US POLITICS: underrated supreme court decisions that i have read

wish I wasn't ON IPHONE because i have ~thoughts~ on this

basically tho while it's def repugnant, I think it's possible to mount a superficial defense of the legality of keeping data without it counting as wanton experimentation and not normal "patient care" (ugh)

It's not that the country is okay with torture. As far as I can tell, the country has decided that torture in a specific set of circumstances (when done to Al Qaeda operatives shortly after they attacked the United States, and when justified by the ticking time bomb scenario) doesn't bother them. But that doesn't mean that the public is okay with all forms of torture at all times. There are also other political issues, right? You may believe that torture is horrible, but also believe that it's better to put it behind us rather than deal with the legal consequences. This is not my position, but appears to be Obama's position and the position of a lot of mainstream Democrats. Like, I think if it turned out that Obama was continuing specific torture policies, there'd be an outcry no matter how much people claim Democrats will let Obama do anything. There's still an ethical difference between illegal wiretapping and torture (mind you, I'm against both, but I understand that there are different public positions). It's hard for me to imagine, tho, that Americans are totally okay with things like: capricious torture of prisoners as a form of punishment, torture of innocent prisoners (I think a lot of Americans justify Bush's torture by believing that all the victims were guilty, not by saying it's okay to torture innocents), medical experiments on anyone (!!! Really, I can't imagine people would be okay with this!). As always, I am constantly surprised by the apathy of the American public, but to the extent that the case can be made that this actually happened, I think a lot of people would be horrified.

There's another thing too, which is once we've let torture pass, it might be harder to nail them for something like this. Ie: If you want to prosecute them for this, why didn't you want to prosecute them for torture? It's hard to make the ethical case that medical experimentation should be MORE illegal than just torture. There'd have to be a special uprising of fury from the electorate, maybe. Otherwise Obama might just decide it's not worth the trouble of making a case to the American public. So there are definitely reasons to be cynical about nothing happening wrt this.

Inane off-the-topic shit, but http://wonkette.com/415838/did-sarah-palin-buy-herself-a-couple-of-luxury-items

For some reason this development makes me feel like taking Sarah Palin more seriously...

You may believe that torture is horrible, but also believe that it's better to put it behind us rather than deal with the legal consequences. This is not my position, but appears to be Obama's position and the position of a lot of mainstream Democrats.

I am 100% stoked that we're of one mind about the actual stuff but the above-described position - Obama's, and that of mainstream Democrats per you, which seems right to me - is so morally repugnant as to beggar description imo

Intelligence officer arrested for leaking the Iraq gunship video.

Nice alignment of priorities there.

So apparently he may have leaked 260,000 confidential messages, or something? If it's true, and it's really confidential stuff, it'll be a) super interesting to see what he leaked and b) he might be tried for treason.

can he? is treason just leaking confidential info? i would think something more would be required

is treason just leaking confidential info?

sorry i mean can it be made up of just this

No, you also have to be a liberal.

you have to like, give aid and comfort to the enemy

Jonathan Pollard is still in prison for leaking military secrets to the Israeli army.

yeah i'm just thinking "aloud"

It looks like Pollard was charged with one count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government. I'm not enough of a legal scholar to know for sure, but it looks like the government has some lee-way with how they want to prosecute leaking secrets. Adam Yahiye Gadahn for instance was charged with treason in 2006, but that was for directly working with Al-Qaeda. So I imagine the United States will decide whether to charge WikiLeaks depending on how damaging the communications are. If they aren't very, tho, and even if they don't make the case that he was giving them to an enemy, there's still a precedence for getting life in prison.

dang!

