text:
Showing posts with label constitution. Show all posts
State constitutional law offers untapped potential to bolster advocacy in freedom of information
The Vermont Supreme Court relied on the 1777 Vermont
Constitution, as amended in 1786, to support access to
information under the public records act (PRA, or FOIA)
In the summer, two third-year law students published in the Journal of Civic Information a superb investigation highlighting the untapped potential of state constitutional law as a tool in access advocacy in the United States.
Among the many ways in which the U.S. Constitution shows its age is its lack of a right of access to information (ATI). ATI has become a recognized human rights norm in modern constitutions and regional instruments around the world, while the concept in U.S. federal law remains relegated to statute: the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which once was landmark yet today suffers from significant dysfunction. For my own part, I have examined the significance of this divergence relative to the problem of privatization in the U.S. FOIA and the South African Promotion of Access to Public Information Act (PAIA). I spoke last month to the U.S. FOIA Advisory Committee re same (HT).
The constitutional lag is not characteristic of all U.S. states. By the count of University of Florida Levin College of Law students Jessica Terkovich and Aryeh Frank, ATI is recognized in the constitutions of seven states: California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire, and North Dakota. In their article, Terkovich and Frank examined case law in these states to see how the constitutional provisions are implicated.
The researchers found that the constitutional provisions were not realizing outcomes in ATI litigation in these states all that different from outcomes that might be reached under the states' statutory expressions of ATI. Rather than concluding that the constitutional provisions are inconsequential, however, Terkovich and Frank concluded from the evidence that constitutional ATI is under-used as a source of law to bolster access advocacy.
Their reasoning resonates with me. When I was a newly hatched academic in the 1990s, I was enchanted by an examination copy of a casebook on state constitutional law. (Lexis and West have current offerings.) I was never able to swing the course offering, but the subject informed my teaching and research. Accordingly, I've always encouraged students to consider state constitutional approaches to legal problems.
Often, state high courts recite by rote the default position that they interpret state constitutional rights as merely co-extensive with federal rights; the pairings are construed in pari materia. The proposition that the free-press-and-speech provision of Article XVI of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights is co-extensive with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was reiterated recently in the scrap over a Boston flagpole now bound for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Courts might reflexively choose the easier path, shrugging off the burden of state constitutional interpretation. But they can readily embrace state constitutionalism when it suits their needs. The Supreme Court of Arkansas long construed the 1874 state constitutional guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure in pari materia with the federal Fourth Amendment. Until they didn't. When the U.S. Supreme Court bounced back a state high court disposition as erroneous under the Fourth Amendment, the nonetheless jurisprudentially conservative Arkansas court, in 2002, suddenly discovered distinct meaning in the state constitution to support its earlier conclusion in the defendant's favor.
That result could not have happened if criminal defense lawyer John Wesley Hall had not made the argument. And that possibility, that the state constitution could mark the difference between liberty and imprisonment, was exactly why Hall included the Hail Mary claim despite longstanding precedent on the in pari materia approach, he once told me.
The potential for potency in a state constitutional claim is all the greater when the right at issue is expressed in the state constitution, but not in the federal Constitution, as is the case for ATI. And the potential is not limited to the seven states that Terkovich and Frank analyzed. Just in September, the Vermont Supreme Court extended its ATI law, the Public Records Act (PRA), to shine sunlight on the records of a private contractor responsible for healthcare in state prisons.
Vermont is not on Terkovich and Frank's list of seven. Nevertheless, in Human Rights Defense Center v. Correct Care Solutions LLC, the Vermont Supreme Court relied on exhortative language—previously held unenforceable by private cause of action—dating to 1786 in the state declaration of rights: "That all power being originally inherent in and co[n]sequently derived from the people, therefore, all officers of government, whether legislative or executive, are their trustees and servants; and at all times, in a legal way, accountable to them."
The article is Jessica Terkovich and Aryeh Frank, Constitutionalizing Access: How Courts Weigh State Constitutional Claims in Open-Government Litigation, 3(1) J. Civic Info. 1 (2021).
Labels: access to information, Aryeh Frank, constitution, constitutional law, FOIA, freedom of information, Jessica Terkovich, John Wesley Hall, Journal of Civic Information, public records, states, Vermont
Chile reflexiona sobre los derechos digitales en desarrollo de nueva constitución
Foto por jpereira via The Loop (c. 2019; CC no especificada)
[English.] La creación de una nueva constitución está en marcha en Chile, y los derechos digitales podrían figurar de manera importante en un nuevo modelo de derechos civiles.
Los votantes chilenos pidieron una convención constitucional en una votación de 2020. La actual constitución de 1980 fue redactada bajo la dictadura de Pinochet. Entró en vigor con el fin del régimen de Pinochet en 1990 con la transición del país a la democracia, pero su texto original y sus muchas enmiendas nunca han sido verdaderamente un producto de la democracia. En contraste, la presente convención se desarrolla con una asombrosa representación de la diversidad chilena, incluidos los pueblos indígenas, casi sin precedentes en la historia de las democracias occidentales.
Chile tiene un historial de marcar el ritmo legal para América Latina. Chile y Costa Rica fueron inusuales en la experiencia latinoamericana por no haberse convertido en una guerra civil después de la independencia. Esa estabilidad suministró un terreno fértil para el desarrollo legal. Andrés Bello elaboró el código civil del país, siguiendo el modelo francés, en 1857. El código Bello fue muy influyente en el continente y anima el derecho civil latinoamericano todavía hoy en día. Costa Rica se convirtió en un innovador en derechos humanos en el sistema interamericano en el siglo XX.
Una propuesta de línea de base en el proceso chileno exige como mínimo el acceso a internet como un derecho humano. La realización del derecho requeriría el desarrollo de la infraestructura de internet en todo el vasto país, 2,653 millas de norte a sur, abarcando desiertos y montañas. La responsabilidad del gobierno sería sustancial. No se podía dejar que el sector privado desarrollara la infraestructura de internet con los márgenes de ganancia derivados de la densidad de población, una limitación que ha atrofiado la penetración de Internet de alta velocidad en los Estados Unidos.
Pero el acceso a internet es solo un mínimo, y hay muchas otras propuestas sobre la mesa que llevarían los derechos humanos convencionales, como la libertad de expresión y la privacidad, al mundo en línea. Muchos países han reconocido aspectos de los derechos humanos convencionales en el entorno en línea. Incluso en los Estados Unidos, los tribunales han reconocido que las órdenes judiciales civiles y penales que limitan el acceso de una persona a internet pueden contravenir los derechos civiles si no se adaptan estrictamente.
La idea que el acceso a Internet para recibir información, en lugar de hablar, ha sido una propuesta precaria en los derechos humanos, de la misma manera que los regímenes modernos de derechos humanos siempre han luchado con el acceso a la información (ATI). Hace diez años, un informe del Relator Especial de la ONU sobre la libertad de expresión describió acertadamente el acceso a internet como un derecho "habilitador" ("enabler" right). En los últimos años, expliqué esta caracterización del ATI en el marco moderno de los derechos humanos.
Participantes del proceso constitucional chileno, coordinado por Patricio Urriola Aballai, director ejecutivo de la Fundación Abriendo Datos, publicaron en mayo una "Carta Magna Digital" que explora el potencial de los derechos digitales para ser reconocidos como derechos humanos. HT @ Observacom.
Labels: access to information, Chile, comparative law, constitution, constitutional law, free speech, human rights, Internet, Latin America
Atlas Obscura fills in fuzzy history of title, 'esquire'
Squire (NYPL)
Atlas Obscura has an excellent piece on the title "Esquire" and its connection to the American legal profession. The writer is L.A.-based freelancer Dan Nosowitz. He writes:
One of the weirder movements in modern American political action attempted to attack a title so vigorously that it would have essentially collapsed the entire history of the American government. The movement didn't succeed, because it was both factually wrong and wildly misguided, but it was wrong in a really interesting way. It relied on the title "Esquire," which is one of the more common but most unusual ways a person can ask to be addressed.
The essay is Dan Nosowitz, What Does the Title "Esquire" Mean, Anyway?: And What Does it Have to Do with Lawyering?, Atlas Obscura, Feb. 3, 2021.
Labels: 13th Amendment, Atlas Obscura, common law, constitution, Dan Nosowitz, England, esquire, history, lawyers, legal profession, professionalism
Amid pandemic, ballot access restrictions yield to right to run for office, state supreme court rules
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, political candidates will have to produce only half the usual number of voter signatures to see their names on the state primary ballot, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled Friday. One justice in concurrence chastised the Massachusetts government for dropping the ball in technology to respond to the crisis.
Massachusetts primary ballots in 2016 (GPA Photo Archive CC BY-SA 2.0)
A primary election in the United States occurs at the state level before the nationwide Election Day in early November. Voters in a primary election choose which candidates from each party will qualify for the final ballot on Election Day. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts held its primary election for the U.S. Presidency on March 3; the primary election for state candidates to state and federal offices is set for September 1. Candidates will vie for a U.S. Senate seat, nine U.S. House seats, 40 state senate seats, and 160 state house seats. Some states with earlier scheduled elections postponed their primaries. For example, Rhode Island postponed its same-day presidential and state primary election from April 28 to June 2. The later timetable in Massachusetts leaves no room for postponement if officials are to prepare ballots timely for Election Day.
Declared on March 10, a state of emergency arose in Massachusetts at a crucial time for political candidates to collect signatures to qualify for ballots in the state primary election. Party candidates were expected to submit signatures to state officials by April 28, for state offices, and by May 5, for federal offices. The requisite number of signatures ranges from 150, for a state house seat, to 10,000, for a U.S. Senate seat. Procured signatures in Massachusetts must be "wet," that is, given live, in ink; there is not yet a legal process to collect, nor a technical capacity to certify, electronic signatures.
Customers line up at social distance to enter my local grocery store.
Photo in Barrington, R.I., Apr. 5, 2020, by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-SA 4.0.
Naturally the coronavirus lockdown has complicated the collection of wet signatures. Candidates and their supporters ordinarily canvass voters door to door and at places where people congregate, such as shopping malls. Social distancing restrictions came into effect just after the halfway point in the time window for collecting signatures. Candidates sought relief from the executive and legislative branches of Massachusetts government. Executive election officials said they were powerless to change statutory deadlines, and bills to relax signature requirements stalled in the legislature. I note, it's hardly in the interest of incumbents and their well-oiled politicking machines to facilitate the raising up of rivals.
Written or not, the right to seek representative office must be, to some degree, a civil, or human, right in a democracy. In Massachusetts, the right is written. Article 9 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights states, "All elections ought to be free; and all the inhabitants of this commonwealth, having such qualifications as they shall establish by their frame of government, have an equal right to elect officers, and to be elected, for public employments."
Article 9 of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution
(Massachusetts Historical Society Collection)
