Bull Moose Strikes Back

This is one from Dear Abby:

My girlfriend, “Donna,” and I have shared a wonderful relationship for nearly three years. During her college days she had a sexual encounter with her best female friend. (They had been friends since high school.)Although they graduated from college five years ago, they continue to see each other. Donna tells me that nothing sexual goes on between them. Personally, I don’t trust her friend. Please help me get over this. — TONY IN WHITTIER

Abby gives some blather about trust. Here is the correct advice:

Dear Tony,

You are sitting on a freaking sexual goldmine. If you can’t figure out what to do with this situation, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to surrender your testicles. (HINT: It involves Everclear. The booze, not the band.)

Bull Moose

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George Steinbrenner had good timing. By dying on the day of the All Star game he got a final bit of attention from all of MLB. And by dying in 2010, he saved his estate a half billion dollars in taxes and likely kept the Yankees in his family.

Now Steinbrenner isn’t exactly a sympathetic figure. In fact, I’ve been joking that the Steinbrenner estate is one of the few that I wouldn’t mind see being hit with the estate tax. But of course, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and I think the estate tax – and the gift tax – should be permanently abolished.

The death tax has its roots, like many of our laws, in English law.  Because in England everything in the domain ultimately belonged to the King or Queen, it was only right that when someone died his property was split up between the King and the heirs. In fact, it was an act of generosity that the King left the heirs anything at all.

However, that’s exactly the kind of thinking that irritated people like George Washington and the Adams cousins in the first place. And indeed for most of America’s history, the estate tax did not exist except for in times of national crisis – a “will tax” to finance a new Navy in 1797,  a 5-6% tax for the Civil War, and a 15% tax for the Spanish-American War, all repealed after the crisis.  When World War I broke out, a 10% tax on estates over $5 million (about $100 million in 2009 dollars) and a 25% tax on the portion of estates worth over $10 million (about $200 million in 2009 dollars) was enacted. The top rate was lowered to 20% after the war.

Then FDR came along and decided that the rate of 20% – something that might be able to be argued as reasonable – was too low and jacked the rate up to 70%.  From then until G. W. Bush the rates bumped up and down, but was always around half.  Insidious things like generation skipping tax were introduced.  (More or less, a generation skipping tax means that if you leave money to your grandson in your will, it will be taxed as if it was left to your son and then he left it to your grandson.)

So back to Steinbrenner. Here’s a guy that turned a $10 million investment into the Yankees into a billion dollar net worth over the course of 35 years.  And while he was making that money he was paying taxes on it much of it, and he was certainly paying taxes on his income. (I understand that much of his wealth is in the form of unrealized capital gains, which have never been taxed. However, if there is no step up in basis upon generational transfer, the government will not ultimately lose that money once there is realization of the investment.) He was employing ball players and front office staff who paid plenty in taxes.  He built an empire while paying his share of taxes on the way.  I fail to see a justification for the government taking half of what he had built, likely meaning that the Yankees would have had to have been sold by his family, if he had died six months later.  The crowning achievement of Steinbrenner’s work would have been ripped away from his family because he was successful. That’s sick.

The estate tax is politically expedient because it only targets the rich. But it is un-American, contrary to the very principles that the country was founded on.  The estate tax rears its ugly head again on January 1, with a 55% rate on estates over $1 million. Long live the King.

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Hey, look at that! A federal judge actually found the Tenth Amendment! And all it took was a search for a way for him to ignore DOMA. (Not “strike down DOMA”. Trial level judges to not “strike down” laws. Their rulings have no, or very little, precedential value.)

Of course gay marriage supporters see this as a victory. And it is something of a victory, I guess.  However, gay marriage supporter Jack Balkin recognizes the “danger” of federal judges dusting off and reading the Tenth Amendment:

As much as liberals might applaud the result, they should be aware that the logic of his arguments, taken seriously, would undermine the constitutionality of wide swaths of federal regulatory programs and seriously constrict federal regulatory power.

….

To be sure, there is something delightfully playful and perverse about the two opinions when you read them. Judge Tauro uses the Tenth Amendment– much beloved by conservatives– to strike down another law much beloved by conservatives–DOMA.

This particular conservative doesn’t think much of the substance of DOMA one way or another, and agrees that it likely runs afoul of the Tenth Amendment. So I’m all for this ruling being affirmed in the SCOTUS. Then we can get started on the work of cutting off all of the other obscene growths that have been festering on our federalist body using the Tenth as a scalpel.

