An ambassador to a foreign nation is also a person. But he represents the views of the head of state. He can't, for example, elect to declare a war because he believes that's the right course of action. He can only convey the message. The job of an elector entails certain responsibilities and imposes certain boundaries on behavior.... just as every other job. If a state defines that job to be a very narrow representative of the wishes of the voters of the state, then that's the job.
Any right which is not stripped from the states is with the states according to the 10th amendment. So it would be a pretty high bar to prove that the Constitution forbids the states from directing the college members on how to vote.
Even if the state has a faithless elector law, they are still free to vote the way they like, the state can just punish them afterwards
If they vote illegally and succeed in changing the outcome of election, we would have an illegally-elected POTUS. States do have the right to direct the college members how to vote (because that right is not stripped from them explicitly in the Constitution and any right which is not stripped from them is with them according to the 10th amendment).
Yeah, it was late. The first sentence should have read "the fact that the laws have not been enforced would be what make the electors' actions legal?" It was meant to state that the lack of enforcement would not make the outlawed actions legal de jure.
You seem to not understand the US Constitution very well, while claiming you understand it better than a guy who taught Constitutional Law at Yale for a long time.
Lessig has taught at Stanford and Harvard. I didn't know he also had a gig at Yale. His real claim to fame came from being disqualified from being an expert witness at the Microsoft trial because Microsoft was able to demonstrate that he had a clear bias.
If it overrides a state law, breaking that state law is fundamentally not illegal. That's the whole point of the supremacy clause.
If the Constitution makes no mention of its legal authority as deciding on any particular matter, that authority is with the states and the people. This is pretty much explicit in the 10th Amendment.
You seem to not understand the US Constitution very well
You seem to think that this amounts to an argument.
Even if what he's advocating for is illegal, great people advocating for breaking the law, knowingly and in protest, is literally what this country was founded upon.
Only if there is no legal way to change the law. In this case there is. And Lessig is recklessly irresponsible in his advocacy of breaking the law in this particular circumstance. Let's say he succeeds. Let's say that someone other than Trump illegally becomes POTUS because SCOTUS splits 4-4 along party lines. This leave the Constitutional authority of acting POTUS in question. All members of US armed forces swear an oath to protect the Constitution. Which means that for each member of US armed forces it would be a matter of consciousness whether their the commander-in-chief is legitimate or not. This is a direct recipe for an armed conflict. The fact that Lessig is trying to achieve a situation where we have a potentially shooting civil war instead of a peaceful transition of power makes more than a tool. It makes him an imbecile. Having thought about it for a bit. I think he should not be allowed to teach or even practice law. If he is not stripped of his bar membership, then we would have someone calling for a breakdown of the rule of law and descent into a civil war as someone with enough clout to claim having an "expert" legal opinion. That's reckless and dangerous.
The fact that laws have not been enforced would be make the electors' actions legal. And if their actions actually changed the result of election, we would have a President who had been illegally elected and a 4-4 SCOTUS. Is this what Lessig is arguing for?
Unless Green Party has a chance of winning the election in those states, it cannot win a suit to force a recount. 2 of those states have already certified their vote. So only a law suit can force them to change it. A suit can only be brought to undo harm done to oneself. One cannot sue to fix harm to some other 3rd party (plain English "party" -- not "political party"). There is no way Green Party can convince impartial judges that it had any chance of winning majority of the vote. So it has no standing.
The statement "there is nothing in the Constitution which mandates it one way or the other" automatically means that it's a states' prerogative (by the 10th Amendment).
It would be one thing if he genuinely didn't get it. But he knows he is wrong and he makes the argument anyway. State laws is what obligates members of the electoral college to vote proportionately or winner-take-all. If states wanted to, they could change their laws through state legislatures. Lessig's argument is that the members of the electoral college should break the law. And, as a law professor, he knows it. As for whether or not the law should be changed, the electoral college acts as a check on corruption. If a certain locality decides to game the system by having a lot of fake votes, there is very little to stop it after the candidate takes office. Currently such a locality would only effect he votes of one state. Without electoral college, it would effect the vote count nation-wide. And, again as a law professor, Lessig knows this.
