Bits & Pieces (Monday Night Open Mic)

I been gone all day, and will be similarly disposed Tuesday and Wednesday. PowerSchool SQL training at work, new puppy and busted TV at home, I’m busy.

So, this is what I’m doing right now:

select st.lastfirst,st.grade_level gl,sc.abbreviation, 

sch2.abbreviation as abbr2,st.entrydate,st.exitdate,st.enroll_status, 

sch2.dfltnextschool, sch3.name,re.entrydate “PrevEntDate”, 

re.grade_level PrevGL,re.schoolid PrevSchoolID

from students st 

join schools scon st.schoolid = sc.school_numberjoin reenrollments re 

on st.schoolid != re.schoolidand st.id = re.studentidjoin schools sch2

on re.schoolid=sch2.school_numberjoin schools sch3

on sch3.school_number = sch2.dfltnextschoolwhere st.schoolid=25and st.enroll_status = 0

and re.exitdate = to_date(’06/04/2011′,’mm/dd/yyyy’)

and (sch2.dfltnextschool != st.schoolid)

and st.schoolid != st.next_schoolorder BY lastfirst

But I’m more interested in figuring out what the custom fields are inside custom CLOBs, but no love so far. See you later!

***

A former employee dishes on working for Keith Olberman. Blocked by my net nanny, but I’m going to have to read that later. 😉

– KW

26 Responses

  1. What kind of dog did you get, Kevin?

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  2. My sister in law, now at the NY Fed Reserve, was at ESPN for 20 years. Her stories about KO were weekly treats.

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  3. Mark/qb:Another WSJ piece today touches again on the topic of the constitutionality of Obama's latest recess appointments.Some of the administration's supporters have tried to argue that the pro forma sessions are a sham and thus that the Senate has been in recess since Dec. 17. Aside from the fact that these sessions are not, in fact, a sham—the Senate enacted the payroll tax holiday extension, President Obama's leading legislative priority, on Dec. 23 during one of those pro forma sessions—the plain language of the Constitution precludes any such conclusion. Article I, Section 5, Clause 4 requires the concurrence of the other house to any adjournment of more than three days. The Senate did not request, and the House did not agree to, any such adjournment. This means that the Senate was not in adjournment according to the Constitution (let alone in "recess," which requires a longer break).The article makes the larger case that qb was making the other day, namely that this is not an isolated incident and that Obama has routinely disregarded the constitution for his convenience."This is not the first time this administration has asserted unilateral executive power beyond past presidential practice and the seeming letter of the Constitution. Its slender justification for going to war in Libya without a congressional declaration persuaded almost no one, and its evasion of the reporting requirements of the War Powers Resolution—over the legal objections of Justice Department lawyers—was even more brazen. According to the administration, not only was our involvement in Libya not a "war" for constitutional purposes; it did not even amount to "hostilities" that trigger a reporting requirement and a 60-day deadline for congressional authorization.Indeed, the Obama administration has admitted to a strategy of governing by executive order when it cannot prevail through proper legislative channels. Rather than work with Congress to get reasonable changes to President Bush's No Child Left Behind education law, it has used an aggressive interpretation of its waiver authority to substitute the president's favored policies for the law passed by Congress. When the president's preferred cap-and-trade legislation to limit carbon emissions failed in Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would proceed by regulation instead. And when Congress refused to enact "card check" legislation doing away with secret ballots in union elections, the president's National Labor Relations Board announced plans to impose the change by administrative fiat—one of the reasons Senate Republicans have tried to block appointments."

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  4. I'm not expert in those areas, but I think the card check and carbon actions were egregious. When someone says Obama is no radical, I look at actions like that and those re DOMA and DADT and just shrug. When he said last week that it is his duty to do what he can without Congress, he gave his game away imo. I don't think what he can meant or means what the Constitution allows. It really means what he can get away with.

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  5. qb:I've always wondered about the constitutionality of the various agency regulations. Does congress really have the legal power to assign its authority to make law to an unelected body?

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  6. Scott,That's one of the Big Questions in administrative law. Phrased that way, no, clearly not. But it is an eternal struggle over whether agencies are enforcing or making laws. In these instances, the fact that Obama acted through agencies after losing battles to pass laws seems to me to make his actions hard to defend.

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  7. qb:Obviously there is some discretion and interpretation necessary in the enforcement of laws. But it seems to me the notion that federal agencies, which promulgate hundreds of new rules and regulations every year, are merely interpreting rather than creating law is absurd on its face. The very fact that they are called rules/regulations demonstrates what is really going on.

