tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post8519430399362834512..comments2024-03-28T22:33:29.066-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: REALLY, REALLY BAD NEWSRobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-53164298656042265172018-07-16T10:49:32.680-04:002018-07-16T10:49:32.680-04:00Continuing in marcel proust's vein: if money i...Continuing in marcel proust's vein: if money is speech, aren't state laws restricting access to property (such as criminalization of making use of another's property) suspect as unconstitutional interference with speech?Utopian Yurihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00793188513692796773noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-32041695310641158992018-07-04T08:24:51.885-04:002018-07-04T08:24:51.885-04:00When a person dies, isn't it legally required ...When a person dies, isn't it legally required in most jusrisdictions in the US that a death certificate be issued? So, even ignoring Costa Rican type horrors of jailing (mostly poor) women for miscarriages (because of suspicions of abortion), wouldn't this bring us to Ceausescu-levels of invasive monitoring of women's fertility to identify conception? At the least, wouldn't women between menarche and the end of menopause have to be take fertility tests during the census to get an accurate count? How would the IRS be able to ascertain if woman or families are accurately counting children for dependent status? Would the SSA have to issue SSNs for every conception? Would women, both US citizens and foreigners, have to have a passport for their fetus if they enter the country when pregnant? The practical problems of this change are overwhelming.<br /><br />On a related note: corporate personhood. Given that the court has given corporations full legal status as persons (I think that's that implication of the most recent rulings around the first amendment), (a) should they be counted in the census, and (b) how can they be denied the right to vote?marcel proustnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-42512290097872287142018-07-03T07:21:22.216-04:002018-07-03T07:21:22.216-04:00Charles Lane has a very interesting column in toda...Charles Lane has a very interesting column in today's Post:<br /><br />https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-to-overturn-roe-republicans-get-ready-for-what-comes-next/2018/07/02/eb8ad380-7e09-11e8-bb6b-c1cb691f1402_story.html?utm_term=.8716f86720f0David Palmeterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01895092366685079046noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-72495390964037639582018-07-03T00:04:55.705-04:002018-07-03T00:04:55.705-04:00As a retired attorney, I can affirm that your son ...As a retired attorney, I can affirm that your son is absolutely correct and the prospect of the Court ruling that a foetus is a person, and therefore protected under the 14th Amendment, is not fanciful. I can see Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch voting in favor of such a ruling. Roberts is now considered the swing vote on whether Rove v. Wade gets overturned. The concept of what constitutes a "person" under the 14th Amendment has already been stretched beyond reason and was the mainstay of the Court's decision in Citizens United, where the Court reaffirmed precedent that held that corporations are "persons" under the 14th Amendment and therefore protected by freedom of speech under the First Amendment. The next premise for the argument is that the expenditure of political donations constitutes speech. For an explanation of how the Court can stretch the meaning of words to include corporations as "persons" and political expenditures as constituting "speech," you would have to ask Wittgentstein.<br /><br />Regarding the Court's horrible decision in Janus vs. AFSCME, overruling precedent allowing states to require non-union public employees to pay fair share fees to the union, I was hoping that the attorneys arguing in favor of the unions would invoke the concept of an unconstitutional "taking." The "taking" doctrine relates to the power of eminent domain, whereby the government can confiscate private property to serve a public good. To do so, the government entity is required to pay fair compensation for the confiscation. The failure to do so constitutes an unlawful "taking." Unions are required by law to fairly represent all employees in the bargaining unit, even those who do not belong to the union. This is referred to as "the duty of fair representation." Unions can be sued for damages if, for example, a nun-union employee who has filed a grievance against the employer argues that the union failed to defend him/her vigorously during the grievance proceedings and contends that the union lost the grievance because of its dereliction of this duty. So, now under the Janus decision, public service unions, and their personnel, are still required to expend time and money to fairly represent non-union members who refuse to pay union dues. This, I would submit, is an unconstitutional "taking" - the services of the union's personnel constitutes property (there is precedent to equate services with property), for which the union is not being compensated. I do not know if this argument was advanced by the attorneys, but I believe it is a valid argument. More valid than the Court's ruling that the requirement that the employees pay fair share fees constitutes "compelled speech," in violation of the First Amendment.<br /><br />MSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-23167550661966248752018-07-02T23:09:59.883-04:002018-07-02T23:09:59.883-04:00I simply cannot get the abortion debate. Nor do I ...I simply cannot get the abortion debate. Nor do I want to pursue it here. I'm being "meta," enough said, or so I hope. The prospect that "person" ("man, woman, or child") might possibly mean embryo or fetus, i.e., non-person, is mind-boggling. "Person" might just as well mean "little red wagon." And thus any legal act declaring anything other than a person a person must fail even the mildest legal standard demanding a mere whiff of reasonableness. What am I missing?Deannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-45751720134106186402018-07-02T21:53:21.510-04:002018-07-02T21:53:21.510-04:00I highly recommend Corey Brettschneider's &quo...I highly recommend Corey Brettschneider's "Gorsuch, Abortion and the Concept of Personhood":<br /><br />https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/opinion/gorsuch-abortion-and-the-concept-of-personhood.htmlLudwig Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17145442092958521609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-20398464033220865732018-07-02T18:55:02.317-04:002018-07-02T18:55:02.317-04:00This is an extremely fanciful prospect. This is an extremely fanciful prospect. Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02998793914690685677noreply@blogger.com