Tim Lee has written an interesting blog post arguing that if the Supreme Court should happen to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, it might actually have a beneficial effect on meaningful access to abortion.

Just as eminent domain abuse hasn’t been an issue that voters were focusing on before the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo that the constitution doesn’t protect their property from the state taking it to give to other private parties, so the reversal of Roe might alert people to the many regulations that have caused many abortion clinics to close; leaving many people legal, but not actual, access to abortion.

I’m not sure exactly how this would play out. In the long run, I’m pretty confident that abortion rights will be protected. In the shorter run, it’s hard to say. It will probably vary a lot by region.

In any event, I think it’s an interesting question. And, I’m always happy to see people challenging the conventional wisdom, and thinking about non-obvious consequences of possible changes.

James Lileks got it right, as usual, when considering the US dissent from a UN compact promoting national censorship to conserve unpopular culture…

The New York Times put it thus: “As with the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty and the treaty creating the International Criminal Court, (The US) will likely remain a critical – and perhaps obstructionist – outsider.”

Imagine that! The killjoy nation. Monarchy, Communism, Fascism, Socialism, now Tribalism – the US never quite joins in the fun. Everyone else jumps off the bridge, and we hang back, taking notes. Like we’re special or something.

Yesterday I received a check in the mail that I’m feeling weird about. It’s not a huge amount, but it’s not trivially small, either.

The payment is a pro-rata share from the Vizcaino v. Microsoft class action suit.

As you may recall, this was the case in which some Microsoft temporary workers (sometimes designated permatemps) sued Microsoft for employee benefits. The claim was that, even though they signed explicit contracts to the contrary, they were common-law employees and entitled to the benefits of regular full-time employees, FTEs, including lucrative stock options and employee-purchase-plan discounted stocks. They argued that they were really treated just like employees (worked at Microsoft for years, did identical work under identical conditions as FTEs, participated in meetings and morale events, etc.) and that Microsoft only designated them differently to avoid paying them benefits and to avoid employer taxes.

But, this is absurd. These people, including me, had agreed to a different deal. In most cases, contractors made more money (in terms of pay and immediate benefits) than their FTE counterparts. I know several people, and I’m sure that there are many more, who specifically chose not to pursue full-time employment because they preferred their compensation packages over that of full-time employees. They weren’t being cheated. They agreed to different terms, and Microsoft lived up to its obligations completely.

It was only afterwards, when some saw their FTE counterparts getting rich from the stock growth of the 1990s that they decided that Microsoft should pay them more.

Court decisions were going against Microsoft and they settled the case in December of 2000 for about $100 million.

While some benefit from this, mostly lawyers, many suffer. For example, as a result of this case, Microsoft has changed its Human Resources policies with respect to contractors. Contractors cannot work longer than one year on an assignment. After an assignment, contractors must take a 100 day break away from Microsoft before engaging in any other assignments. Many other distinctions, like exclusion from morale events without overcoming burdensome hurdles, have made life worse for contractors and the overall morale of the teams they are on.

A few years ago, I was notified that I had been identified as a member of the class in the settlement and was asked to confirm the facts of my employment at Microsoft around 1999. I contacted Microsoft’s legal department expressing my disagreement with the lawsuit and to find out whether my choosing to not participate would help Microsoft keep some of the wrongly taken money. I had a nice exchange with a Microsoft lawyer who explained to me that Microsoft had already made its settlement payment and that it would not receive refunds for rejected awards. He thought that if I refused payment, that would only increase the amount received by those who accepted payment. Neither of us could see how that result would serve justice; in fact it would probably do the opposite by rewarding and encouraging those who approved of this sort of thing. Furthermore, Microsoft was not arranging any mechanism for the voluntary return of funds from the settlement (I suspect that they correctly judged that the bad press from such an arrangement would outweigh the benefit of the retrieved money). He did thank me for my support and acknowledged how frustrating the entire case had been.

So here I am with money I don’t think I earned. My first emotional instinct is to give it away; perhaps to the Cato Institute or the Institute For Justice or some other group that will promote the principles of free markets, private property, and contracts that were trashed by this case.

On the other hand, logically, I don’t think it makes sense. The money is now mine, legally and morally. If I could push a button to reverse the entire case (or the portion that benefited me) I would do it. But I can’t. So, I shouldn’t feel guilty about having the money. And, just as I shouldn’t consider sunk costs when deciding what to do with my assets in the future, I don’t think I should let my emotional feelings about the origin of this money affect how I should use it. I think I should treat it just as I would a bonus from my employer. I might give some of it away (because I’m now in a better financial position to do so), but only if I think that’s the best way to further my chosen values; not because I feel like reacting emotionally.

But, on a meta-level, I’m glad that I feel a bit uncomfortable about getting this money. It tells me that I have a strong sense of justice.

I wish the judges in this case had one.

I’ve been out of town for a few days, and now I have a cold, so please understand the lack of posting recently.

I think there’s an interesting comment thread here about funding the rebuilding of New Orleans, and “public goods” in general.

