July 11, 2009

Well, Duh!

Watergate figure John Dean, who once spent eight years embroiled in a libel suit against a publishing house, is now threatening to sue a college history professor for posting audio tapes online that suggest the Nixon confidant-turned-government witness is covering up the details of his role in the most infamous political scandal in American history.

Of course he's lying and casting blame.  That has been obvious from the beginning.  He's really a quite transparent liar.  (I suppose that's a good thing, ultimately....)  What's truly surprising is that this is news to anyone.

Blast from the Past

Ah, firearms and beautiful women.  A lovely combination.

July 10, 2009

Kafka's Fact Check

I had to read this twice three times to be sure I hadn't misunderstood:

But red tape is a red herring.  In fact, stimulus projects have to be ready to begin quickly.  Projects that have yet to clear permitting, environmental review or other bureaucratic hurdles won't get funded because they won't meet the law's deadlines.

Isn't that the definition of 'red tape?'

Well, the guy did only go to J-school.  We can only expect so much.

You Broke My Guitar, You Hosers!

Canadians get even with a smile:

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Colonel Bogey's Earworm

For Leslie:

Just doing what I can to help!

In Extremis and In General

Meagan McArdle has to explain the difference between medical care in America and in the rest of the world:

This may be why -- contrary to what Mr. Drum has apparently read -- cancer survival rates in Europe lag those in the US.  ... At the highest macro level, life expectancy, Europe generally outperforms us.  But it's not clear how much of that is health care, and how much things like our murder rate, and our famously sedentary lifestyles.  When you drill down into many diseases, we outperform them.  And many argue that we outperform them on hard-to-measure "lifestyle" issues:  how fast your torn ACL gets repaired, how quickly (or whether) you get a hip replacement, etc.  Such quality of life issues are nearly impossible to measure, though this hasn't stopped many people from trying.  But I don't really trust the figures they generate.

Ms. McArdle notices another distinction, although she misses the terminological point: 'Health care' and 'medical care' are not the same thing.  'Medical care' is obvious, but 'health care' includes such things as lifestyle.  But whether or not I have that double blue-cheese bacon burger is no reflection of the quality or efficiency of the medical care I receive to make up for my poor behavior.  (Erhem.  I haven't had one of those in a couple years, but it was yummy!)  In America, we sometimes eat more poorly and live more leisurely lifestyles than do Europeans, but that is an individual choice.  American medical care is the best in the world, and all things considered is not more expensive than other, less-effective systems.  All things considered, I say, because I have seen cost-comparisons between the US and Canada that overlooked significant Canadian expenses.

July 09, 2009

Quote of the Day: Bad Lunch

Wiser and older people tell you that the passions of your youth will dry up and that a more sere and autumnal condition will overtake you as maturity advances, but the thought of the Nixon gang in the White House still infuses me with a pure and undiluted hatred and makes me consider throwing up things that I don't even remember having eaten.Christopher Hitchens  (I don't recommend the whole piece.)

July 08, 2009

Quote of the Day: I've Got a Secret

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. — Benjamin Franklin

Taliban in Jail

Christopher Hitchens offers the best (and singular persuasive) argument to close the prison at Guantanamo:

Suppose that you were a secular or unfanatical person caught in the net by mistake; you would still find yourself being compelled to pray five times a day (the guards are not permitted to interrupt), to have a Quran in your cell, and to eat food prepared to halal (or Sharia) standards.  I suppose you could ask to abstain, but, in such a case, I wouldn't much fancy your chances.  The officers in charge were so pleased by this ability to show off their extreme broad-mindedness in respect of Islam that they looked almost hurt when I asked how they justified the use of taxpayers' money to create an institution dedicated to the fervent practice of the most extreme version of just one religion.  To the huge list of reasons to close down Guantanamo, add this: It's a state-sponsored madrasah.

Save us from ourselves.  Sigh.

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Boned

Oh, get your mind out of the gutter:

But don't use nylon string.  Seriously, that just doesn't go well in the oven.

You can see more at Chef Mohr's Web site.