If k3vin k is called out, I wonder on which camp I fall under :/

gah my computer won't be fixed until Fri (which is good for my day to day respnsibilities tbh) but I still want to go back to this medical experimentation ish.

to wit: it is entirely possible to track all the variables the torture docs tracked without it being equivalent to Goebbels. that is---intelligence agents could sift "normal" pt data and adjust torture techniques without the pjysicians' knowledge o r complicity. would maybe still be illegal and is def morally offensive wrt all parties, but maybe perspective is useful? like I am 100% anti death penalty, and am deeply uncomfortable with physicians that participate (natl anesthesiolgist org just quietly ruled to defrock any members participating iirc), but I recognize that the question of whether or not healthcare peeps should provide aid in questionable settings is kind of an open one.

like, is it good that ppl being tortured got saline instead of plain water? well yeah it's better but that's not a question that should ever have come up because, you know, waterboarding is terrible. seems easy enough as an ethical quandry ("don't associate with torturers"), but taken far enough it might mean no prison docs like at all.

I'm probably the furthest out there antiprison person I know, but I'd still consider doing prison med because, fuck, those guys need doctors too right?

anyway

you are an iPhone hero

:-/

i dunno that is a question i think about a lot (like whether you should comply with some kind of procedure or just not participate because participating = approval) and i don't think having doctors in prison is comparable. but i am not sure. it's like a whole other thread though. we should write a book about prison one day, gbx

Related question (maybe): If you're a teacher who is asked to teach to the test. Even if you feel ethically slightly uncomfortable teaching to a test (because you believe that kind of pedagogy isn't useful for students, doesn't prepare them, etc), do you just refuse? Maybe you feel that you can do a decent job teaching even while teaching to the test where another teacher wouldn't. Or maybe these questions don't rise to that level -- is it worth sabotaging your own employment if you feel they can just find someone else to do the same job. This obviously has its limits (I wouldn't accept that as an excuse for certain things, in particular criminal behavior), but it's not a totally vapid question in any case. If you're a doctor who honestly feels for these prisoners and also this is what you do for a living, do you refuse to do this kind of work because it is ethically problematic? (Is Schindler somewhat justified by exploiting Jewish labor because he saved a number of lives might also be a variation on this question.)

Not exactly equivalent, the situations you've described.

Yeah, I noted that when I said they're maybe related, and that they're variations. Not the same thing obviously.

welp, so much for halter. 3000 votes was the difference?

umm so this California prop 14:

Also headed for a win in California was Proposition 14, a ballot measure that creates a primary-election system in which the top-two vote getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election. It had 60% support.

does this mean the top 2 vote-getters run against each other, or that the top 2 are necessarily in the general? anybody know how this one's going to work? crazy ol' CA propositions, they bankrupted the schools when I was a kid but they sure do make for some interesting at-a-distance questions

does this mean the top 2 vote-getters run against each other,

yes

or that the top 2 are necessarily in the general?

also yes?

love the results - how many things can *only* SF and orange county agree on?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/CA2010Prop14.svg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/CA2010Prop14.svg

er picture not showing up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CA2010Prop14.svg

WA has the top-two thing also, it passed in 2004 and the Supreme Court upheld it after some dispute.

I voted against 14 (it's hugely unfair to third parties) but it's interesting that in 2010, it would have pitted Obama vs. Clinton in the GE.

it's only for statewide races i think

and boyo boy is this nevada senate race going to be insaaaane

is it really hugely unfair to third parties? any third party candidate that would 'have a chance' would be one that could place in the top two the first go around. I guess it's unfair to third party protest voters, but in a bad year for republicans (w/ a massively split vote or something) an ind-type could possibly get to round two?

(think an electoral situation like le pen in 2002 - NOT TO SAY THAT WE WANT LE PEN)

xpost right that's what I meant - it allows for the possibility that the top two vote getters are from the same party & run against each other? that is hilarious. besides the unfair-to-third-parties thing it legislates a sort of cartoonish battle-between-two-is-the-best!!! thinking that while popular in Amerian politics is moronic, whereas in CA multiple parties - at debates, on the ballot - have always kept things interesting

it is unfair to third parties in that it shuts them out of the discourse after the primaries; if you believe in the value of a political landscape in which many views are given voice, this basically tells you you're wrong; these two viewpoints (and now, possibly, two variations on the same one) are really all you need to hear or be given the opportunity to vote for.

rather a crying shame. 3rd-party politics in CA have a long and interesting history, and as I say the whole notion of A vs. B as some Final Parliamentary Good is moronic imo

