "the high point of his intellectual influence across party lines." I offer it because the link to it in the Princeton University Press contains a statement that seem to succinctly explain his approach to interpreting the Constitution.

- Click here for the link.

We are all familiar with the image of the immensely clever judge who discerns the best rule of common law for the case at hand. According to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a judge like this can maneuver through earlier cases to achieve the desired aim--"distinguishing one prior case on his left, straight-arming another one on his right, high-stepping away from another precedent about to tackle him from the rear, until (bravo!) he reaches the goal--good law." But is this common-law mindset, which is appropriate in its place, suitable also in statutory and constitutional interpretation? In a witty and trenchant essay, Justice Scalia answers this question with a resounding negative.

In exploring the neglected art of statutory interpretation, Scalia urges that judges resist the temptation to use legislative intention and legislative history. In his view, it is incompatible with democratic government to allow the meaning of a statute to be determined by what the judges think the lawgivers meant rather than by what the legislature actually promulgated. Eschewing the judicial lawmaking that is the essence of common law, judges should interpret statutes and regulations by focusing on the text itself. Scalia then extends this principle to constitutional law. He proposes that we abandon the notion of an everchanging Constitution and pay attention to the Constitution's original meaning. Although not subscribing to the "strict constructionism" that would prevent applying the Constitution to modern circumstances, Scalia emphatically rejects the idea that judges can properly "smuggle" in new rights or deny old rights by using the Due Process Clause, for instance. In fact, such judicial discretion might lead to the destruction of the Bill of Rights if a majority of the judges ever wished to reach that most undesirable of goals.

From On The Issues: Antonin Scalia

In case you want detail on what makes him conservative on the issues, if not on legal reasoning.

- Click here for it.

Who might Obama nominate?

Politico reports that Obama will likely nominate someone to replace Scalia "in due time once the Senate returns from their recess."

A few commentators speculate on who this person might be

- Vox: Who will Obama choose to replace Antonin Scalia? Here are 7 of the strongest candidates.
- The Daily Beast: Can Obama Take Over the Supreme Court?
- CNN: Whom could President Obama nominate to replace Justice Antonin Scalia?
- The Monkey Cage: Who will Obama nominate to replace Scalia? Here’s how to think about it.
- USA Today: Who could replace Scalia? Here are 10 names.

More on ideology on the Supreme Court

For more fancy looking graphs:

- The Ideological History of the Supreme Court, 1937-2007.
- Ideological leanings of U.S. Supreme Court justices.




For a scholarly look at how ideology is measured on the courts:

- Measuring Ideology on the Courts.

Can - and/or should - Obama make a recess appointment to the

Ironically , given the Republican Congress' opposition to President Obama's use of recess appointments to fill executive positions - Scalia's death occurred while Congress was in recess. Supreme Court justices have been appointed during recesses before. Might Obama do it? Can he?

Here's a bit on the subject. The consensus seems to be that he probably can, but probably won't.

- White House Says Obama Recess Appointment of Scalia Supreme Court Replacement Unlikely.
- Is a recess appointment to the Court an option?
- An Obama recess appointment double whammy strategy.

From Scotusblog: Commentary: Scalia in history — a first draft

Lyle Denniston takes a crack at figuring out how history might remember Scalia. He sees a mixed bag.

- Click here for the article.

History will be kind to Justice Antonin Scalia — if the future fully appreciates his scholarship, his inventiveness in legal thinking, and his beguiling cleverness with words. It will not remember him well for his air of superiority, the sting of his rhetoric, his frequent disdain for collegiality, his exaggerated estimate of himself as a comedian and thespian.

Within the Court and among the panoply of past Justices, Scalia was as much the originator of a school of legal philosophy as Louis Brandeis, as gifted a legal craftsman as Robert L. Jackson, as influential an intellectual as John Marshall Harlan (the second), as path-breaking as Earl Warren.

But he also would become the most polarizing figure on the Court since George Sutherland, as impervious to changing times as Samuel Miller, as condescending as Felix Frankfurter, as self-absorbed as William O. Douglas, as controversial as Roger Taney.

In short, history will find him a deeply puzzling, but profoundly interesting, paradox. He was, as journalist and author Joan Biskupic anointed him, an “American Original.”

If there is a truly enduring part of his legacy, it surely will be his role as the patron saint of modern legal conservatism, and especially the branch of it that believes that the Constitution was essentially embalmed in 1789 (or when an amendment was added), preserved for adulation and imitation but almost always a bit musty and antique.

From 538: Scalia Was Almost Never The Most Conservative Justice On The Supreme Court

Clarence Thomas has always been more conservative than Scalia, and in the past three sessions, so has Samuel Alito.

- Click here for the article.



Other commentators argue that Scalia's conservative scores were compromised by his support of limits on unreasonable search and seizures. Neither Thomas not Alito seem that concerned about it. I have no idea what changed in 2000 to send Scalia in a more liberal direction. 538 argues that justices tend to get more liberal as they get older. Maybe that has something to do with it.

For a closer look at the scores used to measure ideology among Supreme Court justices, click here.

From the Pew Research Center: Presidential job approval ratings from Ike to Obama

Because we could use a quick break from Scalia.

Aside from showing a concise picture of shifts in presidential approval, this also points you the increase in the difference between partisans in how they evaluate presidents.

- Click here for the article.



I find this odd. Obama has both the lowest highs and the highest lows of any president since Kennedy. This might be a result of polarized opinions of him.

Texas Tribune: Analysis: A Field Guide to the 2016 Texas Primaries

- Click here for the article,

Early voting starts Tuesday in Texas, and the races for the presidential nominations are not — in spite of all that noise they’re making — the only contests on the ballot. Here are the most competitive contests for state and federal seats on the state ballot. *

Ignore the asterisk above at your peril. In every election, there are a few candidates who think they are in dire trouble — or whose friends believe that. And there are always candidates who never know what hit them — and who don’t appear to be in any danger until their chances have been dashed. That’s the disclaimer; now to the primary races (and for reference, here’s a full list of who is on the Texas ballots).

From the Texas Tribune: Outspoken Candidates Could Revive Rancor on Education Board

- Click here for the article.

Save for some flare-ups in the past few years over what to put in social studies textbooks — and how to handle an error in one of them — the State Board of Education has seen more turbulent days.

The 15-member board in charge of crafting curriculum and textbooks for the state’s more than five million public schoolchildren spent years building a national reputation as the center of raucous quarrels over how — and whether — to teach young Texans about evolution, Islam and climate change.

Now, such charged exchanges are less common. Those who closely watch the board attribute the shift to the dispersion of a cadre of fervent right-wing conservatives, many of whom either retired or were voted out.

But the relative camaraderie could soon come to an end as two more moderate members step aside — and not just among the board’s Republican membership, where nearly all the notorious infighting has occurred.

