Ten Years Ago at Grasping Reality: May 22, 2008
- A Question I Asked About "Separation of Powers" at the 2008 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference, Omni Hotel, New Haven, CT: A question for Professors Balkin and Haq.... I would put the institutional breakdown's causes in the election of 1994 taught the Republican legislators of Capitol Hill that their jobs are at risk if they fail to support the president of their own party. Hence we now have all the defects of a parliamentary system--lock-step partisan support for the deeds of the executive--and none of its principal advantage which is the vetting of the executive by the experienced legislators of the ruling party...
CFP Panel on the Transparent Society: David Brin's Book Ten Years Later: There are all the—call them Little Brothers—the people who want to sell you things that you may need to be persuaded against your better judgment to buy. And then there are the people who want to figure out whether you will be a more expensive customer to serve... so that they can decide not to let you be a customer.... David Brin wrote, I think, a wonderful book. And complaining that his solution—turn the cameras around—doesn't solve all problems is like complaining that the portions of the free ice cream aren't large enough. Nevertheless, I do complain...
Engagement in Foreign Affairs: Matthew Yglesias on our two examples of following wingnut-McCain policies of not negotiating: "The United States really only has two experiences with a sustained effort at the Bush/McCain approach.... One would be our effort to deny recognition to Communist China during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations... a strategic fiasco... of such enormous proportions that Richard Nixon's role in undoing it actually manages to stack up in a non-trivial way against his otherwise terrible record in office. The other is our fifty year effort to starve the people of Cuba into rebelling against Fidel Castro. McCain actually defends continuing this policy, but everyone with a functioning brain understands that it's been a ludicrous failure..."
