Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1611.6 | 3.6 | 0.22% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2725.5 | 16.2 | 0.60% |
| Oil (WTI) | 94.24 | 0.5 | 0.53% |
| LIBOR | 0.274 | 0.000 | -0.07% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 82.35 | -0.248 | -0.30% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.11% | 0.03% | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 101.8 | -0.2 | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 100.2 | -0.2 | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 201.9 | 0.1 | |
| BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 4.16 |
Markets are flattish after initial jobless claims came in as expected. Challenger and Gray reported that announced layoffs are 41% below last year’s pace. Bonds and MBS are flat.
Moderate. Modest. Measured. That is the summary of the Fed’s Beige Book Survey of economic growth. The bright spot of the report was residential real estate construction. The Dallas District noted the strongest growth, while growth elsewhere was modest to moderate. Since this report is basically as amalgam of the various Federal Reserve District reports which have been previously released, it isn’t a market-mover.
The Senate plan to wind down the GSE’s (Corker / Warner) would liquidate Fannie and Fred, transfer all of their liabilities to Treasury. The liquidation preference would be to the US Government first, then the junior prefs, and then the common shares. Note that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s recent record profits have not gone to paying down their debt to the government – those funds have been simply revenues to the government. A new entity – The Federal Mortgage Insurance Commission would have a re-insurance role and backstop private insurance. Ginnie Mae would not be affected.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
From Ace:
@AceofSpadesHQ: Looks like we’ve all got an ObamaPhone now.
LikeLike
Good one from the Ace archives:
You know what I did this morning? Maybe it would be better if I told you what I didn’t do this morning.
I didn’t have to spend over 12 hours on a transport ship in choppy water, then clamber down a cargo net into a plywood landing craft, all while carrying up to 100 pounds of gear on my back. Then, I didn’t ride through the rough surf in that little plywood target, only to have the steel ramp (the only part of the little plywood boat that was even remotely bullet-resistant) flop down and drop me into the cold ocean water in front of a beach filled with steel obstacles, mines, flying bullets & exploding artillery rounds.
I didn’t fly over enemy occupied territory at 1000 feet in a C47 cargo plane and then jump out of the plane into the teeth of enemy anti-aircraft fire. I didn’t have to worry about my bright white silk parachute making me a good target for troops on the ground who wanted to use me for target practice, and after I landed, I didn’t have to worry about engaging a vastly superior force with only the gear I carried with me (providing that said gear wasn’t ripped off by the turbulence I encountered exiting the plane) with whoever I could gather together from the other troops dropped behind enemy lines the same as I was.
Read it all.
LikeLike
Three of my Sunday School teachers co-taught our confirmation class in 1956. One was a Korean War combat vet and two were WW2 combat vets. They talked about how the war had shaped their beliefs.
Bernie H. was 19 when he landed at Normandie and 30 or 31 when he taught us. He told how they faced withering machine gun fire, and as they advanced, suddenly the guys both on his immediate right and immediate left were dead! He hit the ground. He quickly realized that at 5’4″ he had escaped the level of the machine gun burst by an inch or so.
FWIW, it made him an immediate believer but a long term agnostic.
My [mother’s] cousin Frank shelled from the relative safety of the Channel. My 8th grade teacher, formerly a college fb player, was an officer and bombardier who flew over Normandie early that morning. I was ten months old, but grew up with this in bits and pieces from family and friends.
My father’s kid brother was a Lt. who went over after D-Day and at first had a cushy job driving a General. Then came the BoBulge – where he became a de facto medic b/c the Germans were sniping all the Red Cross arm bands. He volunteered b/c he was a YMCA certified lifeguard who knew artifical respiration and bandaging wounds. He counted himself lucky to survive, but even luckier he missed landing at Omaha Beach by two months.
One adult male per farm was exempted, and my dad was the only one on our farm. But our neighbor had two teenage sons, Joe and Eddie. They missed D-Day, too, but they were with Patton. They were the least tight lipped of my neighbors, friends, and family members, with me, the eager six year old audience, in 1949. Joe went back in for KW, too. I visited Joe around 1990. Haven’t seen them since. DK if either of them are still alive.
