Enoch

Actually, in maritime law, it generally is the Supreme Court's job to make the law. As part of the common law system we inherited from our English buddies, up until a century or two ago, most civil and criminal law was judge-made, established over the course of centuries by experience and precedent. All kinds of things like the elements of burglary, when someone's conduct is negligent, what a person has to establish to have a valid plea of self-defense, etc., were created via the common-law process. (States override this by statute, and with regard to most criminal law issues, they all have. But most civil law issues like the presence or absence of negligence are still decided by judges based judicial precedent rather than statutory law.) Admiralty law is no different in this regard-- absent a statute or treaty on-point, the courts get to decide what the rules are. The Constitution gave the federal government exclusive authority over questions of admiralty law (so that ship owners wouldn't have to worry about the rules in 13 separate legal systems when trading among the states), which means that the Supreme Court is the ultimate decision-maker in the field. Congress could establish the rules by statute if they wanted to, but on this particular principle (the question of when punitive damages become excessive), they hadn't. Absent a statute to defer to or a piece of precedent to rely on, the Court had to make a policy judgment. The standard they decided on was pretty arbitrary and quite pro-defendant, but keep in mind that these are only the punitive damages. The compensatory damages (i.e., the proveable economic harm that Exxon unleashed on the plaintiffs) have already been awarded. For particularly egregious torts, courts sometimes allow additional damages simply to punish the wrongdoer and deter future violations. Those damages are the only thing that this case was about.

Played in an office softball game. Finally, proof that lawyers beat economists (at softball). I played RF, and didn't get a chance to do a whole lot of fielding. Was 2-for-4 at the plate (2 singles, 2 ground-outs), with 2 RBIs. This is only the second game I've played in many many years, so it's taking me a bit to get used to slow-pitch softball. The light went on, hitting-wise, while watching teammates bat after my second at-bat: Since it's slow-pitch, I can pretty much make contact with any pitch I want to. Thus, there is no real reason to swing unless either the pitch looks perfect for a good hit, or there are already 2 strikes in the count. Utilizing this rule, my next 2 ups were my base hits-- a hard-hit grounder up the middle, and a line-drive over the 2nd baseman's shoulder. Then, I walked a mile to the subway station, went home, chugged some unsweetened iced tea, and cooked some bacon & chicken breasts for sandwiches.

As I said back on the first page, the ability scores correlate mostly with how high an opinion you have of yourself. You'll get high stats too if you answer all the questions like "I'm teh sexayest person I've ever met" and "I'm so smart that NASA regularly consults me to double-check their pre-launch math calculations." More humble (read: more accurate) self-praise gets you scores in the 13-15 range. In short, you're all a bunch of self-aggrandizing blowhards. (And, yes, I did just use "correlate" and "self-aggrandizing" in a post simply for the purpose of justifying the 15 INT the test gave me.)

Check out those suits! With matching shoes, even!

This is way outside my area of expertise, but I'll take a pass: By extending Habeus rights to the prisoners, the Court is saying that they must have some kind of due process by which they can question their captivity. That doesn't necessarily mean they get all the process rights that an American criminal suspect does-- they get the level of process that is "due" to them as befits their station. The Geneva Convention defines that level of process with regard to captured enemy soldiers. As there is no treaty defining the level of process due to captive stateless fighters, U.S. executive authorities (DoD command, the military JAG corps, and certain parts of DoJ) and Congress have to work something out, and the courts have the right to say whether it is sufficient or not. I doubt that it gives much incentive to avoid taking prisoners. If these guys are as dangerous as they think they are, the gov't should be able to meet the evidentiary burden required to detain them. If they're not, they should be let go. Shooting them is a non-starter-- I haven't looked it up, but I have to imagine that there are pretty serious criminal penalties in the UCMJ for killing an enemy who is trying to surrender (whether he's a uniformed soldier or not). As for the possibility of handing them over to a more vindictive regime, that is a bit of a hole in the current protections. Ideally, this hole would be solved via some sort of Geneva-like treaty on non-state combatants so that we can be confident that the standards for detention and treatment will be consistent regardless of who the jailor is. But the absence of a treaty to that effect is not a particularly good justification for the continuation of the current policy (the Courts can't solve all problems, and the one that they were presented in this case is a more serious one). Personally, I think there's strong legal reasoning behind the argument that handing a prisoner over to a regime that is you know will torture and/or detain indefinitely without appeal is just a bad as doing the torture/detention yourself. But taking action based on that theory has got to be quite difficult (and depends on statutes I have not read).