However, I’m not holding my breath that this new found respect for the Tenth Amendment will last long.

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Althouse has a poll on her post about the silly Sienea poll ranking the presidents historically.  Althouse’s poll asks “Who is the best president in your lifetime?”

First, an aside about the Sienea poll and why it is silly.  First, it ranks Barack Obama as the 15th best president ever. Any poll or study that tries to rank a sitting president historically should automatically be disqualified from being taken seriously.  Frankly, we can’t even rank G.W. Bush yet because his decisions are still playing out. Second, any poll that consistently has FDR as the #1 president is clearly a poll of political hacks. And this year Teddy Roosevelt is ranked #2. You all know my affection for TR, but who can make a serious argument that either Roosevelt was a better president than Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, or even John Adams? (OK, I’m sure there are some Confederate sympathizers that rank Lincoln low.)

Back to Althouse’s poll. Curiously she doesn’t include anyone before Carter. That works for me, since I was born under Ford.

Right away I would disqualify Ford and Carter for obvious reasons. I won’t consider Obama since he’s only 18 months in. I’d also get rid of George H.W. Bush for mishandling the end of the first Iraq War and for mishandling domestic priorities. So that leaves the two-termers: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan.

W. had some great moments, oversaw the response to an appalling attack on America, started to address the problems with the rouge states in the middle east, and cut taxes nicely. He also didn’t veto enough spending bills, didn’t lead Congress well enough when he had the majority,  didn’t change strategies in Iraq quickly enough, and presided over the disgusting bailout at the end of his term.  So I’ll put him aside.

Clinton presided over the nice, comforting lull we had between the Cold War and 9-11.  He ran a surplus and presided over a nice economy, but he had help from the ‘94 Contract with America congress and the economy on the surplus  and didn’t really have much to with the economy booming.  People forget that Clinton handed Bush a deflating bubble much like Bush handed Obama a deflating bubble.

Reagan took on the commies, changed fiscal policy which helped turn around an economy with a high misery index, took on the commies, bombed Gaddafi, and took on the commies.  His downsides were increased spending and an increased deficit a result of having to deal with the devils of Tip O’Neil and Ted Kennedy to get what he needed for his priorities. (And the deficit wasn’t that historically out of line).  People tend to poo-poo his change of policy regarding the Soviets, (or give the credit to Gorbachev) but that is usually due to either a misunderstanding or underestimation of the evil that was the Soviet empire.  Even the Reagan administration’s scandals were about fighting communism.

Frankly, it’s hard for me to understand how there can even be a discussion about which president from Ford through current was the best. Even if it becomes a partisan discussion the choices are Clinton or Reagan, and Clinton just didn’t have the foreign policy accomplishments of Reagan.

It is amusing to look at the difference between the results of the Althouse poll and the results of the New York Daily News poll with the same question.

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I pretty much don’t care about Gore’s marital problems and/or the accusations of him being a sex crazed poodle.  Even if the “sex crazed poodle” or Laurie David incidents are real, it doesn’t sound like he misbehaved while VP, and he certainly didn’t do something like lie about them under oath, so, whatever.

But this quote didn’t escape my attention:

…suck it up; otherwise, the world’s going to be destroyed from global warming.

That’s advice that Gore’s alleged victim received from her fellow lefties.  I can’t decide if I hope that that quote is real or fear that it is real.

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What a difference a couple of years make. When I took Constitutional Law in law school in the 2006-2007 school year, Supreme Court Second Amendment jurisprudence was sparse, and what was there was a mess.  There were two very basic questions that were left outstanding: 1) Does the Second Amendment apply to individuals or the population as a whole? and 2) Does it apply to just the federal government or is it incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to the states?

The answer to the first question was supplied almost exactly two years ago in Heller: The SCOTUS held that the rights were indeed individual, the capstone of a long slow turn about of lower court jurisprudence (and left-wing echo chamber intellectual work) over the last half century.

Today, the court ruled in McDonald v. The City of Chicago (PDF) that the Fourteenth Amendment does indeed incorporate the Second Amendment rights to the states.

Which makes sense. Say what you will about the doctrine of Fourteenth Amendment incorporation, but either all of the constitution’s protections should apply to the states or none of them should (and the individual state’s constitutions should rule).  And since the doctrine of incorporation was pretty much settled on battlefields between 1861 and 1865, it seems like the Second Amendment is being incorporated rather late.

