The real problem with the Wilshire Metro Red line was that, during tunneling, they hit a pocket of natural gas and blew up a discount clothing store.

So far as I know that's never happened during any other subway excavation. But the LA basin is a seismically and petrologically and otherwise weird place, and residents at the time were justifiably concerned their house might be next.

It's true that Waxman partly caved to the NIMBYs and rich Beverly Hills types who didn't want "those people" riding in on the subway to steal their TVs, but he's far from the worst offender.

The real problem with the Wilshire Metro Red line was during tunneling, when the workers hit a pocket of natural gas and blew up a discount clothing store.

So far as I know that's never happened during any other subway excavation. But the LA basin is a seismically and petrologically and otherwise weird place, and residents at the time were justifiably concerned their house might be next.

It's true that Waxman partly caved to the NIMBYs and rich Beverly Hills types who didn't want "those people" riding in on the subway to steal their TVs, but he's far from the worst offender.

There are laws that must be followed, and the violation of those laws can result in the loss of the repo license. Oh yes, in most states, repo men must be licensed. And they aren't allowed to pull these ridiculous Dog-the-Bounty-Hunter-style shenanigans.

International airplane repos in Haiti and the jungles of Guyana...may not work quite the same way as TV repos in Houston.

If Haiti even has laws on the books, what are they going to do when they're broken? Complain to the International Repo Court?

I do wonder whether Popovich's guys travel on their real passports. I guess if you never leave the airport, you never have to pass through immigration.

@mertam, apparently you missed the "Opinion" label at the top of the article. You also seem to have missed, upon reading the piece, that it was structured as opinion rather than journalism.

Because of limited space, opinion pieces traditionally do not have to lay out the evidence for their claims. They do have an obligation not to lie or deceive about that evidence.

On the internet, and especially on Salon, there's no reason for opinion pieces to lack links to further reading. I know Salon is just publishing Sirota's syndicated content, but the guy has a blog and you should be linking to it.

Back on topic: Another reason the Yankees suck.

@gaudiori:

They weren't Blackwater. There were smaller, spookier operations -- ex-CIA people rehired by the agency to supply them with deniability.

The CIA's torture psychologists were a tiny shop in Seattle, just those two Mormon PhDs and maybe some support staff.

The CIA's rendition flight planning services were supplied by Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary.

Everything was outsourced. It makes it that much harder to put a true picture together.

Whenever libertarians are on the 'good' side, such as in civil liberties and government spying debates, their contribution is ignored (or twisted). But when Wall Street elitists plot to loot Social Security with the help of right wingers like Steve Forbes, then libertarians are lumped in with them, slurred, even given the credit

The most popular definition of a Libertarian is: socially liberal, economically conservative.

Based on which one of those agrees with the liberal readership of Salon, you can sorta predict which libertarian positions are going to be popular here.

p.s. Libertarians didn't exactly distinguish themselves during the Bush years. On civil liberties and defense and "war on terra" issues, there seemed to be a lot more "libertarians" using the label as a facade of independence covering up basic conservatism than true libertarians (whatever those are).

@whaddami,

What happens if your empathy is for the guy trying to maximize profits because he's got two kids in private school and not for the worker getting screwed out of his health benefits, even if he's only 25 and in good health?

"Who is John Roberts," as they would say on Jeopardy. Listening to Roberts in oral arguments is a reminder that empathy isn't sufficient, because he clearly shows empathy for the welfare of corporations -- IIRC, he made some ridiculous comments in the Ledbetter case.

I still think empathy is necessary to be a good judge, especially when hearing cases alone. Although one might argue that, on a panel like the Supreme Court, the presence of one or two stunted legal reasoning machines like Scalia might improve the whole.

Your point about Aristotelian logic is an interesting one, but you're two ships passing in the night with Burton's claim, which is that the recent discoveries in neuroscience and especially cognitive semantics confirm a far less logical model of human nature than the classical one.

So even though empathy may not play an explicit role in writing opinions according to formal legal conventions, there's plenty of unconscious irrationality feeding into the process. See Steven Winter's recent "A Clearing in the Forest" for an interesting attempt to understand that process.

Don't overlook the fact that empathy has always been permitted within the law, in criminal sentencing. That's why conservatives love to take discretion away using "sentencing standards" bills.