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_14,_Top_Two_Primaries_Act_%28June_2010%29

Specifically, Proposition 14 provides for a "voter-nominated primary election" for each state elective office and congressional office in California. Voters can vote in the primary election for any candidate for a congressional or state elective office without regard to the political party affiliations of either the candidate or the voter. Candidates can choose whether or not to have their political party affiliation displayed on the ballot.

huh. really weird imo. does that mean the primaries are state-wide, even for offices that aren't? like, if i lived in SF i could vote in the LA county primaries even though i couldn't vote in their general? cos that would be nuts.

like there used to be laws on the books out there that meant you had to invite everybody on the ballot to the debate from the primaries on, they had to be allowed to participate. I believe in increased participation, and growing up saw a lot of fringe candidates voicing their views against mainstream candidates. they "didn't have a chance," of course. shutting them out on the grounds that they're already defeated seems like the worst sort of exclusionary impulse - and, let's be honest, this is a further codification of money as the only key to enfranchisement. the top two vote getters will be the ones who have the most money; if you can't raise a whole lot of money, well, who cares, nobody wanted to hear what you had to say anyway, little fellow!

as of today, with our current system - how many people on the street in california could tell you who the green party candidate is? I think you're massively overstating the amount of attention that the third parties get.

you know it's conceivable this throws things open for 3rd party candidates -- the whole state (or constituency?) votes in the primary, rather than it being a private affair of the two major parties and their members

but yes they would have to have a lot of money

If 14 is upheld as constitutional, I foresee myself tactically voting in Republican primaries on occasion.

I think this raises the possibility of a non-dem/republican being elected like 400% - and yes, it would most likely be an arnold/bloomberg$$$$$$$ type, but since you really hate the two-party system, shouldn't the fact that someone can be unaffiliated and theoretically win be considered an improvement?

xp michael -- there are no "republican primaries" anymore. there is A Primary, with everyone running thrown into it, then the general, which is a runoff of the top two. fucking bedlam!! this is gonna be great!!

xp man I don't want to get into it with you dude but I grew up in CA politics & you're mistaken. and the point kind of is, in CA, where previously you could appear on the November ballot as a 3rd-party candidate by either paying a filing fee or by gathering enough signatures to waive the fee, the discourse is enriched. 100,000 people total on the street is, I know, an insignificant number to you - who cares about those people? let them vote one or the other and get on board. I disagree strongly with that and feel that more candidates, not fewer, benefits both the system & the public good.

I think he meant voting for a certain republican in the primary xp

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/schwarzeneggers-win/57891/

The practical effect will be incentivize candidates to avoid the trap of having to run one type of campaign to win base voters and another type of campaign to win the general election. It is conceivable that, with such a system in place, Senate candidate Carly Fiorina wouldn't have felt it necessary to sharply tack to the right. But the same system would have required a lot more energy and expenditure from the incumbent, Barbara Boxer.

Who funded the initiative? Chamber of Commerce types, who know that pragmatic candidates won't want to alienate business interests in the state. It was opposed by activists from both parties, who believe it to be an incumbent protection measure of first order.

they can still vote for whomever they want in the primaries, which will inevitably now play a larger role! and the multitude of candidates will get even more press due to the fact that they have a slightly higher shot at being elected in this system.

I wonder if the primaries will turn into giant free-for-alls like the gubernatorial recall election, where there were like 100 people running and the ballot was a giant 8 x 14 sheet.

but I think you have to know how CA politics have worked, and maybe have experienced it closely (I was personally closely involved with 3rd-party runs for about ten years), to understand that this isn't really bedlam - some of the public (televised!) debates back in the day would have 8 candidates speaking. Some of these candidates wouldn't have even thought about bringing prepared statements to lead off with.

I will say though that I like the idea that party affiliation doesn't play into primary voting now, that's a big plus, but the effect (and, I'd say, intent) of this is to shut out all the gnat-like 3rd party candidates who routinely make things troublesome for the big guys - "wasting their time" is I guess how fans of the big guys would put it.