Among the contenders in the races to replace Republican Thomas Ratliff of Mount Pleasant and Democrat Martha Dominguez of El Paso is a 68-year-old East Texas retiree who has said that President Obama used to be a prostitute and a 41-year-old self-described “MeXicana Empowerment Specialist” who says the board’s Democrats have sat silent for far too long.

538: How Scalia Became The Most Influential Conservative Jurist Since The New Deal

More supporting the idea that Scalia helped transform the Supreme Court.

- Click here for the article.

Think of the Supreme Court as a small group of lawyers who meet up in Washington several times a year to discuss and debate a variety of important topics. When they finish debating, they get together with a small staff of recent law school graduates and write up their opinions. Then, if more of them say one thing rather than another, our entire legal system — whether it agrees or not — acts as if it were true.

In a debating society like this, a member with the most persuasive voice and forceful arguments can play an outsize role, and that is what Justice Antonin Scalia did for nearly 30 years before his death on Saturday. His staunch and consistent advocacy for “originalist” methods of legal interpretation — the philosophy that a law’s meaning doesn’t change over time and should be interpreted as a “reasonable person” would understand the text at the time it was passed — raised his profile on the court and made him perhaps the most influential figure in our legal system since his appointment.

The tangible effects of Scalia’s philosophy were manifold, delighting some and disgusting others. Between 1986 and 2014 he was the deciding vote on 342 decisions, according to the The Supreme Court Database, and voted on the “conservative” side 284 times in these decisions.

From Slate: Antonin Scalia Brought the Court to Him: His transformational tenure made originalism the rule by which every justice had to live.

Originalism - textualism, what the plain meaning of the words used in the Constitution were at the time they were written -  - is one of the many methods a member of the court can use to determine the meaning of constitutional language.

- Click here for the article.

His almost 30-year tenure at the high court was transformational; perhaps most striking was his advocacy for originalism (or, more correctly, textualism)—a mode of constitutional interpretation that focused on the interpretation of the law by looking scrupulously to the intent of the legislators who wrote the law. Under his leadership, the court went from an institution often divided on the best way of interpreting the Constitution to a court that often deferred completely to Scalia’s textualist preferences. So profound was his originalist influence on his colleagues that when the court decided United States v. Heller in 2008, even the liberal dissenters approached the D.C. gun laws through the lens of originalism, leading many commentators to observe that Scalia had won: “We are all originalists now.”

There is no doubt that Scalia was a hard-line conservative—a juggernaut in reversing the Warren court revolution—he led the court into culture war battles over race, abortion, religion, the death penalty, and gay rights. But Scalia was also an occasionally surprising hard-liner when it came to protecting the rights of criminal defendants who could not, for instance, challenge witnesses testifying against them or the privacy rights of those who objected to the use of thermal imaging in searches of their homes.

From Slate: What Made Antonin Scalia a Great Writer: The novelty of his language, his use of metaphor, and his wicked sense of humor.

This might be a useful look at one of the Justice's skills - his writing. Supreme Court opinions tend to be well written. As you struggle with multiple writing assignments this semester, you could do worse than try to emulate his style.

- Click here for the article.

To understand what makes Antonin Scalia’s prose compelling—demanding of attention—we need to understand what makes certain language memorable and others forgettable. First and foremost, Scalia’s use of metaphors deserves attention. Part of what makes his style persuasive, even as criticism, is its novelty. Clichés are the archetypal use of outworn language and the bane of bad legal writing. In the words of one judge, a “cluster [of clichés] robs the opinion of the sudden insight which imparts persuasion.” 
But even clichés can leave a memorable impression with the reader if they are used in an unexpected way.

Take this lone dissent by Scalia, from Morrison v. Olson: That is what this suit is about. Power. The allocation of power among Congress, the President, and the courts in such fashion as to preserve the equilibrium the Constitution sought to establish. … Frequently an issue of this sort will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep’s clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf.

The biblical allusion to a wolf in sheep’s clothing is a metaphor that has been used countless times to convey the message that appearances can be deceiving. In this case, however, the metaphor conveys just the opposite: There is no disguise here, no sheep’s clothing, appearances are what they are—clear.

Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer debate the Constitution

In light of Scalia's death - this seems appropriate. It's one of a series of videos featuring a leading textualist (Scalia) facing off against a leading proponent of the living constitution (Breyer).

From Vox: Being sleep-deprived makes people much more likely to give false confessions

For our look on GOVT 2305 at civil liberties and the due process of the law. I'm unaware of appellate decisions - or anything from the Supreme Court - related to sleep deprivation.

- Click here for the article.

Why in the world would someone confess to a crime he didn't commit?
It's a baffling question that has long confounded the criminal justice system. Confessions are powerfully convincing evidence for juries — but false confessions are also relatively common. According to the Innocence Project, one in four people who have been exonerated for crimes they didn't commit confessed to that crime.

Psychologists have documented several reasons this might occur. The big one is that interrogating police officers can impose their suggestions on suspects: "We have evidence proving you were there!" "Your fingerprints were found!"
But there may be another reason people will confess even when they're innocent: They're exhausted.

Law enforcement "really needs to be super careful when a person is being interrogated after they have been up a long time," says Elizabeth Loftus, a co-author on a new study on sleep deprivation and false confessions in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to Loftus's study, the majority of false confessions occur when interrogations last more than 12 hours. That fact made her and her colleagues wonder: How much of a role does sleepiness play? Sleep deprivation, after all, is awful for the body and mind, decreasing our abilities of reason and judgment.

For items related to the Supreme Court and false confessions:

- Implications of a Supreme Court Ruling for False Confessions. 
- False and Coerced Confessions.
- Overturned Conviction Upheld in False Confession Case.

From the Green Papers: HOW DID WE GET HERE, ANYWAY? an historical analysis of the Presidential Nominating Process.

A manageable, but thorough look at the process.

- Click here for it.

Here's a bit of it:

In the original Constitutional framework, the Electoral College itself was to be the presidential nominating body- the equivalent of today's National Conventions. Each Elector was to choose two men for President without having any idea as to how his individual ballot would affect the ultimate cumulative vote of the Electors as a whole. With the proviso that no more than one of the Elector's two choices could be from the same State as the Elector himself, the assumption was that the Elector's first choice would, most likely, be some "favorite son" from the Elector's own home state while his second choice would be forced to be some other notable from perhaps the same region but, by constitutional edict, from a different state. Clearly, the Framers considered it more than likely that the second choices of various Electors would ultimately determine the five "nominees" for the office from whom the House of Representatives, voting by State not as individuals, would pick the next President (for it is doubtful any of them entertained the notion that- except in the case of George Washington- the Electoral College would ever produce a majority of the electoral vote for any of the Electors' choices for President); it is equally as clear that the Framers also believed that they had come up with a system that would keep faction/party from becoming a factor in the election of a President. They, of course, were very wrong.

