Coyote Blog

As is usual when I make an immigration post (wherein I am supportive of open immigration and suspicious of gung-ho enforcement efforts) I got mail saying that the real concern here is the rule of law.   People inevitably want to inform me that this immigration is ILLEGAL (usually in caps) and that these immigrants are BREAKING THE LAW and that the law cannot be enforced unevenly.

First, I am happy to listen to this argument from any commenter who has never broken the speed limit or done a rolling stop at a stop sign.

Second, I would like to offer the rule of law folks, especially those on the right side of the aisle, a thought problem:  Soon, it will be illegal to not purchase a health insurance policy that meets specifications set by Congress.  It is anticipated, however, given relatively low fines, that many people will break this law and not obtain health insurance.   This failure will be ILLEGAL.  These people will be criminals.  Do those of you who seek higher penalties, more robust enforcement, police sweeps, and reduced standards of probable cause for people committing the crime of illegal immigration also plan to seek the same higher penalties for lawbreakers who do not buy an insurance policy?   After all, as you have said, this is not about the law itself but respect for the rule of law.

By your immigration logic, we should be ruthless about lawbreakers who do not have the right insurance policy.  We should encourage the Minutemen to patrol for people without health insurance -- after all, they have said that their concern is with people breaking the law, not immigration or Mexicans per se.  There should be sweeps where people can be arrested for suspicion of not having health insurance, just as they can be arrested under our new AZ law for suspicion that they do not have a green card.

If there is a difference, please explain it to me.  I understand that you may be opposed to open immigration or high immigration rates or immigration by poor uneducated people or whatever.  If so, fine, we disagree -- but stop saying that this is all about the rule of law, or telling me we can't pick and choose what laws we violate.  Because we do the latter all the time.  Our willingness to challenge the state is a large part of American exceptionalism.

PS- Just to avoid misunderstandings from trolls who do not usually read this site, of course I do not advocate the above for health insurance violations.  Just as I don't for Mexicans seeking a better life in this country without obtaining a license to do so from the government.

Disclosure: I have several good friends who are illegal immigrants.  They are wonderful, hard-working people who have been in this country for years.  If we were to conduct tests of people's acceptability to be present in this country, they would pass with scores far ahead of many US citizens.

Update:  I find the argument that open immigration and an overly-generous welfare state can't coexist to be moderately compelling, though I don't see why we could tie citizenship narrowly to receiving these benefits.  I have problems saying that a government license in the form of a green card is required for mere presence in the country.  I have no problem imposing this licensing requirement for receipt of unearned goodies.

Update:  Yes, I am aware that it is ILLEGAL as many people have informed me in all caps.  Here is my response, and a thought problem for those posing that issue to me.

Apparently, our Arizona legislature is about to past a tough new anti-immigrant bill, to make sure that no one can work for us or be on our property without the government's permission.  Why is it that Conservatives who are nominally supportive of private property and private contracts disavow these rights when Mexicans are involved?

First, to the issue of property:

A bill empowering police to arrest illegal immigrants and charge them with trespassing for simply being in the state of Arizona, is likely just weeks away from becoming the toughest law of its kind anywhere in the country....

"When you come to America you must have a permission slip, period," said state Sen. Russell Pearce, the Mesa Republican who sponsored the bill. "You can't break into my country, just like you can't break into my house."

So aren't they essentially using a socialist view of property here?   This means that a person can be found to be trespassing on my property, even if he has my permission, if he doesn't have permission of certain members of the government.   It means that the government has more say over who can and can't be present on property than does the private owner.  This is horrendous precedent that Conservatives will someday come to lament.

As for contracts:

The measure allows police to detain people on the suspicion that they are illegal immigrants, outlaws citizens from employing day laborers, and makes it illegal for anyone to transport an illegal immigrant, even a family member, anywhere in the state.

Oops, so much for my ability to hire and fire at will.  And doesn't it make one all warm and fuzzy to think that having brown skin is officially going to be sufficient probable cause for Sheriff Joe to haul your ass into custody?  Because I am not exaggerating, Arpaio will haul in thousands on mere suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.  He already hauls in hundreds without this law.  What's next, checkpoints with state troopers telling us that "ve vant to see your papers" like we were living in occupied France?  Because the bill essentially requires that people present in Arizona be able to prove they are a citizen at all times.  Do I need to carry my passport when I am jogging?