LikeLike
mark:
He quickly realized that at 5’4″ he had escaped the level of the machine gun burst by an inch or so.
One of the many interesting tidbits that I learned a couple years ago on my WWII trip to Normandy was about those machine guns at Omaha. I had always imagined that a machine gun swung in a wide arc along the beach enabling the gunner to shoot at wherever the invaders happened to be. But apparently the machine guns were positioned in 12 different machine gun nests at various points above the beach, with something like 10 guns in each nest. Each gun was fixed in place, meaning it had a single line of fire, the “beaten path”, across the beach. And the line of fire for each gun was coordinated so as to create a strip of land across the length of the beach, the “kill zone”, making it impossible to cross the beach without running into at least one, and usually several, lines of fire.
We were at Omaha at low tide, and this picture gives you some perspective of the amount of ground that had to be covered to get to the relative safety of the seawall. Pretty chilling, actually.
LikeLike
@AceofSpadesHQ: Looks like we’ve all got an ObamaPhone now.
heh.. Wonder if this bothers the left at all..
LikeLike
RT @chucktodd: After overnight silence, Obama admin finally responds to Guardian report. Won’t confirm specifics but defends the practice.
Paranoid much wingnuts!
LikeLike
Well, it’s not like they don’t have his email and phone records already…
@JoeNBC: Pete Williams tells MJ Justice Dept will likely launch investigation against Guardian in re NSA story on seizure of Americans phone records.
LikeLike
so they’re going after the press again? cause that’s what a free society does.
LikeLike
This Tweet is from a Time Senior National correspondent. Is his perspective the correct one?
@MikeGrunwald: Oh, no, the government knows I made a 74-second phone call to my mom on March 22! This is outrageous because…um…um…
LikeLike
McWing (from Grunwald):
Oh, no, the government knows I made a 74-second phone call to my mom on March 22! This is outrageous because…um…um…
Who needs a 4th amendment at all? “Oh no, the government knows which drawer is my sock drawer. This is outrageous because…um…um…”
Good to see Time employing such clear-headed people in senior positions.
LikeLike
Read it and weep,
@jamiedupree: Sen Dianne Feinstein D-CA on NSA/phone data: “It’s called protecting America”
LikeLike
“This is outrageous because…um…um…”
I’ve nothing nice to say about that attitude.
LikeLike
“@MikeGrunwald: Oh, no, the government knows I made a 74-second phone call to my mom on March 22! This is outrageous because…um…um…”
LikeLike
Was the interviewee under oath?
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/06/nsa-chief-two-weeks-ago-were-the-only-ones-not-spying-on-the-american-people/
LikeLike
Cancer Ward read like this,
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/todd-j-gillman/20100815-Pelosi-pulled-strings-to-let-dying-7500.ece
Some are more equal than others. Will Obamacare fix this? Should it? Is the fear hyperbole?
LikeLike
McWing:
I think this is particularly notable:
“It’s not fair that other people can’t pick up the phone and make the government give them a drug. … It was just such an awakening about how the drug companies have so much power.”
So let’s get this straight…drug companies have to get approval from a government agency in order to sell their drugs; they have to get approval from a government agency in order for its drugs to be used not just in general but to treat specific conditions; if they allow it to be used for non-approved conditions with an adverse outcome, they are at risk of government prosecution; in this specific case it was a politician who somehow and mysteriously was able to get a government agency to give its permission to Mayo to use the drug regardless of what the drug company said.
And yet this whole experience has “awakened” this woman to how much power drug companies have? The mind truly boggles at the incapacity of some people to see what is sitting right in front of them.
LikeLike
Hmmmm
http://t.co/fa7s13tYPu
LikeLike
Scott,
I’ll paraphrase Rep. McDermott, “The drug companies wouldn’t face such regulation if they didn’t produce drugs. Really, it’s their own fault.”
LikeLike
” Pelosi cajoled the FDA to find a legal justification ”
I bet it wasn’t that hard. rule of man, not law. we make it complicated so we can reward .. or punish .. as needed. crap, i’ve got reams of regs on in my office. with enough work, I could likely find something vague enough for the justification.
LikeLike
So what is the worst part of this story?
1] Baron could pull strings I cannot.