From Vox: What are “superdelegates,” and what do they mean for the Democratic nomination?

Despite Sander's victory over Clinton in the New Hampshire Primary, concerns have sprung up that Clinton's delegate haul might be larger than deserved based on vote results. This is due to the "superdelegates" mentioned in the previous post. It's a principal ways that the Democratic establishment tries to control the outcome of primaries, and reduce the chaos that often accompanies the Democratic race.

Vox describes it.

- Click here for the article.

As Elaine Kamarck writes in her book Primary Politics, the creation of superdelegates was a reaction to the messy 1980 Democratic convention, in which Ted Kennedy and his supporters challenged sitting President Jimmy Carter. Many Democrats felt that the democratization of the primary process had led to chaos, and resulted in many nominees that ended up losing. Therefore, they wanted to give party elites more of a say.

"We must also give our convention more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, and, in cases where the voters' mandate is less than clear, to make a reasoned choice," Jim Hunt, who headed the commission that considered reforming the party's rules, said at the time, according to Kamarck's book. "We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party."

Perhaps, as Hunt's quote suggests, the Democratic officials themselves believed this was a responsible way to ensure that the party nominated the right candidate. But it's much harder to believe that that they didn't foresee the undemocratic implications of bolstering the "decision-making power" of party leaders.

The Democratic nomination will be determined by 4,763 total delegates — 4,051 chosen by the voters and 712 who fit the "super" category.

The 712 superdelegates are made up of two major groups. One is prominent elected Democrats, including all of the party's governors, the president and vice president, and all of its members in Congress.

The second group consists of all members of the Democratic National Committee. That includes elected representatives, like mayors and county executives, as well as presidents of various Democratic organizations like the National Federation of Democratic Women and the College Democrats of America, according to the DNC's bylaws.

For more on the subject:

- Wikipedia: Superdelegate.
- Wikipedia: List of Democratic Party superdelegates, 2016.|
- The Green Papers: Democratic Detailed Delegate Allocation - 2016.
- Delegate Selection Materials for the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
- The Green Papers: Republican Detailed Delegate Allocation - 2016.

Ask Dr. Jefferies: Are super delegates an example of checks and balances?

Hi Professor Jefferies,

I'm a student in your online American Government class. Lately I've been learning more than I ever wanted to know about Superdelegates in the Democratic party and I had just one question.  Would you consider Superdelegates as  another, and more recent example, of checks and balances?  I was watching an interview with the DNC chair and she seemed to indicate this was the case.  So, I guess my question would be, is the Superdelegate there to prevent an excess of popular democracy from swinging the party too far to the left?

And I totally understand if you don't have time to answer this, I was just curious.

Cheers
____________

Dear Just Curious,

I wouldn't consider them part of the checks and balances as we discuss them in class because they are not intended to keep each governing institution in its place. A political party isn't considered to be a governing institution - with the caveat that members of Congress organize around political parties. Parties in Congress are some sort of weird hybrid.

That said, I can see merit in her comments. Super delegates (I'll define these in a later post) are used by the leadership in the Democratic Party to limit the impact of primary voters in the party. That would be a check party elites have on party activists. Since party activists in the Democratic Party tend to swing left, they would in fact be a check on that and ensure the party doesn't go so far to the left that it cannot win a general election. Republicans have ways to ensure the party does not swing too far to the right, thought they don't use super delegates. I'll ad detail about how they try to do this elsewhere - right now their efforts don't seem to be very successful.

No worries about me not having time to answer your questions - you're paying for my time so you've got it coming.

Does this help?

If you really really really like Bernie Sanders......

The Atlantic: Eleven Signs a City Will Succeed

For 2306 - more about cities as economic enterprises. Does this refer to Houston and other area cities?

- click here for the article.

By the time we had been to half a dozen cities, we had developed an informal checklist of the traits that distinguished a place where things seemed to work. These items are obviously different in nature, most of them are subjective, and some of them overlap. But if you tell us how a town measures up based on these standards, we can guess a lot of other things about it. In our experiences, these things were true of the cities, large or small, that were working best.

From the Brookings Institute: Angry voters dominate the presidential primaries

This has been commonly remarked upon. Voters are angry. They tend to be so from time to time. The 1992 election comes to mind. Just what makes these voters angry is hard to pin down though. Might be worth a paper or two.

Here are a few thoughts on the subject.

- Click here for the article.

In 2008 fully 84 percent of the public said they were dissatisfied. And no wonder—we were in the midst of a long and questionable war on the brink of a major recession. But to really understand today’s angry voters, have a look at the response in 2014. Although there’s a bit of improvement, in the face of better economic numbers and withdrawal from Iraq, we still have fully 75 percent of the public expressing dissatisfaction with the way things are going. Unfavorable views of the Democratic Party have increased as have unfavorable views of the Republican Party. And, fifty-eight percent of the public thinks the two parties are doing such a bad job that a third party is needed.

That’s an angry electorate—one that is personified these days by Donald Trump but that emerged for the first time in the 2010 elections when the Tea Party surprised everyone, including the Republican Party establishment, with their strength. There is an inchoate feel to this anger when it comes to traditional public policy issues. Bernie Sanders’ voters are mad at Wall Street, but so are some of Trump’s voters. Everyone’s mad about the mess in the Middle East, but some would carpet bomb large swaths of territory while others would rely on Arab “coalitions,” and others would ignore them. As my colleague E.J. Dionne writes in his new book “Why the Right Went Wrong,” Americans today have become so divided that they “were now divided even in their alienation.”

But what does unite the angry voters is the profound sense that something is very, very wrong with today’s leaders. The anger at them goes a long way towards explaining how and why experience has become a dirty word in this campaign—just ask Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Apparently some voters have concluded that only by breaking the mold in a big way—by electing a billionaire with no government experience or a Socialist—can America be saved.

From ScotusBlog: Carbon pollution controls put on hold

- Click here for the story.

Dividing five to four, the Supreme Court on Tuesday evening ordered the Obama administration not to take any steps to carry out its “Clean Power Plan,” a move that may stall the plan until after the president leaves office next January. The order — issued in identical form in individual responses to five separate challenges — will spare the operators of coal-fired power plants from having to do anything to begin planning for a shift to energy sources that the government considers to be cleaner. (An example of the five orders is this one, issued in a case filed by twenty-nine states.)

The plan, designed to make sharp reductions in carbon pollution from the smokestacks of generating plants fueled by fossil sources, is now under review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It has put the case on an expedited schedule, with a hearing set for June 2. However, it may not finish its ruling until this fall, and then either side may try to move the case on to the Supreme Court.