The provision dates, unaltered, to the original 1780 Massachusetts Constitution (Papers of John Adams, vol. 8) and gave candidates now seeking access to the Massachusetts primary a plain hook to plead for judicial intervention. On April 8, three representative plaintiffs, including two Democrats and one Republican, two seeking federal office and one seeking state office, filed an emergency petition for declaratory relief.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has long recognized that the state constitutional right to run for office may confer judicial protection against overreaching legislative or executive restrictions on access to the ballot. The provision was used to support women's suffrage in 1922, if only after the 19th Amendment (1920). The Court rejected a ballot access challenge to statute by Libertarian candidates in 2012; however, in dictum the Court reiterated its competence to adjudicate an article 9 claim and even cited article 9 in tandem with the inherent judicial power, as articulated in the landmark same-sex marriage decision in 2003, to extend Massachusetts civil rights beyond the scope of the U.S. Constitution. Notwithstanding the power of judicial review, the Court's experience in examining ballot access law under article 9 has before now resulted entirely in the approval of "reasonable" or "legitimate" qualifications for office.
Structurally, the Massachusetts Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, disfavors judicial intervention in the electoral process. "As a general matter, the principle of separation of powers … prevents the 'judiciary [from] substituting its notions of correct policy for that of a popularly elected Legislature,'" the Court wrote in the instant case, quoting precedent. The plaintiffs' challenge here called for "policy judgments that, in ordinary times would be best left to the Legislature."
"Signing a Petition" by Elizabeth Jenkins CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Yet, the Court wrote, "[n]o fair-minded person can dispute that the fundamental right to run for elective office has been unconstitutionally burdened or interfered with by the need to obtain the required 'wet' signatures in the midst of this pandemic." Had the legislature passed a law similarly burdening ballot access in the absence of the pandemic, the Court reasoned, surely it would be ripe for judicial review under article 9. Thus, "where fundamental constitutional rights are violated, and where the Legislature fails to remedy the constitutional deficiencies after having had the opportunity to do so, and where an aggrieved litigant files suit seeking remedial relief for the constitutional violation, the judiciary must provide such a remedy."
The Court struggled with the appropriate level of judicial scrutiny, an issue that similarly has confounded the U.S. Supreme Court in its case law over free speech and campaign finance regulation. U.S. constitutional law tends to approach civil rights problems from a formalist framework of tiered judicial scrutiny, its intensity ranging from zero, or minimal "rational basis" analysis, to presumptive unconstitutionality and stringent "strict scrutiny." This framework at first glance contrasts with the much more flexible European approach that functionalizes construction of "necessary in a democratic society," though critics fairly allege that the U.S. Supreme Court's tiered scrutiny has flexed functionally in application.
"Magnifying Glass" by Tall Chris CC BY 2.0
Like the U.S. Supreme Court, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has employed the language of both strict scrutiny and rational, or "legitimate" basis, in article 9 jurisprudence. The Court explained: "When we evaluate the constitutionality of a restriction on access to the ballot, we apply a 'sliding scale approach, … through which [we] weigh the character and magnitude of the burden the State's rule imposes on the plaintiffs' rights against the interests the State contends justify that burden, and consider the extent to which the State's concerns make the burden necessary.'" In other words, the degree of scrutiny is elevated as a function of the degree of burden. Critics such as me contend that setting the appropriate degree of scrutiny only after purporting to observe the degree of burden invites the tail to wag the dog. But that's not important just now. The Court found the burden here to be high enough, whatever language might be used to describe it, to demand strict scrutiny.
Though signature requirements might be modest and legitimate burdens on ballot access in the best of times, the Court opined that the signature requirements are excessively burdensome amid the present pandemic. To reach that conclusion, the Court equated evolving social context with emergency electoral context:
[A]s we have recognized, statutory requirements that were once considered constitutionally permissible may later be found to interfere significantly with a fundamental right as societal conditions and technology change [indirectly citing the aforementioned same-sex marriage case]…. And similarly, statutory requirements that in ordinary times impose only modest burdens on prospective candidates for public office may significantly interfere with the fundamental right to run for political office in a time of pandemic.
Observers may opine whether, or when, that equation holds. Though maybe not surprising when articulated by a progressive state court, the declaration simultaneously authorizes judicial aggrandizement in the expansion of human rights relative to time and in the constriction of human rights relative to exigency. Potential implications abound, for example, in reconciling personal privacy with free speech, or climate change mitigation with free markets. For present purposes, the Court concluded that the signature requirements as applied could not withstand strict scrutiny.
By the time it reached remedy, the Court had painted itself into a corner. The existing signature regime could not stand, yet the executive and the legislature refuse to solve the problem. Plaintiffs invited the Court to simply void the signature requirement on this go-around. But the state cried caution, fairly fearing that throwing open the doors of ballot access would result in incomprehensible ballot chaos for voters. I would be inclined to find the state's position paternalistic, but I remember hanging chads.
By Maklay62 at Pixabay
Admittedly loath to parse numbers, the Court invoked a Solomonic solution. Observing that the emergency arose at about the halfway point of signature collection, the Court cut signature requirements by 50%. The state had suggested that the requirement be cut only for offices requiring 1,000 or more signatures, presumably because of the chaos-will-reign concern, not the incumbency-will-be-threatened concern. The bills stalled in the legislature would have taken that approach, too, reducing signatures from whatever number over 1,000 by half or two-thirds. But the Court found itself without a sufficient basis to adopt the 1,000-signature cut-off, so applied the 50% rule across the board.
The Court issued two further declarations of equitable relief. It extended the deadlines for candidates to submit signatures for state certification from April 28 to May 5, for state offices, and from May 5 to June 2, for federal offices, taking into account the pleadings of the state as to the minimal time needed to prepare ballots. Second, the Court ordered state election officials to find a way to accept and certify electronic rather than wet signatures. These additional measures the Court calculated in recognition of the difficulty, but not impossibility, of continuing to collect voter signatures during the lockdown.
Justice Kafker (Mass.gov)
Only one judge wrote a separate opinion. In concurrence, Associate Justice Scott L. Kafker chastised the state for falling behind the curve in electoral technology:
In this "high tech" era, and in the midst of a global pandemic that severely restricts close personal contact, the failure to be able to solve manageable technological problems on the eve of an election is confounding and distressing. At a time when we need to be fundamentally rethinking what must be done in person and what can instead be done electronically, our electoral process seems dangerously unequipped to adapt to a new paradigm.
Justice Kafker pointed with approval to the electronic voter registration system adopted in Arizona. The Court opinion in a footnote had pointed to Arizona similarly, as well as to technological adaptations in electoral process in New Jersey and Florida in response to the pandemic.
Justice Kafker concluded:
I feel compelled to emphasize that those responsible for our election process must have the necessary tools to quickly adapt to the current pandemic and the future crises to follow. Absent such technological adaptability, our elections will be imperiled and our election laws may themselves have to be rewritten in the midst of a crisis, as was done here. That is an invitation to conflict and confusion that must be avoided.
Voters line up in Boxborough, Mass., in the 2016 primary.
Photo by Liz West CC BY 2.0.
To read between those lines an entreaty to the legislature for funding would not, I think, be too speculative. Lawyers and judges especially are aware of how badly Massachusetts has lagged behind other states in digitizing legal practice and public access to court records.
It would not be a stretch moreover to suppose that Justice Kafker was especially pained to meddle with the specific numeric qualifications for ballot access. He was appointed to the Supreme Judicial Court in 2017 by Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican. In the course of his career, Justice Kafker served as deputy legal counsel to Governor Bill Weld. A past Libertarian candidate for Vice President and outsider Republican candidate for President, Weld was challenging President Donald Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination until Weld suspended his campaign on March 18. Republicans identify with formalism in constitutional interpretation, and Libertarians identify with judicial restraint in rule making, if also, practically, with relaxation of ballot access restrictions.
At the same time, Justice Kafker's conclusion might readily be understood to voice widespread American anxiety over electoral integrity in general, especially in the crosscurrents of equivocal Washington reaction to Russian tampering.
The case is Goldstein v. Secretary of the Commonwealth, No. SJC-12931 (Mass. Apr. 17, 2020). Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants authored the unanimous opinion.
Labels: ballot access, civil rights, constitution, coronavirus, election, equity, Justice Kafker, Massachusetts, pandemic, politics, separation of powers, strict scrutiny, Supreme Judicial Court, technology, voter rights
Scharf laments executive disrespect for courts in immigration enforcement
My friend and colleague Irene Scharf has written for the Human Rights At Home blog on "mid-case deportations" by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Professor Scharf is expert in immigration law, which I know next to nothing about. But Professor Scharf raises the alarm about worrisome incidents of executive defiance of the courts, implicating the separation of powers and raising questions about the very rule of law in America today.
Responding to a Boston Globe editorial (pay wall) at the end of February, Professor Scharf wrote on March 20:
While I of course deplore the acts these crimes involved [subject of charges against immigration detainees], as an immigration lawyer and advocate I am deeply disturbed by ICE's systematic and ongoing attacks on the Massachusetts judicial system. The Globe editors referred to their hope that the federal courts will address and contain these actions. However, given what we've seen recently, it is unclear whether the federal government, acting through ICE, would even abide by a federal ruling. To me, that is the most alarming issue behind these ICE moves.
She quoted respected Seventh Circuit Judge Easterbrook in a recent opinion (Justia), "We have never before encountered defiance of a remand order, and we hope never to see it again.... [I]t should not be necessary to remind the Board [of Immigration Appeals], all of whose members are lawyers, that the 'judicial Power' under Article III of the Constitution is one to make conclusive decisions, not subject to disapproval or revision by another branch of government."
Labels: appellate practice, constitution, courts, deportation, enforcement, Frank Easterbrook, ICE, immigration, Irene Scharf, rule of law, separation of powers
COVID-19 stresses United States on domestic borders; war analog might foster state solidarity upon federal power
Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo was recently
threatened with a lawsuit by New York Governor Andrew
Cuomo. U.S. Air National Guard Photo
by Master Sgt Janeen Miller (2016).
I have just published at the new blog, Law Against Pandemic. Here is the abstract:
The coronavirus pandemic is stressing not only our healthcare systems, but our political and legal systems. The pandemic has challenged our sense of identity in humankind, pitching us back and forth between a spirit of global solidarity and a competition of human tribes for resources and survival. That tension plays out in our political and legal responses to the pandemic, manifesting the natural human temptation to tribalism in both international and intranational dimensions.