Your argument only addresses half the point. The basic science research relies almost exclusively on public funding. And if contrarian lines of inquiry are not funded, they are not extensively researched. The example from medical research does not counter this point because in medicine, unlike basic science, there is a strong profit motif to get the facts right in order to benefit from selling effective treatment in the market place.
one should perhaps consider that those reports are likely reflections of the underlying reality.
The fact that "consensus" claim cannot be valid has already been shown in this thread. A small minority within any community can always hijack a political conversation to create a perception of universal "consensus" through intimidation of skeptics and control of resources (thereby starving any voices of disagreement). The tone in which the AGW hypothesis is being defended suggests that critical voices are being stifled and their research is being excluded from the funding considerations. Fear and intimidation will get you consensus on just about any issue. The fact that a political organization is, once again, joining the chorus of politically-tainted claims puts in question the integrity of research. It does not mean that the facts claimed by the research are wrong. But it does mean that the research is not scientifically validated.
- I think that there are so many incentives and systems in place to combat those biases that it is possible to draw some fairly confident conclusions in most cases.
There are. But in some inquiries there more incentives for bias while in others there is more incentives against bias. And a purely political organization has more incentive for bias.
Which is exactly why having a legal wiretapping warrant does not and should not give him the right to even attempt to decrypt the phone. He would need a search warrant similar to the kind he'd have to get to search any desktop computer. And then the same issues come into play as with a desktop search (can you be forced to surrender encryption keys or is that the same being forced to testify against yourself?).
Fisheries can probably be adopted to grow seaweed instead of fish. It would be a huge additional business for them. It may also be cheaper to grow feed that way (the harvesting cost would probably be smaller).
There simply isn't incentive for the feed manufacturers to fix the methane problem
Maybe not, but there may be for fisheries. If used up fisheries can be used for growing seaweed, this could create a huge additional business for fish farmers.
Your example of a Catholic scholar and protestant dogma isn't very convincing in my mind, since the areas overlap so much - a Catholic scholar might have an interesting or useful point of view.
I am saying the opposite. I am agreeing with your point that political process is not at odds with fact finding. I am saying that it necessarily biases the announced results. Just as a Catholic scholar who would study Protestant dogma, would always need to find some point of disagreement (or stop being Catholic). The priority is to justify foregone conclusions. The facts may support them, but if they don't, then they need to "find different facts", so to speak. Which is why this:
Yes, it makes sense to take into account the motivation of people commissioning studies, but even if someone is biased, they can still come up with valid research.
doesn't hold up. The research may be accurate (in the sense that the reported observations were, in fact, observed), but you can't call it "valid" because it's impossible to tell which lines of inquiry were omitted or cut short in the investigation.
The problem is he wants to diminish encryption which these phones use when they are used as computing devices -- not when they are used as phones. There is nothing to prevent him from tapping a phone call in progress (assuming he has a warrant). What he wants is the ability to decrypt a small computer. This ability has nothing to do with the fact this same computer can sometimes be used to make phone calls. He is looking for stored data -- not for a tap of a call in progress.
Republicans say they're all for smaller government and less personal intrusion.
No, not all Republicans. Nomination of Trump was specifically seen as the end of the conservative movement. Conservatives, generally speaking, were the Republicans who advocated smaller government. Trump has never included smaller government in his platform.
They are not asking to be able to tap communications with a warrant (something which is legal). They are asking for an ability to extract information contained in encrypted phone storage. This is identical to asking any hardware manufacturer to abstain from using strong encryption in desktop computers so that police could read information stored on desktops. If such a law were passed, it would essentially outlaw all strong encryption. This is not without precedent. The government already passed laws equating encryption to weapons. So, at the very least, they may try the same argument to require anyone in possession of a device capable of strong encryption to have a license. I am not advocating for this. But I have problems seeing how this can be stopped.
Steeped in politics, perhaps. Doesn't mean that they are wrong though. They are also pro-vaccine.
So? I didn't say they were wrong. I said they were not a scientific institution. So their understanding of the science, on average, is the same as they of laymen. And their priorities on which scientific opinions to shine the spotlight are guided by politics before science. Sometimes the two coincide. Sometimes they are of you sync. Let's just say that they are as credible on scientific issues as a Catholic scholar would be on protestant dogma (of any one particular denomination). Even if they are knowledgeable on the subject, they would still have a viewpoint which is influenced by goals other than fact finding.