The new orders will delay all parts of the plan, including all deadlines that would stretch on into 2030, until after the D.C. Circuit completes its review and the Supreme Court has finished, if the case does wind up there. There appears to be little chance for those two stages of review to be over by the time President Obama’s term ends next January 20.

Justice Department lawyers had tried to persuade the Supreme Court not to impose any delay, noting that no state would have to file a plan to implement the policy until this September, and any plant would find it easy to get an extension of time to file such a plan until 2018. The government lawyers also told the Court that actual implementation of the plan would not have to begin until 2022, and would have a final completion deadline of 2030.

From the NYT: Obama’s Last Budget, and Last Budget Battle With Congress

- Click here for the article. 

President Obama on Tuesday sent his final annual budget proposal to a hostile Republican-led Congress, rejecting the lame-duck label to declare that his plan “is about looking forward,” with new initiatives that include $19 billion for a broad cybersecurity plan.

The budget for the 2017 fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, would top $4 trillion, although just over one-quarter of that is the so-called discretionary spending for domestic and military programs that the president and Congress dicker over each year. The rest is for mandatory spending, chiefly interest on the federal debt and theSocial Security, Medicareand Medicaid benefits that are expanding automatically as the population ages.

The deficit would increase in this fiscal year to $616 billion from $438 billion last year, the budget projects, in part because of tax cuts that Mr. Obama and Congress agreed in December to make permanent. That would make this year’s shortfall equal to 3.3 percent of the economy’s output, or gross domestic product, up from 2.5 percent and exceeding the 3 percent threshold that economists consider sustainable for a growing economy.

Mr. Obama’s proposed 10-year savings — some spending cuts, but primarily almost $3 trillion in higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some businesses, including a $10-a-barrel fee on crude oil — would push deficits down again for a couple years and offset costs of the president’s proposed initiatives.

Then deficits would begin increasing again with the retirement and health costs of aging Americans. The administration says annual deficits would remain below 3 percent of the gross domestic product through the decade to 2026. The accumulated debt held by the public would grow from $14 trillion currently to $21.3 trillion in that time, but measured against a growing economy, the debt would be stable at about 75 percent of gross domestic product.

What is the Republican Establishment?

They are he ones who allegedly do not want either Cruz or Trump to be their party's nominee, but who are they exactly? What do they want? And why do they not want Cruz or Trump?

- Who exactly is the 'Republican establishment'?
- WHAT GOP ‘ESTABLISHMENT’?
- What Is the GOP Establishment? - A Definition.

New Hampshire Primary Results

NYT: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Win in New Hampshire Primary.
538: New Hampshire Primary: Live Coverage.
Vox: New Hampshire primary results: Donald Trump wins.
Washington Post: New Hampshire primary election results.

From USA Today: Chief Justice John Roberts seeks to limit role of courts

Opportunities to bring lawsuits forward are being limited. Fewer people are felt to posses "standing" to sue.

- Click here for the article.

By siding with the Supreme Court's liberal wing on two major cases last week, Chief Justice John Roberts lent credence to conservatives' concerns that they can't count on his vote. But as he moves into his second decade as the nation's 17th chief justice, Roberts is proving to be strikingly consistent in one area that conservatives applaud. He wants to close the courthouse doors to challengers with tenuous legal grounds or claims, thereby limiting the role of the judicial branch he leads.

That desire has been on display regularly during the first half of the high court's 2015 term, both in rulings Roberts joined and in those he opposed. At nearly every opportunity, he voted to limit plaintiffs' access — demanding that they prove being harmed, back up their challenge with facts, and opt for arbitration over litigation.
The chief justice wrote the court's first decision of the term, ruling Dec. 1 that a California woman had no right to sue the Austrian national railroad in a U.S. court for severe injuries she suffered on a train platform in Innsbruck.

Two weeks later, he joined the court's 6-3 majority ruling that California customers cannot join a class action lawsuit against satellite TV provider DIRECTV because a federal law favoring arbitration over litigation trumps state law.

. . . In a report on Roberts' first decade as chief justice, the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center found him uniformly stingy on standing and generous on forced arbitration. "He has repeatedly emphasized that the role of the courts should be limited, that they’re not there to solve policy debates," says Elizabeth Wydra, the group's president.

Roberts' preferences and his court's precedents are starting to filter down to lower federal courts. In the year ending Sept. 30, the number of cases filed at federal appellate, district and bankruptcy cases all declined, following a trend begun several years ago. The Supreme Court has seen a 13% drop over five years. To liberals, the trend is ominous. Brian Wolfman, co-director of the Supreme Court litigation clinic at Stanford Law School and former director of Public Citizen Litigation Group, says the trend from class action lawsuits toward arbitration penalizes consumers and workers who cannot afford to sue on their own.

"The consumer is effectively shut out from the civil justice system, and the employer or the corporation is effectively creating its own law," Wolfman says.

Also worth a look: Chief Justice John Roberts' Supreme Court at 10, defying labels.

From the Founders' Constitution: Separation of Powers

I'll add more to this later today, but it's a good first look at the separation of powers doctrine.

- Click here for it.

. . . Clement Walker, a member of the Long Parliament in 1648, saw distinctly enough the kind of arbitrary, tyrannical rule against which the governed had to be protected. The remedy, he thought (no. 1), lay in a separation of governmental functions cast in terms of "the Governing power," "the Legislative power," and "the Judicative power."

For Marchamont Nedham, writing under Cromwell's Protectorate in 1656 (no. 2), the required separation is that of legislative and executive powers into different "hands and persons." As used by him, the distinction resembles the sharp dichotomy between the formation of policy and its administration favored by mid-twentieth-century American administrative theorists. Separation, for Nedham, is an indispensable means for locating responsibility and fixing accountability. An executive, unambiguously charged with executing a policy set by the "Law-makers," can be held liable for its performance or nonperformance. Let that clear line of distinction and responsibility be blurred, and liberty and the people's interest are alike in jeopardy.

John Trenchard's argument of 1698 carries Nedham's separation of persons even further (no. 4). One might say that without separation of persons there cannot be a meaningful separation of powers. Here, more than accountability is sought. The freedom of England depends on a truly representative--i.e., an uncorrupt--House of Commons serving as a check on an executive which already has the power of the sword. Given the premise that "it is certain that every Man will act for his own Interest," the only safeguard against "continual Heartburnings between King and People" consists in so interweaving the representatives' interest with that of the people that in acting for themselves, the representatives must likewise act for the common interest. As is true of many eighteenth-century writers, Trenchard here drew on arguments for separation of powers and for mixed or balanced government without sharply distinguishing the two.

Among Americans reflecting on new political arrangements in the latter half of the eighteenth century, no political authority was invoked more often than "the celebrated Montesquieu." Thanks in some measure to those Americans themselves, the name of Montesquieu is firmly attached to the doctrine of the separation of powers. But like most teachings of that subtle mind, this one has its ambiguities and invites differing interpretations.