As policymakers struggle to respond to the pandemic and to curb the outbreak of COVID-19, I have been struck by the emergence of interstate tensions in the United States. The pressure of the pandemic, aggravated by a slow and uncertain governmental response at the federal level, has been a brusque reminder that the United States are a plural: a federation of states that famously endeavored "to form a more perfect Union," but that, like human governance itself, remains a work in progress.
Read more at the new blog, Law Against Pandemic
Posted by Richard Peltz-Steele at 11:41 AM No comments:
Labels: Commerce Clause, constitution, coronavirus, due process, Fourteenth Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Gina Raimondo, New York, pandemic, Privileges and Immunities, public health, Rhode Island, states
Massachusetts Bar honors UMass Law's Francomano, advocate for labor, public education
Francomano center. MassBar eJournal photo.
Attorney Patrick Francomano is a first-class person and excellent teacher, one of the assets that makes UMass Law a best-buy treasure for law students and the Commonwealth. He's a tremendous public servant—and in the same vein, frequent thorn in the side of those in power through his work in labor and in school supervision. I'm delighted to see him and the work he represents honored by the Massachusetts Bar. From UMass Law News and the MassBar eJournal:
"Francomano draws inspiration from John Adams's efforts to establish Massachusetts as one of the first states to grant a constitutional right to education. He believes that public education and the legal system rest on many of the same tenets, and that 'education and social justice are very difficult to disconnect.' As Francomano explained, 'If you have a well-educated society, that is going to be the foundation of a good republic and democracy.'"
Labels: constitution, John Adams, labor, legal education, legal profession, Massachusetts, Patrick Francomano, public education, University of Massachusetts
Abraham & White would limit further extension
of First Amendment as tort defense
In a new article, Kenneth S. Abraham and G. Edward White, University of Virginia Law, argue against the further extension of the First Amendment ("imperialism") to constitutionalize tort law when torts are accomplished through speech. Specifically, they study the First Amendment in defamation, privacy, and IIED before contemplating the First Amendment problems that lurk in fraud, product disparagement, product warning defect, and interference. The interference problem has interested me since The Insider. En route to their conclusion, the authors critically examine the truth-falsity dichotomy. Here is the abstract for First Amendment Imperialism and the Constitutionalization of Tort Liability.
To what extent does the First Amendment impose limits on the permissible scope of tort liability? Until recently, the clear answer would have been, "only under very limited circumstances." During the last few decades, however, the First Amendment has been so greatly expanding its empire that giving this answer is no longer possible. "All bets are off" would be a more accurate answer, because the forms of speech to which the Supreme Court has extended First Amendment protection have become impressively broad. Although existing First Amendment restrictions on the permissible scope of tort liability currently are limited, the very existence of those restrictions confirms that many torts involving speech potentially are subject to First Amendment protection. And many torts do involve speech – the duty to warn about the dangers of prescription drugs, fraud, and even some forms of simple negligence are just a few examples.
If the First Amendment of the future limited all or even many of these different constitutionally unprotected forms of tort liability, then its scope would be pervasive. We contend, however, that neither existing First Amendment doctrine nor sensible constitutional policy supports extending free speech protection to torts that are accomplished through speech, except in extremely narrow circumstances. Extending First Amendment protection to such torts would aggravate what we argue are two of the principal risks posed by First Amendment imperialism: the erosion of the cultural distinction between truth and falsity, and devaluation of the status of speech about matters of public concern. Our contention is that most of the forms of speech involved in torts that are accomplished through speech currently are, and should remain, excluded from First Amendment protection. To support this contention, we examine the First Amendment's extension to previously unprotected forms of speech over the last three-quarters of a century, compare the new First Amendment protections to the doctrinal elements of a series of torts that always or often are accomplished through speech, and argue that it would make little sense, as a matter of tort or constitutional law, to restrict liability for those torts on First Amendment grounds.
Hat tip @ TortsProf.
Labels: constitution, defamation, First Amendment, freedom of speech, infliction of emotional distress, privacy, product liability, tortious interference
Duncan proposes unanimity requirement for U.S. Supreme Court to override Congress
UMass Law Professor Dwight Duncan
My colleague Professor Dwight Duncan has published an article in constitutional law, A Modest Proposal on Supreme Court Unanimity to Constitutionally Invalidate Laws, 33:1 BYU J. Pub. L. 1. Here is the introduction, footnotes omitted:
There is a problem in our constitutional history: the problem of split Supreme Court decisions invalidating democratically enacted laws. From Dred Scott to Lochner to Roe v. Wade to Citizens United, and even the recent Second Amendment decisions of Heller and McDonald, these patently fallible decisions on controversial political and social issues have divided the nation, politicized the Court, poisoned the Supreme Court nomination process and thwarted the political branches and democratic governance. Requiring Supreme Court unanimity to overturn legislation on constitutional grounds would therefore be morally and politically desirable. Why that is so is the subject of this article. I leave for another occasion the legal and practical questions of how to implement such a unanimity requirement.
While the audacity of this idea is perhaps remarkable, flying as it does in the face of our
unbroken history of Supreme Court cases decided by majority vote of the Justices, I would ask the readers' indulgence or suspension of disbelief for long enough to at least consider my argument. Since I have no power to implement this idea, which depends solely on the cogency of the reasons which support it – and I invite discussion and contestation of the idea – the proposal can truly, if somewhat ironically, be called "modest."
Here in its final form, this article hit my desk just as Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke appears on the news evincing receptivity to some form of Supreme Court packing, and in a season just after the dramatic unfolding of the Kavanaugh hearings. Duncan has been working on his modest proposal for a while longer than these events have been on TV, and his modest proposal has stood the test of peer reviews by many (me included). I have been privileged to hear Professor Duncan speak on this subject more than once, and I have learned something new every time. This article marks a worthwhile addition to the discussion of our Court, and the recollection that neither its composition nor its procedural customs are fixed in constitutional stone.
Labels: Beto O'Rourke, constitution, Dwight Duncan, Justice Kavanaugh, U.S. Supreme Court
John Does on sex-offender registry lose all civil rights claims against state, despite possible errors in listings
Persons listed on a part of the Massachusetts sex-offender registry for perpetrators who "moved out of state" have no constitutional privacy claims, state or federal, against commonwealth officials, despite a possibility of egregious error in listings, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled yesterday. The case is John Doe, Sex Offender Registry Board No. 474362 v. Sex Offender Registry Board, No. 17-P-985 (Mass. App. Ct. Sept. 19, 2018).
Plaintiffs sued officials of the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board (SORB) on theories of procedural and substantive due process under the federal and state constitutions after their names, pictures, and criminal histories were posted on the SORB website as "moved out of state." The claimants alleged errors in the reporting, both in accuracy of the information and in the propriety of the posting. The court recited the facts of one egregious case that suggested merit in the allegations of error:
[John] Doe No. 106929 came to Massachusetts in 2005 to attend school. He had previously been convicted in California for engaging in sexual relations with a sixteen year old when he was nineteen years old; California's age of consent was eighteen. After learning that Massachusetts had preliminarily classified him as a level three offender, Doe No. 106929 immediately left Massachusetts, and SORB ceased publishing his photograph and criminal history. Ten years later, in June of 2015, Doe No. 106929 learned through an Internet conversation that SORB had resumed publishing his name and photograph—this time on its "moved out of state" page. The sex offense listed on the page was "rape of a child." Doe No. 106929 received no notice from SORB regarding SORB's new practice, or that his name was being republished on SORB's Web site. Moreover, after Doe No. 106929 left Massachusetts, a court in California had entered an order expunging the record of his sex offense. Doe No. 106929 lost two jobs in California in 2015 once this information was made known at his workplaces.
The SORB abandoned its practice of publishing "moved out of state" records in 2015, but the superior court rejected the state's mootness defense.
Nevertheless, the Appeals Court rejected all plaintiff claims. Affirming on federal procedural due process, the court held that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity, because federal case law has not established any clear wrong in privacy violation. Indeed, federal constitutional law points widely to the contrary. Affirming on federal substantive due process, the court held that the claimants were unable to meet the demanding "shocks the conscience" standard that can turn what otherwise might be a state tort into a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. And reversing on claims under the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, the court held that the defendants were entitled to sovereign immunity. The Massachusetts legislature has voluntarily abrogated sovereign immunity for claims of "threats, intimidation or coercion" under the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act, but plaintiffs did not make such claims.
The court's reasoning on constitutional law is sound, but the facts point to the continuing failure of U.S. law to keep pace with Americans' privacy expectations in the digital age, especially relative to the pace of privacy law developments elsewhere in the interconnected world. John Doe No. 106929's case is especially troubling in light of his California expungement. Expungement already is an embattled concept—cf. "ban the box" movement—in the age of the internet that never forgets and the refusal of American policymakers to engage with the right to erasure. For persons who committed crimes but served their time, that can mean stinging and enduring punishment well beyond what society and the justice system already determined was due. The consequences are even more grave when the punishment is civil in nature, not even necessarily predicated on a criminal conviction.
The state should have no more license to defame or invade privacy than any person. The common law maxim prized by the renowned Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., himself a Bay Stater, asserts that for every wrong, the law provides a remedy (ubi jus ibi remedium). Yet where digital privacy is concerned, profitable commerce in information seems to be holding at bay common law evolution, legislative innovation, and good sense.
Labels: civil rights, common law, constitution, constitutional tort, defamation, due process, expungement, FOI, freedom of information, Massachusetts, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, privacy, right to be forgotten, sex offender
Landmark Indian Supreme Court ruling recognizes constitutional right of privacy
In a landmark ruling akin to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas's famous foray into the "penumbras, formed by emanations" in the U.S. Constitution in 1965 (Griswold on FindLaw), the Supreme Court of India has recognized a constitutional right of privacy, including informational privacy. Here are some highlights from the unanimous 266-page disposition, per Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud (overruling his father, according to some commentary), in Puttaswamy v. Union of India. Download the opinions in PDF here. A very heartfelt hat tip from me to attorney Shruti Chopra for bringing this blockbuster to my attention.
The case revolved around the government's "Aadhaar card scheme" (¶ 3). A project of extraordinary scope, Aadhaar means to assign a unique identity number to every one of India's 1.3bn residents based on demographic and biometric data. The 91-year-old named plaintiff is himself a retired judge; read more at The Indian Express.