Ones who talk to the media, especially the ones with the biggest platform, sure. But that's not the entire field.
No, but they are ones who have the most say into which directions of research gets funded. And without proactive funding of skeptics, the research cannot be considered to have been vetted. Most of basic science, and climate research is basic science (as opposed to applied science), is funded without profit motif. So the occasional funding which the skeptics get from fossil fuel industry is dwarfed in scope relative to the amount of funding coming from the government. Does it influence their publications? Hopefully, very little. But it inevitably influences who has the funding to continue their lines of inquiry.
You might as well say the same thing about epidemiologists studying vaccines, or biologists studying evolution. Any science that has political implications will to some extent become politicized.
But what's the alternative?
The alternative is to do what the biologists have done in the face the onslaught of "intelligent design" hypothesis... and I don't mean Richard Dawkins' approach (I don't know what it is about Brits that makes them so hostile and defensive about their research fields). I mean career academics engaging those who present alternative interpretations of data in open collegial dialogue. The biologists have done it. And the "intelligent design" has largely been pushed back as a mainstream idea. The climate researchers have not engaged their critics. They have largely been hiding behind the backs of politicians, entertainers and sometimes just plain pitch-fork-mob types. Why are they afraid of open debates? If the conclusions are solid, they should hold up in open debate. But it hasn't happened. Instead, even the legitimate skeptics have been rebranded as "deniers." This is a complete rejection of the scientific method. So, while they may be right, I don't want to dedicate my life to studying their conclusions. I want them to defend them in an open dialogue against their harshest, but most eloquent, critics. And, yes, we'll know if those critics are strawmen or patsies (a la Colmes to Sean Hannity).
Those of them who want to be the public faces of this debate should not spew vitriol even when they find themselves on the receiving end of it. Fear and intimidation is not a means to accurate discovery. Otherwise, the "97%" claim. Has no weight. In the face of fear and intimidation, near-universal compliance is expected of those who are on the inside. This is not to say that they are wrong. Only that they have not learned to behave in a manner which is convincing to those who are familiar with the scientific method of inquiry.
If only to the extent that the UN has contributed to a lack of direct combat between the "great powers" since the bloodbath of WW2, on balance it seems to have done more good than harm in my opinion.
Of course, it has. It's become part of a diplomatic cadre of the world. But that makes it a political institution. I wouldn't trust it to be unbiased on science. Forget fossil fuels, if it started making world-wide recommendation on nuclear plants, would you believe that it was not influenced by politics? Of course, not. Because such recommendations would be rooted in politics of nuclear proliferation or non-proliferation. So the organization would be forced to prioritize politics over science. I am certain that similarly climate research considerations that it makes are just as steeped in politics because they are tied into industrialized world's taxation policies.
No, it largely just observed while others did it. It didn't fund development of polio vaccines. It didn't create logistics for distributing polio vaccines. It just collected reports on status quo and existing efforts. It is a sounding board for the heads of states. And it's not even the best platform for that. Twitter probably spreads meme's faster than UN spreads its message.
But if the feed is subsidized, meat farmers can buy the feed. There is also the issue that chicken feed can be genetically engineered with less care than the food grown for human consumption (because we don't care what chickens digest.. only about that which their bodies make out of the nutrients they extract from plants). So feed can be engineered to withstand more severe weather variations and less favorable soil. From my perspective, that's also a technological advantage. And I don't believe anyone outside the US has the same level of bio-engineering as the US companies do. Of course, making plants more resilient increases the yield and decreases costs. I think sugar farmers are the biggest receivers of subsidies in the US, and I don't think this would hurt any chicken farmers. In fact, given that plants can be engineered to withstand a wide variety of weather conditions and soil can be enriched with fertilizers, the only advantage that Africa can offer growers is warmer average temperature (not sure how the cost of that is offset by more difficult access to fresh water). I wouldn't worry too much about "pain and suffering" aspect of chicken farmers, btw. Chickens can run around with their heads cut off for a while. The level of sophistication of their nervous system is probably not more than that of cockroaches.