Why Does Iowa Go First?! | History of The Iowa Caucus Explained 2016

New Hampshire Primary Explained | How N.H. Ended Two Presidencies [2016]

1952 Presidential Primary Newsreel

Enjoy!

538: Why Young Democrats Love Bernie Sanders

He's the oldest - looking anyway - candidate out there and is pummeling the opposition with young voters. Part of the reason is that younger voters don;t have the same negative feelings about socialism that older voters have. Generational change helps explain this. Older generations equate socialism with the Soviet Union and communism. Younger voters equate it with the more benign governments of Scandinavia.

It's interesting to point out that the same voters who are now attracted to Sander's socialism were also attracted to Ron Paul's libertarianism a few years back. The two ideologies share little in common - though there is some overlap between the two.

538 walks through the phenomenon and has some useful things to say about the ideological incoherence of the two parties.

- Click here for the article.

. . . terms such as “liberal” and “conservative” are fairly cynical also, at least in the way they’re applied in contemporary American politics. Rather than reflecting their original, philosophical meanings, they instead tend to be used as euphemisms for the policy positions of the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively. Those parties’ platforms are not all that philosophically coherent, nor do they reflect the relatively diverse and multidimensional political views of individual Americans. Instead, the major American political parties are best understood as coalitions of interest groups that work together to further one another’s agendas.

What’s distinctive about both the Sanders and Ron Paul coalitions is that they consist mostly of people who do not feel fully at home in the two-party system but are not part of historically underprivileged groups. On the whole, young voters lack political influence. But a young black voter might feel more comfortable within the Democratic coalition, which black political leaders have embraced, while a young evangelical voter might see herself as part of a wave of religious conservatives who long ago found a place within the GOP.

A young, secular white voter might not have a natural partisan identity, however, while surrounded by relatively successful peers. In part, then, the “revolutions” that both Sanders and Paul speak of are revolutions of rising expectations.

And a key graphic:

"isms" in the news

The section ideology in 2305 covers pertinent terms. Here's an example of their use in the media.

These are limited to progressivism, populism, libertarianism and democratic socialism. Scroll them if you wish - we might want to talk about how the terms are used, and if they jive with any of the dictionary definitions we would have covered in class.

- The Clinton-Sanders Fight: What Does It Mean to Be Progressive?
- Democrats Debate: What Is A Progressive And Who Wants To Be One?
- The progressive crack up.
- Bernie Sanders and the New Populism.
- Toward a Conservative Populism.
- Rand Paul's Campaign Proved Libertarianism and Conservatism Are Antithetical.
- With Rand Paul’s Exit, Has the “Libertarian Moment” Died Once Again?
- Most are democratic socialists; just don’t know it.
- Democratic socialism might be inevitable in America, even if Bernie Sanders loses.
- The Libertarian Populist Agenda.

From the National Constitution Center: Constitution Check: What does the “Take Care Clause” mean?

It's at the heart of the case Texas brought against the Obama Administration's executive actions regarding immigration - allowing some to be exempt from deportation for a while. The question seem to be how much discretion do presidents get when implementing the law? When does discretion violate the take care clause? The purpose of the clause is to limit the powers of the executive - to make it adhere to the laws passed by the legislative branch, but can these limits be too severe?

Apparently the Supreme Court has never ruled on what the take clause actually means - so this is new turf.

For more on the case, click here for United States v Texas.

- Heritage Foundation: Take Care Clause.

For the article click here.

When a court confronts a claim that a law is not being enforced and thus the executive branch has not “taken care” to execute the law, its review begins with the actual constitutional text. Doing that with the Take Care Clause, one of its words leaps immediately into prominence: the word “faithfully.”

That word seems at least to imply a measure of choice, of discretion. What sort of executive implementation of a law passed by Congress is “faithful,” and what would be “unfaithful”? And, by the way, “faithful” to what or to whom? (The records of the Philadelphia convention are not much help in answering such questions; the Take Care Clause was talked about very little there.)

Structurally, the word “faithfully” modifies “execute,” but isn’t the Founders’ thought behind the phrase that the mode of execution be “faithful” at least to the words chosen by Congress? And maybe, also, faithful to the purpose Congress had in mind?

That second question, of course, draws one immediately into the long-standing debate among Supreme Court Justices: are the only clues to what Congress had in mind the words of a law, or should one also take into account how Congress debated the law in order to see what purpose or policy the lawmakers were embracing?

When the Supreme Court takes up in April the constitutionality of President Obama’s broad change in immigration law, some Justices will focus only on the words of existing law regarding deportation of illegal aliens, and some will search for the congressional purpose.

They will then move from those starting points, comparing them to the specific terms of what President Obama’s aides put together in the plan to delay deportation for at least 4 million immigrants. Under the policy, if a given individual is allowed to remain, that person can then get a work permit and will qualify for some public benefits. 

The crucial finding in this comparison will be either that Congress did give the executive branch a good deal of leeway on how to enforce the immigration law so that deferred deportation is “faithful” to the law, or that Congress made its intent very clear so that little was left to executive discretion, and deferred deportation is “unfaithful” to the law, and thus invalid under the Take Care Clause.

If the court does get to this constitutional issue (there are also procedural and statutory issues in the case, too, and those might be decisive on their own), the Justices very likely will have to provide a full explanation of what that clause means – doing that for the first time in history.

Major court cases about freedom of the press

This is a list from the Bill of Rights Institute.

- Click here for it

I'm not aware of court questions regarding who qualifies as a journalist - I'll keep looking.

Does the free press clause protect the people who videotaped Planned Parenthood?

There is nothing new about undercover reporting - and the pervasiveness of recording equipment seem to make everyone a journalist of sorts, but does that means the constitutional protections apply broadly? What are the implications of this?

- Slate has an article on the subject: Is an Anti-Abortion Activist With a Camera a Journalist?

Here's a chunk of its text:

. . . “the gathering and publishing of information doesn’t instantly make one a journalist, just like the sharing of legal information doesn’t instantly make one a lawyer or knowingly hypothesizing about an illness doesn’t make one a physician. In the latter two examples, the focus is on education, proof of knowledge, and the government’s own line-drawing in licensing lawyers and doctors. There is no government-issued license to practice journalism.” She argues that it will be left to us, the reading public, to draw the lines that courts and legislatures have struggled to clarify: “Unbiased consumers of information could well know journalism when they see it. These consumers believe in some publishers more than others because the publishers’ work is reliable and ethical and truthful, often or mostly published without bias or ideology. And that’s very similar to the way journalism has been defined in a traditional sense, long before we all became publishers.”

