The abuse of the ‘standing’ argument

I mentioned a few days ago a hopeful sign in that a US District Court judge Katherine Forrest had ruled that the NDAA, an awful piece of legislation, was unconstitutional. Glenn Greenwald later wrote also hailing the ruling and examining it in more detail. He highlights the fact that the judge rejected all three of the Obama administration’s objections to the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality.

The ruling was a sweeping victory for the plaintiffs, as it rejected each of the Obama DOJ’s three arguments: (1) because none of the plaintiffs has yet been indefinitely detained, they lack “standing” to challenge the statute; (2) even if they have standing, the lack of imminent enforcement against them renders injunctive relief unnecessary; and (3) the NDAA creates no new detention powers beyond what the 2001 AUMF already provides.

Note that it was the standing issue that was used to overturn an earlier federal court ruling that the National Day of Prayer was unconstitutional.

The standing requirement makes sense in general. If people could bring lawsuits without having suffered any concrete injury, then we would be even more awash in litigation than we are now. But what constitutes a concrete injury has to be judged differently when the issue involves relative intangibles such constitutionally protected freedoms as opposed to (say) defective products.

It is significant that the judge in the NDAA case threw out the ‘standing’ dodge, rejecting the administration claim that the people bringing the case do not have the right to sue since they have not (as yet) suffered any injury the law. Of course, the government then also invokes national security to argue that they should not be forced to reveal if you are being targeted or not. It is a perfect Catch-22: You can’t complain because you cannot show that the law targets you and we, the only ones who know who is being targeted, are not going to tell you if you are or not.

The government will certainly appeal. Unfortunately, the higher courts have been far too sympathetic to the government whenever it claims national security for its abominable actions.

The surveillance state and whistleblowing

The Obama administration can be characterized by at least three features: vast over-reaching in its claim to executive power, egregiously violating people’s liberties, and indulging in excessive secrecy.

Whistleblowers have provided a valuable service in letting us know what is going on and exposing wrongdoing and the administration has been a vigorous prosecutor of leakers and whistleblowers, demanding access to all manner of private communications from reporters and employees in their efforts to identify and harshly punish anyone who crosses them. [Read more…]

Andy Borowitz on the Facebook IPO

I am sick to death of hearing about the Facebook IPO. Although I was one of the earliest people to create a Facebook account (and it still exists) I abandoned it a long time ago and do not even respond to friend requests anymore. I have thought seriously about closing it altogether but refrained from doing so because on occasion it has enabled long-lost friends to find me. [Read more…]

Erich Fromm

I read the works of psychologist Erich Fromm (1900-1980) voraciously when I was younger. His wrote about how humans suffered from a sense of alienation due to their estrangement with nature and with other people, and that this was a source of many mental problems and destructive behavior because they sought to fill that need by various means that did not address the fundamental problem of alienation. In his writings he suggested alternative ways of achieving fulfillment by connecting people with one another in deep and meaningful ways. [Read more…]

Goldman Sachs, short selling, and naked short selling

I do not directly trade in stocks although like anyone with a retirement account, someone is trading on the stock market with my savings. My lack of interest may be related to my lack of interest in gambling generally and to my lack of a desire to make more money. I have a job that pays me enough for my needs and that is enough. My main interest in the financial world is more on the macro side, to understand how it impacts the political and social worlds. But the recent global financial turmoil has resulted in me learning more about the world of high finance than I ever wanted. [Read more…]