And, I think Tom Bell’s skeptical take on the Miers supreme court nomination is intriguing. It’s helping me stay optimistic about the choice, anyway.

Unlike many bloggers, I wasn’t fortunate enough to get any tickets to an advanced screening of the new movie, Serenity. I think this is a very clever promotional idea. Bloggers will get the word out more effectively than lots of other advertising, and it will hardly cost the studio anything.

I’m really looking forward to seeing it, myself. My son and I love the Firefly series on DVD and enjoy the other Joss Whedon television series (Buffy, Angel).

It seems as though the movie is already rated 8.4/10 at IMDB (3,161 votes). For some perspective, if it could maintain that average among regular voters, that would put it among the top rated 46 US films of all time.

Here’s to it living up to my expectations, and that we get either a nice stream of sequels, or a rebirth of the television series (or both!).

UPDATE: Ok. I’ve seen the movie and loved it. Everybody who thinks they might like it should definitely go see it. Lots of great action and humor. I think it helps if you are familiar with the show, but it’s not necessary to get a lot out of it.

Enjoy!

Congratulations to John Roberts for his approval by the Senate Judiciary Committee to have his nomination as Chief Justice of the United States sent to the full Senate for what looks like a certain confirmation. And congratulations to the Democratic senators on the committee who voted for him (Feingold, Kohl, Leahy) for faithfully performing their constitutional duty rather than obstructing a highly-qualified candidate for partisan reasons.

I think that those Democrats who voted against Roberts (Biden, Durbin, Feinstein, Kennedy, Schumer) and those who have announced their intention to vote against him (Boxer, Corzine, Kerry, Lautenberg, Reid) have sent a clear signal to President Bush with respect to his next nominee. And that message, it seems to me is:

Mr. President, you can safely ignore anything we have to say about the next nominee. Our votes have been captured by left-wing interest groups. We couldn’t even vote for someone as incredibly qualified as John Roberts to replace a conservative like Rehnquist. There is no way in hell that any nominee acceptable to you will pass ideological muster for us as a replacement for O’Connor. So, please pay no attention to our expressed concerns. We are irrelevant. Go ahead and pick someone you’d most like to see on the Court, and don’t worry about a potential compromise with senators like us.

I realize that just about everybody sees the response to Katrina as a confirmation of the prejudices that they already had, but I find it hard to disagree with David Boaz in this article.

Before and after Hurricane Katrina, businesses and charities responded effectively. Government failed at even its most basic task of protecting lives and property from criminals. When massive and bloated governments at all levels disappoint, the solution is not to give them more money. Rather, the solution lies in a government limited in scope and ambition, and focused on its essential functions.

And here are some Cato recommendations to offset the first $62 billion spent. Any guesses on how much of this, or any wasteful spending, will actually be cut?

Ha!

No, Bush is “generously” committing hundreds of billions more of other people’s money. I’m sure he thinks it’s a small price to pay for some job approval points.

And, now NASA is going to spend $100 billion (at least) to go back to the moon. Great!

The federal government is out of control. The national debt is now nearly $8 trillion, and yet they keep piling on more. Most Republicans exhibit no more fiscal restraint than Democrats (which is to say: none).

The only positive development I’ve seen from this administration is the Roberts nomination. Hopefully, that will go through smoothly and the next one will be as inspired and successful.

And then, if Stevens and Ginsburg could retire soon…

Well, a guy can dream, can’t he?

Mark Steyn is not impressed:

The comparison with Sept. 11 isn’t exact, but it’s fair to this extent: Katrina was the biggest disaster on American soil since that day provoked the total overhaul of the system and the devotion of billions of dollars and the finest minds in the nation to the prioritizing of homeland security. It was, thus, the first major test of the post-9/11 structures. Happy with the results?

…

One thing that became clear two or three months after “the day that everything changed” is that nothing changed — that huge swathes of the political culture in America remain committed to a bargain that stiffs the people at every level, a system of lavish funding of pseudo-action. You could have done as the anti-war left wanted and re-allocated every dollar spent in Iraq to Louisiana. Or you could have done as some of the rest of us want and re-allocated every buck spent on, say, subsidizing Ted Turner’s and Sam Donaldson’s play-farming activities. But, in either case, I’ll bet Louisiana’s kleptocrat public service would have pocketed the dough and carried on as usual — and, come the big day, the state would still have flopped out, and New Orleans’ foul-mouthed mayor would still be ranting about why it was all everybody else’s fault.

…

Oh, well, maybe the 9/11 commission can rename themselves the Katrina Kommission. Back in the real world, America’s enemies will draw many useful lessons from the events of this last week. Will America?

Check out Jonathan Rauch’s review of senator Rick Santorum’s new book.

People like Santorum make libertarians like me very uncomfortable aligning with Republicans about anything. Santorum has contempt for the “libertarianish right” and “this whole idea of personal autonomy”. He would impose all sorts of new big-government schemes to promote the traditional family over pesky individual choices like, well, just about anything he doesn’t judge to be virtuous.

If this isn’t where the Republican Party is headed, where are the loud Republican voices denouncing it?