Enoch

I'll say that Gromnir is not wrong, in that the majority opinion (as with past Kennedy opinions in this area) seems designed specifically to confuse the hell out of law students looking for the standard structure of a 14th Am case. Due Process or Equal Protection? Sorta both, kinda. Strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, or rational basis? Uh, whichever one means that the 6th Circuit is reversed, because dignity. It seems like EP would be the more logical way to go if you want to strike these statutes-- cite the modern understanding of the inherent-ness of sexual orientation as a basis for some level of heightened scrutiny, overturning what precedents you have to along the way, and fail the "traditional marriage" statutes as not backed by sufficient state interest to meet that scrutiny. Hell, fail them as lacking a rational basis if you have to. I'd have been on-board with that kind of opinion. But Kennedy and his 4 co-signers are, for whatever reason, not willing to state a level of scrutiny for sexuality-based equal protection cases. So instead we get substantive due process with some vague gestures in the direction of equal protection. Which really lacks much in the way of textual restraint-- it smacks of "it's the law because we really want it to be." Even those who also really want marriage equality to be the law can find reason to be uneasy with that kind of jurisprudence. (But, yeah, it does feel a bit skeezy to be contributing to intellectual cover for homophobes and bible-thumpers.)

Of all the dumb things that get said about major pieces of legislation, this is one of the dumbest. The primary point of the legislation was to apply to people who did not have health insurance. Congress, and its employees, had employer-provided health insurance, just like other federal workers. (And workers at big companies, etc.) Of course the logical way to write the law would be to "exempt" Congress. That said, it wasn't written logically. Some opponents of the bill managed to get an amendment in that required Members of Congress and their staff to get their health insurance from the PPACA exchanges. This was silly legislative trolling-- it had no reasonable grounding in policy, the point was just to try to tempt the bill's supporters to make the bill look worse by voting against the amendment. The amendment passed, which caused all kinds of confusion-- how should/would this provision mesh with the existing statutory health insurance benefits for Congressional employees? They settled on the sensible (but still pain-in-the-neck) solution of allowing the money that the employer had been willing to pay for employee health insurance to be applied to the premiums of insurance policies purchased by the employees in the exchanges. (And some mean-spirited jerks even objected to that! They wanted to strip health benefits from their own employees to make a talking point for stump speeches!) So, in short, not only was Congress not "exempted"-- PPACA explicitly called Congress out to be treated differently than any other employer in the country.

Isn't that what the role of the judicial branch is? I was always taught the role of the judicial branch was to interpret law and set precedent. Well, one man's "interpreting" is another man's "re-writing." (And "re-writing," of course, is a job for the Legislature.) Ultimately, the Chief Justice is a pragmatist in matters of statutory interpretation. The money quote from his majority opinion: He understands that sloppy drafting sometimes happens, and doesn't think that it should be the Court's role to scream "Gotcha!" when Congress shoots itself in the foot. If a clear overall plan is evident, Roberts would give it effect, despite some problematic drafting. Scalia's dissent takes an alternate view-- he would say that "legislative plan" is "jiggery-pokery" nonsense that courts use to usurp legislative power. Congress doesn't make "plans" or have a clearly articulable "purpose" or "intent" for its legislation-- it merely writes words that become Law, and the Court's role is to read those words and give them effect, even if the end result would be contradictory. If Congress screws up, and ends up with a law that doesn't do what it wanted to do, it can fix it with new legislation. (Of course, that last point applies equally well to a Robertsian interpretation-- if the Court misconstrues Congress's "plan," Congress can fix it with a new law. And, if the Court is any good at all at figuring this stuff out, it has the advantage of not requiring further Congressional action and not creating a period of major disruption and uncertainty for every little drafting whoopsie.)

As somebody who has occasion to drive through White Marsh, MD, from time to time, this title feels very unnatural.