In other words, it’s entirely possible that even while Daleiden attempts to argue that what he did—or at least what he now says he was doing—is genuine journalism, there are real risks to the rest of us in allowing him to make such broad claims. We aren’t merely risking our privacy and our livelihoods by allowing anyone with a camera and an inextinguishable fantasy to call himself a reporter. We are courting the possibility that his nihilistic and cynical view of the profession could someday become the norm.

The videographer's problem seems to be the fraud he engaged in to get the footage. That does not seem to be covered by the First Amendment. The privileges reporters get seem to extent primarily extend to their ability to not have to testify about confidential sources.

The Supreme Court established this privilege in Branzburg v. Hayes.

- Click here for the decision.

The annotated Declaration of Independence

We read through the document in 2305 last week in order to understand what is in it, especially the list of grievances which were intended to prove that King George - with the backing of Parliament - was attempting to establish a tyranny by consolidating legislative, executive and judicial powers over the colonies.

Here are a few places to go to get detail about those allegations.

- Volokh Conspiracy: The Declaration of Independence annotated.
- Founding.com: Annotated Versions.
- Chapman.edu: The Declaration of Independence, Annotated.
- Patriots Line: The Declaration of Independence – The Grievances.

And for a look at the grievances from the other side:

- A Loyalist’s Rebuttal to the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

The author is Thomas Hutchinson. Here is his rebuttal to the opening paragraph, I highlighted an interesting observation of his:

They begin, my Lord, with a false hypothesis, That the Colonies are one distinct people and the kingdom another, connected by political bands. The Colonies, politically considered, never were a distinct people from the kingdom. There never has been but one political band, and that was just the same before the first Colonists emigrated as it has been ever since, the Supreme Legislative Authority [Parliament], which hath essential right and is indispensably bound to keep all parts of the Empire entire until there may be a separation consistent with the general good of the Empire, of which good, from the nature of government, this authority must be the sole judge. I should therefore be impertinent if I attempted to show in what case a whole people may be justified in rising up in oppugnation [opposition] to the powers of government, altering or abolishing them and substituting, in whole or in part, new powers in their stead; or in what sense all men are created equal, or how far life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness may be said to be unalienable. Only I could wish to ask the Delegates of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas how their Constituents justify the depriving more than an hundred thousand Africans of their rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and in some degree to their lives, if these rights are so absolutely unalienable; nor shall I attempt to confute the absurd notions of government or to expose the equivocal or inconclusive expressions contained in this Declaration; but rather to show the false representation made of the facts which are alleged to be the evidence of injuries and usurpations, and the special motives to Rebellion. There are many of them, with designs, left obscure; for as soon as they are developed, instead of justifying, they rather aggravate the criminality of this Revolt.

For the original draft of the document, click here.

From Slate: Are Assault Weapons Protected by the Second Amendment?

As of yet, the only weapon the Supreme Court has decided falls under the protection of the Second Amendment is a handgun, and only in homes. This is based on the argument that a broad interpretation of the amendment includes the right of self-defense - which is not mentioned in the amendment, but was commonly argued at the time of its ratification to be a reason why arms can be kept and borne.

Cases are winding their ways to the court which will allow them to rule whether protection applies not only to handguns, but to assault weapons as well. The author mentions some of these cases - including one that the Supreme Court decided to not hear in December - four justices chose not to hear the case. Another - Kolbe v Hogan - might be accepted though. It involves a ban on assault weapons passed by the state of Maryland following the Sandy Hook shooting. The lawsuit was filed by a variety of groups and a couple citizens who argue the Second Amendment should apply to assault weapons.

Specifically they are arguing - as I understand it - that limits on weapons should be subject to strict scrutiny rather than intermediate scrutiny. This is more difficult test to pass, which makes it more likely that limits on guns will be found constitutional.

- Click here for Kolbe v Hogan.

For grins - here's the list of plaintiffs. It's taken from the case.

- STEPHEN V. KOLBE
- ANDREW C. TURNER
- WINK'S SPORTING GOODS, INCORPORATED
- ATLANTIC GUNS, INCORPORATED
- ASSOCIATED GUN CLUBS OF BALTIMORE, INCORPORATED
- MARYLAND SHALL ISSUE, INCORPORATED
- MARYLAND STATE RIFLE AND PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INCORPORATED
- NATIONAL SHOOTING SPORTS FOUNDATION, INCORPORATED
- MARYLAND LICENSED FIREARMS DEALERS ASSOCIATION, INCORPORATED

- Click here for the article in Slate.

In December the Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging a Chicago suburb’s ban on selling and owning assault weapons. Two justices—Clarence Thomas joined by Antonin Scalia—offered up a bitter dissent when the court refused to weigh in. But the high court, which hasn’t heard a major gun case since 2010, nevertheless let stand a lower court’s ruling that the 2013 ban, adopted in Highland Park, Illinois, did not violate the Second Amendment or the court’s recent jurisprudence interpreting

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case called Kolbe v. Hogan, sent the state of Maryland’s ban on assault weapons back to a federal trial court for a second, more scrupulous review. In a 2–1 decision, the majority of the appellate panel found that the semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines banned under a new Maryland law “are in common use by law-abiding citizens” and cannot be banned under the Second Amendment. The ruling sets the wheels in motion for another major gun fight at the high court.

. . . Maryland’s Firearm Safety Act was passed along with a raft of similar gun control measures in other states in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre in December 2012. Twenty children and six adult staff members were killed in that massacre by a gunman using three semi-automatic firearms. Among other things, the Maryland statute banned possession of firearms designated as “assault weapons,” including AR-15s and AK-47s. Maryland also banned sales and purchases of ammunition magazines of more than 10 rounds. A District court in Maryland upheld the ban.

That ban and similar ones have been surviving in federal courts because they have been subject to intermediate scrutiny—a constitutional test that often turns on whether the government has a reasonable purpose for a gun law. Public safety is often sufficient to satisfy that standard. The 4th Circuit, in demanding that the lower court look at the Maryland law again under strict scrutiny—a standard that makes it very difficult to salvage a law—sets up the potential for a new high court showdown.

The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution

That's the title of a provocative article which claims that when nations look to redesign their constitutions, they are likely to look to other countries for models. Ours is kinda old.

- Click here for it.

The Q and A with one of the authors is worth a look.

- Click here for that.

She speculates why the decline:

- The most likely reason for the declining appeal of the U.S. Constitution lies in the Constitution itself. We find that the U.S. Constitution is increasingly out of step with a global constitutional consensus on human rights. There are a number of features that make the U.S. Constitution atypical:

- The U.S. Constitution contains a relatively small number of enumerated rights. While other constitutions around the world have gradually become more rights-inclusive, the U.S Constitution has not added any rights at all over the last century.

- Among the relatively few rights that the U.S. Constitution does contain are some provisions that are rare at the global level. Examples of such provisions include the establishment clause (adopted by about 30 percent of the world’s constitutions) and the right to bear arms (adopted by less than 2 percent of the world’s constitutions today).