I know a few paranoiacs here have managed to convince even relatively smart people outside this state that we are somehow in the midst of an invasion.  I live here, and no such thing is true.  We have a large Hispanic population that makes the state more interesting, and the limited number of problems immigrants cause for infrastructure here are no worse than the issues any major city faces.  I operate business all over the state, including right down at the border, and there is simply nothing awful going on here to justify this kind of paranoia.

Postscript:  Just to be clear, I believe I have the right to hire anyone I please, and to lease an apartment to anyone I please.  I don't think that people who happen to be born in another country should have to get a license from the state to be able to contract with me in these ways.  Both Democrats and Republicans are awful about this -- they rail against some modest state intrusion in their lives and then support an even bigger one.

From a BBC poll:

Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

The survey - of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries - found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.

Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens.

International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access.

So everyone who ever lived before about 1990 were denied a fundamental human right.  I would rewrite this study either as "80% of people have a silly definition of human rights" or probably more correctly "100% of BBC poll authors do not know how to write a good poll question."

I had a dinner conversation last night with my Massachusetts mother-in-law.  She is pretty interesting to talk to because she is a pretty good bellwether for Democratic talking points on most issues.  She was opposed to the recent Supreme Court speech decision removing limits on third party advertising near an election  (I think she misunderstood the scope of that decision but that is not surprising given the shoddy reporting on it, up to and including Obama getting it wrong in his State of the Union).   She advocated strict campaign spending restrictions (both in terms of amount of money and length of the campaign season) combined with term limits.

We could have gone a lot of places with the discussion, but we ended up (before we terminated the conversation in the name of civility) discussing whether restrictions on money were equivalent to restrictions on speech.  She of course said they were not, and said under strict monetary controls I still had freedom of speech - weren't we still talking in the car?

It is hard to reach common ground when one person is arguing from a strict rights-based point of view while the other is arguing from a utilitarian point-of-view.   Essentially she knows in her heart that she is restricting speech, but wishes to do so to reach a better outcome.  I made a couple of utilitarian arguments, including:

• I pointed out that when the stakes of government are so high, money and influence never goes away.  Just as in any economy, when you ban money, a barter economy arises.  So if we ban large campaign spending, then the quid pro quo becomes grass roots efforts and voter mobilization.  Groups like the UAW become more powerful (we are seeing that already).  They are trading their member's votes for influence.  Connected companies like GE are doing the same thing, trading their support for legislation that is generally hostile to commerce for specific clauses in said legislation that exempts GE and/or makes the laws even more punishing on their competition.  The problem with all this activity is it is hard to see and totally unaccountable -- at least with advertisements we see people out in the open with their agendas.
• I observed that it was smart to add term limits to her plan, as otherwise her recommendations would be the great incumbent protection act.  But by limiting money, immediate advantage is given to people who already have name recognition and celebrity.  Think we have too many actors and athletes running for office?   Well be prepared for a flood with stricter campaign finance restrictions

However, I tend to shy away form utilitarian arguments.  The best arguments I have against the notion that money can be restricted without restricting speech are:

• Her comment that I still had freedom of speech (ie I am talking freely in the car) with strict campaign cash restrictions ignores the actual wording of the First Amendment, which reads "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech."  Her test, which is "Am I still able to speak in some forum even if I can't in others" is not a valid test for conformance to the First Amendment.  Otherwise, speech could be restricted at will as long as there was some narrow safe harbor where one could express his opinion.    The better test is whether the proposed law, ie a restriction on how much and when a person can spend money advertising his or her opinions, abridges or reduces freedom of speech.  And I think it is hard to deny that everyone has less freedom, in the form of fewer options and reduced scope, after such legislation.
• One interesting test is to broaden the question -- Does restricting spending on something (in this case speech) constitute a restriction on one's underlying right to the activity (e.g. speaking freely).  I was tempted to ask her (she is a strong and vocal abortion rights supporter) whether she would therefore consider the right to abortion to be untouched by Congress if a law were passed to limit each person's spending on abortion to $5 a year.   Abortion would still be entirely legal  -- all government would be doing is putting on some spending restrictions.   Obviously one's scope and options to get an abortion would be limited -- only those who happened to have a doctor in the family could perhaps get an abortion -- just as under her speech plan only those who had a large newspaper in the family could speak fully and freely before an election.

