The share of passengers denied boarding rose until the late 1990s to about 1 in 500, but it’s fallen to about one in a thousand
.. involuntary denied boardings are affecting about six passengers per 100,000.
.. But a free-market solution would require the airlines to raise the compensation offer indefinitely until somebody accepted the offer. It’s a simple matter of fairness: If airlines are legally permitted to make false promises—and to overbook a flight is, essentially, to promise a service that cannot be fulfilled—they ought to pay market price to compensate people for the unfulfilled promise. Instead, airlines are permitted to practice a kind of bizarro capitalism, in which they can overbook with impunity and throw people off the plane after they reject an arbitrary fee.
.. airline industry is sheltered from both antitrust regulation and litigation.
.. when fuel prices fell last year, as The Atlantic’s Joe Pinsker (who edited this story and who has a relative who works at United) has written, airlines spent the savings on stock buybacks rather than pass them to consumers.
.. what recourse do they have against the company? Very little. In the last decade, class-action lawsuits have become endangered thanks to a series of Supreme Court rulings that have undercut consumer rights. Disputes over fine-print regulation are increasingly likely to be settled in arbitration, without a judge or jury
David Souter Killed the Filibuster
control of the Supreme Court functions as a somewhat delayed reward for winning ideological battles at the presidential level, and then as a check on the next ideological coalition as it’s taking power.
.. Thus judicial appointees of the pre-New Deal era restrained Roosevelt’s liberalism for a time, and the judicial appointees from liberalism’s New Deal-Great Society heyday continued to advance liberal causes even as the Democratic coalition fell apart.
.. it was Souter who was the real outlier, Souter who really prevented the long era of Republican appointees from putting restraints on social liberalism, Souter who made today’s judicial battles seem more existential to the right than to the left.
.. Souter was sold to George H. W. Bush by his chief of staff, John Sununu, and the moderate-to-liberal New Hampshire Republican Warren Rudman as an easy confirmation because he lacked a paper trail.
.. Souter spent a brief time voting with the conservatives, then cast one of the crucial votes to uphold Roe, then swiftly evolved into as reliable a liberal as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama could have ever hoped to appoint … and then, as the by-then-inevitable coup de grâce, retired under Obama, allowing Sonia Sotomayor to take his place.
.. Had Souter simply voted like a typical Republican appointee — not in lock step with Antonin Scalia, but as an institutionalist, incrementalist conservative, in line with the current chief justice, John Roberts — then it’s likely that Roe v. Wade would have been mostly overturned in the 1990s, returning much of abortion law to the states, and that the gay rights movement would have subsequently advanced through referendums and legislation rather than a sweeping constitutionalization of cultural debate.
.. This, in turn, would have dramatically lowered the stakes of judicial politics for many Republican voters
Donald Trump Racks Up Few Wins So Far
.. Other presidents have seen approval ratings significantly worse, but they have all come at later points in their presidencies, Gallup found.
President Bill Clinton hit a low in his first summer in office of 37%, but it marked a bottoming out from which he climbed back to win re-election.
Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush each reached the 20s in the latter years in their first, and only, terms of office, and didn’t recover.
- .. The selection of Judge Gorsuch, who now serves on the federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, is a rare case in which the president has managed to clearly fulfill a campaign pledge,
- as was his promise to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and
- expedite approval of long-stalled pipeline projects.
.. His description of the revised ban as a “watered-down version of the first one” already has complicated the government’s arguments in support of it.
.. Mr. Trump lashed out at lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus who withheld support for the White House-backed health-care bill after deeming it insufficiently conservative. He said he would “fight them” in the 2018 elections, if he had to. The rift, some conservatives have said, is mutual.
.. Ms. Walsh, in charge of assigning West Wing office space, gave Mr. Dearborn an office he found inferior to the space allotted to his assistant. Mr. Dearborn and the assistant switched offices, which angered Ms. Walsh. Aides loyal to Mr. Dearborn cheered Ms. Walsh’s White House departure, while other insiders—including top Trump adviser Steve Bannon—heaped praise on her.
SCOTUS Hearing Revealed The Character Of Neil Gorsuch AND Senate Democrats
he was so consistent and respectful, that opinion pieces have taken to denying him support, but not blaming him for it. To do otherwise would seem monstrous in the face of the kind of character on display by the Colorado Judge who some say may have learned at the knee of Kennedy, but will likely rule in the vein of Scalia.
.. Gorsuch’s immediate, and obviously habitual, graciousness to someone who sneezed was a moment worth noting.
.. Opposition to Gorsuch is absurd given his bi-partisan support, his qualifications, and his qualities as a man, and yet come it will.
.. a kind man