- The U.S. Constitution omits a number of generic building blocks of global rights constitutionalism. Women’s rights, for example, are found in 90 percent of the world’s constitutions but do not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The same is true for physical-needs rights, such as the right to social security, the right to health care and the right to food, which appear in some form in roughly 80 percent of the world’s constitutions.

Some Choice Rants

I'll add more later - and these are just a sample of some very good work that's been turned in - but here's a sample of some of what's been turned in so far:

A bit serious:

In so many aspects of our culture we obviously side with the “good guy” and cheer the mon against the antagonist. The ideas of superheroes, proud soldiers, even little clips showing maybe a child or animal with a disability defeating the odds and warming our hearts blasted allover public media. Why then, I find myself wondering, does it always seem like the antagonist is winning. The manipulator, the bully, the cheat, and the liar all seem to be alive and thriving in the world I see. It is like in the real world everyone loses the ability to see through the sales a stand sides with the stronger side. By nature the ones I know who are kind and giving almost always take a back seat to the selfish takers. Everywhere I look I see these selfish types not only surviving, but thriving. Living great lives, getting great jobs and promotions, cutting you off on the road and not getting pulled over, all with little or no resistance from others. My father was always my favorite debate partner and I loved that I was the only one who could work him into a passionate rant. In discussing some matters I would always be assumed as “the bleeding heart”and would end up arguing on the side of what’s best for everyone collectively assuming everyone is equal. I asked my father one time how he could not see certain situations as sticking up for the underdog to which he told me when he was young he was picked on, then he got big and felt the responsibility to take up for the ones still getting picked on. I commented that I rarely see that behavior anymore and asked what changed. He told me he got tired of fighting and they never learned to defend themselves.

Someone has a problem with their fellow millennials:

Something that “grinds my gears” beyond belief is this generation I’m stuck in. The one we like to call millennials. I can’t identify with almost anything that these people stand for. Their lives are so run by technology and living for the “likes” on their posts or photos. They’re so detached from the world. Emotions have gone out the window. It’s almost a crime to have feelings anymore, or instead of actually showing feelings to the person who deserves them, we post about them on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter and every other social media site we can think of. Whatever happened to telling or showing someone you loved or hated them face-to-face? I don’t understand.

These lovely people also, quite frankly, piss me off with their lack of work ethic. I grew up being taught that you have to work for what you needed and wanted. Now it’s supposed to be handed to you on a silver platter and then spoon fed to you. I’m not saying that everything should be outrageously expensive and unattainable for the lower classes, but I do think that people should be working harder towards what they want in life instead of sitting on their rear ends complaining how life isn’t fair. This is what happens when children get trophies for participating and parents intervene with consequences of their children’s decisions. I don’t want to be busting my butt just to support those who aren’t willing to do so because they’re simply too lazy. Kids need to be taught that life isn’t always going to be fair and not everyone is equal when it comes to money, but if you work hard you can get somewhere.

I’m tired of everything being so censored because we’re afraid we might offend someone. Get over yourself, put on your big girl panties, stop being so offended by everything, and move on with your life. This generation needs to learn that the world DOES NOT revolve around them. I don’t get why everyone is so offended by the smallest things, when in all reality, whatever was said or done probably had little to do with them in the first place. I really fear for the children who are being or are going to be raised by most millennials. I fear for what is happening and going to happen to our country.

Are you ready for college? It may have nothing to do with your high school (I might agree)

School systems don’t prepare their students for college. They treat them way to special and give them way too many opportunities to pass. For example, at my high school we were given three different opportunities to pass a test. We could either pass it the first time we took it, take a retest if we didn’t pass the first time, or if we failed twice do test corrections. What high schools aren’t letting students know s that college doesn’t work that way. That then makes college twice as hard as they thought because they weren’t properly prepared. Not only does effect students that go to college but also students that do not. In the real world people don’t let you fix your mistakes 2 or 3 times, usually its one big mess up and the next time you’re fired. It also doesn’t prepare them because it teaches them hard work doesn’t pay off and you can BS all your problems. This problem really needs to be addressed and fixed because if this continues to happen it will cause a lazier generation of students.

Everyone should wait table for at least a little while:

The restaurant I worked at recently decided to stop adding automatic gratuity to large parties. As a waitress this is extremely frustrating because that automatic gratuity is our protection. I say this because taking a big party like a 20 top means that we will get no other table for the rest of the night so our entire pay that day will come from only one table. On top of that our tip already gets cut in half since we have to split that party with another server since one can not efficiently serve a table of 20. So if these tables decide to not tip well, and leave 10$ dollars on a 500$ bill we servers essentially make nothing. I am saying this from experience because the last few months so many of my friends took parties with 20+ people, gave great service, and received tips that less then 10 %. Servers do not make minimum wage, we need those tips,and for some people being a server is their career, they cant afford days where they make nothing. All restaurants need to have automatic gratuity so that their workers are protected and rewarded for their hard work.

And this might be one of my all time favorites. You think you have to pointless things:

Every single day, except for days that we don’t have practice, I have to water dirt. Dirt doesn’t grow. I have to water the dirt to make sure that the dirt stays moist, when I live in a place where it doesn’t really rain and it gets scorching hot in the summer. I have to make sure that a dry substance stays moist and it doesn’t go bad. How does dirt even go bad. How does one ruin dirt. I also have to make sure that the dirt doesn’t get too wet when I water it. Watering dirt used to not bother me, back when I had basically a fire hose to do it with. The hose went bad, so now I do it with a garden hose. I have to walk halfway out and I have to make sure the water doesn’t blow back into me from the wind. I know this isn’t as bad as I make it out to be, but it is so monotonous and I’m tired of having to drive home in soaked clothes because the hose explodes and water shoots all over my face. I’m just tired of it.

A Brit explains U.S. Elections, and does a pretty good job. This is a good general overview. Worth a quick look before we get into specifics in class.

The Dissolution of Catholic Monasteries

The video below highlights a period of the development of London that coincided with Henry VIII's destruction of Catholic monasteries following his decision to kick the church out and create the Church of England with himself as the head. It marked a period when the powers of the king expanded considerably since he was not only in charge of government and the church, he was suddenly considerably wealthy - which inevitably increases one's power.

I though it might also serve as a reminder that as we witness the destruction of religious sites in the Middle East, the west is not above doing similar things.

For more on these events:

- Tudor Place: The Suppression of the English monasteries.
- Wikipedia: Dissolution of the Monasteries.
- Wikipedia: List of monasteries dissolved by Henry VIII of England.
- Catholic Herald: A sad reminder of the art lost in the years after the Reformation.

The London Evolution Animation

I can't anything like this for cities in the US or preferably Texas - I'm sure something is out there - but here is a look at the gradual organic development of London. This is a key feature of how cities tend to grow. It helps explain why they are substantively different governing entities than counties, states, and nations.

