GFL - I respect much of what you have to say and your feelings on this issue as expressed in prior posts. I am conflicted about gay marriage not on a moral basis but simply because of the long tradition of heterosexual marriage and associated two-parent child rearing. It is clear that children reared by single parents are at a disadvantage - not that this fact informs much behavior. So, for these reasons and not out of animus, I am inclined to go slowly on the issue of gay marriage.

As to the case at hand, I can only recur to the thought that "hard cases make bad law." This is a hard case, especially given my view that the less the state is involved with personal and private matters, the better. This view, as others have pointed out, is tempered in this case by a consent decree. I am glad I am not the judge. I was frequently chastised by law professors telling me to, "Not look for consistency in the law."

Was the agent threatened with deadly force? Would not the FBI and state police who were present determine - before the interview - that the subject was unarmed? It appears that there were three armed officers present with one witness. 

Of course he is a defender of the First Amendment - just one notch above his defense of the Second.

Just so. If congress is clear on agency jurisdiction, agencies may not overreach. Unfortunately, even with 2000 page bills - poorly conceived and written - agencies will likely continue to have free reign.

Having just read the salient portions of the opinion and the dissent, I easily come down with the dissent. The majority (surprisingly for Scalia) write for an ideal world in scholarly fashion. Roberts, for the dissent, makes the compelling realistic case, quoting Madison: "the accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judicial in the same hands... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

He goes on: "The accumulation of these powers in the same hands is not an occasional or isolated exception to the Constitutional plan; it is a central feature of modern American government."

Without the possibility of judicial review we are Gulliver in Liliput, bound by thousands of restraints - only in our case resembling barbed wire (some of it electrified). No court review, no wire cutters.

Bureaucracy will consider itself overburdened (running in place) until there is one bureaucrat assigned to each citizen. Come to think of it, they will need two; one to tell us what to do and another to document it.

If liberals were at all empirical, they might have noticed that not one single program has ever solved the problem it was created to solve and gone out of existence. There is surely some probability that one program would have fixed one problem were such programs ever effective. Instead the volume of righteous indignation only increases on all fronts. They insist, and the MSM acquiesces, that they be judged by their 'good' intentions, never by results.

Dave, this is a marvelous argument for small government. It should be required reading in state-run schools. Of course, were it detected in the possession of a student, he/she would be immediately suspended for thought crime on some pretext or other. Thank you!

The 'promiscuous pan-specific singles bar...' sentence beautifully adumbrates the idea presented. And it is funny.

Thank you, John, for this superb review. Indeed, it furthers my knowledge parsimoniously as I would be loathe to shell out (pun intended) the required sum. Some might call me a reluctant pupa. You have so clearly summarized the hypothesis, I doubt I would retain more by reading it in detail. I was fascinated by invertebrate zoology in college. In retrospect, I have a greater understanding of just what the subject may be teaching.

As to glossaries, our professor told us - at the end of the course - that he wanted us to become 'keen observers.' To further that goal, on the final exam was a question whose answer had appeared only once (in parenthesis) in the textbook - in the caption under a small picture. It was 'scaphognathite' - meaning 'gill bailer' - the modified second maxilliped of decapod crustaceans. I remember it 50 years later! 

I particularly agree with analyses like this, as they reduce bad government to  sins evident in individual attitudes and actions. It seems to me that false pride/hubris - as so well stated - is essential to the whole project of progressivism. No evidence to the contrary is ever acceptable to progressives. Modifying Paules slightly, the blame goes to either the opposition for 'obstruction' or not yet enough resources/control.

One might think that if progressive programs were effective, at least a few of them would have solved a problem or two by now, become unnecessary and gone out of business. One would never know that anything has even improved  judging by the ever increasing volume of whining about problems - in the face of exploding government expenditures on every supposed problem under the sun! There is just never enough coercive power or money.

Bureaucracy becomes evil by its very nature. Self-interest moves bureaucrats to ever invent new rules, lest their absence lead someone to believe their job just might not be necessary. So, year after year, rules become ever more intrusive and coercive, even as production of real things shrinks (with the resources which pay technocrats' salaries). It will end badly.

I think you make a very persuasive argument Fred, and I particularly agree that the last thing we need is a program to undo the dependencies government has created. If all the government run incentives for and rescues from self-destructive behavior were removed, individuals would quickly learn to behave in more sensible ways, and develop skills to get on with their neighbors, who would become their flesh and blood source of moral and material support. As the DMZ analogy suggests, threatened living organisms are remarkably resilient, and that includes dysfunctional humans. In short, they would have a strong incentive to become participating members of a community and maybe even find not only sustenance, but a purpose in life. 

Yes, Vald, that is the whole poem. I wasn't able to format it without double spaces between the lines. Sorry. You correctly understood it as a cri de coeur, a core plaintive wish to understand the nature of being - micro and macro - to find my place in it and the almost desperate need to connect with others, near and far. Kind of like what we do on Ricochet. I took a risk posting it. Thanks for reading.

I would take my favorite Chesterton quote -

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried,"

-and substitute the word "community" for this discussion - "Community has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."

We have become used to calling power structures communities. They are not. Perhaps true community and representative republics are incompatible. I wonder what anarcho-capitalists think about this.

In a country awash with wall-to-wall prime-time TV sexual innuendo, pornography and rampant sex between near strangers, it is positively bizarre that bureaucrats in the federal government wish to script and choreograph sexual speech and intrigue on college campuses (and that lawyers are required to interpret the rules).  It recalls the now-defunct Antioch College, which published an absurd how-to handbook with an actual script to be followed in every step of a sexual encounter. At this rate, I expect a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) in the Federal Register, consent forms and creation of an administrative court system to handle interlocutory carnal matters .

What this accomplishes is actually anti-erotic and truly tragic. What the state is saying is that our most potentially intimate interactions are actually power struggles and institutions are necessary to mediate them. What ever happened to the notion that we are each empowered to work out our relationships and differences with each other? Do college women need an agency to tell some male to get lost or to shut up?

Our state masters prescribe shriveled and desiccated human relationships. They would squeeze all the human juices out of them.

Indeed. It is as certain as the universal law of gravitation.

"All the news that fits our tint."