(h/t: Instapundit)

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July 06, 2009

Ding, Dong!

Robert Strange McNamara (no, really!), Vietnam-era Defense Secretary and serial revisionist, is dead.  Good riddance!

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July 05, 2009

Tacking Right

I don't disagree with Penn in substance on the drug issue, although maybe in the amount I'd be willing to intervene.  Or perhaps not.  I don't have any friends about whom I can even imagine that this could be a problem.  Perhaps my imagination fails me.

Regarding suicide, however, I take a slightly different tack: Many people do contemplate and even commit suicide when facing temporary or correctable circumstances, such as an illness which is not terminal or clinical depression which can be treated although admittedly rather ham-handedly. (Psychiatric medicine is not all it's cracked up to be.  Yeah, I'm sorry.)  In such a circumstance, I'm not entirely opposed to a forced 'time out' while friends and responsible professionals help the individual to sort things out.  But I am not happy with such an application of force against an innocent person, so that period would have to be very short.  I mean, it should be measured in a small number of weeks, and I would hope that all involved would be deeply troubled — sickened — by the moral dilemma.

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Playing Nice

But, um, that's Japanese music, dude. Seriously.

July 04, 2009

Happy Independence Day

Thanks to 3dflags.com.

July 03, 2009

The Happiest 4th of July

Quote of the Day: Belly Up

Only dead fish go with the flow. — Sarah Palin

Selling a Lie

I frequently find myself wondering what, exactly, is the difference between advertising and lying, and doubly so for political advertising.  Well here we are, in the midst of a debate about whether to nationalize a large portion of this nation's health care, and the baloney is flying fast and furious.  Here are two big whoppers I heard on the radio yesterday afternoon, on the same show, from the same guy:

  1. The health-care insurance industry has no competition, so we need the government to compete with it.
  2. America is 2nd-worst in the world in infant mortality.

One wouldn't expect the first lie to fool anyone, but I heard a version from the White House a couple days ago, so I assume the script has been market-tested.  Thus I must state the obvious: The 'health-care insurance industry' is composed of many doctors, hospitals, and health insurers, all competing with each other.  Where is this supposed lack of competition, and how would government 'compete' with an entire industry? 

In fact, a large part of the problem with the cost of health-care can be traced to current government mandates and restrictions and the ridiculously-low rates that Medicare pays to doctors and hospitals.  They have no choice but to raise their rates elsewhere to make up the difference.  And where I live, the State has actually limited the number of hospitals that can exist in the area.  Seriously: One hospital chain wanted to open a new hospital a couple miles from my house, but it took an act of the State Legislature to permit it!  There is your competitive shortage — mandated by government.  (I'll leave the outrageous cost of malpractice insurance due to lying bastards like, oh, John Edwards, for another day.)

On the second point: America is frequently rated twentieth-best or tenth-best in the world in infant mortality, depending on what organization is doing the analysis and how careful they are to compare 'apples to apples.'  But even the 'tenth-best' figure is wildly unfair to the United States.  The worse figure comes from an advocacy group (guess what they're advocating for!) that apparently can't be bothered to account for the differences, country-to-country, in the definition of a 'live birth.'  In many countries — including Ireland, which is certainly not third-world — a baby that never takes a breath on its own is not considered to have been born alive.  In the US, that baby might put on forced oxygen and counted among the living and then, if it dies despite the best efforts of modern medicine, as an infant that didn't make it.  The UN accounts for this difference in definition, thus rating the US much higher than in some other 'studies.'

But even the UN doesn't fully account for the apples and oranges: In the US, a distressed pregnancy in which the fetus is almost certain to fail will often be treated by emergency Caesarean section, thus turning the distressed fetus into a distressed premature baby with poor chances for survival.  But yet we try and we count it as a live birth, and thus our extraordinary efforts count against us in the infant-mortality statistics.  This is the danger of any such social-science statistic: The unaccounted variables are often far more important that even the researcher knows.

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July 02, 2009

Y'all Be Careful Now

Tell Me Another One

The cover-up begins:

An intact Air France Flight 447 slammed belly first into the Atlantic Ocean at a very high speed, a top French investigator said Thursday, adding that problems with the plane's speed sensors were not the direct cause of the crash.

