9th circuit expands border searches

The Volokh Conspiracy offers this great analysis of this 9th Circuit opinion today.  Basically, the court ruled that so long as an item seized at the border could have been searched at the border under the border search exception to the 4th amendment, the police can search it whenever and wherever they want without a warrant.

DC Circuit comes out with opinion on what constitutes membership in al Qaeda

In this opinion, Judge Kavanaugh said that even though the US government could not prove that a Guantanamo detainee was a member of al Qaeda (and therefore subject to being held in definitely under 2001's Authorization of the Use of Military Force) under the command structure test, his petition for habeas corpus must be denied.  The court says that each case must be analyzed on its on facts, without a firm standard.

Imagine that; you have to analyze the facts to determine if someone is a member of al Qaeda.  It was my understanding that is why we have jury trials, but having the DC Circuit as a fact finder should work as well.

JP Morgan Chase has to buy back mortgage backed securities

A lawsuit against a subsidiary which created a $666 million publicly offered bond backed by home equity lines of credit, now owned by JP Morgan Chase, by an insurer of mortgage backed securities can proceed.   The issue was that the Plaintiff only has evidence that a random sampling of mortgages included in the security were not conforming to the warranties of the bond creator.  Judge Crotty ruled that this statistical sampling was sufficient to allow the suit to continue.

I have at least one thing in common with the FTC...

...Google Buzz irritates me.  However, unlike the FTC I cannot force Google to submit to privacy audits for the next 20 years.  The FTC found that Google facebook knock-off Buzz's opt-out procedure was sufficiently opaque as to the amount of private data from Gmail accounts it shared, and is forcing the giant to submit to bi-annual audits to make sure it is complying with its own privacy standard.  Google issued this mea culpa.

This is also a big settlement for the FTC, which has been attempting to position itself a privacy watchdog, whether Congress tells them to or not..

Water bureau to pay for new Rose Festival headquarters

Portland's Water Bureau is set to spend $1.5 million of money from Portland residents to overhaul the Rose Festival's headquarters.  This is part of broader mission creep for the water and sewer people, who are also spending $2.5 million on "parks and planning, including $69K on enforcement of rules for dogs in parks (grumble).

The battle lines are being drawn for next year's elections on this issue.  Randy Leonard and Amanda Fritz are pretty much diametrically opposed on this issue and also up for re-election.

End of HAMP?

Yesterday, the House voted to end the HAMP program.  The vote basically broke along party lines, with Republicans, critical of the program's efficacy, voting to end the program.  In fairness, everyone except Obama and the treasury is critical of the program efficacy.

However, the vote begs the question; is an unequivocally lousy system for helping homeowners in foreclosure better than none at all?

Home prices down, especially in Portland

The S & P/Case-Shiller index of home prices for January 2011 for 20 cities came out today, and it shows a continued slide of home prices, as foreclosures stack up.  What is surprising is that Portland and Seattle are close to the top of the list in terms of declining home prices, even compared to cities which have been traditionally in the forefront of declines, like Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Phoenix.  Portland home prices are at their lowest since January, 2005.