2] His widow thinks this has something to do with the drug company’s power [as so well stated by Scott].
3] Pelosi acted on behalf of a contributor.
4] FDA approved based on Pelosi’s pressure.
5] Baron was not as deserving of special treatment as Mother Theresa or many people who are not saints.
I think 3] and 4] are business as usual – remember Dr. Frist and keeping that brain dead woman alive.
I think 1] is a big deal. I also never liked Fred, so 5] plays for me. And 2]? That is just nuts on its face, and I hope most people catch it.
LikeLike
McWing:
Is that a real quotation?!?
LikeLike
No, he was lecturing Tea Party groups being discriminated against by the IRS that try wouldn’t have faced such scrutiny if they did not apply for the tax status. That its their fault the IRS hit them.
LikeLike
Here’s a vid of Bagdad Jim saying “baby, why’d you make me hit you?”
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/04/jim-mcdermott-to-tea-party-groups-you-brought-this-irs-scrutiny-on-yourselves-by-applying-for-tax-exemption-you-know/
LikeLike
McWing:
Here’s a vid of Bagdad Jim
Ah, now I get it.
LikeLike
“That is just nuts on its face, and I hope most people catch it.”
unlikely, IMHO, this is “pelosi and selfless FDA slay greedy company”
LikeLike
Mark,
I’m sure a few more regulations will fix it.
LikeLike
From those wingnuts at the NYT:
The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.
LikeLike
Interesting bit on Panetta,Moynihan and leaks.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350345/leaky-leon-strikes-again-tevi-troy
LikeLike
Wyden weighs in,
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/350345/leaky-leon-strikes-again-tevi-troy
LikeLike
$10 says we find out Ibama had more people waterboarded then Bush.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
LikeLike
Look, I clicked on that porn site by accident.
Seriously.
Obama’s gonna be pissed when he reads about this tomorrow.
LikeLike
I know there’s a lot going on, and I’ve been gone for a day and a half, but this, among many other things y’all have talked about in the last 24 hours or so is really bothering me tonight.
Every Senate Republican except Dan Coats of Indiana (who didn’t cast a vote) just voted to sustain a filibuster against Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island’s bill to extend low interest rates on college loans. Independent Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia joined the Republicans. Needing 60 votes to end debate and have a vote on the actual bill, the Senate only came up with fifty-one votes. If Congress can’t agree to do something, college loan interest rates will double on July 1st.
Republicans know that they are doing catastrophically badly with voters under thirty, and this is how they deal with it. I guess I am glad that they are so terrible at politics.
Quoted in full from Booman.
Is this really necessary?
I’ll check into the links re the Verizon crap manana.
LikeLike
The WSJ defends the NSA’s data-mining effort.
The critics nonetheless say the NSA program is a violation of privacy, or illegal, or unconstitutional, or all of the above. But nobody’s civil liberties are violated by tech companies or banks that constantly run the same kinds of data analysis. We bow to no one in our desire to limit government power, but data-mining is less intrusive on individuals than routine airport security. The data sweep is worth it if it prevents terror attacks that would lead politicians to endorse far greater harm to civil liberties.
The program was blessed by Congress in the Patriot Act and its later amendments, with broad powers for the NSA to obtain and monitor “any tangible things” including “records, papers, documents, and other items” in order to “protect against international terrorism.” As for the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches, the Supreme Court has long held (Smith v. Maryland, 1979) that there is no legitimate expectation of privacy for phone records that are held by a third party, which can be seized without a warrant.
BTW, I have been meaning to ask you all about a slightly different but related issue, the whole DNA thing from the other day, about which I do not have a strong opinion. Is there a substantive difference between the police taking fingerprints from someone in custody and the police taking DNA from the same person?
LikeLike
jnc…this Bud’s for you.
U.S. and British authorities are preparing to bring criminal charges against former employees of Barclays PLC for their alleged roles trying to manipulate benchmark interest rates, according to people familiar with the plans, marking an escalation of a global investigation now entering its sixth year.
The charges are likely to be filed this summer, these people said, roughly a year after the big British bank became the first institution to settle over allegations that it attempted to rig the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and other widely used financial benchmarks. The people cautioned that the plans aren’t finalized and could be delayed or modified.
