The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Strange 4th Amendment Bedfellows

When I agree with Antonin Scalia (and so do justices Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor), and disagree with Stephen Breyer (who agrees with Thomas and Alito), something has gone wrong with the universe. On Monday, the inversion of reality happened when the Supreme Court announced its decision in Maryland v. King, finding that police can go fishing with your DNA:

The police may take DNA samples from people arrested in connection with serious crimes, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The federal government and 28 states authorize the practice, and law enforcement officials say it is a valuable tool for investigating unsolved crimes. But the court said the testing was justified by a different reason: to identify the suspect in custody.

Justice Scalia went apeshit, and for once I think he's absolutely correct to do so:

With rigor and wit, Scalia meticulously demolishes this made-up claim. “The Court’s assertion that DNA is being taken, not to solve crimes, but to identify those in the State’s custody, taxes the credulity of the credulous,” Scalia begins. He then describes the “actual workings of the DNA search at issue here” on which the Court is “strangely silent.”

Scalia concludes his inspiring dissent by noting the tremendous stakes in the case, and the dangers posed by the Court’s uncritical approval of DNA testing of arrestees—a decision that will affect the “nearly one-third of Americans [who] will be arrested for some offense by age 23.” He predicts that although “the Court disguises the vast (and scary) scope of its holding by promising a limitation it cannot deliver”—namely, that DNA testing will be limited to those arrested for serious crimes such as felonies—the logic of the decision would, in fact, allow DNA tests to “identify” those arrested for traffic offenses. He then directly addresses American citizens, in rousing words that he read from the bench: "Make no mistake about it: As an entirely predictable consequence of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.” And he ends with one of his most memorable images: “Perhaps the construction of such a genetic panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.”

I honestly don't get Breyer joining the majority on this one, though. That's just weird.

Priorities in the Illinois House

Sometimes, the Illinois General Assembly reminds us that Molly Ivins had it right: the only state legislature worse at their jobs than Illinois' is Texas'.

Yesterday, the only legislature we have adjourned for the summer, after passing the least popular bill on its agenda this year and failing to pass one of the most popular:

Illinois had appeared poised to become the 13th state to approve same-sex marriage. Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn promised to sign the bill. Democrats held veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate. President Barack Obama called for its passage during a Thursday night fundraiser in his home city, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was a major backer as well.

Under the bill, the definition of marriage in Illinois would have changed from an act between a man and a woman to one between two people. Civil unions could have been converted to marriages within a year of the law going on the books. The legislation would not have required religious organizations to perform a marriage of gay couples, and church officials would not have been forced to allow their facilities to be used by gay couples seeking to marry.

But as the hours wore on, the optimism and energy dissolved in the face of strong opposition from Catholic and conservative African-American church groups, leading [Rep. Greg] Harris [D-Chicago] to rise on the floor and tearfully announce that he would not call the bill — there wasn't enough support after all.

Thank you, churches, for confusing conservatism and Christianism once again. And thank you, Illinois House, for cowering behind procedure in the face of criticism from a small minority of constituents. Failing to take a vote means we actually don't know which of our representatives would have chosen to side with history and which ones with the past. Well-played, troglodytes, well-played.

Oh, and the legislature also failed to pass pension reform, about which the bond markets will probably have something to say on Monday.

Good thing it's now legal to carry concealed guns in Illinois. Because nothing keeps your kids safe (from gay germs, one must assume) like a .380 in your purse.

End of day roundup

Oh, my, some doozies today:

  • Via Calculated Risk, Fermanagh, Ireland, has put up a Potemkin village to reassure all the G8 leaders that everything is fine. This includes, for example, putting photos of a thriving butcher shop over the boarded-up windows of a former butcher shop. It's a laugh-and-cry moment.
  • The New York Times Magazine published a story about a near-crash on a commercial airliner that...doesn't make sense. Aside from reading like an undergraduate creative-writing assignment, it's simply not plausible that it happened as described. James Fallows dissects it.
  • New Republic's Isaac Chotner puts Chris Kyle in context.
  • Chicago Public Radio examines why all our outdoor cafes are on the North Side.

More as events warrant.

