Founders' Quote Daily

"[T]here is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution."

— Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 81, 1788)

On the one hand, one might consider this a bad thing, as a failure in intention.

On the other hand, just consider where we might be now had the law been extensively "construed in the spirit of the Constitution" by the kind of people who can stand up and say with a straight face in front of the national press that the words "the People" mean "the People" everywhere that they are used throughout the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, except in the Second Amendment, where they mean either "the States" or "the Federal Government" depending upon the speaker's whim of the moment.

It makes about as little sense as the idea that you can prevent teenage pregnancy and STDs by refusing to teach teenagers about birth control and safe sex.

No pretexts?

The FCC has just issued new regulations for protecting telephone subscriber information in the wake of the Congressional act outlawing "pretexting", that polite euphemism meaning "impersonating someone in order to steal their personal data".  Phone company representatives don't seem happy.

One of the biggest concerns phone companies have is that the FCC is making it difficult for them to work with partners and marketing contractors to bring new services to consumers, by mandating that they can only share customer data with these partners once they obtain customer consent.

"We are deeply concerned that the FCC is taking an overly broad approach far beyond protecting the legitimate privacy interests of call detail information to preventing any marketing of new services, bundled offerings and new applications--using joint venture partners or independent contractors--that can save consumers money," Walter McCormick Jr., president and CEO of USTelecom, said in a statement.

So, lemme see here ... what he's saying is that the new FCC anti-pretexting rules make it harder for phone companies to hire telemarketers to annoy me?

You know, it might be just me, but I don't see a downside to this.