The Court examined the origin of privacy, beginning with Aristotle's distinction between "public and private realms" (¶ 29). The Court traced privacy through Blackstone (¶ 30), John Stuart Mill (¶ 31), Madison (¶ 33), Warren and Brandeis (¶ 34), and Cooley (¶ 36). "Conscious as we are of the limitations with which comparative frameworks of law and history should be evaluated, the above account is of significance," the Court explained. "It reflects the basic need of every individual to live with dignity…. The need to protect the privacy of the being is no less when development and technological change continuously threaten to place the person into public gaze and portend to submerge the individual into a seamless web of inter-connected lives."
Speaking favorably to the evolution of "natural rights," the Court cited Locke (¶ 40), Blackstone (¶ 40), Roscoe Pound (¶ 42), and Ronald Dworkin (¶ 46), as well as the American Declaration of Independence (¶ 41) and French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (¶ 41). Applying "a settled position in constitutional law," the Court regarded constitutional rights as "emanat[ing] from basic notions of liberty and dignity" (¶ 24).
The court regarded recognition of informational privacy as consistent with India's obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (¶ 66). "India's commitment to a world order founded on respect for human rights has been noticed along with the specific articles of the UDHR and the ICCPR which embody the right to privacy" (¶ 91; see also ¶¶ 129-130). The Court found collateral international legal support in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (¶ 132). The Court rejected the "theory that civil and political rights are subservient to socio-economic rights" (¶ 154).
Textually, the Court invoked the Preamble of the Indian Constitution, which commits itself to values of "justice," "liberty," "equality," and "fraternity" (¶¶ 93-95). "The submission that recognising the right to privacy is an exercise which would require a constitutional amendment and cannot be a matter of judicial interpretation is not an acceptable doctrinal position. The argument assumes that the right to privacy is independent of the liberties guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution. There lies the error. The right to privacy is an element of human dignity." (¶ 113.)
A basic, "inalienable" right to live, the Court reasoned, must predate the Constitution. "It would be preposterous to suggest that a democratic Constitution without a Bill of Rights would leave individuals governed by the state without either the existence of the right to live or the means of enforcement of the right" (¶ 119).
With regard to originalism and living constitutionalism, the Court wrote: "Now, would this Court in interpreting the Constitution freeze the content of constitutional guarantees and provisions to what the founding fathers perceived? The Constitution was drafted and adopted in a historical context. The vision of the founding fathers was enriched by the histories of suffering of those who suffered oppression and a violation of dignity both here and elsewhere. Yet, it would be difficult to dispute that many of the problems which contemporary societies face would not have been present to the minds of the most perspicacious draftsmen. No generation, including the present, can have a monopoly over solutions or the confidence in its ability to foresee the future. As society evolves, so must constitutional doctrine. The institutions which the Constitution has created must adapt flexibly to meet the challenges in a rapidly growing knowledge economy. Above all, constitutional interpretation is but a process in achieving justice, liberty and dignity to every citizen." (¶ 116.)
The court rejected strict originalism and pledged fealty to living constitutionalism expressly in a meditation upon technology: "Today's technology renders models of application of a few years ago obsolescent. Hence, it would be an injustice both to the draftsmen of the Constitution as well as to the document which they sanctified to constrict its interpretation to an originalist interpretation. Today's problems have to be adjudged by a vibrant application of constitutional doctrine and cannot be frozen by a vision suited to a radically different society. We describe the Constitution as a living instrument simply for the reason that while it is a document which enunciates eternal values for Indian society, it possesses the resilience necessary to ensure its continued relevance. Its continued relevance lies precisely in its ability to allow succeeding generations to apply the principles on which it has been founded to find innovative solutions to intractable problems of their times." (¶ 151.)
With regard to precedentialism, the Court rejected precedents incompatible with a constitutional right to privacy. The Court cited U.S. decisions Buck v. Bell (U.S. 1927) (approving compulsory sterilization) (Oyez) and Korematsu (U.S. 1944) (approving Japanese-American internment) (Oyez) as examples of court decisions contrary to human rights and so appropriately "consigned to the archives, reflective of what was, but should never have been" (¶ 121).
With further regard to comparativism, the Court cautioned that "[f]oreign judgments must ... be read with circumspection ensuring that the text is not read isolated from its context" (¶ 134). That said, the court explicated precedents from the United Kingdom, United States, South Africa, and Canada, as well as the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In U.S. case law (pp. 141-65), the Court pointed to:
Boyd v. United States (U.S. 1886) (private papers),
Meyer v. Nebraska (U.S. 1923) (teaching in foreign languages),
Pierce v. Society of Sisters (U.S. 1925) (compulsory schooling),
Olmstead v. United States (U.S. 1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) (telephone wiretap),
Griswold v. Connecticut (U.S. 1965) (contraceptives),
Katz v. United States (U.S. 1967) (telephone wiretap),
Stanley v. Georgia (U.S. 1969) (obscene content in home),
Eisenstadt v. Baird (U.S. 1972) (contraceptive information),
Paris Adult Theatre I v Slaton (U.S. 1973) (obscene films),
Roe v. Wade (U.S. 1973) (abortion),
United States v. Miller (U.S. 1976) (bank records),
Carey v. Population Services International (U.S. 1977) (contraceptive advertising and sale),
Nixon v. Administrator, General Services (U.S. 1977) (presidential papers),
Whalen v. Roe (U.S. 1977) (prescription drug information),
Smith v. Maryland (U.S. 1979) (pen register),
Bowers v. Hardwick (U.S. 1986) (sexual privacy),
Planned Parenthood v. Casey (U.S. 1992) (abortion),
Minnesota v. Carter (U.S. 1998) (home window view),
Minnesota v. Olson (U.S. 1990) (home overnight guest),
Kyllo v. United States (U.S. 2001) (thermal imaging of home),
Lawrence v. Texas (U.S. 2003) (sexual privacy),
NASA v. Nelson (U.S. 2011) (background checks),
United States v. Jones (U.S. 2012) (Scalia opinion and Sotomayor concurrence) (GPS tracking),
Florida v. Jardines (U.S. 2013) (Scalia opinion and Kagan concurrence) (dog sniff),
Riley v. California (U.S. 2014) (digital cell phone contents), and
Obergefell v. Hodges (U.S. 2015) (gay marriage).
Examining informational privacy, the Court reiterated Indian precedents rejecting the U.S. Fourth Amendment third-party doctrine (¶¶ 66, 77).
The Court spent many pages engaging with commentators on and critics of privacy doctrine, including Richard Posner and Robert Bork (¶ 140, p. 197), Catherine McKinnon (p. 198), Alan Westin (p. 199), Roger Clarke (p. 200), Anita Allen (p. 200), and Bert-Jaap Koops, et al. (p. 201). Specifically with regard to the formulation of an informational privacy right, the Court discussed the works of Christina Moniodis (¶ 174), Yvonne McDermott (¶ 174), Daniel Solove (¶ 175), and Posner again (¶ 179). The Court discussed privacy principles developed through the legislative efforts to update Indian data protection, including notice, choice and consent, collection limitation, purpose limitation, access and correction, disclosure, security, transparency, and accountability (¶ 184).
Regarding the protection of life and liberty in article 21 of the India Constitution, the Court wrote: "Life is precious in itself. But life is worth living because of the freedoms which enable each individual to live life as it should be lived. The best decisions on how life should be lived are entrusted to the individual. They are continuously shaped by the social milieu in which individuals exist. The duty of the state is to safeguard the ability to take decisions – the autonomy of the individual – and not to dictate those decisions. 'Life' within the meaning of Article 21 is not confined to the integrity of the physical body." (¶ 106.)
"To live is to live with dignity. The draftsmen of the Constitution defined their vision of the society in which constitutional values would be attained by emphasising, among other freedoms, liberty and dignity. So fundamental is dignity that it permeates the core of the rights guaranteed to the individual by Part III [of the Constitution]. Dignity is the core which unites the fundamental rights because the fundamental rights seek to achieve for each individual the dignity of existence. Privacy with its attendant values assures dignity to the individual and it is only when life can be enjoyed with dignity can liberty be of true substance. Privacy ensures the fulfilment of dignity and is a core value which the protection of life and liberty is intended to achieve." (¶ 107; see also ¶¶ 168-169.)
The Court listed privacy rights previously recognized under article 21 of the India Constitution: right to travel abroad, right against solitary confinement, right of prisoners against bar fetters, right to legal aid, right to speedy trial, right against handcuffing, right against custodial violence, right against public hanging, right to doctor aid at public hospital, right to shelter, right to healthy environment, right to compensation for unlawful arrest, right against torture, right to reputation, and right to pursue a livelihood (¶ 150).
The Court rejected the recognition of privacy in statute or in common law as a basis to refuse recognition in constitutional law. Citing the Max Planck Encyclopaedia of Comparative Constitutional Law, the Court found validity in privacy as both a negative right and a positive right. (¶ 158.) With regard to the separation of powers, the Court heralded the importance of judicial review as "a powerful guarantee against legislative encroachments on life and personal liberty," not to be surrendered easily (¶ 166). The Court frowned on the proposition of recognizing privacy only as ancillary to substantive due process, pointing with disapproval to consequent "vagaries of judicial interpretation" in U.S. law (¶ 167).
The Court concluded, in key parts:
- "Privacy is a constitutionally protected right which emerges primarily from the
guarantee of life and personal liberty in Article 21 of the Constitution. Elements of
privacy also arise in varying contexts from the other facets of freedom and dignity
recognised and guaranteed by the fundamental rights contained in Part III" (part T(3)(C), p. 262).
- "At a descriptive level, privacy postulates a bundle of entitlements and interests" (part T(3)(E), p. 262).
- "Privacy includes at its core the preservation of personal intimacies, the sanctity of family life, marriage, procreation, the home and sexual orientation. Privacy also connotes a right to be left alone. Privacy safeguards individual autonomy and recognises the ability of the individual to control vital aspects of his or her life" (part T(3)(F), p. 263).
- "While the legitimate expectation of privacy may vary from the intimate zone to the private zone and from the private to the public arenas, it is important to underscore that privacy is not lost or surrendered merely because the individual is in a public place" (part T(3)(F), p. 263).
- "This Court has not embarked upon an exhaustive enumeration or a catalogue of entitlements or interests comprised in the right to privacy. The Constitution must evolve with the felt necessities of time to meet the challenges thrown up in a democratic order governed by the rule of law. The meaning of the Constitution cannot be frozen on the perspectives present when it was adopted" (part T(3)(G), p. 263).
- "An invasion of life or personal liberty must meet the three-fold requirement of (i) legality, which postulates the existence of law; (ii) need, defined in terms of a legitimate state aim; and (iii) proportionality which ensures a rational nexus between the objects and the means adopted to achieve them" (part T(3)(H), p. 264).
- "Privacy has both positive and negative content. The negative content restrains the state from committing an intrusion upon the life and personal liberty of a citizen. Its positive content imposes an obligation on the state to take all necessary measures to protect the privacy of the individual" (part T(3)(I), p. 264).
- "Informational privacy is a facet of the right to privacy. The dangers to privacy in an age of information can originate not only from the state but from non-state actors as well. We commend to the Union Government the need to examine and put into place a robust regime for data protection" (part T(5), p. 264).
Additional and collateral opinions run from PDF page 267 through 547.
Posted by Richard Peltz-Steele at 5:27 PM 1 comment:
Labels: civil rights, comparative law, constitution, India, privacy
SCOTUS lets stand First Amendment protection of ci...
Christian flag, Nazi art color SCOTUS arguments th...
U.S. rental car oligopoly hits new lows, as custom...
With DeJoy still at helm, U.S. Postal Service seem...
RIP Andrew Jennings, legendary investigative sport...
Code might inevitably regulate journalism in digit...


