“When you share a story with your friends and peers, you care a lot more how they react. You don’t want them to think of you as a Debbie Downer.”

This is an interesting observation that is worth further consideration.

Can social media end negativity bias in the press?

I've been trying for some time to read Republic, Lost by Lawrence Lessig. I kept getting bogged down in parts I and II.

I've seen Lessig's solutions presented by advocates, and I don't buy them, but I can't criticize what I haven't read. Finally, my conviction that this IS the right problem to be thinking about caused me to forge my way through to Part III.

Part III is an excellent statement of the nature of the problem, and includes discussion of important topics that the simplified statements of his solutions seemed to gloss over, although I might organize it differently.

Some basic problems:
1. Congressmen don't know everything. They need to be informed.
2. Informing them is not a hobby - people have to be paid to do that.
3. If you can afford to hire a lobbyist, Congressmen are going to be more informed about your concerns than the guy next to you who cannot.

1. You have a right to freedom of speech.
2. It costs money to publish things.
3. People with more money speak more loudly.
4. The populace tends to believe what they hear.

Both of these concerns seem intractable.

Lessig layers on top an additional concern:

1. Congressmen and staffers are not paid well relative to their peers.
2. Congressional campaigns are extremely expensive.
3. Congressmen must raise money.
4. Congressmen become dependent upon the sources of that money.
5. You don't trust them to be independent from their sources of funding.
6. This dependence changes their behavior.
7. They are more receptive to the views of donors. (Donations buy access.)
8. They actively seek to regulate businesses in order to provoke donations from them because they need the money.
9. They have pushed our country to become more politically partisan because it produces greater individual donations.
7. All the fundraising distracts them from doing things that are unrelated to fundraising.

Lessig compares this to the behavior of an alcoholic.

I haven't read part IV yet, on solutions. I wanted to get my map of the problem laid out in writing, first.

I think that the book is worthwhile for part III, alone.

Republic, Lost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-N.Y., chairman of the committee, said the passage of CISPA was "important," but said the bill's "privacy protections are insufficient."

ACLU: CISPA Is Dead (For Now) - US News and World Report

The retirement racket.

Video: The Retirement Gamble | Watch FRONTLINE Online | PBS Video

This abstract presents, in a nutshell, the absurdity of our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.

In United States v. Jones, 132 S.Ct. 945 (2012), the Supreme Court restored the trespass test of Fourth Amendment law: Any government conduct that is a trespass onto persons, houses, papers, or effects is a Fourth Amendment 'search.' According to the Court, the trespass test had controlled the search inquiry before the reasonable expectation of privacy test was introduced in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). Although Katz had rejected the trespass test, Jones restored it. This essay examines the history of the Fourth Amendment search doctrine and reaches the surprising conclusion that the trespass test never existed. Pre-Katz decisions did not adopt a trespass test, and instead grappled with many of the same questions that the Court has focused on when applying the reasonable expectation of privacy test. The idea that trespass controlled before Katz turns out to be a myth of the Katz Court: Katz mischaracterized Fourth Amendment history to justify a break from prior precedent. Jones thus restores a test that never actually existed

The Curious History of Fourth Amendment Searches by Orin Kerr :: SSRN

Peter Swire, last year:

CISPA would override decades of carefully crafted laws about when the government must use a warrant, or have another lawful basis for accessing the personal information of the American people.

Moving too fast on cybersecurity - The Hill - covering Congress, Politics, Political Campaigns and Capitol Hill | TheHill.com

Interestingly, despite the fact that the push for Tsarnaev to be held as an enemy combatant is coming from GOP officials, Republican respondents to the poll are even more strongly tilted towards worrying about government compromising constitutional rights, by 56-34. Conservatives tilt this way by 46-41. Democrats also agree by 48-43.

Americans don’t believe in shredding Constitution to fight terror

It’s also important that the key 2011 provision in which Congress said whom the president can detain “exempts U.S. citizens entirely,” as Benjamin Wittes explained at the time. Similarly the 2009 Military Commission Act—which Graham wrote—states that American citizens may not be tried by military commission.

Tsarnaev an enemy combatant? John McCain and Lindsey Graham’s harmful campaign to undermine American justice. - Slate Magazine

NOT a political prerogative?

Its worth noting that an alternative view is that Tsarnaev cannot be detained as an enemy combatant because he is not a member of Al`Q and therefore the Congression "Authorization for the Use of Military Force" does not apply to him. Were he an actual member of Al'Q, the Obama Admin might have handled this differently:

"I am not aware of any evidence so far that the Boston suspect is part of any organized group, let alone al-Qaida, the Taliban, or one of their affiliates–the only organizations whose members are subject to detention under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, as it has been consistently interpreted by all three branches of our government," Levin noted. "In the absence of such evidence I know of no legal basis for his detention as an enemy combatant."

4 GOP lawmakers push for Boston bombing suspect to be declared an enemy combatant - ABA Journal

A political prerogative:

I agree that treating an American citizen as an enemy combatant is an extraordinary step. But it is an option. What is disturbing is that President Obama and Attorney General Holder are so in the grips of their ideological belief that terrorism is a law-enforcement, rather than military, problem that they made this decision with insufficient information.

Obama’s Priorities: Ideology over Security | National Review Online