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An ambassador to a foreign nation is also a person. But he represents the views of the head of state. He can't, for example, elect to declare a war because he believes that's the right course of action. He can only convey the message. The job of an elector entails certain responsibilities and imposes certain boundaries on behavior.... just as every other job. If a state defines that job to be a very narrow representative of the wishes of the voters of the state, then that's the job.
Any right which is not stripped from the states is with the states according to the 10th amendment. So it would be a pretty high bar to prove that the Constitution forbids the states from directing the college members on how to vote.
Even if the state has a faithless elector law, they are still free to vote the way they like, the state can just punish them afterwards
If they vote illegally and succeed in changing the outcome of election, we would have an illegally-elected POTUS. States do have the right to direct the college members how to vote (because that right is not stripped from them explicitly in the Constitution and any right which is not stripped from them is with them according to the 10th amendment).
You seem to not understand the US Constitution very well, while claiming you understand it better than a guy who taught Constitutional Law at Yale for a long time.
Lessig has taught at Stanford and Harvard. I didn't know he also had a gig at Yale. His real claim to fame came from being disqualified from being an expert witness at the Microsoft trial because Microsoft was able to demonstrate that he had a clear bias.
If it overrides a state law, breaking that state law is fundamentally not illegal. That's the whole point of the supremacy clause.
If the Constitution makes no mention of its legal authority as deciding on any particular matter, that authority is with the states and the people. This is pretty much explicit in the 10th Amendment.
You seem to not understand the US Constitution very well
You seem to think that this amounts to an argument.
Even if what he's advocating for is illegal, great people advocating for breaking the law, knowingly and in protest, is literally what this country was founded upon.
Only if there is no legal way to change the law. In this case there is. And Lessig is recklessly irresponsible in his advocacy of breaking the law in this particular circumstance. Let's say he succeeds. Let's say that someone other than Trump illegally becomes POTUS because SCOTUS splits 4-4 along party lines. This leave the Constitutional authority of acting POTUS in question. All members of US armed forces swear an oath to protect the Constitution. Which means that for each member of US armed forces it would be a matter of consciousness whether their the commander-in-chief is legitimate or not. This is a direct recipe for an armed conflict. The fact that Lessig is trying to achieve a situation where we have a potentially shooting civil war instead of a peaceful transition of power makes more than a tool. It makes him an imbecile. Having thought about it for a bit. I think he should not be allowed to teach or even practice law. If he is not stripped of his bar membership, then we would have someone calling for a breakdown of the rule of law and descent into a civil war as someone with enough clout to claim having an "expert" legal opinion. That's reckless and dangerous.
The fact that laws have not been enforced would be make the electors' actions legal. And if their actions actually changed the result of election, we would have a President who had been illegally elected and a 4-4 SCOTUS. Is this what Lessig is arguing for?
Unless Green Party has a chance of winning the election in those states, it cannot win a suit to force a recount. 2 of those states have already certified their vote. So only a law suit can force them to change it. A suit can only be brought to undo harm done to oneself. One cannot sue to fix harm to some other 3rd party (plain English "party" -- not "political party"). There is no way Green Party can convince impartial judges that it had any chance of winning majority of the vote. So it has no standing.
The statement "there is nothing in the Constitution which mandates it one way or the other" automatically means that it's a states' prerogative (by the 10th Amendment).
It would be one thing if he genuinely didn't get it. But he knows he is wrong and he makes the argument anyway. State laws is what obligates members of the electoral college to vote proportionately or winner-take-all. If states wanted to, they could change their laws through state legislatures. Lessig's argument is that the members of the electoral college should break the law. And, as a law professor, he knows it. As for whether or not the law should be changed, the electoral college acts as a check on corruption. If a certain locality decides to game the system by having a lot of fake votes, there is very little to stop it after the candidate takes office. Currently such a locality would only effect he votes of one state. Without electoral college, it would effect the vote count nation-wide. And, again as a law professor, Lessig knows this.
Your argument only addresses half the point. The basic science research relies almost exclusively on public funding. And if contrarian lines of inquiry are not funded, they are not extensively researched. The example from medical research does not counter this point because in medicine, unlike basic science, there is a strong profit motif to get the facts right in order to benefit from selling effective treatment in the market place.
one should perhaps consider that those reports are likely reflections of the underlying reality.