On the day of Obama's inauguration,  I wr0te:

I will be suitably thrilled if the Obama administration renounces some of the creeping executive power grabs of the last 16 years, but he has been oddly silent about this.  It seems that creeping executive power is a lot more worrisome when someone else is in power.

I want to highlight two recent stories.  First, via Popehat:

The White House is considering endorsing a law that would allow the indefinite detention of some alleged terrorists without trial as part of efforts to break a logjam with Congress over President Barack Obama's plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday.

Last summer, White House officials said they had ruled out seeking a "preventive detention" statute as a way to deal with anti-terror detainees, saying the administration would hold any Guantanamo prisoners brought to the U.S. in criminal courts or under the general "law of war" principles permitting detention of enemy combatants.

However, speaking at a news conference in Greenville, S.C., Monday, Graham said the White House now seems open to a new law to lay out the standards for open-ended imprisonment of those alleged to be members of or fighters for Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

That is a really, really bad idea.  What would J Edgar Hoover had done with such a law?  Would Martin Luther King have been declared a terrorist.  And speaking of King, who the FBI kept under illegally deep surveillance for years, we have a second related story via Disloyal Opposition:

Last Friday, federal attorneys told the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals that government officials should be able to track the location of Americans by following their cell phone transmissions -- without having to get a warrant. While the FBI and state and local officials have already obtained logs from mobile phone companies that reveal the locations of customers' telephones, the practice has never formally been endorsed by the courts. The latest federal arguments -- and rebuttals by civil liberties organizations -- give the courts the opportunity to either support or repudiate federal claims that Americans have no "reasonable expectation of privacy" so long as they carry cell phones.

Yes, I blame Bush for getting the ball rolling on both these fronts, but wtf did we elect Obama for?  Many libertarians held their nose at his interventionist economics in order to try to thwart what they saw as a scary trajectory for executive power and civil liberties.  If we had wanted populist economic machinations combined with limitations on individual liberties, we could have voted for Pat Buchanon.

I have warned for quite a while that government health care is a Trojan horse for all kinds of intrusive micro-regulations of our decisions and behaviors.  Here's an update: (via Maggies Farm)

"As the government assumes a larger share of health care costs, it is increasingly able to use that as a justification to intrude into personal decisions or private enterprises, whether it's a matter of smoking policy, trans-fats, or salt," we wrote last month. Now the Wall Street Journal is out with an editorial praising Michelle Obama's campaign against childhood obesity, reasoning, "the reality is that U.S. obesity imposes huge costs on taxpayers. In 2006, the per capita increase in spending attributable to obesity was 36% for Medicare and 47% for Medicaid, according to a paper last year in Health Affairs. Many fat kids grow up to be fat adults, and you've got to start somewhere."

Almost any behavior or decisions, from eating to driving to sports participation, has implications on one's potential future health care costs.  So by this logic, almost anything can be regulated.  For example, I would argue that sex has a much higher health care cost impact than eating, not just in STD's but in the cost of pregnancies and pediatrics.   Or as another example, our family spent far more in health care costs on treating our kids' accidents while playing sports than in dealing with any obesity costs.  Should we be requiring kids to stay indoors playing on the computer where they will be safe from potentially expensive accidents?

Via the Telegraph:

The American blogosphere is going increasingly "viral" about a proposal advanced at the recent meeting of the Davos Economic Forum by Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, that an equivalent of a "driver's licence" should be introduced for access to the web. This totalitarian call has been backed by articles and blogs in Time magazine and the New York Times.