The 114th Congress will be 40% saner than the 113th

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) won't be running next fall:

Mrs. Bachmann, defiant as ever as she insisted that she would have won re-election had she tried, also said the legal inquiries had nothing to do with her decision. She vowed to continue to fight for the principles she said she holds dear — religious liberty, traditional marriage, family values and protecting innocent life, she said.

“I fully anticipate the mainstream liberal media to put a detrimental spin on my decision not to seek a fifth term,” she said in a gauzy network-television-quality video posted on her campaign Web site. “They always seemed to attempt to find a dishonest way to disparage me. But I take being the focus of their attention and disparagement as a true compliment of my public service effectiveness.”

Yes, of course, because that's what the media do: they report facts that paint Michele Bachmann in a negative light. Or, as Krugman often says, "facts have a well-known liberal bias."

How about one of her House colleagues, then?

“Michele Bachmann is not retiring because she thinks her Tea Party views are out of touch. She’s retiring because she’s under investigation,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “What really concerns me now is the competition that will emerge in the House G.O.P. to fill her shoes. That competition is going to pull House Republicans even further to the right of where they are now.”

Yeah, I'm not sure how much farther right than Bachmann the Minnesota GOP can go. Her special brand of bat-shit-crazy simply defies the abilities of mere mortal politicians to recreate.

Bachmann will no doubt land on her feet, thanks to the right-wing sound machine that has gotten Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich lucrative speaking careers. I'm going to miss seeing Bachmann's smiling face on the Daily Show, though.

Update: The Onion has the truthy story:

Saying that it’s the Lord’s will, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann announced on her website Wednesday that she has decided not to seek reelection in 2014 because God wants her to earn millions of dollars working for a high-powered lobbying firm.

It sounds like it might be a true story, doesn't it?

All 45 GOP Senators lie to the Supreme Court

This morning, the Senate Republican caucus, representing a minority of the U.S. Senate, a minority of the States, and a minority of the American people, sent a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the President is thwarting the will of the people:

All 45 Republican senators co-signed an amicus brief filed Tuesday calling on the Supreme Court to curtail the President’s power to temporarily appoint nominees without the Senate’s approval.

“[R]ecess appointments have become a means to sidestep Senate confirmation,” the brief declared. “In any case, the President himself has made clear that he will resort to recess appointments, and indeed has done so, precisely to circumvent perceived Senate opposition.”

Presidents of both parties have used the recess-appointment power to fill vacancies. But it has taken on a new meaning under Obama, because Republicans have sought to neuter agencies whose functions they oppose — such as the NLRB and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — by seeking to filibuster all nominees to run them. The White House says the power is both constitutional and necessary to avoid a “significant disruption” in executive governance.

In other words, since the President used one of his Article 2 powers to circumvent the methods of thwarting the will of the American people Senate Republicans have tried so far, the Republicans are asking the branch of government they do control to step in. Because, hey, when you're a nihilist, do-nothing, know-nothing party, you have to stop at nothing to achieve nothing.

Obamacare picks up steam; Republicans nervous

Yesterday California rolled out is ACA Exchange, and it looks like a rousing success:

An estimated 5.3 million Californians will be eligible for coverage through Covered California, the state agency running the insurance marketplace. The lowest-income people will be referred to public safety net programs, while some 2.6 million middle-income residents will qualify for federal subsidies to help pay their premiums.

Covered California provided examples of what a 40-year-old would pay depending on income and where that person lives.

A San Francisco resident earning more than $46,000 a year will be able to choose among five plans with a monthly premium ranging from $221 to $501.

Meanwhile, a 40-year-old resident in Fresno who earns about $15,400 a year will be able to pick from four plans and will be eligible for federal subsidies. That person can expect to spend between $53 and $102 on premiums each month on a middle-of-the road plan.

In other words, the exchange has done what it promised to do: make insurance available at reasonable prices to uninsured Californians. This is, of course, a disaster for Republicans:

Based on the premiums that insurers have submitted for final regulatory approval, the majority of Californians buying coverage on the state's new insurance exchange will be paying less—in many cases, far less—than they would pay for equivalent coverage today. And while a minority will still end up writing bigger premium checks than they do now, even they won't be paying outrageous amounts. Meanwhile, all of these consumers will have access to the kind of comprehensive benefits that are frequently unavailable today, at any price, because of the way insurers try to avoid the old and the sick.

