Following the 2008 crash, government enforcement action extracted $110 billion from lenders and other players over a variety of alleged sins relating to the rise and collapse of the mortgage bubble. Where did it go? Governments held on to a lot of it, a lot went to the government-sponsored Fannie and Freddie mortgage enterprises, favored “housing-related community groups” got some, some went to homeowners with mortgage struggles or to new low-interest loans. In New York, money is going to rebuild the Tappan Zee bridge and “the annual state fair is using bank-settlement money to build a new horse barn and stables.” But no one has kept track of where a lot of the money went, there being no overall effort to account for it. [Christina Rexrode and Emily Glazer, WSJ]
Police roundup
- Open-minded: liberal-leaning Marshall Project publishes Heather MacDonald, often found on other side of criminal justice debates, on why police shootings of “unarmed” persons are not as clear-cut a matter as one might think;
- “Report: Dashcam Equipment in Chicago Police Vehicles ‘Intentionally’ Destroyed” [Bryant Jackson-Green, Illinois Policy]
- Sure-footed SWAT response to San Bernardino terror attack proved value of police militarization, right? Not so fast [Anthony Fisher]
- In December Cato held a conference on “Policing America,” catch up with the videos here [Jonathan Blanks]
- “Head of multi-jurisdictional anti-drug task force says forfeiture reform may spell the end of these roving, self-funded teams of drug-fighting cops who aren’t answerable to any local authority. He makes a good argument, but not the argument he thinks he’s making.” [that’s Radley Balko summarizing Tim Helldorfer, Memphis Commercial Appeal]
- U.S. Department of Justice “Wants to Punish Abusive Ferguson Police with Massive Raises” [Scott Shackford, more on civil rights suit]
“Judge blasts warring parents who squandered $500K on custody battle”
Canada: An “outspoken Hamilton judge blasted warring parents for squandering $500,000 on their bitter child custody battle. ‘How did this happen?’ asked exasperated Ontario Superior Court Justice Alex Pazaratz. ‘How does this keep happening? What will it take to convince angry parents that nasty and aggressive litigation never turns out well?'” [Toronto Sun]
Scalia’s change of mind on agency deference
Initially, Justice Antonin Scalia supported the doctrine (Auer/Seminole Rock) by which courts defer to administrative agencies in interpreting the scope of their regulations. Toward the end of his life, however, he changed his mind. And in that change lies a lesson about the tension between the dangers of arbitrariness and abdication in the judiciary, and how the Constitution goes about addressing that tension [Evan Bernick; earlier]
Campus climate roundup
- Some profs still deny: “The Glaring Evidence That Free Speech Is Threatened on Campus” [Conor Friedersdorf]
- Student demands at Western Washington University would “create an almost cartoonishly autocratic liberal thought police on campus” [Robby Soave] After University of Kansas professor tried awkwardly to discuss her own white privilege, students took offense and things haven’t gone well for her [Robby Soave: update, Althouse]
- Feds equivocate on whether notorious campus “Dear Colleague” letter has force of law [Hans Bader, CEI; George Leef, Pope Center; me on the letter in 2013]
- Yale expels the captain of its basketball team, and KC Johnson has some questions Minding the Campus, Academic Wonderland]
- I wanted to scream about insensitive canoe discourse in Canada and there was no one to hear me but the loons [CBC] And an instant classic: feminist glaciology framework for a more just and equitable science and “human-ice interactions” [Sage Journals; U. of Oregon, part of $412K NSF grant]
- Lose that worldview, citizen: attending public Oklahoma university requires “changing our worldview to accommodate others’ experiences of oppression.” [Audra Brulc via @DouglasLevene]
Amending the Constitution
The National Archives mounts an exhibition of proposed constitutional amendments over the years. To understate matters, not all of them were great ideas [Michael Ruane, Washington Post]
On the idea of an Article V convention to propose constitutional amendments, of which I have been critical lately, you can watch a presentation I gave to the Common Cause national “Blueprint for a Great Democracy” conference held last week.
NSA to share more data with domestic law enforcement
“The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.” [New York Times] Currently, NSA analysts in possession of information about Americans gathered “incidentally” during foreign intelligence gathering apply rules to remove or mask information relating to innocent Americans’ activities. Under the revised rules, downstream agencies would instead be responsible for screening out information they are not supposed to use. Notwithstanding earlier assurances, the step makes it more likely that data from global telecom surveillance will wind up in the hands of the FBI and other domestic agencies for purposes of domestic law enforcement policing having nothing to do with terrorism. [Radley Balko]
Rhode Island attorney general pushes broad ban on hostile social media posts
Someone needs better advice about the First Amendment, and quickly: “Social media posts, sexually explicit or otherwise, that cause someone’s online embarrassment or insult, would become crimes under a set of bills being advanced by Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin.” One of the bills “would target a wide range of social media activity that makes people ‘feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested.'” so long as it had been “made with the intent to cause emotional distress and be expected to cause distress in a ‘reasonable person.'” While previous “cyber-bullying” legislation required a pattern of conduct, “someone could be prosecuted under the new Kilmartin bill for a single post if at least two others pile on with ‘separate non-continuous acts of unconsented contact” with the victim.'” — meaning that the trigger for jail time over speech could be the actions of other persons. [Providence Journal] Two years ago the New York high court struck down an overbroad ban on so-called cyber-bullying.
“When you say our product is better than yours, that is false and misleading.”
LARP foam arrow charges keep flying [Joe Mullin, ArsTechnica]
An eight-Justice Supreme Court
It isn’t especially onerous for the Supreme Court to operate with eight Justices, as we know from earlier vacancies and recusals, note Josh Blackman and Ilya Shapiro [Wall Street Journal] History of election-year SCOTUS nominations and confirmations doesn’t prove what some liberals imagine it does [Roger Pilon; Jonathan Adler and follow-up]
Plus: Wouldn’t it be nice if every Supreme Court nominee were asked to name something he or she thinks is a good idea yet unconstitutional, or, conversely a bad idea that is constitutional? [Trevor Burrus]