Note that this was a 5-4 decision which would have almost certainly been 6-3 the other way had George Bush not been reelected in 2004.  Presidential elections matter long beyond the term of the Presidents elected. The timing of this decision really emphasizes that since today we are seeing part two of a line change of the four left wing justices.

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McChrystal should be sacked simply because if his judgment is so bad that he lets a skeezy reporter writing something for Rolling Stone – Rolling Stone! – get him on record badmouthing his superiors, he obviously doesn’t have the judgment required to win the fight in Afghanistan.
Before any of this happened McChrystal was floundering. Obama has a golden opportunity: Use it as an excuse to replace him with Petraeus. Sure, it’s a demotion, but Obama can wrap it in a “he’s doing his patriotic duty and taking one for the team” speech and everyone wins. The country wins.  The people of Afghanistan win. Petraeus grows his legend and book advance fee.  And Obama looks like a competent commander-in-chief. They’d just have to make sure Petraeus stays hydrated.
The irony is that Obama won’t turn this into a win for himself and the country because what McChrystal and his aids said is true:  He has no idea how to handle this.  Any of this. If it doesn’t involve running for office or orchestrating deals in the senate he’s no good at it.

But I’ll hold out hope that he’ll surprise me on this. I guess he did let the SEALS kill those pirates.

UPDATE: I guess I should go on record that a half-assed firing of McChrystal without some kind of worthy successor lined up – James Mattis? – would be a disaster.  If Obama can’t find anyone, the best thing to do is accept McChrystal’s apology, admonish him, and send him back to Afghanistan to redeem himself.

This is bad news:  “Protocol dictates the next commander of the International Security Assistance Force  should be a general from another country.” If a non-American is put in charge in Afghanistan, everyone might as well all go home and save the time and treasure.

UPDATE 2: I am extremely pleased to be wrong. Obama did exactly the right thing.

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By now you’ve seen the video of a Seattle cop punching a 17-year-old “girl.” If not here it is:

Here is my only problem with the events depicted in the video: The cop punched a 17-year-old female in the face and didn’t drop her. Time to hit the weight room, officer.

Some of the criticism I’ve heard is that the cop should have used a Taser to subdue the girl. Now, I’ve never been hit with a Taser, but I have been punched in the face enough times to know that it’s no fun, and I’ve seen videos of what Tasers do. I think I’d rather be punched in the face. (Besides, according to reports on local radio today, the cop didn’t have a Taser.)

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Geeze, did someone read “Catcher in the Rye” and become activated or something?

I heard that the Congressman was acting “violent” and “vicious.” I don’t think he was acting violent so much as he was acting like a class A weirdo. I expected him to start asking “Is it safe?”

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Seattle is discouraging the use of skybridges, and is trying to tax Macy’s skybridge out of existence.

Why?

Because it never rains so skybridges are unneeded? No.

Aesthetics? A little.

Because skybridges are elitist? Bingo.

“What a skybridge does is it takes people off of the right of way and puts them up in the air, and leaves usually the people who aren’t good enough to go in the buildings down below,” City Councilmember Jean Godden said. “It’s really not very friendly.”

That’s right. They want to make sure all of the people who can afford to shop at Macy’s and spend money to keep people employed have as much uncomfortable contact with the human debris that Seattle lets accumulate on its streets as possible.

But at least they’ll prevent aggressive panhandling, right? Oh, I forgot. NO.  The free love idiot that they elected mayor decided to veto that ordinance.

In an economy which requires retail and downtown establishments to have much help as possible, Seattle continues to make petty rules to assure shoppers that their trip downtown will be as uncomfortable as possible. Brilliant.

And I would point out that this is a skybridge that is already there. It’s not like Macy’s is asking for a new one. It makes this move twice as silly.

And I have a feeling that if the skybridge was connecting a Whole Foods to an Apple Store it would be given a free pass.

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Yesterday was the running of the North Olympic Discovery Marathon, I ran my fourth half marathon, but my first since lap band surgery and the 50 pound (so far) weight loss that has accompanied it.

