Author Archives: FrankieReeder

Elizabeth Warren’s Latest Comment About Running For President Is the Most Cryptic Yet

by FrankieReeder Posted on October 23, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

With 106 weeks until the next presidential election, speculating about a potential Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) candidacy is like going on a long car ride with a six-year-old. “Are you running?” No. “How about now?” No. “Now?” No. “Now?” No. “What about now?” No. “Are you running?” No. “Are you running?” exasperated sigh “Aha!”

But Warren does continue to do the things people who are considering a run for president tend to do—flying to Iowa to rally the troops on behalf of Rep. Bruce Braley, for instance, and going on tour to promote a campaign-style book. Her latest venture, a sit-down interview in the next issue of People magazine, isn’t going to do much to quiet the speculation, even as she once more downplayed the prospect of a run:

Supporters are already lining up to back an “Elizabeth Warren for President” campaign in 2016. But is the freshman senator from Massachusetts herself on board with a run for the White House? Warren wrinkles her nose.

“I don’t think so,” she tells PEOPLE in an interview conducted at Warren’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, home for this week’s issue. “If there’s any lesson I’ve learned in the last five years, it’s don’t be so sure about what lies ahead. There are amazing doors that could open.”

She just doesn’t see the door of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue being one of them. Not yet, anyway. “Right now,” Warren says, “I’m focused on figuring out what else I can do from this spot” in the U.S. Senate.

“Amazing doors”; “I don’t think”; “right now”—what does it all mean? Warren’s not really saying anything we haven’t heard from her before. But after then-Sen. Barack Obama’s furious denials about running for president eight years ago, no one’s ready to take “no” for an answer. At least not yet, anyway.

View post: 

Elizabeth Warren’s Latest Comment About Running For President Is the Most Cryptic Yet

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Elizabeth Warren’s Latest Comment About Running For President Is the Most Cryptic Yet

Digital Privacy Is Fundamentally Different From Physical Privacy

by FrankieReeder Posted on June 26, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Tim Lee argues—or perhaps merely hopes—that yesterday’s decision protecting cell phones from warrantless searches might signal a turning point for the Supreme Court’s attitude toward digital information in general:

The government has typically pursued a simple legal strategy when faced with digital technologies. First, find a precedent that gave the government access to information in the physical world. Second, argue that the same principle should apply in the digital world, ignoring the fact that this will vastly expand the government’s snooping power while eroding Americans’ privacy.

….The government hoped the Supreme Court would take this same narrow, formalistic approach in this week’s cell phone privacy case. It wanted the justices to pretend that rifling through the vast quantity of personal information on a suspect’s cell phone is no different from inspecting other objects that happen to be in suspects’ pockets. But the Supreme Court didn’t buy it.

….The Supreme Court clearly recognizes that in the transition from information stored on paper to information stored in computer chips, differences of degree can become differences of kind. If the police get access to one letter or photograph you happen to have in your pocket, that might not be a great privacy invasion. If the police get access to every email you’ve received and every photograph you’ve taken in the last two years, that’s a huge invasion of privacy.

This is a problem that’s been getting more acute for years. The basic question is whether courts should recognize the fact that digital access to information removes practical barriers that are important for privacy. For example, the state of California keeps lots of records about me that are legally public: DMV records, property records, birth and marriage records, etc. In the past, practically speaking, the mere fact that they were physical records provided me with a degree of privacy. It took a lot of time and money to dig through them all, and this meant that neither the government nor a private citizen would do it except in rare and urgent cases.

In the digital world, that all changes. If a police officer has even a hint of curiosity about me, it takes only seconds to compile all this information and more. In a technical sense, they don’t have access to anything they didn’t before, but in a practical sense I’ve lost a vast amount of privacy.

In the past, the Supreme Court has rarely (never?) acknowledged this. In yesterday’s cell phone case, they not only acknowledged it, they acknowledged it unanimously. Is it possible that this means they’ll be applying a more skeptical view to similar cases in the future? Or even revisiting some of their past decisions in light of the continuing march of technology? We don’t know yet, but it’s certainly possible. Maybe the Supreme Court has finally entered the 21st century.

Original article: 

Digital Privacy Is Fundamentally Different From Physical Privacy

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Digital Privacy Is Fundamentally Different From Physical Privacy

Presidential Appointments Were Already a Total Nightmare. Now They Just Got Worse.

by FrankieReeder Posted on June 26, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Barack Obama had better hope nobody resigns from his administration during the final two years of his presidency. Thanks to a new Supreme Court ruling released Thursday, it’s going to be a lot harder for Obama, and every other future president, to staff the executive branch.

In a unanimous decision penned by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court greatly reduced the president’s ability to make recess appointments with its decision in Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board. Breyer’s opinion rejected a lower court’s ruling that would have essentially nullified the president’s ability to appoint nominees to temporary jobs in the executive branch when Congress is out of town. But Breyer and his fellow eight justices said that the president can’t ignore Congress when it claims to still be at work, even if those sessions are just show meetings to obstruct the president. While upholding the concept of recess appointments, the new ruling will in essence prevent the president from using recess appointments anytime the opposition party controls one side of Congress. The Senate can’t enter a recess without the consent of the House, and they’re unlikely to ever get permission to officially leave town if the House majority is opposed to the president. The court’s decision also leaves countless labor dispute decisions in doubt.

Continue Reading »

Originally posted here: 

Presidential Appointments Were Already a Total Nightmare. Now They Just Got Worse.

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Presidential Appointments Were Already a Total Nightmare. Now They Just Got Worse.