Obamacare critics have long warned, and Obamacare defenders have long feared, that insurers selling plans through the new exchanges would inevitably jack up premiums—if not to pad profits, than to adjust to the regulations that the new law imposes....

For some young, healthy people who now have skimpy, dirt cheap coverage, the new prices really will seem rather high by comparison. But experts think the number of people who fit that category will be small. That's one reason why, on Thursday, officials and consumer advocates were talking about a very different kind of sticker shock: Premium bids that were lower than expected. “For plan after plan, we’re getting the best-case scenarios,” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California.

The availble figures back up that verdict.

Krugman is gleeful:

[T]hink about the political dynamics. Because the Supreme Court decided to let states opt out of the Medicaid expansion, some states — notably Texas — will have a pretty dysfunctional version of Obamacare in 2014, although even those systems will provide significant benefits to many people. Still, the whole political calculus was supposed to be that Republicans in red states could point to the horrors of Obamacare and ride them to political victory. Instead, it looks as if we’re going to see blue-state residents reaping the benefits of a functional health care system, while red-state residents are denied many of those benefits, for what looks like no better reason than mean-spirited spite — because what’s going on is, indeed, mean-spirited spite.

Suddenly 2014 just got a lot more interesting. Politics on one side, policies on the other...which will win?

Arcologies, already?

If you've ever played SimCity, you have probably encountered the Arcology, a massive self-contained building that houses thousands of people. They're almost here:

BSC is going to stuff 30,000 people into these self-contained skyscraper communities—a resident of Sky City will use up 1/100th of the land used by a typical Chinese citizen.

And it really is a city in and of itself—4,450 apartments, nearly 100,000 square feet of indoor vertical farms, 250 hotel rooms, 92 elevators, 30 foot courtyards for athletics, and a six mile ramp that can be used to walk or run around the entire city.

Once again, BSC intends to build this thing in seven months. How will that work? Treehugger's Lloyd Alter explains: "16,000 part-time and 3,000 full-time workers will prefabricate the building for four months and assemble on site in three months." (For a closer look at all of the design specs, see Alter's in-depth piece on the project.)

Imagine 7,000 apartments between 50 m² and 225 m² in size (as one variation calls for), and you've got either a really cool vertical city or Cabrini-Green to the third power.

When complete, the first one will be 828 m tall—10 m taller than the Burj Khalifa, but presumably better integrated with local water treatment and the local real estate market.

If they built it in Streeterville, it would look this scary:

I do not know whether this is a welcome idea or a truly horrifying one.

(Via Sullivan, of course.)

UK Commons passes marriage equality by huge margin

In the end, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron probably didn't need to go hat-in-hand to Ed Miliband, but the dead-enders in his own party forced him to. Regardless, marriage equality has passed the House of Commons tonight 375-70, will probably pass the House of Lords easily:

But the prime minister, who attempted to reach out to his party by emailing a "personal note" to all members saying that he would never work with anyone who "sneered" at them, suffered the humiliation of having to plead with the Labour party for support. He also saw more than 100 Tory MPs, including the cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, vote against him on the first amendment of the day.

The prime minister will understand the dangers of relying on opposition support for a flagship measure after he personally ensured that Tony Blair's schools reforms survived with Tory support in 2006 three months after he became leader. Within months, supporters of Gordon Brown forced Blair to name the date of his departure the following year.

But who could become Tory leader next? William Hague? And how likely would that make an election before 2015?

I'm glad the U.S. isn't the only English-speaking country with swivel-eyed loonies, but still, can you imagine the U.S. House passing marriage equality by the same margin? (366 to 68, for those keeping score at home.) Hell, marriage equality has overwhelming support in Illinois but somehow it can't get to the house floor in Springfield. It's disappointing that the U.K. could have marriage equality before Illinois—but that's fine. The U.K. can teach the U.S. something about conservative values in the meantime.