First of all, even though I missed the goal of 2:20, I have to say that I am pleased with the fact that my chip time 2:26:58 demonstrates a huge improvement.  My chip time for the same race last year was 2:43:28, exactly 16.5 minutes more.  And my chip time for the much hillier Seattle Half Marathon last Thanksgiving weekend was 2:48:02.  Obviously, I’m able to maintain a better pace through the course now that I’m not carrying 50 extra pounds the whole way. I was pleased that where last year the marathon winner passed me at about 1 mile left to go, this time he finished after I finished, walked to my car, and was walking the dog.

BUT… I think I should have been able to make my goal. Just before mile 6 of the course, my stomach started doing strange things and I got incredible pain in my side that lasted for about 3 miles.  Not only did it slow me down, but  I had to stop occasionally to try to stretch it out and ended up walking up some of the hills as to not aggravate it.

If you look at my split (as taken by my Garmin Forerunner) there is a marked difference between the first half and the second half:

(Note the extra 0.09 mile required through the course of the run for zig zagging around people and such.) I was ahead of pace for a 2:20 finish before my side stitch.

It wasn’t the normal side stitch that one gets from not breathing properly. I would have welcomed that instead as an easy to solve problem, but it was the kind of side ache I get whenever I have tried to run with something in my gut.  I think the problem was that I had too much sticky spaghetti late on Saturday and it kind of just hung around my stomach pouch for hours and hours. I felt it kind of hanging around my stomach late into the night and never felt like my stomach was empty on Sunday morning.

So, while I was stewing from about mile 6 to 9 about my band “betraying me,” the fact is that it has been the tool that has been most useful for me to be able to move as fast as I did for the bulk of the race to start with.

Next time any carb loading will be done at lunch time and dinner will be light or liquid. Though I’m so sore right now, I don’t really want to think about next time.

I also have to give props to my wife. She ran her second half marathon with me yesterday, and improved her time by about 16 minutes, too. Only she didn’t have the advantage of being 50 pounds lighter. She just trained it out.

(Cross posted at The Band Blog.)

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Never forget.

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Watch for me finishing the North Olympic Discovery Half Marathon tomorrow at the streaming video of the finish line.
I hope to finish at about 11:20 AM Pac-10 time.

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From my e-mail in-box:

Latinos & Immigration in America

A Discussion About Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law & Upcoming Legal Challenges

Featured Guest Speaker:

Thomas A. Sae nz

MAL DEF President and General Counsel

Panelists:

Jorge Bar ón, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project

Luis Fra ga, University of Washington

Pramila Jaya pal, OneAmerica

Shankar Naray an, ACLU

Rebecca Smith, National Employment Law Project

Moderator:

Dan Ford, Latina/o Bar Association of Washi ngton

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

7:00p.m-9:00p.m.

Town Hall

1119 8th Avenue

Seattle, WA 98101

The need for national immigration reform has never been greater. On April 23, 2010, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed SB1070 which requires law enforcement to question people about their immigration status during everyday police encounters and criminalizes immigrants for failing to carry their “papers.”

MAL DEF President Thomas Sae nz will speak on MALDEF’s legal challenge to the newest anti-immigrant law out of Arizona and on the pressing need for federal immigration reform.  Following Saenz’s remarks, a panel of speakers will join Saenz to discuss these issues as well as the recent incident involving the beating of a young Latino man and the use of a racial slur by a Seattle police officer.

I’m not sure why they are calling this a “town meeting.” This is an invitation to an echo chamber. It might be interesting to go just to see if anyone takes the 10 minutes to read the bill.

I’d like a ruling on whether “Mexican” is a racist slur, by the way.  In case you missed it the cop who was “beating”  the Latino man said, “I will beat the Mexican piss out of you.”  It seems to me that if he was trying to be racist, he could have said about a half dozen other things.  If I go to France and some frog assumes, with good reason, that I am American and threatens to “beat the American piss” out of me, he’s not being racist, right?  I realize it is somewhat different because Mexico isn’t quite the melting pot America is, but I still don’t think “racist slur” is the correct term.  “Slur based on prejudice of nation of origin,” maybe.

And the reason I put “beating” in quotes isn’t necessarily to defend the cop’s actions, but in America’s history some people have taken real beatings from cops.  I don’t want to take away from those beatings by equivocating a graze of the boot to the head while stomping on a hand to those beatings. Unnecessary use of force? Maybe, I wasn’t there, but from what the tape shows I could buy that. A beating? No.

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If Bill Clinton brings down Obama, would it be politically feasible for Hillary to be the ‘12 nomination?