text:
PERL_SCRIPTS= approve chpw dbck-password findmember \
	fsck-mlkeys fsck-pgpkeys gpgtest mail-handler \
	new-member notify-idle notify-stuck notify-unvetted \
	report-unvetted state-mon

SHELL_SCRIPTS= cronrun-day cronrun-minute cronrun-week \
	extract-sysadmins fix-install merge-member remove-from-tg \
	rename-email set-no-mail tg-maker

SCRIPTS= ${PERL_SCRIPTS} ${SHELL_SCRIPTS}

MADE= portal.conf common.pm http-real.inc signature ${SCRIPTS}

MADE_SGID= mh-wrapper

OTHER= schema.psql funcs.sh

SUBDIRS= db_migrations

all: ${MADE} ${MADE_SGID}
	@set -e; for subdir in ${SUBDIRS}; do \
		( set -x && cd $$subdir && ${MAKE} ${MARGS} $@ ); \
	done

clean:; rm -f ${MADE} ${MADE_SGID}
	@set -e; for subdir in ${SUBDIRS}; do \
		( set -x && cd $$subdir && ${MAKE} ${MARGS} $@ ); \
	done

CFLAGS= -O -Wall

portal.conf: portal.conf.template ../siteconfig
	perl ../mycat.pl ../siteconfig < $@.template > $@

common.pm: common.pm.template ../siteconfig
	perl ../mycat.pl ../siteconfig < $@.template > $@

http-real.inc: http-real.inc.template ../siteconfig
	perl ../mycat.pl ../siteconfig < $@.template > $@

signature: signature.template ../siteconfig
	perl ../mycat.pl ../siteconfig < $@.template > $@

mh-wrapper: ../siteconfig mh-wrapper.c Makefile
	@echo ${CC} ${CFLAGS} -DWRAPPED=!library!/mail-handler \
			-o $@ mh-wrapper.c | \
		perl ../mycat.pl ../siteconfig | \
		sh -x

# XXX not installing db_migrations or schema.psql since vixie thinks
# those will always be used from this source directory, not in !library!
install: ${MADE} ${MADE_SGID} ${OTHER}
	@( echo mkdir -p !library!; \
	   echo install -m 6755 -o !wwwuid! -g !wwwgid! \
		mh-wrapper !library!/; \
	   echo install -m 755 -o !wwwuid! -g !wwwgid! \
		${MADE} !library!/; \
	   echo install -m 644 -o !wwwuid! -g !wwwgid! \
		${OTHER} !library!/; \
	) | \
		perl ../mycat.pl ../siteconfig | \
		sh -x -e; \
	done

.SUFFIXES: .pl .sh

.pl:
	@echo $< =\> $@; \
		rm -f $@ && \
		perl ../mycat.pl ../siteconfig < $< > $@ && \
		chmod +x,-w $@

.sh:
	@echo $< =\> $@; \
		rm -f $@ && \
		perl ../mycat.pl ../siteconfig < $< > $@ && \
		chmod +x,-w $@

${PERL_SCRIPTS} ${SHELL_SCRIPTS}: ../siteconfig Makefile

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
The Highland and Island Emigration Society was a charitable society formed to promote and assist emigration as a solution to the Highland Potato Famine.

Between 1852 and 1857, it assisted the passage of around 5,000 emigrants from Scotland to Australia. The Society's work was both praised for providing a solution to the famine in Scotland, and criticised for providing landlords with an easy mechanism for the Highland Clearances.

The formation of the Highland and Island Emigration Society
In 1846, the Highland Potato Famine caused a crisis in the Highlands and the islands of Western Scotland, an area already struggling with overpopulation and the upheavals of the Highland Clearances. The deaths from starvation were so high that, in 1848–1849, the government delivered shipments of oatmeal to locations along the western coast to give to starving families.

Relief measures were supervised by Sir John McNeill, himself a highlander. In 1846, in his role as chairman of the Board of Supervision for the New Poor Law of Scotland, he toured 27 of the most distressed parishes. As the famine continued, many, like McNeill, began to doubt that relief was a sustainable solution to the problem. His view was shared by others. For example, in Skye, one of the hardest hit areas, the local clan chief, Norman McLeod, bankrupted himself between 1846 and 1849 providing relief to his people. In 1849, he was obliged to leave Skye and move to London, working as a clerk earning three pounds a week. He became convinced that emigration was the only solution and eventually joined the London Committee of the Highland and Island Emigration Society. Similarly, Thomas Fraser, Sheriff Substitute of Skye, who had worked there since 1846 organizing relief, came to believe that emigration was the only hope.

In 1851, McNeill published a report to the Board of Supervision summarizing his views and proposing the "large-scale emigration of the 'surplus' population as the only way forward". This view was strongly shared by Sir Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury in London. He saw emergency food supplies as a "useless palliative" and thought that emigration to Australia would provide the relief needed.

By April 1852, Trevelyan had founded the Highland and Island Emigration Society, with McNeill, following a meeting at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, Covent Garden. They had a strong and useful ally in Sir Thomas Murdoch, chairman of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners. MacMillan attributes the success of the Society primarily to this powerful trio: Trevelyan and Murdoch for Treasury and Emigration, and McNeill as the chief administrator of Poor Relief in Scotland.

Despite having the appearance of an independent philanthropic organisation, the Society has been labelled a quasi-governmental organisation by historian Tom Devine. Evidence cited to support this view include the close involvement of senior civil servants in the Society, the Emigration Advances Act of 1851 which provided loans to landlords to pay their share of emigration costs and all overseas mail from the Society using the Treasury's mail facilities. The existence of the Society allowed a course of action that would have cost more as a government operation and went against the ruling party's political ideology.

Skye was the area selected for the Society's first operations, with Australia as the ultimate destination. Australia was chosen because the Highlanders' experience as shepherds and cattle drovers would be valued there. By the time the Society closed, Skye was the origin of 59% of all its emigrants (59% = 2818 people). The next commonest starting points were Harris and a combined total for Mull and Iona - each providing 6% of the overall number.

The rules of emigration
In its first pamphlet, published in May 1852, the Society set out its rules for emigrants:

 The Emigration will be conducted, as much as possible, by entire families, and in accordance with the rules of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners.
 Passages to Australia are provided by the Commissioners, from Colonial funds, for able-bodied men and women of good character ... on production of a stated quantity and description of clothing, and on payment of a deposit ...
 The Society will advance the sum necessary to make good whatsoever may be deficient for these purposes ... The emigrants will he required to repay to the Society the whole of the sums advanced to them, which will again be applied in the same manner as the original fund.
 The owners or trustees of the properties from which the emigrants depart will be expected to pay one-third of the sum disbursed on account of the emigrants by the Society.

The last rule, which required landlords to partially fund the emigration of their tenants, has been criticized.
Richards: "the operations of the ... Society were clouded by its allegiance with landlords wanting to divest themselves of small tenantry who were no longer economic".
Prebble: "Helped by the Highland Emigration Society and by the Commissioners for emigration – the one finding the money and the other the ships – the lairds of the Isles were now clearing their estates with sickening haste."

British Government support
The British Government provided funds through the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission. This was the agency that had already been tasked with sponsoring emigration to Australia, but which did not favour families, preferring to select young single adults. Trevelyan set about changing this policy, using his close association with the chair of the Commission, Sir Thomas Murdoch. The British Government also passed the Emigration Advances Act of 1951, which provided a mechanism for landlords to borrow money to pay their share of emigration costs. The provision of HMS Hercules by the Board of the Admiralty was at a lower cost than would be usual.

Popular support for the emigration plan

In 1852, popular support for emigration was widespread. The Society's pamphlet of May 1852 announced that its patron was Prince Albert and asked the public for donations. The list of benefactors included The Queen (£300), Prince Albert (105), three Scottish Dukes (£100 each), Members of Parliament, the Australian Agricultural Company, and numerous clergy. Yorkshire manufacturers, fearing a labour shortage affecting the supply of wool from Australia, were keen to subscribe large amounts to the Society.

The London Committee, which in addition to Trevelyan himself, included other influential individuals such as Thomas Baring, Baron Rothschild, and W. G. Prescott, Governor of the Bank of England, wrote personal letters to prominent Scots in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras asking for funds to help ...

this final effort to put an end to the misery that is breaking the spirit and degrading the character of our Highlanders, now that an absolute necessity of removing them has coincided with such an opportunity of providing for them elsewhere as never has, and perhaps never will, occur again.

