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The Federalist Society recently posted a podcast on this subject.
http://www.fed-soc.org/multime...

The issues, and unintended side effects of The Telephone Consumer Protection Act are more extensive than you probably imagine.I recommend that podcast as TFA for this thread.

From people who can't spell it.

As a member since law school, show me where FS claims as an official position that America should be a non-secular, Christian nation.

Or STFU.

She's a member of the Federalist Society, isn't that enough? http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/id.54/author.a sp

What more could you want?

It shows things in a new light after you hear all the mindless ranting and raving around here.

The point is that certainty is missing, that secret law governs what happens, and that there is no recourse. Unlike any other transport service, I can't count on being allowed to fly, even with a contract for that service in place. Calling the airlines private at this point is silly - they are all but nationalized - bailouts whenever needed, security all but outsourced, and plenty of congresscritters to buy them the legislation they want.

And that's before I bitch about the specific requirements and creeping TOA/BB/SS/Whatever you want to call it.

For them wot care, take a look at a different view of how airline regulation, secret law, and the airline cartel's cozy relationship with government is working out.

Truly, we are approaching a situation in which certainty of contract and basic privacy is reserved for those wealthy enough to use blinds, have a share of a plane, the money to create a trust for private finance, etc. And the cost is going up.

If you feel protected, you're deluding yourself.

The Fourth Amendment includes requirements for the issuance of search warrants, and many critics of the NSA program seem to assume that this means that all searches must be executed pursuant to a warrant. This assumption is wrong. There are dozens of situations where warrantless searches have been approved by the courts. The overriding principle is that searches of Americans (defined to include resident aliens) must be reasonable.

One of the many situations where warrantless searches have been approved is when the government is seeking foreign intelligence information, such as information relating to potential terrorist threats. Next to the Constitution itself, of course, the highest authority is the United States Supreme Court. At least three Supreme Court cases have discussed this subject.

The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court's activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that "no orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the requested authority" submitted by the government.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004, the most recent years for which public records are available.

Warrant requests rejected

The judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.

While his replacement will also be right-of-center, Bush strongly rewards neo-con views. The replacement is likely to support further strengthening federal power and diluting that of individual States.

As a libertarian who voted for Bush both times, this was one of my biggest fears (along with his inability to veto spending). However, this particular fear has somewhat subsided with the nomination of Roberts, who I get the impression would associate most-strongly with the Federalist Society, if doing so weren't political suicide. In other words, I get the impression that Roberts would limit federal power (limit use of commerce clause as a catch-all excuse for federal involvement), not expand it.

Roberts seems to be a "classical/paleo conservative" (otherwise known as a "classical liberal" in the US or a "liberal" in Europe), not a neo-con. If the next person appointed by Bush is even half as good as Roberts he'll be better than 6/7ths of the existing court.

Then what's my incentive to actually let the customer survive the trip, if their life insurance is paid to me upon their death?

Oh, I see, you meant to say that the trip-providing company becomes the underwriter for their insurance policy... which, upon your death, would have the safe net result as your survivors suing the bejeezus out of their company.

The only problem is you have not explained where their operating capital comes from, because actually running a trip to orbit and back isn't peanuts... If you're not going to charge the actual customers for the cost of the trip, then who really is going to pay? Getting the government to subsidize it only works if you have a lobby already in place... As we can see with sub-orbital flights (our airline system), even flying "for beans" with a subsidy doesn't pay the costs if you can't get the cost of operations down.

Airlines are private companies...can't they require whatever the hell they want?

When it comes to access to pols corps get more respect than small businesses who get more respect than the average individual. Hence they get better response such as government bailouts, which I'm pretty sure you business wouldn't have qualified for due to insufficient lobbying power. Your business probably could have qualified for a federal grant, but a single mother of 2 working 37 hours a week (a common cut-off so companies don't have to give benefits) for 8 bucks an hour (37*8*52=$15,392) couldn't qualify for handouts. This is not to say that the small businessperson isn't often between a rock and a hard place, but let's face it if we all called our senator at the same time - BillG gets right through, you can get through to high-level flunky and I get to leave a message for a low-level flunky to get back to me sometime.

I'm pretty sure you can sue the government. Unless you're in China.

Here's a judgment from a (totally unrelated) case where somebody did.

In most US states (and many other countries), the legal concept of "priest-penitent priviledge" means that a religious professional cannot be compelled to testify about confidential matters learned in the course of his duties.

It is similar to the privileges enjoyed by attorneys, physicians, and spouses. The legal argument (first successfully used in US court in 1813) is that "freedom of religion" requires barring the government from interfering in a religion's practice of private confession.

(Here's an informative counterargument to the prevailing Constitutional interpretation)

And (I'd like to believe) judges are a lot harder to buy or exert pressure on than politicians
I'd like to believe that, too, but unfortunately the Federalist Society gets in the way. The integrity of the judiciary has been undermined, with all the dangers for our system of government that that implies. (I don't wish to imply that the Federalist society, with whom I personally disagree and for whom I certainly do not speak, has a monolithic position on the Microsoft case. Orrin Hatch, as just one prominent example, takes a strong anti-Microsoft position. Here's a recent symposium they had on the subject. )

One of my more paranoid friends pointed out to me the Federalist Society, on the basis that it is an association of judges with their own agenda, and that it is a conservative agenda. If you check out their website, it is quite the sedate affair.

This is contrasted with the very unsedate anti-federalist sites like this one, which are all a hoot, and read *every* thing the federal government does as a con, a gype, and a fake..

However there is a point here which is well made, given broader evidence by our experiences of the past few months.

There are many judges that tend to lean one way or another. Judges do NOT live in a vacuum. Commercial interests, via their lawyers and bean counters, are out for the maximum number of beans in the pot.

Aside from the obvious joke on the effects of eating too many beans (combined with lawyers, etc.), I would want to know more of the possible conflicts of interests of the judge(s) involved. You can bet that the corporate interests choose a judge that they thought would be the most sympathetic to their cause. They would be stupid to do anything else