As bloggers have not been slow to point out, the system being proposed is very similar to one that the government of Red China reluctantly abandoned as too repressive. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, the usual unholy alliance of government totalitarians and big business would attempt to end the democratic free-for-all that is the blogosphere. The United Nations is showing similar interest in moving to eliminate free speech.

I called this one back in 2005.  This isn't the first attempt by the UN in particular to throttle free speech via licensing way back in 1985.

I made this from a link at Radley Balko's site for Carlos Miller.

A man has to tear down a house he built with his own money on his own property because he did not get government bureaucrats' permission to build it.  Don't tell me we are living in a free market economy when the only way to build shelter on your own property is to do it in secret.

Ilya Shapiro:

Well of course they aren't "” but that's constitutionally irrelevant:  Corporations aren't "real people" in the sense that the Constitution's protection of sexual privacy or prohibition on slavery make no sense in this context, but that doesn't mean that corporate entities also lack, say, Fourth Amendment rights.  Or would the "no rights for corporations" crowd be okay with the police storming their employers' offices and carting off their (employer-owned) computers for no particular reason? "” or to chill criticism of some government policy.

Or how about Fifth Amendment rights?  Can the mayor of New York exercise eminent domain over Rockefeller Center by fiat and without compensation if he decides he'd like to move his office there?

So corporations have to have some constitutional rights or nobody would form them in the first place.  The reason they have these rights isn't because they're "legal" persons, however "” though much of the doctrine builds on that technical point "” but instead because corporations are merely one of the ways in which rights-bearing individuals associate to better engage in a whole host of constitutionally protected activity.

That is, the Constitution protects these groups of rights-bearing individuals. The proposition that only human beings, standing alone, with no group affiliation whatsoever, are entitled to First Amendment protection "” that "real people" lose some of their rights when they join together in groups of two or ten or fifty or 100,000 "” is legally baseless and has no grounding in the Constitution. George Mason law professor Ilya Somin, also a Cato adjunct scholar, discusses this point here.

A friend of mine from Princeton days writes:

... and you seem in favor of the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs the FEC, I was wondering how you feel about being a customer or supplier or competitor of large businesses who can spend far more than your business to influence the rules of the game.

From what I read, I am sure you have a compelling answer, but I would be scared to death. (Maybe that's why I work for a large corporation [Target] instead of attempting to run my own business.)

I thought this was a pretty good question, and I answered:

1. I try hard not to make utilitarian arguments to Constitutional and rights issues.  As an example, I am sure we might have less crime if the police were empowered to incarcerate anyone they wanted without trial, but we don't do it that way.
2. I worry most about corporate lobbying (e.g. by Immelt at GE) and this is unaffected by this ruling - it was legal before and after.   This decision allows corporate advertising, which is public and visible, which I can at least see and react to, as opposed to back room deal making.
3. Libertarians certainly worry about your question, and why many of us fear that what we are creating in this country is a European-style corporate state, rather than socialism.  To a libertarian, the answer is not less speech, but less government power to pick winners and losers in commerce.

I would rather not have a trial of KSM than have the show trial it is shaping up to be.  I didn't think anything could be more offensive to human rights than indefinite detention without due process but this may be worse.

The Washington Post writes, and Paul Cassell agrees, that the Administration screwed up by treating Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the underwear bomber) as a regular criminal, and should have considered some sort of administrative detention instead.

The analysis seems spot on to me.  I can't for the life of me figure out why as a society we would want to give Miranda warnings to such a high-value suspect like Abdulmutallab.  While there is debate about the extent to which Miranda warnings reduce the overall confession rate (I think it is significant, while others disagree), surely we can all agree that in the context of Abdulmutallab's interrogation such warning were not going to be helpful in obtaining information about, for example, where he trained and what other attacks might be planned.

Uh, OK, but the law of the land is to give arrested criminals on US soil Miranda warnings and an attorney.  What legislative authority (I think we are supposed to be a nation of laws) exists to do otherwise?  And if such a law did exist, what would the bright-line rule be that should be written in law so real human beings making arrests know when it is OK and when it is not to kidnap someone to Gitmo?  I have struggled to find anyone who can write such a rule -- it always comes out sounding like the old definition of pornography, "I know it when I see it."  Remember, the Patriot Act was used far more for drug and child porn cases than it ever has been for terrorism -- it is very, very hard to circumscribe new police powers, particularly when police so desperately want to keep and hold those powers.