I agree, although I am of the personal opinion that anyone who seriously feared outright compensation was guided by a touch more paranoia than sense, and that said individuals are unlikely to be assuaged by a single court decision. The concern with Scalia's opinion in Heller is that it's a bit loaded. The only rationales for reasonable restrictions that he uses as examples are historic ones-- i.e., restrictions that it can be established were applied to the rights of British and/or Colonial citizens in the 18th century. This is all in dicta (parts of the decision not essential to the outcome of this particular dispute, meaning that it isn't binding precedent, but can be informative of later decisions), but I suspect that when the first post-Heller challenge to a restriction falling short of an outright ban makes its way back to the SCOTUS, Scalia will argue that the only valid exceptions are historic ones, which could potentially kill a lot of (IMO) necessary restrictions. Nitpick: The Court didn't give rights to "foreign nationals fighting on foreign battlefields"-- it gave rights to foreign nationals residing in the custody of the U.S. Government. They didn't have the protection of American law until America arrested them and threw them in a cell.

You Are A: Lawful Neutral Halfling Wizard (4th Level) Ability Scores: Strength- 11 Dexterity- 13 Constitution- 12 Intelligence- 15 Wisdom- 12 Charisma- 11 Detailed Results: Alignment: Lawful Good ----- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (22) Neutral Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (16) Chaotic Good ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14) Lawful Neutral -- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (26) True Neutral ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (20) Chaotic Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (18) Lawful Evil ----- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13) Neutral Evil ---- XXXXXXX (7) Chaotic Evil ---- XXXXX (5) Law & Chaos: Law ----- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12) Neutral - XXXXXX (6) Chaos --- XXXX (4) Good & Evil: Good ---- XXXXXXXXXX (10) Neutral - XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14) Evil ---- X (1) Race: Human ---- XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13) Dwarf ---- XXXX (4) Elf ------ XXXXXXXX ( Gnome ---- XXXXXXXXXXXX (12) Halfling - XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (14) Half-Elf - XXXXXXXXXXXXX (13) Half-Orc - (0) Class: Barbarian - (-23) Bard ------ (-17) Cleric ---- (-4) Druid ----- (-6) Fighter --- (0) Monk ------ XX (2) Paladin --- (-19) Ranger ---- (-4) Rogue ----- (-2) Sorcerer -- XX (2) Wizard ---- XXXXXXXX ( Ah, Lawful Neutral. My career choice as a bureaucrat/attorney is starting to make sense... (I think that the ability score questions are really asking how high an opinion you have of yourself.)

Not to nitpick details here, but I do have a question. If the the manufacter (Ruger in this case) sells to a dealer that has a valid license but that dealer does not practice due dilligence (i.e. background checks and waiting periods as required by state law) how does civil liability extend beyond the dealer who sold the gun to the mentally ill buyer withput a background check? In other words, if the dealer has a state license in good standing how could Ruger be blamed even in civil court for the bad business practice of another party? Or could they? What I'm getting at here is can civil liability be assigned to a party that did no wrong? The key fact I inserted on that point is that the manufacturer knew or ought to have know about the dealer's shenanigans. Absent further info, reliance on a state license is probably fine to insure oneself from liability. But if that further info is present, a license isn't going to protect Ruger. (Indeed, depending on how the licensing statute/regulation is written, they may be under an obligation to report the dealer to the state authorities.)

I generally agree. Causation is not sufficient to establish either criminal or civil liability-- at the very least, there must also be some wrongful or negligent action (save in rare "strict liability" situations). But it's important to never say never, and recognize that there could be factual circumstances that extend liability to other parties. To take the above example, but imagine that: 1) Ruger knew or ought to have known that this particular retailer ignores various regulations and sells the weapons on the black market, but sold to him anyway; 2) The retailer sells to a mentally ill buyer; 3) Gun is "stolen" because the buyer, as consequence of his illness, left it sitting on the sidewalk; 4) Woman finds gun on sidewalk, believes it is a sign, and takes it home to shoot her abusive husband. Criminally, only the woman is liable for the shooting itself, but all the others involved could be liable for related lesser crimes (although the mentally-ill buyer and possibly the woman could have valid affirmative defenses). "Shared accountability," as Wals puts it, usually comes into the picture in civil cases. A civil court in the example as I've laid it out could very well find everyone up to and including Ruger at least partly responsible for the husband's wrongful death. That means $ rather than jail time, but it does capture the concept at least a little bit.

Wall-Rs? What's the R stand for? I thought they were WALL-A, not R. As in "Axiom-Class" in place of WALL-E's "Earth-Class."

I thought that was a weakness of KotOR, too. And I forgot that the conversation with the Founder was in Act III-- that was the point where I started to lose interest, and allow my irritation with the craptacular epic D20 gameplay (not Obsidz' fault) to outweigh my interest in the characters and their fates.

