Ahhhh…Twitter Community Notes:
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With the recent controversy about citizens intervening in criminal behaviour in public, here is a thread about a story from the Before Times. Click image to view the whole thing.
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Not to mention rotten eggs, spoiled produce?
Or is HimSelf, spoiled produce?
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Here’s a glitch:
The Congress shall have Power … To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
See what this means is that Congress shall have Power to, without going through the onerous procedures to amend the Constitution, to delegate its Power to a bunch of unelected bankers. That’s what it means, you see. And it also means that any Power Congress has, it can delegate to unelected anythings. This was all originally intended by the framers because they originally intended that the Constitution be a living, breathing, spurting bodily fluids into the body politic document!
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Not a great look… reminds me of “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!”
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But when interpreting executive regulation written under color of legislative enactments, doesn’t the Supreme Court - under the APA - begin with the “presumption of regularity” or some such evasion of the non-delegation doctrine?
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The winds may be shifting on this. On 2023-04-14 the Supreme Court decided two cases, Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission v. Cochran which directly challenged the power and legitimacy of the administrative state. According to the Wikipedia page, the issues before the court were:
- Whether Congress implicitly stripped federal district courts of jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to the Federal Trade Commission’s structure, procedures, and existence by granting the courts of appeals jurisdiction to “affirm, enforce, modify, or set aside” the Commission’s cease-and-desist orders.
- Whether a federal district court has jurisdiction to hear a suit in which the respondent in an ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission administrative proceeding seeks to enjoin that proceeding, based on an alleged constitutional defect in the statutory provisions that govern the removal of the administrative law judge who will conduct the proceeding.
and the decision, which was unanimous, 9-0, held:
The statutory review schemes set out in the Securities Exchange Act and Federal Trade Commission Act do not displace a district court’s federal-question jurisdiction over claims challenging as unconstitutional the structure or existence of the SEC or FTC.
This is being interpreted as a shot over the bow of the administrative state and an indication the court is now willing to entertain constitutional arguments against it. Here is law professor Richard Epstein’s analysis of the decision on his “Libertarian” podcast. (N.b. Notwithstanding the name of the podcast, few people I know who call themselves libertarians would consider Richard Epstein to be among their number. He generally describes himself as a “classical liberal” and seems to be just fine with eminent domain, state surveillance, overseas military adventures, and non-state-mandated “affirmative action”. Still, he is among the few in legal academia to challenge takings, expansive interpretations of the commerce clause, or the legitimacy of the National Labor Relations Act.)
The Axon decision is widely seen as the overture to Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimando, which the court has decided to hear. This case is a direct challenge to the so-called “Chevron deference”, in which the court, in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. prescribed “a two-part test applied by the court, when appropriate, that is highly deferential to government agencies: first, whether Congress has spoken directly to the precise issue at question, and second, "whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.” This decision, dating from 1984, has been a pillar of power grabs by the administrative state in, for example, deciding that the stagnant sinkhole in your back yard is a “navigable waterway”.
The betting, at least in the libertarian jackal bins, is that Chevron is going down.
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‘Libertarian jackal bins’?
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Sounds about right.
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Oh! Well! May we then seek reparations for all the interest paid out to the banksters under the Federal Reserve Act that provided the capital safety net draining from the political economy not only the need to manage technology development risk, but also the production of children as middle class families were gutted of their substance?
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In writing about the emergence of the radical left in the 1960s, columnist Jimmy Breslin quoted John Roche, a political scientist working in the Lyndon Johnson White House, dismissing them as:
… a bunch of “Upper West Side jackal bins.”
Huh?
Jackal bins? What were jackal bins? As further investigation disclosed, Roche had said “Jacobins,” a word evidently so unfamiliar to his interviewer that “jackal bins” was the best he could do with it in transcribing his notes.
“Jackal bins” could only truly be the native lair of libertarians.
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The United Nations in Geneva comes out in favour of brotherly and sisterly love. (This tweet has since been deleted, but the screen shot, captured around 11:00 UTC on 2023-05-07, is authentic.)
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What? Did the UN Geneva really used the hashtags "#StopWar #IncestinPeace ???
Is the second one a really poor transcription of “Insist on Peace”? Or is the UN finally standing up for brothers & sisters?
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The tweet has been replaced by these two.
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A Freudian slip, perhaps?
The following are quotes from the document, “The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty”, published March 2023 by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), a U.N. affiliated NGO based in Geneva:
Emphasizing that, with respect to the application of criminal law in connection with consent, international human rights law requires paying due regard to:
a) the legal capacity of people with disabilities to consent, including through supported decision-making;
b) adolescents’ evolving capacity to consent in certain contexts, in fact, even if not in law, when they are below the prescribed minimum age of consent in domestic law; and
c) non-discrimination and equality with respect to sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, race, disability and other protected fundamental characteristics;
PRINCIPLE 16 – CONSENSUAL SEXUAL CONDUCT
Consensual sexual conduct, irrespective of the type of sexual activity, the sex/gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression of the people involved or their marital status, may not be criminalized in any circumstances. Consensual same-sex, as well as consensual different-sex sexual relations, or consensual sexual relations with or between trans, non-binary and other gender diverse people, or outside marriage – whether pre-marital or extramarital – may, therefore, never be criminalized.With respect to the enforcement of criminal law, any prescribed minimum age of consent to sex must be applied in a non-discriminatory manner. Enforcement may not be linked to the sex/gender of participants or age of consent to marriage. Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees.
(emphasis mine)
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