Lawrence Lessig has a well-reasoned and balanced r...

Lawrence Lessig has a well-reasoned and balanced response to the left’s reaction to Obama’s recent FISA vote. I left my own thoughts in a comment yesterday.

Submitted by crazymonk on Thu, 07/10/2008 - 5:00am.

Comments (9)

"He has promised to repeal the immunity as president."

This raises, for me, an interesting ex post facto law question. The crazy people on Reddit keep loudly arguing that giving post-event immunity is an ex post facto law and is therefore unconstitutional. It's not; what is unconstitutional is making something a crime, or a worse crime, when it wasn't a crime, or was a lessor crime, at the time it was committed.

I've done no research on this at all, but I'm curious if there's ever before been a challenge to liability where something was a crime, then was made not a crime through post-crime immunity, but then that immunity was later stripped away. Is that the same as re-creating the crime? It was a crime when it was committed, then it wasn't, then it was again... is that an ex post facto problem? I don't think it would be, but you'd need plow through the argument a few times to get there.

Does Flea have any insight on this point?

PS - CM, could you possibly add I to your list of approved HTML tags? Also, B and BLOCKQUOTE would be good, but definitely I. I don't even know what the DL, DT and DD tags do...

RumorsDaily | Thu, 07/10/2008 - 1:07pm

Done.

crazymonk | Thu, 07/10/2008 - 1:20pm

A lessor crime: Violating your lease. Say, by having a loud 20-minute argument while neighbors are studing for the bar exam.

Lorelei | Thu, 07/10/2008 - 2:01pm

Isn't that a lessee crime? A lessor crime would be installing cabinet doors in a tenant's kitchen that, while nice and new and clean, don't really match the rest of the apartment and make the kitchen look smaller.

Jon May | Thu, 07/10/2008 - 2:04pm

I was thrown off by "Lessig"... it has my penultimate letters in words starting with "less" all thrown off.

RumorsDaily | Thu, 07/10/2008 - 3:50pm

RD: No.

flea | Fri, 07/11/2008 - 1:03pm

OH MY GOD SOMEONE JUST EMAILED TO ASK ME WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CALL YOUR CREDIT CARD CARD COMPANY AND UNBEKNOWNST TO YOU IT'S OUTSOURCED TO CHENAI AND YOU'RE GIVING ALL YOUR PERSONAL INFO, IS IT SUBJECT TO THE FOURTH AMENDMENT??

the answer is: AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

flea | Fri, 07/11/2008 - 2:38pm

Excellent question.

crazymonk | Fri, 07/11/2008 - 2:44pm

Were they worried about the government listening in to that phone call, or just the fact that some guy in Mumbai now has their credit card info?

RumorsDaily | Fri, 07/11/2008 - 7:15pm