The Supremes Get One Right

Posted on 24 June 2018 by eehines

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that authorities generally need a search warrant before they can obtain broad access to data that shows the location of cellphone users, a decision that sets privacy boundaries in the digital age.
The court, in a 5-4 opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, cited the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee to be free from unreasonable government searches.

And

We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier’s database of physical location information[.]

Yewbetcha.

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AHPs

Posted on 23 June 2018 by eehines

Association Health Plans are new plans that, by regulation, allow small businesses to band together across industries and state boundaries to form health insurance buying consortiums. Using this larger size-generated buying power, they should be able to acquire cheaper, better tailored, more flexible plans for their employees, plans that those employees actually will want.

However.

The left says association plans are junk insurance that will blow up ObamaCare.

Some AHPs likely will be; that’s a fact of life in any market, free or centrally planned. However, a free market is self-regulating and quickly so; junk plans will be few and far between. Blow up Obamacare? That’s win-win.

This is a preview of AHPs. Read the full post (141 words, estimated 34 secs reading time)

A Proposed EU Budget

Posted on 22 June 2018 by eehines

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have agreed a proposed EU budget. As you might expect, I have a question. One of the points of agreement is the purpose of the “single eurozone budget” they want to create:

The EU will set up a single eurozone budget to boost investment and promote economic convergence among all 19 member states.

What does this purpose statement mean, exactly? Who will pay into the budget and in accordance with what parameters? Who will pick the investments to be supported and on what basis? On these two matters, details are yet to be worked out, certainly; it’s early in the process.

This is a preview of A Proposed EU Budget. Read the full post (278 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

Why Should There Be a Cap?

Posted on 22 June 2018 by eehines

Scott Atlas wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal that all of us should have access to health savings accounts, instead of just the few well-off among us who can afford the high deductible health coverage plan that’s currently a prerequisite for having an HSA. He also wants to raise the cap for contributing to one to $7,350 per year.

He’s on the right track, but he stopped short. Why should there be a cap on HSA contributions? Why can’t we contribute as much or as little as we want instead of what Government will permit?

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The Pope

Posted on 21 June 2018 by eehines

…gets another one wrong. If he was accurately quoted by ANSA (Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata, an Italian news agency) and by the SIR agency of the Italian bishops’ conference—or by CRUX, which claims the quotes—that is. They quoted him as

denouncing the pre-natal tests that can result in parents choosing to terminate a pregnancy if the fetus is malformed or suffering other problems.

The Pope is aiming his fire at the wrong target. Families intending to have the baby rather than abort it could benefit from pre-natal tests that find that the “fetus is malformed or suffering other problems.” Such foreknowledge would give the family months in which to prepare financially, emotionally, physically, to join/generate support groups, all to increase the family’s ability to receive and nurture the baby.

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Child Abuse, Continuing

Posted on 21 June 2018 by eehines

In the ongoing dispute over separating children from their illegal immigrant parents (OBE with President Donald Trump’s EO ending the practice) Progressive-Democrat Senator Bob Casey (D, PA) said this:

Infest? We’re not talking about insects, these are children! You are talking about kids who are scared, alone and being held in cages. You have the power to stop it, do it.

Casey isn’t talking about children, though, he’s talking about weapons he and his Progressive-Democrat fellows want to use for their personal political gain. These are not children in Progressive-Democrat eyes, they’re just mechanical tools for them to use.

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Privacy!?

Posted on 20 June 2018 by eehines

You ain’t got no privacy. You don’t need any stinking privacy!

Using facial recognition software in combination with image storage houses like drivers license databases can be highly useful in tracking down criminal suspects.

But the combination can be highly dangerous, too, as this attitude by Joseph Michael, Washington County Deputy State’s Attorney in Maryland, demonstrates:

the expectation of privacy ends when you sit down and smile at the government desk.

Pinellas County (FL) Sheriff Bob Gualtieri argued

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Child Abuse

Posted on 20 June 2018 by eehines

We have children being separated from their parents as those parents are detained for their illegal crossing of our border, their illegal entry—some might say break-in—into our nation. Some point out that many of those children, the ones who arrive unaccompanied, were callously separated from their parents by their own parents in their country of origin. Others point out that many of those allegedly accompanied children are not members of a family unit but are simply pawns of drug and human traffickers being used to facilitate those traffickers’ illegal entry. There are, though, many children/parent family units that have parents detained for their illegal entry and the children separated from them rather than being locking up, too.

This is a preview of Child Abuse. Read the full post (280 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

Reform at the FBI?

Posted on 19 June 2018 by eehines

FBI Director Christopher Wray said he takes the DoJ IG report castigating the FBI’s performance on the Clinton email scandal seriously.

He [Wray] ordered training for senior executives on the report’s lessons….

Really? These guys are senior executives–they already knew what they were doing, and they knew at the time that what they were doing was wrong. They should be fired for cause.

So far, it looks like Wray is just engaged in the emptiness of sound and fury.

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Cynical Union

Posted on 19 June 2018 by eehines

Recall President Donald Trump’s Executive Order limiting the amount of time public union employees can spend doing union business during their work day.

The American Federation of Government Employees has demurred and gone into court to seek an injunction blocking enforcement of the EO. AFGE General Counsel David Borer insisted

We will not allow this or any other administration to trample on the Constitutional rights of federal workers[.]

This cynical claim is based on Borer’s insistence that his members’ freedom of association right is violated by the EO.

This, of course, is nonsense.

This is a preview of Cynical Union. Read the full post (270 words, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

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