I don't deny from a utilitarian point of view that being able to grab people off the street and lock them up without trial forever might prevent some terrorism, but wasn't it Conservatives, just the other day, that were arguing re: Citizens United that Constitutional protections can't be waived for utilitarian reasons?  I agreed with them then, what changed here?

Kevin Drum writes a post that I would interpret as saying "I really can't dispute the Supreme Court speech decision on principles but I am going to anyway because I don't like the result.  He ends by saying

In the end, I guess I think the court missed the obvious "” and right "” decision: recognizing that while nonprofit corporations created for the purpose of political advocacy can be fairly described as "organized groups of people" and treated as such, that doesn't require us to be willfully oblivious to the fact that big public companies are far more than that and can be treated differently. Exxon is not the Audubon Society and Google is not the NRA. There's no reason we have to pretend otherwise.

This is silly.  Just because people are not organized primarily as an influence group does not mean that those folks, once they are pursuing their goals, don't find the need to try to have influence, or have somehow given up their right to try to have influence.  And whose fault is this anyway if Exxon shareholders feel the need to influence the political process?  If the Left hadn't targeted commerce with a never-ending proliferation of restrictions and wealth-confiscations, commercial enterprises probably would not see much reason to waste money on advocacy.  I can tell you that the last possible thing I want to spend money on in my company is kissing some Senator's ass or buffing up the NY Times ad budget, and would spend money to do so only under a pretty existential threat.

But why is there some mythology that members of Audubon or the NRA somehow have more control of the organization's advocacy than Exxon's shareholders?  Sure, when you join the NRA you probably have a good idea what their positions are going to be, but are you really any less able to predict Exxon's positions on most issues?  As I wrote in his comment section:

When you say "Exxon is not the Audubon society," I am not sure how? I am a stockholder of the first and a member of and contributor to the second. I have bought products from both. I have written both (well, actually I wrote Mobil once but it is the same now as Exxon) about their issue advocacy, each time with equally small effect. It is as difficult as a stockholder of Exxon to even get a disclosure of their issue advocacy and lobbying efforts as it is for Audubon (though I am smart enough to take a pretty good guess at both). Neither allows me, as a shareholder/member/contributor to vote on their advocacy/lobbying, either in terms of amount spent or direction. Each carry substantial influence in particular government realms.

So I am confused how they are different, except perhaps that you are personally sympathetic to one and not the other.

Just to remind you the existential threat that causes corporations to want to speak out in public, I will take an example from Drum himself, when he said:

It means the health insurance industry is scared that we might actually do something in 2009 and they want to be seen as something other than completely obstructionist. That means only one thing: they've shown fear, and now it's time to bore in for the kill and gut them like trouts. Let's get to it.

So I guess Exxon is indeed different from the Audubon Society - no one is trying to gut the Audubon Society like trouts.

The reaction by the left to the Supreme Court decision yesterday overturning speech limitations on corporations seems tremendously hypocritical.  No one seems to complain on the left when certain groups/corporations (call them "assembly of individuals") get special access to the government and policy making.  Jeffrey Immelt and GE, Goldman Sachs, the SEIU, and the UAW all get special direct access to shape legislation in ways that may give special privileges to their organization -- access I and my company will never have.

Deneen Borelli wrote, in response to Keith Olberman's fevered denunciations of free speech for corporations

"It also seems as if the pot is calling the kettle black. MSNBC is currently owned by General Electric. GE Capital was bailed out by the taxpayers. GE CEO Jeff Immelt is a close advisor to President Obama, and GE would profit from Obama policies such as cap-and-trade. Olbermann has served as a cheerleader for all of this. Are Immelt and Olbermann simply afraid to allow others to possibly gain the attention and influence GE has had all along?"

