Author: nick

[ad_1] 8/14/1935: President Roosevelt signs into law the Social Security Act of 1935. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of this law in Helvering v. Davis (1937). President Franklin D. RooseveltThe post Today in Supreme Court History: August 14, 1935 appeared first on Reason.com. [ad_2] Source link

[ad_1] Some excerpts from the long (>16K word) opinions in Wednesday’s U.S. v. Wagner, written by Sixth Circuit Judge Whitney Hermandorfer, joined by Alan Norris: A grand jury indicted Kyle Wagner for cyberstalking and transmitting interstate threats. The conduct giving rise to the indictment followed a series of escalating communications in which Wagner threatened federal law-enforcement officers and their supporters, solicited resources to evade detection by the authorities, and entertained an inquiry about killing a former government official. A magistrate judge ordered Wagner detained pretrial. But the district court changed course and permitted Wagner’s release. Though acknowledging that the record…

[ad_1] Even today, I see people on social media denouncing former Israeli PM Menachem Begin as a “Fascist,” echoing critiques made by his Socialist Zionist rivals, famously including Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt. The Fascist label was obviously unfair. After all, Begin sat peacefully in opposition in the Knesset for almost three decades, was elected PM, and then voluntarily resigned. This is not the behavior of a Fascist. But I didn’t know much more than that about Begin’s political career. So I found a new article by Maya Mark, about Begin’s struggle against Emergency Law during Israel’s early years, of…

[ad_1] My post yesterday on surrogacy and abortion has generated many responses, as I had suspected. Surrogacy is one of those issues that conservatives simply don’t want to talk about. It is often heart-wrenching when couples are not able to have children, and IVF and surrogacy are viewed as miracles to let these couples have children. To raise any moral or legal objections to this practice is sometimes seen as a third-rail, even in Republican pro-life circles. And on the left, how many of the women who wore bonnets from the Handmaid’s Tale to protest Justice Barrett hired poor women…

[ad_1] Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (CHATGPT), stood in front of a packed Chase Center alongside Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan and described a future where ordinary people have no freedom, no agency and no privacy. In his version of what the world could look like ten years from now, artificial intelligence cures cancer, produces endless material abundance and takes care of nearly every human need. In return, people live inside a perfect surveillance state where the machines provide comfort while human beings are left with nothing meaningful to do. The quote that spread across the internet was blunt enough:…

[ad_1] Amid mounting public backlash, Flock Safety, the largest provider of automatic license plate readers (ALPR) in the United States, released a statement on Thursday touting new policies “strengthening privacy, accountability, and security.” But the changes still fail to address the constitutional concerns held by civil liberty and privacy advocates.  Over the last few weeks, debate over ALPR systems has reached a new high. Privacy and data security concerns over the mass surveillance technology have prompted an anti-Flock movement, including websites that map more than 130,000 ALPR cameras across the country and a search engine that can find whether a…

[ad_1] Jeff Merkley has a plan to save the republic from Donald Trump’s “authoritarian playbook”, or so says the senator from Oregon.  “This is a president trying to become a strongman authoritarian,” said Merkley on the On NOTUS podcast this week. “If we don’t repair the Constitution, we don’t have a republic.” His “For Our Republic Act”, which was introduced earlier this month, is a sprawling piece of legislation that aims at reversing many of the president’s claims of executive authority and clamping down on some of the more novel forms of corruption we’ve seen under the president’s second term. …

[ad_1] Yesterday’s Seventh Circuit opinion in McDonald v. Trustees of Indiana Univ. held that public university professors lacked standing to challenge a state law that called for faculty members to be evaluated based in part on whether they were (1) unlikely to foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity within the institution; (2) unlikely to expose students to scholarly works from a variety of political or ideological frameworks that may exist within and are applicable to the faculty member’s academic discipline; or (3) likely, while performing teaching duties within the scope of the faculty member’s employment,…

[ad_1]  Download Audio. Journalist Lindsey Snell returns to the show to talk about Syria. She first recounts her experience getting kidnapped by the Jihadists who now control the country. Scott and Snell then debunk all the propaganda we’re being fed about Jolani and the rest of his “moderate” rebels who now, with Western backing, are closer than ever to establishing their caliphate in the Middle East. Discussed on the show: Lindsey Snell is a journalist covering conflict and crises in the Middle East and North Africa, especially Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Tunisia. She currently lives in Germany. Follow her…

[ad_1] Some excerpts from the long Turpin v. Charlotte Latin Schools, Inc., decided today by the N.C. Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Richard Dietz, joined by Chief Justice Paul Newby and Justices Philip Berger Jr., Tamara Barringer, and Trey Allen: According to the complaint in this case, Plaintiffs Doug and Nicole Turpin sent their children to a private school called Charlotte Latin School. Beginning in the summer of 2020, the school began to change its curriculum to focus on politicized issues of race and gender identity. At some point, the Turpins learned that the school was teaching their…