I think probably not, even if she’d want to be in such an unwinnable slot. So that would leave, who? Biden?

Not that I think any of that would ever happen. Rahm Emanuel is being set up to be the next Obama associate to be thrown under the bus and we’ll all be told that we shouldn’t worry ourselves about it.

The only way I could see it going all the way to the top is if someone makes the mistake of trying to throw Bill Clinton under the bus, because he won’t stand for it. But I doubt anyone will be that dumb. Then again, I didn’t think anyone in the cabinet would be the second to fall for an easily avoided “gotcha” moment.

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What’s the deal with Obama’s cabinet? You’d think Napolitano would have been ready for McCain’s question after Holder got burned on it.

What is she doing during her 6 hour work day? Napolitano, like Holder, is a  lawyer. That bill took me all of 10 minutes to read. That really should have been a softball that McCain was lobbing her.  Instead she whiffed in a manner that made her look ridiculous.

If I was Obama, I’d get them all together and say, “The next one of you jackasses that shoots his mouth off on something without taking 10 minutes to read what you’re criticizing is going to have to answer to Oprah.”  Of course, that would require leadership.

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This installment comes from Slate’s “Since You Asked.” (H/T Althouse.)

Dear Cary,

Worried

Cary’s response was pretty pathetic and completely predictable. If you read the response and replace “Fox News” with “heroine” it pretty much makes sense. (Althouse liked it, though. Women and their feelings…)

Here is the correct response:

Dear Worried,

Seriously? “How can I help him embrace a progressive, inclusive future? How do I bring back rationality, sensitivity and temperance into our discussions?” Sweet baby Jesus, I can’t fathom what the problem is. I mean, who wouldn’t want a snotty graduate student walking into their house and lecturing them about what an ignorant racist they are?

You are an independent, socially liberal woman in my mid-20s, currently in graduate school? Translated into English that means you’ve never been out in the real world a day in your life, haven’t paid a cent of income tax, and in general you know shit about shit. It sounds like your old man, on the other hand, has seen a couple of things.  If something has his attention, maybe it’s worth thinking about.

First, I have to say that Fox News can be a healthy part of a complete information diet, and yes, it probably wouldn’t hurt the old man to flip around the dial or the internet a little bit to keep himself intellectually honest.  However, anyone who takes Slate seriously enough to actually write to their advice columnist probably isn’t really in a position to criticize anyone’s choice in media.

You say, “he actually thinks Obama may be a Muslim, a socialist/communist, and is actively destroying America while the left-wing media clings to political correctness and looks the other way.” If that’s so, it sounds like he’s batting about .400. However, I doubt that is what he’s actually thinking. I know your type. You hear someone saying something that doesn’t completely square with your secular-progressive world view and your “nuanced” mind shuts down, runs the first sentence heard through the Daily Kos/Olbermann decoder ring and spits out the proper, easily-identifiable “what the right thinks” catch phrases.

Let me frame this in a different way: Your dad likely thinks your political beliefs are as ignorant and dangerous as you think his are. Does he harangue you and write you to half-assed advice columnists about his terrible daughter? Does he try to control the TV you can watch and radio you can listen to?

What you should do is visit your dad and apologize for saying snotty shit like “men in lynch mobs wore hats, and it didn’t make them any more decent” and for saying ignorant shit like “ideological repression of postwar America.” Rather than focusing on the racism and sexism in the ’50’s try to identify what your dad cherishes about those days. Maybe you will get something out of it. If your dad is or was a decent man like you say, there must be something worthwhile there. And are you sure that he “longs for the past” or is he looking to the past as a guide to the future? You might also want to think hard about whether he’s really changed that much or whether you have.

Or just keep harping on him with your know-nothing self righteousness until he finally tells you to fuck off and cuts you out of the will. Whatever.

Lovingly,
Bull Moose

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Monkey see:

The [San Francisco] Board of Supervisors today approved a resolution calling for a boycott of the state of Arizona…

Monkey do:

Seattle City Council approves Arizona boycott

Seattle is like the kid in high school that hung out with the popular crowd, but clearly wasn’t the one bringing the popularity.  Rather, he was there because he was the pathetic “yes man” who stroked the egos of the cool kids enough to be let into the group.  Sure, once in a great while he’d come up with ideas like banning plastic grocery bags, but mostly he just followed.  Seattle is the Potsie of America’s Enlightened Blue Archipelago.