Um, no.  The tail was discovered several miles from the rest of the plane.  What, it floated away from everything else?

But hey, government-subsidized French manufacturer, government-subsidized (and partially-owned) French airline, French government investigator ... no, there's no conflict of interest here!  Move along, now.

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Unreasonable

July 01, 2009

In Which Helen Thomas Redeems Herself

Now they've pissed her off:

Superbaloney

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks this whole 60-vote 'supermajority' thing is baloney.  Actually, with the number of 'moderate' (read: left-liberal) Republican senators, 55 Democrats will do to railroad most things through.

June 30, 2009

A Compromised Decision

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the 2nd Circuit, including Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano.  The ruling was 5-4, but the most interesting point was the one on which the Court was unanimous: That the 2nd Circuit applied the wrong legal standard to the case, and in a summary judgment no less!

The minority of the Supreme Court, as explained by Justice Ginsburg, wanted therefore to remand the case to the 2nd Circuit with the implication that the 2nd Circuit should remand the case to the District Court where the problems began, but they (the minority) argued that the result would be the same under the correct standard.  (This is why your high school math teacher required you to show your work: Sometimes you get the right answer for a really bad reason.)  But the majority disagreed: the City of New Haven's actions constituted a de facto quota system, the matter needed to be settled decisively, and some points of precedent needed to be clarified. 

One can make a reasoned argument, as Justice Ginsburg noted, for remand — to allow the 'process' to run — but given that the ultimate result was certain and that the majority were additionally applying a precedent that really needed to be (and still needs to be) clarified by the Supreme Court, it would have been unjust and imprudent to let this case drag on any longer.  Good people have been denied a promotion they earned, and more might elsewhere be treated unjustly while the 'process' runs to no effect, so the Court chose to end it.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court didn't do enough to clarify its 2006 precedent nor to drive a stake through the heart of the 'disparate impact' doctrine of Griggs v. Duke Power (1971), so confusion remains, the sure sign of compromise.  That is a damned shame.

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Disgusting

The Minnesota Supreme Court today rejected Sen. Coleman's challenge to the election, on the grounds that the rules for counting absentee ballots cannot be changed after the fact, and in fact the Coleman camp had previously agreed to some of the erroneous procedures, thereby precluding a challenge on the point.  And, although the precincts that didn't follow the rules were primarily Democrat-leaning, there's no way to fix the inequality without requiring everyone to ignore the rules that are clearly-specified in Minnesota law, which would be unjust.  I believe the ruling is correct.  Damn it.

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Multiple

(Click on image to go to author's Web site.)

June 26, 2009

Mastering Fate

(Note: I have pretty much rewritten this post.  No change in content or emphasis, but the originally-published version truly sucked.)

A couple readers have protested the A.G. Lamplugh quote that 'Aviation, in itself, is not inherently dangerous.'   There is some cause to dispute that claim, but not, I think, for the obvious reasons.  Lamplugh was lying in the way that an interested official will to keep the public from panicking.  Aviation, in 1930, was a genuine gamble.  But notice the other context: Lamplugh also thought that travel by sea involved substantial risks that could be greatly mitigated by proper training of and attention from the crew.  That was true in the 1930s, as it is now, and it was and remains true of aviation.  But compared to the rest of life in the 1930s, the 'danger' was not so impressive as it might seem in retrospect.  Today, the 'danger' is not worth worrying about.

But I say that Lamplugh was lying because he was speaking — or writing, I'm not sure — in the 1930s, when airplanes really did just fall out of the sky, or disappear, especially on intercontinental flights, often for reasons that were not known and never would be.  This was largely due the immaturity of aviation technology at the time and the fact that weather predictions were nearly useless, especially on longer flights, and weather observations were few and far between.

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June 23, 2009

Brace Yourself!

(Click to embiggen.  h/t: Denny)

We're Here to Help

Jimbo has his crystal ball focused on ObamaCare.  Owwwwww!