Here is an example -- has the health care bill considered my company's situation, where we have 400 seasonal workers, almost all of whom are over 70 and on Medicare already?  How, in these circumstances, do we offer health care plans?  Are we relieved of the penalty for not offering a plan if they are on Medicare or a retirement health plan already?  The legislation does not address these issues (see Hayek) and I am sure numerous others, but I will never be able to cut a special deal for my workers or my industry as GE or the UAW have.

Further, corporate paid speech is alive and well in this administration, you and I just can't see it.  Lobbyists are all having record, banner, unbelievable revenues, in large part because the government is putting such a large chunk of the economy in play for forced redistribution and everyone who can afford it is paying to influence the process.

But nothing in any of the good government reforms have (rightly) ever put any kind of restrictions on this kind of speech directly to legislators.  The only speech they limit is speech to the public at large.  In effect, McCain-Feingold said that it is just fine to spend gobs of money speaking directly to us government folks, but try to go over our heads and talk directly to the unwashed masses, well, we have to make that illegal.  Far from tilting the balance of power to a few rich elite firms, the recent Supreme Court decision gives new power to the rest of us who don't have privileged access.

Update: Speaking of hypocrisy, the NY Times Corporation is outraged other corporations have been given the same rights it has had all along.  In a sense, the Times is lamenting their loss of a monopoly.

Update #2: Ilya Somin:  Corporate speech is actually an equalizer for far worse inequalities of political influence and access that already exist.

Until today, we had the right to free speech, and the right to assembly, but not the right to free speech when we were assembled.  The Supreme Court has thankfully corrected that absurdity.  Quick roundup:  Jonathon Adler, John Stossel, Katherine Mangu-Ward,  JD Tuccille, Jacob Sullum

Hopefully this is true, but it appears that Google is fed up with Chinese hijinx and is considering either pulling out of the country or insisting on being more open and less filtered.  I have given Google a lot of grief here for enabling Chinese censorship, so kudos if they are starting to rethink their relationship with China.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered"“combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web"“have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Discussions about Guantanamo still seem to focus on moving the prisoners to another facility.  This is exactly the danger I warned about several years ago -- that focusing too much on Gitmo itself as a facility was missing the whole point.  The problem was indefinite detentions without due process, not the facility per se.  But since so much of the press latched onto Gitmo itself as the problem, it as allowed the administration to say that it is solving the problem by eliminating Gitmo and moving the prisoners  (either to Illinois or Afghanistan, the plan keeps changing) while still clinging to the position that it should still have the power to detain people at the President's pleasure.

Dhalia Lithwick has a good article on just what a mess we have created at Gitmo.  Are there potential, even past, terrorists there?  Probably.  But I could probably say that there are current or past criminals in any random 1000 people I might sweep off the street.  That doesn't justify locking them up  -- as a country, we have always said that it is better to free the innocent at the cost of potentially missing some of the guilty.

And please don't hammer me again in the comments with "there is a war on and these are just POW's."  Sorry, they are nothing like traditional POW's.  They were not caught on the battlefield, were not in uniform, in many cases were just turned in by other people for a bounty.  I think I would accept that maybe slightly different rules apply to these folks than to a person arrested on 5th Avenue in New York, but on the other hand supporters of their detention need to admit that some extra scrutiny needs to exist vs. traditional POW rules, as in this case their very combatant status is unclear, something that was not the case in, say, with most POW's in WWII.

This is kind of scary -- shoplifters denied trial by jury.  A judge seems to think its too much of a hassle to do follow that old Sixth Amendment thingie. We've gutted the rest of our constitutional protections, why not jury trial too?

An Arizona appeals court is set to issue a ruling today about whether people accused of shoplifting are entitled to a jury trial. The decision stems from a Peoria woman who got pinched for shoplifting and was wrongly denied a jury trial by a Maricopa County Superior Court Judge last year, CBS 5 (KPHO) reports.

Because the penalties for shoplifting are often relatively minimal -- probation, or community service -- the judge seemed to think calling in a jury wasn't necessary and said a jury trial for shoplifters was open for debate.

General rule of thumb -- when your leaders attempt to convince you that choice and individual liberty are bad for you, run away.  They are not really interested in your well-being.