It will be interesting to see if they go after just the high profile traders involved, or if they also prosecute the relatively low paid back-office people who were actually responsible for submitting the rate to the BBA. Count me skeptical that they can actually get a conviction on this. I think the definition of LIBOR was ambiguous enough to give banks leeway in what they submitted, and I also think they will have a difficult time proving that any attempted manipulation was successful. It seems to me the strongest case they might have is regarding coordination among several banks, but I don’t know how they make that case if they are only going after the employees of one bank. There is also, of course, the fact that for at least part of the time (during the ’07/’08 crisis period) the authorities knew what was happening and tacitly approved it.
LikeLike
What has happened to the R alternative suggestion, Lms? Is it still alive?
LMS, I agree with you that there is a student debt load issue that is critical for too many and a possible brake on the economy, as a whole. I don’t know that the ultimate resolution has a lot to do with capping rates at 3.4%. I thought a sliding market cap on a federal loan made more sense.
But the underlying problem that college can easily cost more than the individual ROI will justify is real. You know that I think CCs are a big part of the answer. And I think states should support their university systems much more than they do now. I think it is so in the interest of each state to do this that it should be obvious to the lege. What I don’t think is that this should become a federal problem.
I know – once we federalized the student loans it became a federal problem. But think how skewed this is. States now determine how much they will charge the federal loan program, in effect, to subsidize what their leges will not pay for.
Again: if there is enough public will to get subsidized student loan programs they should be done in each state that is willing.
You know I think information and by extension education are public goods[Scott does not]. I just don’t think they are federal level responsibilities, with few well defined exceptions.
I also wonder why we have singled student loans out for no bankruptcy relief. The Bankruptcy Act has been a great boon to the economy since virtually the founding of the republic. In fact, I think the narrowing of the protection achieved by the banks and their no. one friend former Sen. Dodd, and their number two friend, former Sen. Biden, in the first decade of this century were a bad idea.
LikeLike
mark/lms:
LMS, I agree with you that there is a student debt load issue that is critical for too many and a possible brake on the economy, as a whole.
My thinking is that if there is a student debt load problem (and there surely is) it makes absolutely no sense to encourage students to take on more debt by offering them loans at below-market rates, especially for degrees which give them little or no chance to be able to pay off the debt. If banks were doing such a thing (which they wouldn’t given that it makes no economic sense for them) there would be outrage over “predatory” lending. But when the government does it it becomes essential public policy, and the outrage gets directed at those who want to end it. Weird.
You know I think information and by extension education are public goods[Scott does not].
You are right that I do not, but let’s assume for the moment that you are correct and that education is a public good that the government should provide. Shouldn’t, then, the government restrict its educational offerings only to those areas of study that are demonstrably beneficial to society? Roads are a classic public good, but the government doesn’t just build roads anywhere for anybody who wants one. It targets specific areas for specific reasons that are presumed to provide benefits to everyone. So presumably the same should be true of education. What possible “public good” could be provided by an English major with a minor in Women’s Studies?
LikeLike
Former NSC spokesman for Obama,
@TVietor08: I am so pissed about invasions of my privacy that I’m going to tweet about it and post an angry open letter on my non-private Facebook page
LikeLike
Whither rate shock?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/06/07/the-war-on-bros-exchange-subsidies-wont-protect-young-people-from-obamacares-higher-insurance-premiums/
LikeLike
Serious and excellent article, I think, George.
LikeLike
Mark I agree on the Community Colleges and think they’re a great and useful resource for students, the states and families. Unfortunately, unless you’re just going for some sort of certification or basic training in a specific trade or technical expertise, at some point a student needs to move on to a four year college. Then of course there are the various state universities, for the most part I think they’re still a bargain and somewhat affordable, at least here in CA. Of course we have the problem here of serious budget cuts and new enrollment constraints as well as risk to four year degrees because of class availability. But nevertheless, our family certainly took advantage of the state school opportunities.
And then at some point you run into the graduate programs and the high cost of some of the schools. I think that’s where an awful lot of students run into the risk of ROI problems. I know that’s what happened here to two of our kids, well, my nephew and our oldest daughter. The other two managed to navigate the system much better.