Did some shotgun hunting when I was a teenager. Mostly, I did it as a grandfather-father-son bonding experience. I haven't gone back since I went away to college. Bird hunting was fun-- you're always out moving around, there are dogs, and shooting the bird as it's flying off is a nice challenge. When you get one, it gets thrown in a satchel and you can clean it when you're done. Plus, pheasants are good eats. Deer hunting, on the other hand, was not my style. You're out in the woods before dawn, in the fall/winter, trying to stand very still and not make a sound. (I.e., freezing your arse off.) And then, the animal you're trying to shoot is beautiful, graceful, rather large, apt to bleed a lot, and needs to be gutted in the field (which is disgusting) and dragged back to your vehicle. There is a visceral thrill you get that lasts from when you first sight the animal until when you take your shot (heart pounding in your chest and all that), but it's just not worth all that other stuff.

Why does a movie need memorable quotes? I saw it the other night, and it was fantastic. If anything, the lack of dialogue helped the film by focusing the designers and the audience on the Keaton-esque silent comedy (and tragedy). The first 20 minutes-- before there was even a single word of dialogue-- was the best part of the film. For a film that's generally marketed to kids, though, it has a pretty dim view of humanity's future. Am I the only one who sees Pixar giving a subtle F-U to Disney's marketing people? They renew their deal to keep Pixar working for the Mouse based on their ability to produce merchandising money factories like "Finding Nemo" and "Toy Story," and then their next two films are a movie about cooking with a rat as the hero, and one starring an anthropomorphized trash compactor with a pet ****roach living in a future Earth that is wholly ruined thanks to greedy corporations and fat stupid lazy people. I can just picture the meeting-- "let's see those bastards sell kid's pajamas with that on it!!"

Not sure if this fits in with your idea of "narrative," but I thought the story pacing was weak. The central mystery was solved for the player at the end of the 2nd act, which takes away a good portion of the player's incentive to continue.

I can buy that, but I don't get the whole

Just finished Mass Effect. It kept my interest until the end, which is pretty unusual, so it has that going for it. But the eventual 'reveal' was really disappointing. I see where they were going with the more cinematic feel. But the cinema they ended up mimicking for most of the game was a straightforward mediocre action film, complete with a never-wrong hero, a blandly evil villain, very reasonable politicians as an obstacle that we're all supposed to hate just because they're politicians (I laughed every time Shepard or Anderson got angry at the council because they didn't take my vague mystical vision as gospel), a plot that requires supreme suspension of disbelief (seriously-- ), swarms of evil robots, and some gratuitous near-nudity. I hate that kind of movie. In its favor, though, Ferros and Noveria were both a lot of fun. Both had some good action, some good surprises (the uncertainty in the well-paced introduction of the was very effective in making the player feel both curious and vulnerable), and some interesting player choices at the end. Once those were done, though, the rest of the game was a letdown. (The much-ballyhooed drama on Virmire wasn't nearly as interesting to me.) Not sure what I'll play next. Might toy around with a different ME character (I played this run as a paragon female infiltrator), but I doubt I'll stick with that for very long. CivIV, of course, is my default choice, so unless some other inspiration strikes me, I'll probably play some more of that. (There's a new official patch out, too.)

Not quite. The sequence is a 2/3rds vote by both houses of Congress, then the ratification by 3/4ths of the states, either via their legislatures or by conventions. (Most past amendments have gone the legislature route-- the only one that I recall using state conventions is the 21st, which ended Prohibition.) http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A5.html

Link.

Actually, she's been the one pushing the pre-nup idea. Our financial situations are pretty similar-- I have a little more savings and a little less debt than she does, but she has a higher-paying (although less secure) job. Also, we're in a common-law property state, so unless accounts are co-mingled during the marriage, both spouses keep sole ownership of their assets. I think her interest in a pre-nup is mostly emotional (i.e., "if you cheat on me, you ain't gettin' nuthin!"). I'm undecided, but there's no rush. As I understand it (although family law is by no means a specialty of mine), a "post-nup" done in the first few months of a marriage works, too. The tooth feels mostly better (for now, anyway). I think I'll give it the weekend to see how it reacts before I call up a bunch of dentists to try to book a short-notice appointment. Marriage is a "qualifying life event" that lets me opt into a different health insurance plan at work, and I'll try to target one with less stingy dental coverage. My strategy with regard to my health insurance when I started working was to acknowledge that I'm a relatively healthy guy in my 20s who really hates to visit the doctor, which meant that the cheapest option was the best one. As I'm now pushing 30, getting fatter, and beginning to acquire a lovely set of long-term medical conditions (psoriasis in my ear, occasional acid reflux, and a food allergy or two), a more expensive but more generous insurance plan makes more sense. (Hooray for adverse selection in insurance markets!) Thus, I can probably save a fair amount of money if the tooth can wait a month.