The fact that "consensus" claim cannot be valid has already been shown in this thread. A small minority within any community can always hijack a political conversation to create a perception of universal "consensus" through intimidation of skeptics and control of resources (thereby starving any voices of disagreement). The tone in which the AGW hypothesis is being defended suggests that critical voices are being stifled and their research is being excluded from the funding considerations. Fear and intimidation will get you consensus on just about any issue. The fact that a political organization is, once again, joining the chorus of politically-tainted claims puts in question the integrity of research. It does not mean that the facts claimed by the research are wrong. But it does mean that the research is not scientifically validated.
- I think that there are so many incentives and systems in place to combat those biases that it is possible to draw some fairly confident conclusions in most cases.
There are. But in some inquiries there more incentives for bias while in others there is more incentives against bias. And a purely political organization has more incentive for bias.
Which is exactly why having a legal wiretapping warrant does not and should not give him the right to even attempt to decrypt the phone. He would need a search warrant similar to the kind he'd have to get to search any desktop computer. And then the same issues come into play as with a desktop search (can you be forced to surrender encryption keys or is that the same being forced to testify against yourself?).
Fisheries can probably be adopted to grow seaweed instead of fish. It would be a huge additional business for them. It may also be cheaper to grow feed that way (the harvesting cost would probably be smaller).
What incentive does big ag have to do anything to reduce their environmental footprint?
It may not, but it would be additional business for artificial fisheries (ie, fish farmers).
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President Elect of the United States of America
"Close, but no cigar." -- Bill Clinton, former President of The United States
There simply isn't incentive for the feed manufacturers to fix the methane problem
Maybe not, but there may be for fisheries. If used up fisheries can be used for growing seaweed, this could create a huge additional business for fish farmers.
Your example of a Catholic scholar and protestant dogma isn't very convincing in my mind, since the areas overlap so much - a Catholic scholar might have an interesting or useful point of view.
I am saying the opposite. I am agreeing with your point that political process is not at odds with fact finding. I am saying that it necessarily biases the announced results. Just as a Catholic scholar who would study Protestant dogma, would always need to find some point of disagreement (or stop being Catholic). The priority is to justify foregone conclusions. The facts may support them, but if they don't, then they need to "find different facts", so to speak. Which is why this:
Yes, it makes sense to take into account the motivation of people commissioning studies, but even if someone is biased, they can still come up with valid research.
doesn't hold up. The research may be accurate (in the sense that the reported observations were, in fact, observed), but you can't call it "valid" because it's impossible to tell which lines of inquiry were omitted or cut short in the investigation.
The problem is he wants to diminish encryption which these phones use when they are used as computing devices -- not when they are used as phones. There is nothing to prevent him from tapping a phone call in progress (assuming he has a warrant). What he wants is the ability to decrypt a small computer. This ability has nothing to do with the fact this same computer can sometimes be used to make phone calls. He is looking for stored data -- not for a tap of a call in progress.
Republicans say they're all for smaller government and less personal intrusion.
No, not all Republicans. Nomination of Trump was specifically seen as the end of the conservative movement. Conservatives, generally speaking, were the Republicans who advocated smaller government. Trump has never included smaller government in his platform.
They are not asking to be able to tap communications with a warrant (something which is legal). They are asking for an ability to extract information contained in encrypted phone storage. This is identical to asking any hardware manufacturer to abstain from using strong encryption in desktop computers so that police could read information stored on desktops. If such a law were passed, it would essentially outlaw all strong encryption. This is not without precedent. The government already passed laws equating encryption to weapons. So, at the very least, they may try the same argument to require anyone in possession of a device capable of strong encryption to have a license. I am not advocating for this. But I have problems seeing how this can be stopped.
Steeped in politics, perhaps. Doesn't mean that they are wrong though. They are also pro-vaccine.
So? I didn't say they were wrong. I said they were not a scientific institution. So their understanding of the science, on average, is the same as they of laymen. And their priorities on which scientific opinions to shine the spotlight are guided by politics before science. Sometimes the two coincide. Sometimes they are of you sync. Let's just say that they are as credible on scientific issues as a Catholic scholar would be on protestant dogma (of any one particular denomination). Even if they are knowledgeable on the subject, they would still have a viewpoint which is influenced by goals other than fact finding.