These are problems without easy solutions. Rape and sexual assault are notoriously difficult crimes to prosecute. It is quite rare for a rape/SA to occur in a situation so well documented that a defense attorney couldn't raise a reasonable doubt as to the absence of consent. Particularly so when the creeps who perpetrate these kinds of crimes engineer the circumstances to protect themselves in advance, as in the classic 'frathouse party' sexual assault fact pattern. Compounding this, until rather recently, colleges and college-town political institutions (i.e., cops, DAs) were generally pretty patriarchal organizations. They are/were also in a competitive environment with regard to recruiting students and faculty, and thus strive/strove to protect their reputations, in part by avoiding any big public rape trials. This created circumstances where lots and lots of rape/SA victims found themselves with no option but to deal with it-- the DA wouldn't prosecute unless they had multiple stone-cold-sober witnesses, and the school would rather pretend it didn't happen and thus deferred to the DA. That's what folks talk about when they say "rape culture." And if you don't see problems with the above, well, I don't know what to tell you. The thing is, now that schools are taking these sorts of things more seriously (driven largely by the fact that a majority of American undergraduates are now female), there is no clear answer regarding how to make things less bad. The standard for prosecution remains the same, but if you lower the standard for school-initiated discipline like expulsion, you risk "false positives," as in the simplified story told in the OP. Which ****ty outcome is worse-- potentially innocent dudes getting expelled, or ladies getting raped and seeing everyone around them line up to protect the perpetrator? The one somewhat-easy partial answer is to change the "culture." For example, everybody should know that there are risks to getting blackout-drunk with folks who you don't know well enough to trust, not just women. Dudebros should be willing to step in and stop their wingman from crossing the line (and give honest testimony if/when they do). But that's a slow process. Maybe a little overreaction in administrative punishment practices is a good way to kickstart that? I don't know.

I actually played Officer Krupke in a community-theatre production of West Side Story when I was about 13. (It kept to my strengths-- a mostly-comedic role in an otherwise-serious musical, but with little singing required. See also: The Rabbi, in Fiddler on the Roof.) Anyhow, R.I.P. Ornette.

I don't know, Obsidian right now seems stuck on some projects of varying interests for their fanbase and them : they help with Skyforge, they're the main developers of Armored Warfare, etc. Aside from PoE and maybe the adaptation of Pathfinder's Card Adventure Game, they don't seem to have much of the stuff which made them famous on their plate. That's my read as well. Managing the creative side of a company working mostly on MMO-type stuff doesn't exactly feel like it's in Avellone's wheelhouse. And, even if GreyFox is right and things have never been better for Obsidian, well, what better time for Chris to cash out his equity interest in the company? Sell high!

Getting an owner out of a closely-held corporation isn't always an easy thing to do. It can take some time (and consultation with attorneys and other professionals), particularly if the value of the overall company isn't easily determinable.

As far as I can tell, it comes from people who don't like Sawyer assuming that Avellone agrees with them.

So long as we're making wild guesses, I suspect that the indie scene is the most probable place where you'll see MCA's future vidyagame work. The guy seems to be passionate about his creative projects, but the day-to-day stress of helping to run a reasonably large company has got to be tiring. And, given that the company is reduced to working on Tank MMOs so that they can make payroll, it probably isn't quite the avenue of creative expression that it used to be.

Well, he has spoken a lot about how busy he gets with all his various projects, and it's not hard to imagine that the managerial responsibilities and headaches that come with being a co-owner of a reasonably-sized business are by far the least fun of them. Hopefully he got a nice buyout of his ownership share. But even if he didn't, 12 years of salary has got to be more than could have been reasonably hoped for when he signed onto Feargus's crazy "go it alone" scheme. Best of luck, Chris!

On a whim the other night, I fired up Dungeons of Dredmor for the first time in rather awhile. And it has changed quite a lot since the last I looked in on it. (I think I also bought the DLC in some Steam sale or another.) It remains consistently charming and pretty entertaing, in spite of its core problem of being a Roguelike that takes a really really long time to play through. So now I'm trying to work out a way to honor my avatar with a build featuring Astrology and Egyptian Magic.

Doesn't look like the Pentagon at all-- it's a ballpark. Probably Fenway.