June 22, 2009

What The?

I thought I was the only person crazy enough to say this about marriage:

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More Proof of Global Warming

June in Phoenix, below 100°F?

"It's probably the best June since I've been here, and I've been here most of my life," said the National Weather Service's Valerie Meyers, who is in her late 40s.  "It's been really nice."

Possibly the nicest June ever.

It's that type of thing that is fun to say but hard to quantify.

Thursday, however, was the 14th consecutive day to stay below 100 degrees.  That's the longest stretch of its kind in any June since 1913.

We're all going to die!  Arrrrrgggghhhhhh!

June 19, 2009

Isn't He Dreamy?

Getting There

Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous.  But to an even greater degree than sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity, or neglect. — Captain A. G. Lamplugh, British Aviation Insurance Group, 1930

Tuesday night, in the middle of a rainstorm, a small airplane returning from Georgia crashed onto the runway at the little airport two miles from my home.  The pilot, an engineer and former university professor who founded an international electronic-sensor company, died either in the crash or in the fire that subsequently destroyed the airplane. 

Wednesday afternoon, as I watched the maintenance vehicles working on the runway, I asked the old man of the airport what had happened.  Did he suppose the airplane had caught a downdraft in the rainstorm, or maybe some wind-shear as it crossed the tree-line?  Or perhaps the pilot cheated, flew too low and too slow, and a simple gust kicked the sky out from under him?

'That could be,' the old man said.  'But I do know he shouldn't have been flying in that weather.  He won't do it again.'

That does sum it up, doesn't it?  The pilot was in such a hurry to get home that he flew into weather that no small plane should challenge, trying to land using a high, steep non-precision approach at an airport with short runways surrounded by tall trees.  He ignored a dozen better options in order to get home as planned, and arrived on-schedule and dead.

*   *   *

This mistake is so common that it even has a name, beaten into the head of every aspiring pilot and harped on again at every review of his flying skills: Get-there-itis.  We need, for some reason, to get to our destination as planned, no matter all the better reasons to the contrary.  Never mind that bad weather can overwhelm the pilot and even tear a jumbojet to pieces.  Never mind the maintenance issues on the airplane, or our own exhaustion, or the better airport ten or one hundred miles away.  Never mind all the reasons to cab it to the nearest hotel and try again later: We must get there and so we press on.  Sometimes we are lucky and we arrive at our destination in one piece, but all too often, like the good professor, we turn our little airplanes into flaming lawn-darts with our tender selves trapped inside.  Because ... nothing.

To see this happen again, to an otherwise excellent fellow who clearly had the experience to know better, and despite all the warnings that shouldn't even be necessary, is sickening to a pilot.  Hubris and small aircraft are a terrible combination.  A pilot must know when to say: Too much.  He must have the discretion to admit that the reasons to hold back are greater than the reasons to go, and he must have the valor to say no, especially to himself: Yes, reality applies to me, too.  No, I am not special.  The pilot who cannot do this is an accident in search of a grid-reference.  It is only a matter of where and when.

*   *   *

This lesson was driven home to me before I had gotten quite arrogant enough to bend my airplane or my body.  One night, before I had the training to fly an airplane on instruments alone, I blundered into an advection fog that had not been predicted although I should have suspected it.  For several, horrible seconds, I had no idea which way was up, much less north, south, east, or west.  But I rallied my wits and my autopilot, turned around, and asked Air Traffic Control for their wise advice.  With the help of an overflying United Airlines captain who kindly relayed our radio messages (bless you, Sir!), we found an adequate alternative runway where I landed and stayed for the night.  A pilot's-lounge couch has never been so comfortable!

My pilot-reports that night essentially re-wrote the weather briefings, and I took the lesson on prudence and the dangers of excessive trust deeply to heart.  Had anything else gone wrong that night, had things been any worse, they could have been much worse.  I still go cold when I remember how perilous that situation, the result of a simple rookie mistake, had been.  But I had blundered only into an unpredicted overcast, not a violent rainstorm, and I had plenty of fuel to take me to an unplanned alternate.  This and my willingness to get on the radio and confess my predicament are probably why I am still here to regret my mistake.