I’m not sure about the federal Stafford loans and the interest rates but it seems to me if the Feds are going to be in the business of guaranteeing these loans they ought to make sure the interest rates remain as low as possible. Otherwise, I agree, leave it to the states.
Anyone who knows me at all will know I do believe the federal government has some interest in educating our youth but that’s an entirely different issue than the interest rates I think.
I also think that the bankruptcy laws should hold some sort of process by which student loans can be forgiven, reduced or otherwise managed rather than ruin the entire future of a young person who made some bad choices based on faulty assumptions, many of which were presented by the universities themselves. I wonder about the accountability issues for the schools and the loan counselors etc.
LikeLike
Regarding the student loan bills, we have one bill that passed the House along Republican lines a couple of weeks ago and another bill that failed in the Senate this week which was largely supported by Democrats. It’s my understanding, although I could be wrong, that we’ve already eliminated new subsidized Stafford loans as of 2011 and the loans they’re talking about are existing subsidized loans.
LikeLike
I admit I haven’t had a chance to get caught up on all the wiretapping of phones, if that’s how they’re doing it, and it’s happening on the internet as well obviously, but really I think we have the Patriot Act to thank and Democrats like DiFi who like the status quo, and Obama as well. I blame them right now because they’re the ones in charge but this all obviously began in a Republican administration.
It’s too bad there’s no one really in office now with the power to unwind the encroachment on our civil liberties. And unless someone challenges it with a real grassroots backing from the people I expect this is the new normal. Pretty discouraging considering how hard this country fought to preserve not only our rights but the rights of others, only to find out we really just give lip service to the notion.
LikeLike
I also wonder why we have singled student loans out for no bankruptcy relief.
I think this is a holdover from when lots of private loans were being issued. Now that the program is much more federalized undoing this may be seen as a giveaway or encouraging moral hazard. Because a snookered person with useless vo-tech degree is not Too Big Too Fail.
LikeLike
mark:
I also wonder why we have singled student loans out for no bankruptcy relief.
Presumably because the money is owed to the government rather than a private creditor.
I may misunderstand how this works (or worked), but isn’t this just an example of the government allowing itself to follow different rules than those everyone else has to follow? My understanding is that normally in a bankruptcy all the creditors get in line to get partial repayment while all claims over the debtor are wiped away. So if the government has guaranteed a student loan from a private bank, and the student goes bankrupt thereby defaulting on the loan, the government is obligated to make the private bank whole. This in turn makes the government a creditor to the bankrupted borrower. Normally the government would have to get in line with everyone else and get whatever partial payment they can as the claim is wiped out. But in this case the government is allowed to keep the claim in perpetuity. As far as I know, this is a benefit that no other creditor in a bankruptcy can ever get.
Am I missing something, or is the process different than what I understand it to be?
LikeLike
It was a reaction to previous high profile abuse where doctors and lawyers would file bankruptcy, discharge their debt, then immediately begin a lucrative practice as a result of their education credentials. I.e. it was impossible for the trustee to seize the education “asset” and distribute it among the creditors.
This was highlighted in the Congressional hearings prior to the law changes in 1978.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/16/us-student-loan-crisis-idUSBRE87F01220120816
LikeLike
“I also think that the bankruptcy laws should hold some sort of process by which student loans can be forgiven, reduced or otherwise managed rather than ruin the entire future of a young person who made some bad choices based on faulty assumptions, many of which were presented by the universities themselves. I wonder about the accountability issues for the schools and the loan counselors etc.”
The logical way to address this and balance the competing interests would be to either revise the hardship test, or not allow student loan “cramdown” or dischargability for a fixed period of time after the initial loan. I.e they have to wait say seven years before it’s eligible for modification or discharge.
LikeLike
“Is there a substantive difference between the police taking fingerprints from someone in custody and the police taking DNA from the same person?”
Read Scalia’s dissent. Fingerprints during arrest were justified based on “identification” of the person in custody if they had false ID or an alias. The majority also tried to shoehorn this in as identification, not a search of cold cases which was total BS if you read the facts.
