The U.S. has always had a tempestuous relationship with the idea of due process. Obviously, some process requirement is necessary. You can’t actually have a “nation of laws” if the operation of those laws is left entirely up to the…
No Delegation: The State Should Do Its Own Work
I’m not optimistic on anything being fixable at this point, but we should still think about how to do better next time. Because there will (eventually) be a next time. And when it comes time to write the constitution for…
Authoritarians United: Most Courts Will Be Too Slow To Matter
If the police are mostly on the wrong side, then it shouldn’t be surprising that most courts will be too. It’s where their class affinities lie, after all. Judges are wealthy and, for the most part, they grew up that…
Authoritarians United: Most Police Will Be On The Wrong Side
Police organization in the U.S. are no more democratic than the military. Which is to say: not democratic at all. Officers are trained to obey, and to have no role in choosing their leaders (and no role in interpreting the…
Showing Their Work: Laws Should Be Version-Controlled
The tech industries appear to have provided most of the foot soldiers, many of the generals and pretty much all the lunacy behind Musk’s ongoing coup attempt. For which many of us in the industry sincerely apologize. For the most…
Calexit: Dumb Name, Smart Idea
So, California has an independence movement. I know; this is not a surprise. (Many states, mostly Republican party strongholds, have California independence movements these days; they love to say they want us out of the Union. We’re one of the…
Political Climate Change: NOAA Needs An Ark
There’s a faction in U.S. politics that thinks the State shouldn’t be doing anything that someone could be making a profit from. And they really hate NOAA. NOAA is less than popular with the climate-change-is-a-hoax faction, too. And since these…
Freedom Ferrets: Enough Is More Than Enough
“You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” – Joseph Welch It shall not stand. This nonsense had already gone too far, but now they’re risking the only surviving population…
Unfixable: The U.S. Constitution Is Irreparably Broken
The U.S. constitution was, for it’s time, a pretty impressive piece of work. But that time was over 200 years ago. And in those 200 years, various factions within the U.S. have managed to warp it into the weak, twisted…
British Eyes Are Watching: Apple Caves On Private Encryption
Looks like it’s time to set aside that iPhone: the U.K. has demanded that Apple compromise iCloud backup encryption. And Apple just announced that they will comply. Now, in theory, the way they’ve said they’ll comply will only affect users…