There have been other teachable moments over the years from which I learned again the lessons of carelessness and neglect, that reality cannot be denied, and that flying, more than most things, does not forgive big mistakes.  Neither does it forgive too many small mistakes.  Nature knows all the cards, and gravity always wins.

June 17, 2009

Rats!

Via e-mail:

June 14, 2009

And a Large Marsupial, Too

I have put up a mini-review of Christopher Hitchens' The Trial of Henry Kissinger, at right.  Hitchens throws in everything including the kitchen sink and an unwitting large marsupial, but the argument ultimately fails on the evidence he himself provides.  (Although Hitchens does not, himself, notice.) 

The fundamental problem with this book is Hitchens' confusion of the devout Cold War-era policy of looking the other way, with active involvement in atrocities committed by our supposed anti-Communist 'friends.'  But after 9/11, this vice has become a virtue for Hitchens, in that he remains as always absolutely impatient with any dictatorship or junta, and wants them wiped from the face of the Earth in the name of democracy and freedom.  In the cases of those countries and organizations who support or commit terrorism, he is certainly right.  This is now clearly a matter of our 'national interest,' as we learned on 9/11 but should have learned earlier.

Happy Flag Day

June 13, 2009

Korean Cover

WTF?

That boy is way too young to play like that!  (And did he actually improve on the original?)

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Fugue It

I used to be able to play this – competently, if not adequately – but I think I shall just give up and listen to Herr Richter:

Oh, I do want to get my hands on that console!  Alas....

(Yes, I do know that's twice in a week.  But listen, watch, and forgive me, please.)

'Shut Up,' He Explained

Andrew Klavan, again.

June 11, 2009

Quote of the Day: Hobson's Choice

I realized today that I'd be a happier person if Hillary Clinton were President.NRO Reader

June 10, 2009

How Now Brown Bow (Out)

Slapping the Wrong Hands

Young men in India can't keep their hands to themselves:

Colleges in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh said Wednesday that female students would be banned from wearing jeans and other Western clothes to halt sexual harassment by male classmates.

"Girls who choose to wear jeans will be expelled from the college," Meeta Jamal, principal of the Dayanand girls' college in Kanpur city told AFP. "This is the only way to stop crime against women."

A growing number of colleges in Uttar Pradesh have decided to outlaw jeans, shorts, tight blouses and miniskirts on campus in an attempt to crack down on "Eve-teasing" -- as sexual harassment is known in India.

I've always wondered what the deal was with this guy....

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Big Meanie!

And Mr. Klavan, again.

June 09, 2009

Beware the Green-Blooded Hobgoblin

Bill Whittle is at it again.

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A Year Without Summer

From AccuWeather.com:

According to Long Range Expert Joe Bastardi, areas from the northern Plains into the Northeast will have a "year without a summer." The jet stream, which is suppressed abnormally south this spring, is also suppressing the number of thunderstorms that can form. The ones that do form in areas of the Ohio Valley and West are forming in places with very cold temperatures, which can lead to more electrified thunderstorms than normal this year.

But, of course, long-range predictions are, four parts out of five, voodoo, so take it for what it's worth.

June 08, 2009

WTF

Capitalist Stooge

Today, President Obama admitted that we are, in fact, in a deep recession; that the problem is worse than they predicted; and their 'stimuli' are (erhem) not helping.  They seem to be the last to notice.

Stephen Green explains for the economically-illiterate, i.e. Obama voters:

Let’s pretend for a moment that, god forbid, you break your arm. And somehow you end up with a team of doctors all trained at Obama University. As you lie there on the table in the ER, one doctor treats your arm by banging on the unbroken one with a ball-peen hammer. The second doctor takes the unusual course of setting your hair on fire. And the third one uses leeches.

Undeterred by your arm’s stubborn refusal to set, soon the doctors start blaming one another. And even though all of them are doing nothing but compounding your injury, none will take any blame. In fact, the louder you scream, the harder they go to work on you.