Support also came from the governments in the various Australian colonies, including £3,000 from South Australia in 1853,
and £3,000 from Tasmania in 1854, on condition that a certain number of emigrants were sent there.

Criticism of the Society's emigration plan
The Society's emigration scheme was sometimes exploited by landlords, leading to some of the notorious forced evictions that figure in the history of the Highland Clearances. For example, in 1854, Donald Ross published a pamphlet entitled "Real Scottish Grievances" in which he describes some of the results of the activities of what he refers to as "a body calling itself the Highland and Island Emigration Society".

Trevelyan must have been aware of these incidents because many were widely reported. However, when a correspondent suggested that the emigration was being used to "facilitate the landlord's clearances", the Chairman replied "They will no doubt gain by the removal of the unemployed population, but the people will gain far more. This is essentially a popular movement."

Trevelyan's correspondence reveals a low opinion of the "Celtic race" (despite his own Cornish, and therefore Celtic, ancestry) that was not uncommon for the times. These views influenced the operation of the Society. According to Kent:

The active principles on which the Highland and Island Emigration Society was founded, and which it consistently espoused, were a mixture of liberal political economy, ill-disguised racism and a grudging form of charity.

The sometimes conflicted nature of the Society and its operations is reflected in MacMillan's comments on the nature of Trevelyan:

Trevelyan's own personality is enigmatic, with its undertones of racial prejudice and authoritarianism. He could defend his emigrants against the criticisms of Robert Lowe and the critics of his schemes in New South Wales, but he could also contemplate with satisfaction "the prospect of flights of Germans settling here in increasing numbers – an orderly, moral, industrious and frugal people, less foreign to us that the Irish or Scotch Celt, a congenial element which will readily assimilate with our body politic". He certainly believed that he was benefiting both Britain and the Highlanders, for he wrote on another occasion, "The Irish and Scotch, especially the latter, do much better when they have a fresh start in other countries, and become mixed up with other people, than when they stay at home".

Operations

Apart from being unusual in the way it funded emigrants, the Society was also unusual in the application of its first Rule – emigration by family. This was in contrast to the usual pattern of immigration at the time which was single men, couples, or small families. The families selected by the Land and Emigration Commissioner's agent in Scotland, acting on behalf of the Society, were extended, sometimes to three generations.

Families that satisfied the Society's criteria were selected and assigned a family number. Between 1852 and 1857, 29 ships carried 963 families sponsored by the Society, comprising around 5,000 emigrants.

The family-centred policy was slightly modified in 1853 when the Society sought to increase the proportion of single females. This met requests from Australian businesses and the colonial government. The Society's ability to meet this demand was used in negotiations with key individuals in Australia. The result was an increase in single females from 18% to about 25%.

Those selected to emigrate with the Society were the poorest from each community. The majority were not crofters, but cottars and squatters. Many had to be provided with clothing in order to leave their homes. Only in 1853 were better off applicants accepted, due to a shortage of those willing to emigrate in that year. The very poor were often those most reluctant to leave their homes and the slightest (and most temporary) of improvements in their circumstances would rapidly reverse any decision to go.

The voyages could be dangerous with passengers dying of typhus, scarlet fever and smallpox. For example, out of 615 immigrants (not all sponsored by the Society) on the 1852 voyage of the Ticonderoga, 168 died including 82 children under seven. However, other voyages went smoothly; a well-documented one is that of the Sir Alan McNab, which sailed from Liverpool in 1854, where:

Only trifling sickness occurred, chiefly diseases of the throat and glands, which the Surgeon thought might have been caused by the ship's being lined with salt to preserve its timbers.

In 1852, its first year of operation, 17 ships carried Society emigrants to Australia. There were only 4 ships in 1853 – "Economic conditions in the Highlands had improved slightly, and the people were reluctant to emigrate." In 1854, the number of ships rose to five but then operations were disrupted by the Crimean war. In 1855, only two ships left with Society emigrants, none in 1856, and only one, the last, in 1857.

End of the Society
The pressure for emigration to Australia was eased by improved economic conditions in Scotland after 1854 and a decrease in the demand for labor in Australia. Between 1855 and 1857, only 544 Highlanders were sent to Australia by the Society.

Trevelyan took a long view on the Society's legacy. Writing to McNeill in 1852, he stated:

Five hundred years hence, a few of the most aristocratic families of the great Australian Republic will boast of being able to trace their ancestors in the Highland Emigration Book of 1852–53.

The records of the Society were placed in the Register House in Edinburgh. According to MacMillan, "It is to Trevelyan's sense of history and his concern for the safety of documentation, characteristics of a great civil servant, that we owe the remarkable survival of the central records of the Society."

As well as providing valuable insight into this turbulent period of Scottish history, the Society's documentary legacy has allowed researchers to track the fate of many of the Society's emigrants.

As Trevelyan envisaged, many Australians today owe their existence to the work of the Society. Without the Society their ancestors may never have left Scotland, maybe not even survived the harsh conditions of the time.  Hellier: "The HIES succeeded in dispensing thousands of impoverished Highlanders abroad by knitting together colonial needs, landlord eviction, public charity and Highland kinship."

See also
 Ticonderoga (clipper) (emigrant ship in 1852)

References

Bibliography

External links
 The Life of Emigration – Marketing the Dream
 The Ships List – Details on one of the HIES ships – Hercules also including commentary on HIES

History of the Scottish Highlands
Forced migration
Scottish emigration
Scottish diaspora
1850s in Scotland
Highland Clearances
1852 establishments in Scotland
Organizations established in 1852
Organizations disestablished in 1857
1857 disestablishments in Europe
1857 in Scotland

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


That would be yours truly, on October 5, previewing the ALDS.
Yes, hell was freezing over. The New York Yankees–the Yankees!–weren't the team everyone loves to hate. They had retooled the team the right way–no more massive free agent contracts, homegrown talent, had to play their way into the postseason and caught fire against the Minnesota Twins in the Wild Card Game. The 2017 Yankees were the good guys for once.
Fast forward two months, and most of us outside of the five boroughs feel a bit snookered. Cashman swooped in after Giancarlo Stanton rebuffed the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals, offered the Miami Marlins an offer that could be easily-enough refused, and the team–whose face is now Yankee legend Derek Jeter–was allowed by their superstar to make the deal. It will be formally announced Monday.
I'm admittedly being a little melodramatic, but the optics on this deal just don't *ahem* look good.
In 2011, the then-New Orleans Hornets, Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers agreed to a complex deal to send Chris Paul to the Southland. It was so lopsided, commissioner (and Dark Lord of the Sith) David Stern vetoed it.
So, no: the Yankees aren't the culprits here. Doesn't mean we have to like it.
Further, on paper, of course this makes the Yankees a better team: the team already had solid bats in Didi Gregorius and Gary Sanchez, speed and upside in Aaron Hicks, big upside in Greg Bird and a mutant beast in Aaron Judge. When news started circulating, Yankees Twitter started in on how this would be the new Murderer's Row, how Jeter should get a ring for his part in the 2018 World Series pennant, etc.
Stanton is an all-world talent and the reigning National League MVP, but he struck out at a 2:1 ratio to taking walks, set a personal low for outs in a season (447, by far his highest to date), grounded into 13 double plays (after totaling 11 in 2015 and '16 combined) and likely will not see the field in AL play.
The Yankees have also agreed to take on the overwhelming majority of Stanton's remaining contract, which is straight out of the old spend-spend-spend playbook that turned the Yankees into full-on baseball heels. Further, if there are injuries (not out of the question) or he underperforms (see also: Giambi, Jason, Ellsbury, Jacoby, Johnson, Randy), Stanton has zero incentive to opt-out in 2020. The Yankees have tied a significant part of their future to a star who is showing signs of beginning to trend in the wrong direction and won't help in the field.
I'm not in any way convinced that Stanton will absolutely make the Yankees better than they would be by staying the course. We'll never know now; nevertheless, that's a lot of money for a player who hasn't played meaningful homestretch baseball, much less in October.
And let's be real: Giancarlo Stanton is a great ballplayer, but he's not Bryce Harper and he's certainly not Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth. For the Yankees, this is a clearance rack bargain in the same way that your local Marshalls isn't a Nordstrom Rack.
We can hate the Yankees, but we all can agree that this was the deal they really couldn't not make. For that, we can hate Jeff Loria more than we already do: after all, Loria allegedly tanked the Montreal Expos (Hi, Jonah Keri!) and sold them to Major League baseball, only to pull a Bill Veeck and acquire the Florida Marlins, hold Miami and Dade County over a barrel and build an atrocity of a stadium with an eyesore they call artwork in left-center, and then sold the team for a reported $1.2 billion dollars to the current, Jeter-led regime.
No, it's not the Yankees being the evil empire. But it's not ideal for those of us genuinely enjoying the Yankees' success playing the same fiscal game as (most of) the rest of Baseball.
Terrible article. Every other team would have taken this guy if the Marlins didn't give him a no-trade clause.
Harper and Machado are going to get $400m contracts from teams NOT named the Yankees. How do you explain that, in light of your mind-numbingly stupid comment "the same fiscal game as everyone else"?
Baseball is about the players ON the field, bro. And who are you to begrudge players from making a fair share of the money coming in from the massive revenue in MLB?
Lastly, let's talk about Stanton: He had a 1.000+ OPS. He had the hardest hit balls in all of baseball. He hit 59 HRs with over 125+ RBI, leading the NL in both, on a bad team in a bad market. And you are complaining about how many walks the guy had? Really? And 16 GIDPs? That is NOTHING. Paul O'Neil lead the league in GIDPS twice with the Yankees, and he averaged over 16 every year in his NYY career. He had a 2:1 K to BB ratio in 1998. Did the Yankees make a bad trade sending Roberto Kelly to the Reds, then? Based on your analysis of Stanton, O'Neil NEVER should have been a NY Yankee!
16 GIDPs is actually pretty low for a guy that hits as hard as him. You should know that.
I assume that since you utterly hate Stanton and hate this deal, you will be turning OFF the TV or phone or device or whatever when he comes up to bat, in every at bat this year, yes? If he hits 40+ hrs and drives in 140 and NY is in the ALCS again, are you going to cry and complain about how bad this deal was?
Clueless writing plagues the sports media nowadays, and this article is a painful reminder that just because someone has an "opinion" doesn't mean anyone on the planet should take it seriously.
First, every other team would not have taken Stanton because they couldn't have afforded his salary or don't need him, production notwithstanding. This isn't fantasy baseball, players have roles and there are teams that don't need what he has to offer.
Second, you've misquoted me both in spirit and letter: I'm pretty clearly speaking to the Yankees shedding salary in recent years, developing prospects and avoiding binging in free agency, something for which Cashman deserves/-d a lot of credit. I'm speaking to the recent past, not the future. Frankly, I don't understand where you're coming from re economics. I am not arguing a player shouldn't get what he can in the market. Harper will command a massive salary–I'm not sure about Machado and $400M, but it will be sizable. This is unquestionably an about face based on recent years.
Further, are we really comparing Paul O'Neill to Giancarlo Stanton? Be serious.
I don't 'utterly hate' Stanton, his contract or this trade, but at this point, you've clearly abandoned reasonable conversation for word-twisting and straw men. I do think it doesn't make sense in that the Yankees wouldn't have traded for him save for the exact set of circumstances that unfolded and they don't need what he brings to the table. I do think there are reasons to be wary, and those reasons are not irrational. Strikeouts and the ability to get on base are the two biggest respective liabilities and assets in today's metrics-driven game. Stanton is trending in the wrong direction on both accounts. If Judge regresses and Stanton continues to trend this way, it'll be back-to-back Dave Kingmans and the lineup card loses significant potency. At best, it is a gamble to assert that they will both continue along the way they have, and Cashman decided that was a gamble worth taking.
Long story short, you've chosen to misread this story as something that it isn't, and that's unfortunate. In swapping out meaningful discourse for comment flambé, you've become exactly what you claim to hate. I appreciate the time you've taken to respond to an, in your mind, unserious opinion.