I have shared before the main problem with all these new fake "rights"  (e.g. right to healthcare, right to a job, etc.).  Our original Constitutional rights were merely checks on government - they said the government could not pass laws to prevent us from doing certain things or invade our homes without some sort of due process, etc.  But these new rights require that some previously free individual be coerced into providing money or labor or both to supply others with these new rights.    I often use the desert island test - if you can't have the right alone on a desert island, its not a right.

But what I had not realized until recently is that many of these new fake rights also share in common a level of compulsion on the beneficiary  (not just the payer and provider).  For example, you have the right to bear arms and engage in free speech, but you are not required to own a gun or speak in public.   But you will be required to use, and pay for, your new "right" to health care, at the threat of a term in prison.   In this light, its doubly perverse to call something like health care a "right."  How can something which government uses compulsion on the payers, the providers, and the users be associated with so clean and moral a notion as a "right."  Freedom of religion is a right.  Health care is a want.

I got to thinking about this even more with "the right to a job at a fair wage," embodied in such laws as the Fair Labor Standards Act.  Proponents of such a right would consider it a victory that employers have been compelled to not pay less than $7.25 an hour for labor.   But the beneficiary is the subject of compulsion as well.  This law also means that I cannot sell my labor at less than $7.25, even if I am willing (even eager) to do so.    This means that if my choices are to sell my labor at $6.00 or for nothing, the government compels me to be unemployed.  My son is 16 and would like a retail job, preferably around books this summer.  Having real job experience and customer contact experience, for him at his age, is worth enough that he would likely work for free.  But he can't work for free, because the Fair Labor Standards Act only allows compensation to be valued in monetary terms - non-monetary benefits like skills improvements don't count.  So, given the economy, my son will likely not work next summer.  All for his own good, of course.

Via Popehat:

The new rules, issued in September and October, tell officers "screening may not be conducted to detect evidence of crimes unrelated to transportation security" and that large amounts of cash don't qualify as suspicious for purposes of safety.

NFL players - its safe now to carry your Whizzinator.

From CBS News, Via Matt Welch:

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization...

The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.

This is remeniscent of the indimidation subpoena and later arrests at the Phoenix New Times orchestrated to stop the paper from criticizing Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Via a reader, from the AZ Republic:

A Phoenix ordinance banning charity dining halls in residential neighborhoods withstood a challenge by a north-central Phoenix church.

Retired Arizona Supreme Court Justice Robert Corcoran, serving as a hearing officer, ruled Monday that feeding the homeless at a place of worship can be banned by city ordinance. The decision affects all Phoenix churches with underlying residential zoning.

Over the summer, city officials maintained that CrossRoads United Methodist Church, 7901 N. Central Ave., violated Phoenix zoning code by feeding the poor and homeless on its property, a use that can only occur in commercial or industrial zones.

You will be relieved to know that this has nothing to do with a wealthy people fearing that their Xanax-induced equilibrium will be upset by actually seeing a poor person in their neighborhood.   We are assured as such by Paul Barnes, a "neighborhood activist" who presumably participated in the suit to stop the Church from holding pancake prayer-breakfasts:

"It's not a problem with homeless people in wealthy neighborhoods. That would be a matter of prejudice. This issue would be setting churches up to avoid zoning ordinances."

Wow, I am so relieved.  And we all know what a problem it is when churches are organized solely to evade zoning regulations.  Why, just last week the First Baptist Church and Gas Station as well as the United Methodist Church and Topless Bar opened right in my neighborhood.

You will be happy to know as well that the Constitution in no way limits the government in any way when it wants to regulate your property:

In a 19-page opinion, [Judge] Corcoran said the city can restrict where the homeless and poor can be fed and that zoning regulations apply to everyone equally. Additionally, he said that trumping land-use regulations is not a constitutional right.

Whew - yet another assault on the rights of government bureaucrats has been bravely turned aside.

Update: More random embedding of ads by the Republic.  They are putting them between words in the paragraph now.  RRRRRR.  Hopefully it is gone now.

Via Cato:

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes' seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of "public use."

More Kelo coverage here.