I posted this to get to the heart of the matter on Sotomayor and the lively discussion regarding her nomination.

I think it would behoove all of us to properly define what exactly an "activist judge" is.  I would define an activist judge as one who does not follow the law and legal precedent when making a legal determination.  Rather, such a judge would substitute what they think the law should be rather than what it is.  However, there is a caveat. 

A judge on the Supreme Court need not follow precedent, as bad precedent needs to be overturned.  A district court or appeals court judge does need to follow any precedent, regardless of how wrong that precedent is.  IIRC, Gonzalez v. Carhart was a model for how judges should act: district and appeals courts struck down the law banning partial birth abortion based on precedent and the law.  The Supreme Court then changed the precedent.

Please offer up your own definitions of an activist judge and whether or not you'd agree that courts inferior to the Supreme Court are beholden to bad precedent.

An article that caught my attention a few months ago titled "Use Your Illusions " (yes, a cheap knock off of the G'nR album ) by Slavoj Zizek in the Nov./Dec., 2008 edition of London Review of Books interestingly shows how the international left views the political landscape in the United States.

This one will be rather short (well maybe not), but I was thinking about this more and more recently and wanted to get my thoughts down on some electrons while the idea was fresh.

When talking about economic transactions, one often hears the story of the two gentlemen who, without any coercion on either's part, come to an agreement.  The buyer agrees to pay $X for a widget sold by the seller. Both men are ostensibly "better off" for the deal, which becomes a point for increasing free trade.

I suppose that both men are "better off" from their own point of view, but what about from an objective point of view?  Is there even a way to objectively measure this?  I'm bold enough to say there is!

Using a continuum, we can "visualize" the price at which a buyer would buy a good or service and at which the seller would provide the good or service.  So long as their pricelines match somewhere, they will come to an agreement.  I'll switch terminology and say that both are equally "worse off" if the area of overlap on the priceline is bisected; at this bisection is the objective "worse off" point.  This would be the point at which neither person is, comparatively speaking, better/worse off than the other.

I'll also talk a bit about fairness here, too.  This point of objectivity is also the most fair price point at which a good or service could be sold.  Being that I'm still a philosophical liberal, I enjoy government intervention on behalf of whomever is getting the more raw deal.  Nine times out of ten the seller, because he has a greater reserve of capital, can afford to be more discriminating than the buyer, which is why I support any government efforts (done within constitutional parameters, mind you) to level the playing field as it were.

Now this is under complete information assumptions.  Under incomplete information assumptions a different definition of "objective" occurs.  The "you paid WHAT for that?" is the very trival (and fuzzy) benchmark for objectivity there.  Veblen comes to mind as well when thinking about objectivity.

What say you?

Cato's monthly in depth issue online magazine.

Hat tip to Will Wilkinson .

This month's topic is free-markets vs. corporatist markets.

Says Will:

this month’s Cato Unbound should be required reading for: leftists and liberals who think libertarians are corporate shills; conservatives with Adam Smith ties who love corporations; libertarians who love Wal-Mart a little too much.

The Black Swan , by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an engaging book about an important topic. However, if a reader who is familiar with the topic(s) will not find any new ideas.

Hat tip to Arnold Kling who cites a great thought experiment from unqualified reservations . This experiment is right up my alley because it forms part of the bedrock of my perspective on society, progress and governance. I've touched on this general area of thinking in the past in various conversations and in many forms.

George Carlin has died at age 71.

Fuck.

And I use that term very deliberately given that Carlin's "Seven words you can't say on TV" ultimately became the focus of a Supreme Court case about obscenity and censorship.

Hat tip to Dr. Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek who cites a commentary in today's WSJ by David Boaz of Cato.

In the commentary, Boaz challenges the notion, implicit or explicit, put forth by the presumptive nominees which states that we as citizens should commit ourselves to higher national causes.

Boaz is obviously not impressed with this vision.

In the days before every Memorial Day I range from irritated to disgusted at all the commercialization of Memorial Day -- as in the unavoidable screams of "MEMORIAL DAY SALE!!!". I think to myself: "Who was the first a--hole with the nerve to hold and advertise a 'Memorial Day Sale'?" If 9/11 ever becomes a national (day-off) holiday, will we at some point see one TV commercial after another urging us to "Come on in for great 9/11 SAVINGS!!!" ? If that sounds sick to you -- even inconceivable -- well, that's how I feel about Memorial Day sales.

Think Tanks are valuable sources of information. No doubt. But at the same time, I think most people can admit that they can also obscure debates on issues because they do their job too well.

In a way, I'm reminded of a previous diary that grumbles a bit about the complexity of stats and how it would seem that the same raw numbers can made to support opposing arguments....gotta hand it to those think tanks.

Tyler Cowen cites and comments on on an interesting post by Brad DeLong .

Having reading a study about education, market inequality and the question, "why more people don't go to college?", by Altonji, Bharadwaj, and Lange, Brad Delong concludes:

Altonji, Bharadwaj, and Lange do not know.

That is the title of this latest entry at The Art of the Possible, a libertarian/liberal fusionist website for deep discussion on the sometimes colliding, sometimes overlapping world views.

"Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you." I think I like that formulation of the Golden Rule a bit better than the one I have heard more often, "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." For one thing, it makes it that much more difficult to justify the kind of logic that we discussed ad nauseum recently.

Promoted by Brendan

They say people speak (or write) when they cease to be at peace with their thoughts. So let me get this out

I've been throwing around this idea on how to further increase the uniqueness of our niche here at Swords Crossed. In keeping with the name of the site, I propose that we have a internal (fencing-themed) debate among ourselves in a "co-diary" format. We'd have two of our fellow "Swordsman" do and 3 point back-and forth (opening point, rebuttals, and closing point) Here's (roughly) how it would work:

I'm sure most people have probably heard Thomas Jefferson's oft-cited quote about government and newspapers:

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

Yes. One of my favorite quotes from our third President. I can't say I disagree. :)

On that note, one would think Jefferson was a big fan of the press....perhaps not.

Consider:

In this country many of us equate strength with the lack of emotion. The strong one is the one who can endure life without feeling. The weak one is the one who shows their emotions and thus are banished to a life of disappointment and tragedy. With the introduction of the political narrative of Barack Obama there has been a lot of talk about the word hope. I don’t ever recall this word being dissected to the degree that it has been during his unlikely run towards the White House. One would believe that no other politician has ever invoked the word in an election before.

Hat tip to Arnold Kling for pointing to this:

Austrian School Economist Peter Klein of the University of Missouri shares two great quotes from great thinkers that embody some of his views on democratic governance (and I wholeheartedly agree):

the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests.

A recent discussion about limited resources and economic growth and their relationship as it affects our sustainability got me thinking about a book I just finished last week: The Logic of Life by Tim Harford .

Most people who regularly post here know my basic political temperament. At the core, I'm essentially a progressive/socialist with a few odd libertarian and federalist streaks. What puts me solidly in the libertarian camp on federal issues is my strict constructionist/originalist view of the Constitution. For instance, I really like the idea of social security, Medicare, the welfare state, etc., but in my view the Constitution authorizes no branch of government to create these programs. The Supreme Court has ruled otherwise.

Hat tip to the lovely Megan McArdle for this interesting article by Becker and this other one by Posner (much longer and detailed) at the Becker-Posner Blog on the state of liberalism in academia.