Category Archives: Law

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Federal Bureaucrats

5 Comments

…are disconsolate over the repeal of their regulations.

Good.

[Update a while later]

This is an amusing argument. And by “amusing,” I mean stupid:

Pizarchik is already working on ideas to write a new version of the stream rule under a future president, though he declined to share any details. He also hinted someone could mount a constitutional challenge to the review act itself, which critics have long argued tramples on the separation of powers.

“I believe there’s a good chance that, in a legal challenge, that a court will overturn Congress’ actions here as an unconstitutional usurpation of the executive branch’s powers,” he said.

So let me get this straight. He thinks that Congress repealing a rule arising from a law passed by Congress, per another law passed by Congress, is a usurpation of the executive branch’s powers? Hokay…

Do you know what’s a real usurpation of separation of powers? Unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats taking over the legislative function through rule making.

[Update a few minutes later]

As a (female) friend told me last week in DC, I bathe in and drink their tears every night:

“It’s almost a sense of dread, as in, what will happen to us,” said Gabrielle Martin, a trial lawyer and 30-year veteran at the Denver office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where colleagues now share daily, grim predictions about the fate of their jobs under Mr. Trump’s leadership.

“It’s like the movie music when the shark is coming,” Ms. Martin said, referring to “Jaws,” the 1975 thriller. “People are just wary — is the shark going to come up out of the water?”

Very soon, I hope.

Health, Law, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Progress On Aging

12 Comments

…and the resistance to it. I think he’s right that it’s not based on science or logic, but philosophy. Some people (including Isaac Asimov) think that death is necessary, almost to the point of ultimately worshiping it. Of course, some of it could be a recognition, conscious or otherwise, of the supreme disruption to many accepted institutions that it would entail, including pensions, life-time appointments, death taxes, etc.

And I hate when they use the word “immortality.” I think an eternal life would be far worse than death, but that’s not the goal; it’s simply living as long as we want to continue to live.

Update a couple minutes later]

Sort of related: GM Salmonella cures cancer. Cool. But the anti-science left will oppose it because GM.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

Ron Wyden

17 Comments

Why he must resign:

The shocking revelation: Senator Wyden has been, for more than a decade, a willing accomplice to a plot to undermine the American political order and to overthrow the Constitution by infiltrating agents of radicalism into the highest reaches of the federal judiciary.

The nefariousness of this undertaking cannot be overstated. The monsters advanced to positions of power with Senator Wyden’s assistance include dangerous extremists whose ideology “represents a breathtaking retreat from the notion that Americans have fundamental Constitutional rights.” His agents take “a very dangerous view to our liberty” that “harkens back to the days when politicians restricted a people’s rights on a whim.”

Wyden’s anti-constitutional conspiracy “is couched in the sort of jurisprudence that justified the horrific oppression of one group after another in our first two centuries.”

This is cruel, but fair.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Former Obama official: “Why liberals should back Neil Gorsuch.”

[Update a while later]

Orrin Hatch on senate Democrats: “I don’t care what they want at this point.”

Neither do I.

[Update Thursday morning]

If you want to get non-hysterical takes on Gorsuch, the Volokh Conspiracy is your go-to place.