That, apparently, is what’s going on in the West Wing these days. Our economy is being managed by Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard.

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The Lovely Month of May

It is currently 52°F at Chez Mike.  Yesterday, it didn't get above 55°F.  Saturday, either.  In fact, it hasn't been above 60°F since mid-week last, since which we've had nothing but cold and rain.  (This is a full 20° below normal.)  Green Bay is setting record low daily high temperatures.  It's snowing in North Dakota.  A large low-pressure region is centered over the northern mid-west and won't leave.  What month is it again?

Global warming, my pasty Norwegian ass.

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Night of the Living Government

It's alive!!!!

(And an excellent excuse to play Bach's Toccata and Fugue in Dm, too.  Well, the toccata, anyway.)

Quote of the Day: Media Circus

Even Tiger Beat is more objective and adult than these starry-eyed sycophants, and its intended audience has more sophistication and intellectual depth than anyone watching Chrissy Matthews’ little circle jerk.Mike @ Cold Fury

June 07, 2009

Actively Confused

Attorney Jeff Rowes obscures the issue of judicial activism:

Bad government is usually the result of runaway government.  And runaway government is usually the result of government exceeding its constitutional prerogatives.  Because they have a far stronger stake in the integrity of checks and balances on government power than in the culture war, conservatives and liberals should declare a truce over "activism" and reflect on the need to take the whole Constitution seriously.

Judges should be neither active nor passive, neither aggressive nor deferential.  In a word, they should be engaged -- engaged in protecting constitutional rights to property and economic liberty, because these areas of the law have the most impact on our daily lives.

'Activism' is the active pursuit of a cause.  In the judicial sense, activism is the effort to fashion the law as the judge thinks it ought to be.  Judicial activism is thus not the opposite of deference to Congress, but rather of adherence to the law, which means firstly the Constitution and secondly what Congress has enacted.  Put more baldly, the distinction between the proper role of judges and judicial activism is the distinction between the rule of law and the rule of men.  It is no matter whether the judge agrees or disagrees with the law in question.

If Congress were to go on a jag of unconstitutional legislation (as it did with the TARP program and has continued to do this spring), then a proper, non-activist Court exercising the full measure of judicial restraint would strike down the offending laws (or elements of the laws, as is the usual case) as they were presented for review.  Such a Court would certainly be active (and probably very annoyed), but not activist.  'The Switch in Time That Saved Nine' was capitulation from proper judicial action (not 'activism') to improper deference. 

Nor is judicial deference (to Congress) improper per se.  The burden of proof is on him who argues that Congress has acted unconstitutionally; if the burden isn't met, then courts must yield.  This is mere respect for the Separation of Powers: Legislature writes the laws; the Executive signs, executes, and enforces them; and the Judiciary is responsible to apply them in disputed cases and, if they clearly stray outside constitutional limits, to check them.  One might view such deference as a 'thumb on the scale,' but Congress might also be checked by the electorate, whereas a judicial appointment is for life.  Only a fool would try to limit legislative power by handing it over to the judiciary.

*   *   *

The misdirection regarding judicial activism has become common in recent debate, as has the related fraud of claiming that judicial legislation is the direct and proper inheritance of Marbury v. Madison.  (The latter does not appear to be part of Rowes' argument.)  This isn't even intellectual dishonesty; the agents of such subterfuge know the real issue, and they know that Chief Justice Marshall did and intended no such thing as they claim.  They are simply trying, more or less cleverly, to fashion a cover story for unconstitutional judicial action in pursuit of an otherwise desperate political agenda.

Unfortunately, there are plenty advocates of judicial activism on the 'libertarian' side of the debate (which is why Rowes wants a 'truce' on activism), 'scholars' who apparently pine for the days of 'economic substantive due process.'  They are just as dishonest – and sometimes in the same ways – as the left-leaning activists of the Warren Court.  They should have their noses rubbed in the fact that 'substantive due process' was the invention of Chief Justice Taney in Dred Scott v. Sandford*.  The principle is entirely foreign to the U.S. Constitution, whether applied economically or otherwise, and is thus injustice in the context of American law.

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