Note that the key issue here is what is considered a reasonable search that doesn’t require a warrant when someone is arrested for an unrelated issue, but not yet convicted of anything. I don’t think DNA testing of convicted felons has been an issue.
The next logical step would be to DNA swab all people at a checkpoint say for DUI testing even if they aren’t arrested. If they figure out a way to get DNA from a breathalyzer, they should be able to bootstrap it from that.
The whole point of course is to end run the requirement of a warrant for a search.
LikeLike
jnc:
Read Scalia’s dissent.
Yeah, I figured I should do that, but haven’t had time.
Just to play devil’s advocate (again I don’t have a strong opinion on this), regardless of the ostensible reason for taking fingerprints, don’t the police still use those prints as a tool to search cold cases?
It also strikes me as a little odd that fingerprinting could be construed to be done for identification purposes, since such identification depends upon one already having been fingerprinted previously. What is the justification for taking the fingerprints the first time?
LikeLike
“Am I missing something, or is the process different than what I understand it to be?”
Under current law (BAPCPA 2005), private education loans get the same benefit as well. There have been proposals to change that. Note also that there’s a hardship test (Brunner Test)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444097904577537390098445700.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/fairness-for-struggling-students-act_n_2538832.html
http://www.bankruptcylawnetwork.com/bankruptcy-appellate-panel-gets-student-loan-test-right/
LikeLike
jnc:
Under current law (BAPCPA 2005), private education loans get the same benefit as well.
Ah….
LikeLike
jnc
This was interesting from that wsj piece.
“Sallie Mae continues to support reform that would allow federal and private student loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy for those who have made a good-faith effort to repay their student loans over a five- to seven-year period and still experience financial difficulty,” it said in a statement.
LikeLike
That’s probably the best position from a balancing standpoint.
LikeLike
Here’s the problem with the opinion:
The majority concedes the DNA swab is a search under the Fourth Amendment, but argues that a warrant isn’t required because it’s critical to identifying the person who was arrested for booking purposes. I.e. making sure they have the correct person in custody.
Scalia shoots that down by showing that the clear purpose of the statute and the processing time required for the results isn’t to identify the person with regards to the crime that they have been arrested for, but solely to search against the existing database of sexual assaults and other previous crimes where there was DNA evidence.
The majority didn’t even attempt to argue that was a legitimate purpose and balance against it, but rather stuck with the “routine identification” BS.
Click to access 12-207_d18e.pdf
LikeLike
jnc:
The majority didn’t even attempt to argue that was a legitimate purpose and balance against it, but rather stuck with the “routine identification” BS.
Yeah, I get that. But isn’t it also BS with regard to fingerprinting? Suppose I am arrested for some alleged crime, let’s say DWI. They take my fingerprints, ostensibly in order to ID me. But I have never been arrested before, and therefore never fingerprinted, so there is nothing on record against which to check my newly taken prints. How does taking my prints aid in “routine identification”? It seems to me the only point in taking my prints is to 1) check to see if I have ever been arrested before and 2) establish a record to be used in future investigations of not-yet-committed crimes. How can it be construed as simply “routine ID”?
LikeLike
Scott, there is an archaic but bright line reason why finger prints are different than DNA.
This same Court – Kennedy, both times, I think – says that drawing blood is an intrusion, but cheek swab samples are not.
The archaic bright line is that a search indicates an intrusion into a private space. Fingerprints are like photographs – external, not seized through a classic search.
This bright line is now breached.
YJ, as for NSA, you know what I think of general perusal of everything by the Gov. BS.
Scott, wrt your [hypothetical, arguendo] take on some education serving the public good, but not necessarily all, I tend to agree.
Lms, good point on some large number of young folks having been oversold. JNC, thanks for your take on the student loan situation. I think I agree.
Gotta go.
LikeLike
” But isn’t it also BS with regard to fingerprinting? ”
It wasn’t at the time they were invented and originally litigated when there wasn’t a possibility of doing a manual search against every single set of finger prints recovered from all crime scenes in the entire country per arrest.
However, the existence of a national computer based system that now makes this possible may mean that a difference of degree has become a difference in kind with regards to the Fourth Amendment.
Again, Scalia puts it better than I do and the majority opinion evades the arguments rather than addresses them.
LikeLike