Animated History of North America

From the folks that brought you the video about the territorial development of the United States. This takes a broader look at it. I've tried to argue in class that a key early goals of the US was to kick competing powers out of North America, or at least contain them. The video suggest they were largely successful.

Key documents from Magna Carta to the U.S. Constitution

For class discussion:

- Magna Carta.

- The Petition of Right.

- The English Bill of Rights.

- Declaration of Independence.

- Article of Confederation.

- Proceedings of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government.

- Constitution of the United States.

Another Quiz: Where Do You Fit in the Political Typology?

From the Pew Research Center.

- Click here for it if you so inclined.

From the Texas Tribune: Cheerleader Case Can Proceed, State Supreme Court Rules

This smells like a potential US Supreme Court case.

It concerns whether the breakaway banners cheerleaders in Kountze High School created for football players to crash though violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution.They were in the habit of painting biblical verses on them. Since it is a public high school, such actions can be seen to be a governmental endorse of a particular religious views over others. To avoid lawsuits, the ISD ruled that they could not paint religious messages on the banners, but the cheerleaders sued.

The ISD countered that they could not do so, but the decision by the Texas Supreme Court was simply that a lawsuit filed by the cheerleaders could go forward. There has yet to be a substantive ruling on the merits of the case - that is the actual constitutional question posed by the dispute. Now the process is in place to figure that out.

- Click here for the article.

The East Texas students have been fighting for the ability to cite Bible verses as part of their cheerleading routines since 2012, when the Kountze Independent School District told the squad they could not paint Christian messages on the banners football players ran through before their games.

The district instituted the ban after the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates for the separation of church and state, threatened to sue. Foundation members argued that because the Bible-quoting signs were held by cheerleaders wearing official school uniforms, and at official school events, they were tantamount to school-sponsored religious activities.

The ban didn’t put an end to the district’s legal woes — because the cheerleaders’ parents promptly filed a lawsuit of their own, claiming the ban violated their children’s right to free speech. The squad members came up with the banner ideas on their own, and bought the supplies with their own money, making it clear they were acting as individuals, the cheerleaders’ parents said.

The case has been making its way through the legal system ever since. In 2013, the Kountze district independently overturned its “no Bible messages” ban, but families of several cheerleaders kept pursuing the lawsuit anyway. Eventually, the 9th Texas Court of Appeals threw the case out, ruling that because the policy was no longer in effect, the lawsuit was moot.

On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court overruled the lower court's decision, writing that the lawsuit should be allowed to continue because the ban could “reasonably be expected” to be reinstated.

“The District no longer prohibits the cheerleaders from displaying religious signs or messages on banners at school-sponsored events,” Justice John Devine wrote in the opinion. “But that change hardly makes ‘absolutely clear’ that the District will not reverse itself after this litigation is concluded.”

For the actual decision by the court click here.

Lingering posts about the Iowa Caucus

I've let these pile up. It's past time to post them and move on.

- Donald Trump Got a Huge Number of Votes in Iowa. Imagine If He’d Actually Run a Campaign. It's true that Trump lost. But apparently he had next to no ground game and though a presence on social media was enough to win. This allowed Cruz - who mobilized the religious right and developed mart voter targeting mechanisms - to edge him out. Trump still got more votes than the past two winners of the caucus.

- How Ted Cruz Engineered His Iowa Triumph. A great inside look at how a well run campaign operates. And Cruz does seem to take campaigning seriously. It involves sophisticated statistical modeling. Much

- Some Iowa Caucus Precincts Flipped a Coin to Determine the Democratic Winner. There were reports that coin tosses to break ties between the two Democrats. Here's detail on the process. For our purposes, it might be wise to point out that sometimes every vote does count. NPR argues that the coin flips did not win the caucus for her.

- What We Learned in Iowa: Maybe the GOP contest isn’t really about the establishment and outsiders. More on Cruz's ground game.

- How Ted Cruz outfoxed Donald Trump in Iowa. And even more - this could be an indication of the road ahead, but commentators caution that primary states are more difficult to mobilize than caucus states.

- Cruz Won Iowa Because of Evangelicals, Would Lose General Election For Same Reason. Much of the mobilization by the Cruz campaign involved his support by evangelical voters. Cruz focused his messages to that group to win the caucus, but the author points out that the evangelical vote is a far smaller component of the general electorate. Today's appeal might work against him later.

- Iowa Caucus entrance poll results. An in-depth look at the data that tells which candidate won which group in Iowa and by how much.

Who controls the Republican Party?

An occasional question. Here's the latest I've found on it. The two major political parties in the United States are highly decentralized. Finding their center - or who is in charge of either at any moment in time - is very difficult. And the power center is often in flux. The author argues that the current Republican Party is controlled by media personalities, specifically talk radio hosts and Fox News.

- Ted Cruz and Donald Trump: Signs of conservative media's grip on GOP.

Over the course of the last three decades, these media personalities have surpassed party officials and even elected representatives in their influence, ascending to exalted status atop Republican leadership. Yet, they prioritize goals seemingly at odds with good governance, and often, even the party's sole purpose for existence.

Talking heads wresting control of the GOP from the traditional party power brokers benefits neither the party, nor the nation. Political parties, after all, exist to win elections. By surrendering issue control to entertainers on the fringe of contemporary thought, however, the Republican Party has limited its ability to reach the 42% of Americans who according to Gallup, regard themselves as independents in a national, general election.

. . . On the rare occasions when Republican elites have attempted to reassert control, they've been pounded into submission by the titans of talk and their allies in Congress. One example came last summer when House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) stripped Rep. Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina) of his subcommittee chairmanship as punishment for crossing the Republican leadership on a key procedural vote -- which violated a cardinal rule of party loyalty in the House.

When choosing sides between the maintenance of party order and discipline or support for a charter member of the House Freedom Caucus who was among the leaders who forced a government shutdown in 2013, one talk icon didn't hesitate.
While chatting with a Meadows' sympathizer, Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, a disgusted Laura Ingraham slammed the leadership for its shabby treatment of leaders like Jordan and Meadows.

"This is what the mafia does," Ingraham said. "You know, I'm sorry, but this is a political mafia up on Capitol Hill. That's the way I see it. I don't see this as a Republican Party that represents people like me."

Later in the show, Ingraham hosted Meadows, who she praised: "Mark Meadows, Republican (of) North Carolina who stood up for common sense and pragmatism in trade and was punished for it."

She shamed Chaffetz, exclaiming "there's a point where you just have to say, you know I voted the right way in your mind on trade, sir, but I will not do this. I won't be party to what you're doing to these good men. That's what he should have said."

Less than a week later, Chaffetz reversed course and restored Meadows to his position, signifying the toothlessness of the elected Republican leadership.