which is immaterial. they're still going to make guns, for law enforcement or whatever, including in countries that don't have any gun laws. those will still end up on the street. simple econ after that, a reduction in supply will not change demand, and the only outcome is that it will cost more to get an illegal gun, or they will go to further extremes to acquire them. Unless demand for illegal guns is completely inelastic (and there is no reason to believe that it is), those higher prices will lead directly to there being fewer illegal guns sold on the street, and thus fewer guns being used in crimes. As you say, it's simple econ. Sure, you'll never eliminate the market for them entirely, but you can't base policy on all-or-nothing scenarios.

I hear this justification quite often and it has never made much sense to me. Guns don't come out of a factory "illegal." All illegal guns were legal guns at some point, until they were moved across state lines, stolen, sold privately to dodge background checks/registration, etc. A reduction in the supply of legal guns will reduce the supply of illegal guns. As I said above, if I were to pick between a state of society with freely-available handguns and one without, I think the latter is far more preferrable. But, in America, that's not the choice before us-- there are just far too many weapons already out there for a flat prohibition to work. Instead, what is needed is more consistency in regulation and enforcement, so that it's not quite so easy for someone to buy weapons in a "We Heart Gunz" state and bring them in to a jurisdiction that is more careful about who is allowed to carry deadly weapons. The federal laws currently on the books do some of that, but they've proven to be really tough to enforce and could use some refinement and strengthening.

Today I am beginning to regret not having gone to the dentist for the past 3 or 4 years. The first molar on the upper left side of my mouth is developing an ache-- I've got a touch of a cold, and the tooth has started hurting when I try to suck mucus out of my sinuses. To make matters worse, I have moved since the last time I've seen a dentist, so I don't have one locally, and I'm getting married in 2 weeks, so this had better either go away or get fixed before then.

You guys are missing the most important "bad"-- the writing sucked. There wasn't a single interesting, believable character in gameworld, and the main plot was Captain Predictable's Adventures in Generic Land. As for sidequests, there were a few highlights (the magic painting, the bizarre dreamworld, and a couple of the Dark Brotherhood targets), but for every interesting task, there were about 23 deathly boring "kill all the fozzles in cave #452" missions.

motive for having the weapons is immaterial. if you are prevented from carrying a gun, it's a bit difficult to do either. besides, i quite believe that the framers came from a time when it was often necessary to defend oneself from other citizens (as well as other predators) and the thought of this was on their minds when the 2nd was written. taks Not as much as you might think. The gun-toting frontiersman was a pretty small minority in the colonies by the late-18th century. Most of the citizens were townspeople or farmers in well-settled areas by that point. The farmers might have had a weapon to use on deer eating their crops, and the townspeople might have had one for militia duty, but 18th-century firearms are pretty poor tools for self defense against a burglar or the like. I've skimmed over today's majority opinion, and it's hard to disagree with from a historical point of view. There never really was any one "original intent" of any constitutional provision-- the different founders and state legislators all had different intents in writing and ratifying the document. Thus, you can find support for both an "individual right" view of the Amendment and a "collective right" view, depending on where you look. But the former one is probably the most prevalent and straightforward reading of the text and it's history-- for the most part, the Amendment was a reaction to English history, when the Stuart monarchs used loyal militias and royal decrees to disarm people in communities opposed to their rule. The other important thing to note is that the holding, in the end, was pretty narrow. It invalidated a statute because it barred people from possessing (without a permit, and the government issued zero permits) a handgun in their home. But, because the language of the 2nd Amendment implies a preservation of a pre-existing right ("shall not be infringed"), the Court looked to restrictions on gun usage under 18th century English and colonial law. (You couldn't just stroll around Boston in 1791 with a loaded musket on your shoulder.) Additionally, the court held that "dangerous and unusual weapons" can still be banned, restricting their holding to the ban on guns commonly kept for lawful purposes (such as self-defense), and declining to overrule an older decision that upheld a ban on sawed-off shotguns. Also, restrictions like background checks, bans on sale to felons or the mentally ill, and registration laws are still allowed. Edit: Just for the record, from a policy point of view, I think widespread gun ownership in a modern society is a really dumb idea. But, in America, there are already so many guns out there that a flat ban would be ineffective. A well-enforced scheme of licensing and registration (preferrably national in scope) is the best way to go, along with banning the more exotic types of weapons that have no purpose other than mowing down crowds of people.

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra -- Ko Ko