It is worth noting that Seattle’s boycott does not include their red light camera contract. Once again ideals stop where money starts for the left (not that it doesn’t for the right, but the left is supposed to be above that, right?).

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Could Kagan be a stealth moderate? Those are some interesting finds at that link, but I’m not holding my breath. First, moderate SCOTUS nominees tend to turn into leftist SCOTUS Justices. Second, Obama knows her fairly well and must know what he’s getting. Right? Then again, Obama has not shown himself to be a spectacular judge of people.

However I will say that Kagan is head and shoulders above Obama’s other finalists in my view.  Sure, she was never a judge, but that might be a feature rather than a bug (see: William Rehnquist). I don’t understand why Kagan wasn’t nominated before Sotomayer.  Well, maybe I do. I’d theorize that it has to do with Obama’s obsession with being historical; first wise latina on the court and all of that. But if Kagan was put on the court in part  to try to win Kennedy, you’d think that would have been the priority.

I’m also getting a kick out of the gay-or-not-gay rumor mongering from the left.  I just assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that she is a lesbian. And because I’m one of those bigoted conservatives it didn’t make any difference to me either way, I’m just against her because she’s a woman (everything after the comma was a joke for those of you that are humor impaired). I was surprised to see this story yesterday.

In any case, it looks like the SCOTUS left wing line change is 2/3 done.  There’s just Ginsburg to replace before 2012.  (I’m hoping that Breyer tries to make it into a second Obama term and then… whoever… can replace him and break the perpetual 4-4-1 tie.)

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Ah, politics. This week one side will be complaining about the other side distorting facts about a new law; the next week the side that was complaining will be promulgating distortions of their own about the other side’s bill.

I took a few minutes to actually read through the bill (PDF).  There are some things I like about it, and some things I have questions about.

First, the thing I really like about it is that it punishes people who employ illegal immigrates.  One of my main concerns in this debate is that these migrant Mexican workers are being horribly exploited. They are paid low wages, are not provided worker’s comp insurance, and often work in unsafe conditions.  Second to that is that the employers are not paying into the SSI and Medicare system in a time when those programs could use the cash.

I think the preemption question is going to be interesting.  That bill was written specifically to face that challenge. Arizona’s defense is going to be simple: How can a state law be preempted by a Federal law when they say the same thing?  Just when we thought all the Federalism issues had been addressed after 221 years.  Can the Feds order a state government not to enforce federal law when it involves the status of citizens within the state border? That will be a SCOTUS opinion I’m looking forward to.

Most of the distortions and hysteria involving this law are completely off the mark, though.  Most of that arises from the misunderstanding (or, for all of the politicians who have been through law school, pretending to misunderstand) the term “reasonable suspicion.”  “Reasonable suspicion” is a term of art in law and law enforcement.  There is a huge body of case law about what constitutes “reasonable suspicion.”

I’ve heard a lot of talking heads going on about how this law will give Mexicans the same status as Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland.  That simply isn’t the case.  Law enforcement is well trained in what reasonable suspicion is.  They have to be. Reasonable suspicion applies when making an arrest to every thing from misdemeanor drug possession to first degree murder.

Not only is the reasonable suspicion protection in place, but the law enforcement agent has to be in “lawful contact” with the suspect before they can act on a reasonable suspicion.  “Lawful contact” is another term of art that is well hashed out in case law. It is well established that a person must identify themselves to a law enforcement officer during the course of lawful contact.  And while citizens are not required to carry ID, legal immigrants are required to carry their green cards under federal law.  (That is my other major question – are citizens going to be arrested because they don’t have a driver’s license if they are engaging in behavior that triggers reasonable suspicion but does not rise to the level of suspicion required for arrest otherwise? That might be a problem. )

So I will grant that there are going to be nuances for developing reasonable suspicion under this law that are going to have to be worked out in the Arizona state courts or the Federal courts.  But that’s what happens in the common law system whenever a new area of law comes along.

UPDATE:

George Will:

The fact that the meaning of “reasonable” will not be obvious in many contexts does not make the law obviously too vague to stand. The Bill of Rights — the Fourth Amendment — proscribes “unreasonable searches and seizures.” What “reasonable” means in practice is still being refined by case law — as is that amendment’s stipulation that no warrants shall be issued “but upon probable cause.” There has also been careful case-by-case refinement of the familiar and indispensable concept of “reasonable suspicion.”

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