text:
Riot in Cell Block 11
Director: Don Siegel
Stars: Neville Brand, Emile Meyer, Leo Gordon, Frank Faylen, Robert Osterloh, Paul Frees, Alvy Moore, Dabbs Greer, Whit Bissell
Rating: 6 (from 1 vote)
Review: Riots in American prisons are becoming increasingly common. And now another has erupted: one inmate (Neville Brand) has led the men of Cell Block 11, the worst offenders in their prison, into revolt, holding guards hostage and threatening to kill them if their demands are not met. But they don't want to escape: they want better and more humane conditions...
Richard Collins wrote this "torn from the headlines" hardboiled drama, which carried on the tradition of the social issues films of the thirties and forties, where topical news stories inspired sensational storylines. Riot in Cell Block 11 even starts with a newsreel of footage from recent disturbances and an interview with an expert to back up its claims to be working in the public interest.
Violence has put the prisoners where they are, and it's violence that becomes their chief way of expressing themselves and, sadly, their main liability - they even end up fighting amongst each other. Compare that with the authorities' heated discussions, which tend toward oppressive answers, despite the prison Warden's protests. In a rare starring role, burly, rasping-voiced Brand makes the most of his opportunities, turning in an aggressive, intelligent performance: when he says he'll kill a guard for every prisoner shot, we believe him. Leo Gordon also makes an impression as his dangerous second-in-command.
Siegel keeps the tension simmering throughout, whether its with the frequent bursts of brutality (stabbing the Commissioner!) or his well-organised crowd scenes. Actual Folsom Prison locations and stark, black and white photography add a sharp edge to an already gritty movie. The social concerns are never far away: we're told that 65% of criminals reoffend, and the politics of reform are constantly on the agenda (in between the mayhem, anyway). But the downbeat ending suggests not so much that a compromise can be reached, rather that there will be no effective solution to the problem. Music by Herschel Burke Gilbert.
Don Siegel (1912 - 1991)
Respected American director, a former editor, whose action thrillers were second to none. He started out in lower budget movies like The Big Steal, Riot in Cell Bock 11 and The Lineup but come the sixties he started making higher profile work such as the remake of The Killers and Madigan. His fruitful partnership with Clint Eastwood gave us Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz, among others. Another of his finest 1970s films was Charley Varrick.
Siegel had small acting roles in Play Misty for Me and Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers - he had directed the classic original in the 1950s.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Herb gminy Gorzyce – jeden z symboli gminy Gorzyce, ustanowiony 12 listopada 2008.

Wygląd i symbolika
Herb przedstawia na tarczy koloru błękitnego złoty kłos zboża (symbol rolnictwa gminy), nad nim trzy złote sześcioramienne gwiazdy (trzy znaczenia: nawiązanie do herbu ziemi sandomierskiej, do herbu Leliwa i trzech wczesnośredniowiecznych parafii na terenie gminy), a pod nim pół koła zębatego (symbolizującego przemysł gminy).

Przypisy

Gorzyce (gmina w województwie podkarpackim)
Gorzyce


Hi , Myself Kim leave in usa .I am doing civil engineering degree.but my own business please only serious girls are contact me.
I'm a caring, hard working, down to earth guy. I have been learning Spanish, and I am OK at speaking the language, but I really enjoy learning the language and I like to find friends with which to practice.
Divorced. 49 with older sons. Seeking my best half. Best friend. Lover. And future wife. Hard working business man. Provider. Affectionate and Loving.
Hard working, kind, small business owner looking for a special lady to keep a fire burning between us eternally.... And be willing to relocate to the U.S.
SERIOUS AND HARD WORKING MAN THAT LIVE WITH HIGH REPUTATION, THAT VALUE LIFE, I LIVE ALONE SINCE I DIVORCE WITH MY WIFE.
I'm a very nice guy looking for a good woman.
I like fishing, bowling, travel, going to restaurants, cooking, whatever interest me. I like to try new ideas.


A slight preview replay of last weeks Impact Wrestling show.
All hell starts off the match and now Jake with Aerostar now Callihan with a powerbomb to Aerostar. Vikingo in and Sami cuts him off with a Bicycle kick, Vikingo fights back and tope is caught and oVe hits a triple apron bomb on him. Kid follows with a moonsault and Vikingo hits a shooting star press onto the floor taking them all out. Back into the ring now Sami cuts Kid off with a clothesline for 2. Crist brothers in now as they double team Kid, Vikingo in now and hits a corkscrew head scissors and then gets suplexed into the corner. Jake follows with a superkick and now a triple team on him and Kid makes the save. oVe hits triple tombstones for a 2 count then the All Seeing Eye for the win.
Backstage with Swann and Sydal and Sydal is angry with Swann and wants to tag with Swann against The Lucha Brothers and Swann agrees.
Drake in the ring and Lee answers his challenge and attempts to get the hand in first on Drake but that backfires now Drake in the corner with stomps, now Lee with a kick in the corner and now a right and Drake whips him into the corresponding corner. Lee sends Drake out the ring with a Superman elbow, now Drake with a leg drop on the ropes. Lee hangs up Drake on the top rope and now shoulders to the midsection in the corner on Drake. Lee slams him into the corner by his head and now Drake hits a clothesline from hell, Lee with a boot and Drake drags him by the hair to the mat. Drake with a powerslam and now Lee counters into a roll up for 2. Drake hits Gravy Train for the win.
Match not started with the beat down on Kronoz and now match starts and hits a spinning backfist for the win.
After the match King calls out LAX and of course trashes them.
LAX in their hangout with Konnan saying that he will kill King in a Concrete Jungle match after cooling off his team.
Alisha makes her way to the ring and now Apache makes her way to the ring.
Apache tying up the legs of Alisha and now a deep arm drag and now a 2 count. Apache with kicks to the thighs and now a snap mare into drop kick, Apache with a powerslam into a leg drop for 2. Apache with a double leg takedown and now the surfboard submission with Alisha gets out. Apache whips Alisha into the corner and is met with an elbow, Alisha with some elbows now and a quick roll for 2. Alisha slams Apache's head into the top turnbuckle and now with elbows to the face and into a clothesline. Alisha with a flatliner for 2, Apache with a powerbomb for the win.
After the match Apache gives a promo in Spanish. In turn its a challenge to Tessa Blanchard next week.
Backstage with El Texano and he welcomes Aries to Mexico and says that he will meet his boot and fist and become Impact World Champion.
Rich Swann and Matt Sydal vs Fenix and Pentagon Jr.
Swann makes his way to the ring and now Sydal does as well then Fenix makes his way to the ring and last but not least Pentagon Jr. makes his way to the ring.
Swann and Fenix start off the match with Fenix missing a cutter after both showing off and now the tag to Pentagon and Sydal. They both are trading off their trademark slogan in the ring and now Jr hits a kick to the chest. Fenix in now and both him and Jr hit superkicks and Fenix hits a cutter now the double team on Swann. Double team Body scissors on Sydal for a 2 count. Sydal with a thigh kick and repeated thigh kicks and now one to the head for 2. Swann back in now with Pentagon sending him face first into the turnbuckles and now slaps to the face and a kick to the back and the tag back to Sydal. Pentagon hits a boot to both Swann and Sydal and the tag to Fenix. Fenix with a corkscrew suicide dive over the top rope after Swann takes down Pentagon off the apron. Fenix hits a superkick to Sydal on the outside and Swann now off the top turnbuckle taking out both Fenix and Pentagon.
We are back with Fenix and Sydal now and Sydal misses in the corner and Fenix hits a spinning kick and Sydal hits a knee now the tag to Swann. Swann and Sydal tried the double team before Pentagon came in for the save and now Swann and Sydal with hurricanranas from both corners on both Pentagon and Fenix for 1. Fenix with a stomp to the back of the neck of Swann and a piledriver on the apron to Sydal. Fenix with the Black Flare Driver for the win.
Winners Fenix and Pentagon Jr.
Out comes Brian Cage and then oVe and they get chased to the outside of the ring.
Backstage with Aries and company listing off who he's run off and beaten and the same will be said of El Texano even though he praised him.
Playback of moment of the week.
Next week Tessa vs Faby Apache is official.
Abyss is being sent into the Impact Wrestling HOF.
Texano makes his way to the ring and now Aries and company(Killer Kross and Moose) makes their way to the ring.
Aries with a deep arm drag and now a drop kick, Texano with a shoulder takedown and now a forearm and a springboard over the top rope. Aries with clubs to the back and now over the top rope met with knees to the back, Texano with a kick to the chest.
We are back with Texano in the corner and Aries hitting forearms and now shorthand whips him into the corner. Aries with a kick and blasts his head into the top turnbuckle and now rakes his back with the hands, now slams his head into the corner and a forearm to the face. Texano with a right and now Texano returning the rakes to the back, Texano with a tilt a whirl backbreaker and now a leg drop for 2. Aries is trying to run away from the match but Kross tells him not to walk, Kross tosses the title to Aries but the ref catches Aries with the title, now Texano with a superkick and a rope break pin. Aries with a brainbuster for the win.
After the match a video promo from Johnny Impact appears on the videoboard and he says that he might not be medically cleared to fight Aries at BFG. Aries sends his side attachments to find Impact in the crowd, but Impact appears on the ramp and ensue the beat down on Aries. Impact takes out Kross and Moose in the process once they realize Impact is in the ring, now Edwards comes out of nowhere with a kendo stick and hits all 3 with it chasing them off.