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  8. Have to add the support of the expanded POTUS power to call us enemies of the state to the list of sins. Agree on Libya and supported BHO until the 60 days ran out, then thought he was out-of-bounds. Think the recess appointments are arguable, but do reflect the tendency to arrogate unwarranted power in the POTUS.Scott – you would have to analyze each agency decision based on the power granted in the statute. Sometimes the grant of rule/regulation making authority is very broad, limited only by the purpose and funding of the statute.The alphabet agencies are sometimes called a fourth branch in that they are the spawn of legislative-executive marriage. Nothing in the grant of power to Congress or the grant of power to the Executive in the Constitution prohibits them from acting in concert, but there is a conservative school of thought that starts from the premise that no fourth branch is authorized. One current admin law issue that NoVAH has promised to comment upon is under ACA, where the HHS was granted authority to name the "essentials" of a basic health care policy, but then punted and deferred to the states.

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  9. Schoolid!=schoolid and schoolid=schoolnumber? I hate inconsistent column names…Is that query looking for kids who've switched schools?

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  10. " I've always wondered about the constitutionality of the various agency regulations. Does congress really have the legal power to assign its authority to make law to an unelected body?"Interesting question. I don't see why they'd be unable to delegate, which is what they've done. As a practical matter, it is difficult to imagine Congress taking on the entirety of the FAA's Rulebook. On the other hand, maybe they'd become too busy to foul up everything else.

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  11. Mark:Sometimes the grant of rule/regulation making authority is very broad, limited only by the purpose and funding of the statute.Does the constitution grant Congress the authority to authorize unelected bodies to make "rules/regulations" or, in laymans language, law? If not, it would seem to me that any such statutes as you describe must be unconstitutional. but there is a conservative school of thought that starts from the premise that no fourth branch is authorized.I don't want to sound flippant, but tt's hard to imagine why this would be a "conservative" school of thought. I've read the constitution, and its seems more like a reality based school of thought. No where in the constitution is a 4th branch authorized, is it?

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  12. bsimon:Interesting question. I don't see why they'd be unable to delegate, which is what they've done. Does it say in the constitution that it can?

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  13. Scott – the alternative view, the one which has prevailed, is looking at what the Constitution prohibits and deciding that if it is not prohibited than it is not in violation of the Constitution.That has prevailed because the Constitution itself is loosely written as to defining powers but tightly written as to defining prohibitions.

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  14. "then" not "than"

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  15. " Does it say in the constitution that it can?"As Mark notes .. does it say in the constitution that it can't?

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  16. Mark/bsimon:So, then, if congress wanted to establish a heredity based monarchy, and delegate its law-making powers to this monarch, it would be perfectly constitutional of them to do so? Certainly there is nothing in the constitution prohibiting it from doing so.

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  17. I'll think about that one at lunch – but at first blush the 1st, 5th and 14th Amendments would be prohibitive barriers to "heredity based". The revised question for me will be "Can Congress appoint a Special Master to create the annual budget and the revenue laws, retaining only the power to vote his/her suggestions up or down?"That might be interesting. Probably would work OK, of course.

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  18. Why would the 1st, 5th and 14th amendments be relevant?

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  19. Mark:Why not Article I, Section 9?

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  20. Think about a "hereditary" appointed position, Scott, in the context of equal protection, due process,and no establishment of religion. Think about it in terms of the Art. 1 Sec.9 prohibition on granting titles of nobility.The harder question would be my special master.

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  21. Mike beat me to the prohibition on titles section.

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  22. Mrk/Mike:I think we get around the article 1, section 9 prohibition on titles by simply calling our new monarch, say, Chariman of law making rather than King or Queen of law making.The hereditary qualifications for the new position would be established by DNA testing(science!!!) and a process ordained by congress, not God, so I don't think the prohibition on the estabishement of a state religion is at all relevant.As for due process and equal protection, again I don't see the relevance. No one is being deprived of life. liberty or property simply because there is a particular DNA qualification required for our new Chariman of lawmaking, nor is any state depriving anyone of equal protection of the law due to this qualification.

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  23. LUNCH!Hereditary positions in government deny applicants due process and equal protection as surely as positions reserved to white males or black females or Jews or Christians.———————————–A carefully crafted Special Master statute, or series of them, might work. Congress would still have to convene and directly vote, but committee work might be suspended so the assholes can campaign ALL the time.

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  24. Mark:Perhaps my problem is that I am reading the relevant amendments for what they actually say, rather than as they have been interpreted over the years. For example, I don't see how making an arbitrary characteristic a qualification for a particular government-appointed post deprives anyone of "life, liberty, or property" in any way at all, much less without due process of law. No one is being execute, no one is going to jail, no one is being fined.Note that I'm not arguing that such arbirarty qualification requirements wouldn't be unjust or wrong, just not prohibited by the plain language of the constitution itself.

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  25. Like Mark, I think the title doesn't matter as much as the "hereditary" nature. If you called it "Citizen X" and passed it down by genetics, it would still seem to conflict with Article 1, Sec. 9. But I'd imagine that the "titles of nobility" clause has not been reviewed by SCOTUS. If that reached the Roberts Court, I'm sure we'd have a long treatise about the definitions of "title" and "nobility."

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  26. " not prohibited by the plain language of the constitution itself."What looks like plain language to laymen is twisted into knots by lawyers.

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