Ones who talk to the media, especially the ones with the biggest platform, sure. But that's not the entire field.
No, but they are ones who have the most say into which directions of research gets funded. And without proactive funding of skeptics, the research cannot be considered to have been vetted. Most of basic science, and climate research is basic science (as opposed to applied science), is funded without profit motif. So the occasional funding which the skeptics get from fossil fuel industry is dwarfed in scope relative to the amount of funding coming from the government. Does it influence their publications? Hopefully, very little. But it inevitably influences who has the funding to continue their lines of inquiry.
You might as well say the same thing about epidemiologists studying vaccines, or biologists studying evolution. Any science that has political implications will to some extent become politicized.
But what's the alternative?
The alternative is to do what the biologists have done in the face the onslaught of "intelligent design" hypothesis... and I don't mean Richard Dawkins' approach (I don't know what it is about Brits that makes them so hostile and defensive about their research fields). I mean career academics engaging those who present alternative interpretations of data in open collegial dialogue. The biologists have done it. And the "intelligent design" has largely been pushed back as a mainstream idea. The climate researchers have not engaged their critics. They have largely been hiding behind the backs of politicians, entertainers and sometimes just plain pitch-fork-mob types. Why are they afraid of open debates? If the conclusions are solid, they should hold up in open debate. But it hasn't happened. Instead, even the legitimate skeptics have been rebranded as "deniers." This is a complete rejection of the scientific method. So, while they may be right, I don't want to dedicate my life to studying their conclusions. I want them to defend them in an open dialogue against their harshest, but most eloquent, critics. And, yes, we'll know if those critics are strawmen or patsies (a la Colmes to Sean Hannity).
Those of them who want to be the public faces of this debate should not spew vitriol even when they find themselves on the receiving end of it. Fear and intimidation is not a means to accurate discovery. Otherwise, the "97%" claim. Has no weight. In the face of fear and intimidation, near-universal compliance is expected of those who are on the inside. This is not to say that they are wrong. Only that they have not learned to behave in a manner which is convincing to those who are familiar with the scientific method of inquiry.
If only to the extent that the UN has contributed to a lack of direct combat between the "great powers" since the bloodbath of WW2, on balance it seems to have done more good than harm in my opinion.
Of course, it has. It's become part of a diplomatic cadre of the world. But that makes it a political institution. I wouldn't trust it to be unbiased on science. Forget fossil fuels, if it started making world-wide recommendation on nuclear plants, would you believe that it was not influenced by politics? Of course, not. Because such recommendations would be rooted in politics of nuclear proliferation or non-proliferation. So the organization would be forced to prioritize politics over science. I am certain that similarly climate research considerations that it makes are just as steeped in politics because they are tied into industrialized world's taxation policies.
No, it largely just observed while others did it. It didn't fund development of polio vaccines. It didn't create logistics for distributing polio vaccines. It just collected reports on status quo and existing efforts. It is a sounding board for the heads of states. And it's not even the best platform for that. Twitter probably spreads meme's faster than UN spreads its message.
But if the feed is subsidized, meat farmers can buy the feed. There is also the issue that chicken feed can be genetically engineered with less care than the food grown for human consumption (because we don't care what chickens digest.. only about that which their bodies make out of the nutrients they extract from plants). So feed can be engineered to withstand more severe weather variations and less favorable soil. From my perspective, that's also a technological advantage. And I don't believe anyone outside the US has the same level of bio-engineering as the US companies do. Of course, making plants more resilient increases the yield and decreases costs. I think sugar farmers are the biggest receivers of subsidies in the US, and I don't think this would hurt any chicken farmers. In fact, given that plants can be engineered to withstand a wide variety of weather conditions and soil can be enriched with fertilizers, the only advantage that Africa can offer growers is warmer average temperature (not sure how the cost of that is offset by more difficult access to fresh water). I wouldn't worry too much about "pain and suffering" aspect of chicken farmers, btw. Chickens can run around with their heads cut off for a while. The level of sophistication of their nervous system is probably not more than that of cockroaches.