Yeah, I'll step right up and acknowledge the flaws in Bethesda's recent games... but I still managed to have rather a lot of fun with them. Fallout 3 fell short in the character writing and overall narrative, but they nailed the art design and set-dressing elements of the Fallout brand, as well as the DC-area-in-a-Fallouty-world stuff. Skyrim was great fun, so long as you were smart enough to play it as an Argonian named "Climbs-Tall-Rocks" who disregards the main plot and instead focuses on summiting all the mountains.

Am I the only one who thought that the video was kind of awful? Why did they waste 3 minutes of my time with that ridiculous kid character, just to repeat the dumb "don't you hate modern games marketing?" joke that they slapped onto the Wasteland menu screen? I expect that I'll eventually kick in enough to get a copy when it comes out, which is pretty much what I did for Torment. My confidence that Inxile will produce a playable game is higher, post-Wasteland, but the weaknesses in that game's systems design are preventing me from getting too excited. I enjoyed M&M X for what it was worth, so if this matches that, I'll be happy to play it. (For the record, I played a bit of at least one of the BT games back in the day, but I didn't own any of them.)

The NYT Magazine with the latest on the Russian trolling industry.

Hey, if we can't bring a sport down with our indifference, maybe we can prosecute it out of existence! You're next, competitive cycling!

I sometimes wonder if luzarius is aware that a substantial proportion of the internet, broadcast and cable TV, the advertising industry, and the print publishing business is devoted to little other than allowing the public to look at women who meet a mainstream standard of beauty. His (I'm playing the odds on gender here) single-minded devotion to finding the same a in very specific entertainment field is ... odd. Not true! Some of them were hunchbacked old crones!

Wow...that seems a bit harsh. What is the definition of a " paupers grave " ? It means different things in different times. What I mean is that the state - as I understand it now - pays for a cremation, a basic urn, and the urn to be interred somewhere in a participating cemetery. They become One of Many.

New PAT rules! Teams now must declare whether they intend to go for two (in which case the ball is spotted at the 2, as before) or attempt a 1-point PAT with the ball spotted at the 15 (making for a 32- or 33-yard attempt). Also, turnovers on PAT/2PC tries can be returned by the defense for a 2-point "touchdown." Lots of potential for interesting decisions here. In event of a penalty wiping out a play, the offense can change their mind-- e.g. after a false-start on a 2PC, they can switch to a PAT from the 20, rather than a 2PC from the 7. I think a post-TD celebration penalty can now be used either on the kickoff (as before), or to force a 48-yard PAT try (or 17-yard 2PC try). If the offense is kicking, defenses now have very little incentive to call anything other than a 10- or 11-man rush. That'll lead to more blocks, but also more penalties and injuries. That said, coaches are boring and will likely almost all trot the kicking team out there in every situation except the "down 8 late in the game" circumstances when they already go for 2.

From the album audaciously titled Prepare Thyself to Deal with a Miracle. Circular breathing is cool. Note that the youtube upload calls it "Celestial Blues," but both my CD and the metadata that kicked in when I burned it call the track "Celestial Bliss."

Ya'll are a bunch of sadists.

Specifically, when you walk into Twin Elms for the first time, the gate guards mention that the riots in Defiance Bay have subsided and that the city gates are open again. It's their not-subtle way of saying "go away, estramor." I was overleveled for the bounties I've tried thus far, as I waited until 1.05 reduced the XP payout. There isn't much that letting loose with all your 5th-level Druid spells can't fix.

I was able to avoid killing the thieves, despite taking the neutral route in the warehouse. I think the important detail is to wait until the Main Quest asks you to get a patron for the hearings before crashing the thieves' hideout. I got the option to avoid a fight via the following sequence: 1) Warehouse resolved in a neutral fashion; 2) Advance Main Plot to the point where Lady Webb tells you to find a patron; 3) Visit Doemenal HQ to get the quest to find the letter from Abrecan; 4) Enter thieves hideout for the first time. I suspect that the first step might even be unnecessary-- you can probably pass over the warehouse quest entirely, or do it after all this. The mission from Lady Webb is enough to get you in to see Abrecan, who gives the quest you need to avoid a fight with the thieves.