With Father's Day coming up and the U.S. Open starting tomorrow, it's a good time to consider the game of golf and the dad-ly men who play it. These are the subjects addressed by James Dodson's A Son of the Game, a book that is revealing, if perhaps in unintended ways, about both.
Dodson, prodigal scion of an old Carolina family (the 18th-century homestead, Dodson's Crossroads, he tells us, is located on Buckhorn Road between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough), has played his way around the world while writing for golf and travel magazines. He's written a biography of Ben Hogan and co-authored Arnold Palmer's memoir. But as this book opens, on the eve of the 2005 U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, Dodson's caught in the grip of a mid-life crisis. He's tired of writing about the pros, he says, because they're allTiger Woods and Phil Mickelson exceptedso robotic and fixated on the money. His own six-handicap game is in the toilet. Damn.
But Dodson, who lives in Maineor did at the timethinks a return to his roots, and to the Pinehurst fairways he first trod with his dad, may rekindle his love for the game and help him impart it to his teenage son, who prefers hockey. Dodson's even accepted a short-term writing gig with The Pilot, a thrice-weekly Sandhills newspaper, sick as he is of writing for the corporate boneheads who've bought out his magazines. Eventually, everything works out great for him, and he relocates his wife and kids to the Sandhills.
Dodson's book will make a fine Father's Day gift for any dad who, as Dodson did, yearns for the country club life, gives the wife "guilt gifts" so he can spend endless hours golfing with the boys, and has no idea why his first wife left him. Indeed, such a dad might favorably recite, as Dodson does, what his friend said on the subject of fathers and sons: "Can you think of anything better to pass along to them than the simple joy of playing golf with a buddy?"
And so can Dodson, since the same friend has also related how his life turned around when, during a time-out from competing on the Asian tour, he spent two months working in the slums of Calcutta for Mother Teresa. After that, he wasn't so spoiled and self-indulgent, the friend says. While in Michigan working as a club pro, he even became "an activist for the poor" and ran for Congress as a social-justice liberal (if still a fiscal conservative). Without a stitch of irony, Dodson goes on to describe how his friend's mid-life crisis caused him to move from Michigan to Pinehurst, where his friend owns a gift shop.
Apparently his activism is now of the "fix your ball marks" variety?
Now, don't get me wrong. I like golf. I've even played No. 2, though it was years ago, when $50 would buy you 18 holes and a caddy. (Today, multiply by 10. By the way, I shot an 87.) Golf's a terrific social game. It's a lesson in the vagaries of life. It's all about tradition. I play just as soon as I can, after, that is, I've managed to forget how badly I played on the previous occasion.
But let's face it, golf played well is a huge time-eater, is seriously expensive unless the course you're playing isn't equipped with grass, and is unfortunatelybecause yes, it's a fun gameone of the most elitist endeavors on the planet.
This is the side of golf Dodson either doesn't get or doesn't care about as he tells his tale. His rich daddy taught him the game, and he's determined to pass it on as a gift to his sweet-swinging son. But his son doesn't love the game. Or maybe he does! But he can't play under pressure. But maybe he can! Omigod, what a soap opera this thing is. Don't these people have anything else on their minds besides a smooth takeaway?
Meanwhile, Dodson moans about how commercial golf has gotten. (His only funny line: By renaming it the Cialis Western Open, sponsors gave new meaning to golf's old maxim, "never up, never in.") It's not the same pure game he learned back when Pinehurst was the preserve of "true amateurs," who didn't need to win any money.
Rich white guys, in other words.
Actually, Dodson's book is also a good gift for dads interested in the history of Pinehurst and how it became a golf mecca, but who'd rather not hear about the racism involved or the possibility that Pinehurst might just tend to attract the totally self-absorbed.
As told by Dodson, Pinehurst is rife today with ex-movers and shakers who enjoy being in each other's company so they can avoid serious subjects and can concentrate on bad jokes, their putting, and convincing their children that this is how real men behave when they "follow their heart." Interestingly, it's only when Dodson talks to the occasional woman that anything interesting is said.
And we wonder why our patriarchal country is in the trouble it's in? Happy Father's Day.


1 1) National Hydrology Project' (NHP) launched by Ministry of Water Resources during the year 2016-2017 is assisted by which of the following?
2 2) The world's most powerful supercomputer as of June 2018 belongs to which of the following country?
3 3) Which one of the following is the largest Publicly Listed pharmaceutical company in India by Market Capitalization as of 2017?
4 4) Rani Rashmoni' is a patrol vessel was commissioned into the Indian services. It is commissioned under which of the following ?
5 5) The headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia is known by which of the following?
6 6) The government proposes to set the country's largest national data center with capacity for 500,000 virtual servers at which of the following place?
7 7) Who is appointed as ICICI Bank chief operating officer (COO) in June 2018?
8 8) Who is appointed as New Chief of Bangladesh Army in June 2018?
1) National Hydrology Project' (NHP) launched by Ministry of Water Resources during the year 2016-2017 is assisted by which of the following?
Explanation: The Ministry had earlier launched an ambitious programme 'National Hydrology Project' (NHP) during the year 2016-2017. NHP is a World Bank-assisted central sector scheme with pan-India coverage.
2) The world's most powerful supercomputer as of June 2018 belongs to which of the following country?
US scientists have unveiled the world's most powerful and smart scientific supercomputer that can complete over 200,000 trillion calculations per second. The US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory supercomputer called 'Summit' will be eight times more powerful than its previous top-ranked system, 'Titan'.
3) Which one of the following is the largest Publicly Listed pharmaceutical company in India by Market Capitalization as of 2017?
Explanation: Top Publicly Listed pharmaceutical companies in India by Market Capitalization as of 2017. Sun Pharmaceutical (Rank 1) with Market Capitalization of Rs 1,55,716 Crore.
4) Rani Rashmoni' is a patrol vessel was commissioned into the Indian services. It is commissioned under which of the following ?
Explanation: The last of the five Fast Patrol Vessel (FPV) project of Indian Coast Guard 'Rani Rashmoni' was commissioned into the Indian Coast Guard.
5) The headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia is known by which of the following?
6) The government proposes to set the country's largest national data center with capacity for 500,000 virtual servers at which of the following place?
Explanation: The government will be setting up the country's largest national data centre in Bhopal, with capacity for 500,000 virtual servers.
The country has four such centres for hosting government websites, services and apps. These are at Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi and Bhubaneswar.
7) Who is appointed as ICICI Bank chief operating officer (COO) in June 2018?
Explanation : The ICICI Bank board,appointed ICICI Prudential Life Insurance CEO Sandeep Bakhshi as whole-time director and chief operating officer (COO), creating a new top position at India's second largest private bank, to steer all its businesses.
8) Who is appointed as New Chief of Bangladesh Army in June 2018?
Explanation: Bangladesh appointed Lieutenant General Aziz Ahmed as the country's new army chief for three-year tenure.


RUPGCET – 2017 /Rayalaseema Univesity RU PGCET 2017 Results/Rank Cards/Counselling Scheduled and Certificate Verification Scheduled at rudoa.in/RU PGCET 2017 Results/Rank Cards at rudoa.in/RUPGCET – 2017 NOTIFICATION/RU PGCET 2017/RUPGCET – 2017, Kurnool Rayalaseema University PG Admissions 2017 ,RU PG ENTRANCE TEST 2017,Rayalaseema University PGCET 2017,RUPGCET 2017/RU PGCET 2017/RUPGCET – 2017 Online Application Form filling Instructions,RU PGCET Hall Tickets 2017,RUPGCET 2017/RU PGCET 2017/RUPGCET – 2017 Results/Rank Cards 2017,RUPGCET 2017/RU PGCET 2017 Counselling Dates-Admissions-Certificates Verification 2017,RUPGCET 2017/RU PGCET 2017/RUPGCET – 2017 Notification,Rayalaseema University PG Admissions Notification 2017,RU PGCET 2017/RU PGCET 2017 MA,MSC,MCOM,MCA Counselling Scheduled/Admission Scheduled and Certificate Verification Dates at rudoa.in.
Rayalaseema University, Kurnool invites online applications for admissions into P.G Courses for the year 2017-18 (RUPGCET-2017). Eligible candidates may submit their applications through online mode. The detailed information is available on the website www.rudoa.in or https://ruk.ac.in. Application Registration and Processing fee of Rs. 400/- (Rs. 300/- for SC / ST / PHC) may be paid through Atom technologies by using Debit / Credit Card / Net Banking & Bill Desk.
Get Download RU-PGCET 2017 Hall Tickets - Click Here.
Get Download RU-PGCET 2017 Results - Click Here.


text:
Home / Stories / Then and now: The cast of 'The Facts of Life'
Then and now: The cast of 'The Facts of Life'
Tootie, Jo, Blair, Natalie and George are still doing big things. Especially George.
February 13, 2018, 12:32PM By MeTV Staff
When The Facts of Life premiered in 1979, television had never seen anything quite like it. It was rare for a sitcom to focus on children, outside of Leave It to Beaver and The Brady Bunch, but here was a show stuffed with adolescent characters. The Diff'rent Strokes spin-off was set in a boarding school, which probably struck audiences as Saturday morning fare.
Yet The Facts of Life soared, largely on the strength of its ever-maturing cast, tackling the serious issues of growing up while delivering laughs. It lasted for nine seasons.
Today, all of the cast is still out there, entertaining on television and in movies. Take a look at how they've grown.
Click on the images to flip and reveal the actors today.
1980squiz
Can you match the series finale title to the correct '80s sitcom?
newsobituaries
R.I.P. Mitzi Hoag, star of Alan Alda's series We'll Get By and Natalie's adoptive mom on The Facts of Life
You probably forgot these 16 celebrities appeared on 'The Facts of Life'
Hopelessly Devoted To You