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On the way out the door, Mayor Bloomberg is not slowing down. In fact, his legal department filed a brief early in the stop-and-frisk case, before his successor (who opposes the policy takes over).

Even in cases where the city has been unable to resolve a longstanding dispute, like in the federal ruling finding the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policies to be discriminatory, the city has moved quickly. Rather than wait for Mr. de Blasio to take office and make good on his promise to withdraw the city’s appeal, the city’s famously combative corporation counsel filed appeals briefs that run nearly 200 pages two weeks ago, well before the court’s deadline.

The gambit, which a city official said was intended to define the Bloomberg administration’s position on the stop-and-frisk issue, left some legal adversaries questioning the city’s motives.

“This was a last-gasp effort by the Bloomberg administration to have a final say about the stop-and-frisk rulings that have stained its legacy,” said Christopher Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which is handling one of the stop-and-frisk cases. “I feel for the lawyers who worked their fingers to the bone on legal briefs that were filed simply to make a political point.”

Yeah. Politics. I suppose the right thing to do would be to ask the court for a delay in filing briefs so the new administration can state their position. I’m sure the plaintiffs would not oppose the delay.

And Mazal Tov to Mayor Bloomberg. He is now a grandpa.

There’s that word again. Unravels. A very fine title for my next book.

In WSJ, John Cochrane writes about alternatives that we should consider when Obamacare implodes (presuming, I suppose, that this is inevitable).

The unraveling of the Affordable Care Act presents a historic opportunity for change. Its proponents call it “settled law,” but as Prohibition taught us, not even a constitutional amendment is settled law—if it is dysfunctional enough, and if Americans can see a clear alternative.

This fall’s website fiasco and policy cancellations are only the beginning. Next spring the individual mandate is likely to unravel when we see how sick the people are who signed up on exchanges, and if our government really is going to penalize voters for not buying health insurance. The employer mandate and “accountable care organizations” will take their turns in the news. There will be scandals. There will be fraud. This will go on for years.

Yet opponents should not sit back and revel in dysfunction. The Affordable Care Act was enacted in response to genuine problems. Without a clear alternative, we will simply patch more, subsidize more, and ignore frauds and scandals, as we do in Medicare and other programs.

There is an alternative. A much freer market in health care and health insurance can work, can deliver high quality, technically innovative care at much lower cost, and solve the pathologies of the pre-existing system.

He is preempting the common refrain that without Obamacare, we have to go back to the bad status quo:

ObamaCare defenders say we must suffer the dysfunction and patch the law, because there is no alternative. They are wrong. On Nov. 2, for example, New York TimesNYT +0.93% columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote movingly about his friend who lost employer-based insurance and died of colon cancer. Mr. Kristof concluded, “This is why we need Obamacare.” No, this is why we need individual, portable, guaranteed-renewable, inexpensive, catastrophic-coverage insurance.

On Nov. 15, MIT’s Jonathan Gruber, an ObamaCare architect, argued on Realclearpolitics that “we currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance.” We do. He concluded that the Affordable Care Act is “the only way to end that discriminatory system.” It is not.

On Dec. 3, President Obama himself said that “the only alternative that Obamacare’s critics have, is, well, let’s just go back to the status quo.” Not so.

In related news, Karl Rove, who is still waiting on the undecided voters in Ohio to surge for Romney, fearlessly predicts that the individual mandate will be lifted in 2014.

Two stories of internet censorship, one very real, one not so much, highlight the possibility of both de jure and de facto internet censoring.

The first story comes from across in the pond in England. For some reason, Prime Minister David Cameron thought it would be a good idea to require ISPs to install safety filters to block children from accessing porn. Oh, think of the children. Customers (parents) can opt out of the filter.

Look at that choice!

From a policy perspective, this is terrible in more ways than I can count. Why should people have to affirmatively justify their need to look at porn (and you can be sure records are being kept about who opts out). What if two people share an internet account (roomates or couples), and one doesn’t want the other knowing that he/she looks at porn. This can chill so much conduct. Of course, the U.K. has no First Amendment, so sucks to that.

And, as could be expected, the filter is way too broad, and censors a whole host of sites that are not “hardcore pornography,” such as sex-ed web sites, and other risque blogs. Plus, it missed plenty of porn sites. And it took the internet a few hours to build a workaround.

The likelihood of the United States imposing a porn filter is close to zero. But, that is not to say that certain types of the undesired speech, lacking in social value, that may result in liability for ISPs may be censored from the internet in the United States, through a more indirect way (more on that later).

The second example has to do with this Duck Dynasty issue. I had only heard of this show because I teach Keeble v. Hickeringill and ask my students about duck hunting. Twitter blew up the other day with reports that Twitter was blocking people from tweeting to a website in support of Duck Dynasty, istandwithphil.com

But, it turns out, that website was flagged as spam. No doubt, someone who didn’t stand with Phil reported it as Spam.

Now, you may so, so what? Big deal.

But, for some time, because of Twitter’s filters, it was impossible to tweet about a web site that was expressing a very distinct form of speech. Tweeting that website, for some period, was censored. Thankfully, Twitter unblocked it.

But imagine if Twitter didn’t. Twitter has the capability to stifle wide swaths of speech, simply because someone finds it offensive.

Returning to my earlier point, imagine if ISPs could be held liable for posting certain forms of speech that people find undesirable, you can be damn sure similar filters will kick in to block that speech. No way Twitter will go to court for some dumb tweet.

And herein lies the paradigm for internet filtering if ISP liability goes away under Section 23o of CDA. We won’t need to be like the U.K. If we like our First Amendment, we can keep it. But the broad power of mediums like Twitter or Facebook to control the speech we see, even through indirect government nudging via liability, is extremely powerful.

I’ll have more about this soon.

Take a look at what Ted’s daughters, Caroline and Catherine are wearing in his Christmas Card. Does it look familiar?

Remember Pajama Boy?

Merry Christmas everyone!

Update: Taylor Swift is in on it also.

Update: Confirmation from the Cruz office. Picture was taken pre-Pajama Boy. But I’ll still laugh.

@JoshMBlackman photo was taken pre-pajama boy.

— DavidPSawyer (@DavidPSawyer) December 24, 2013

HealthCare.gov just tweeted that there is no extended deadline to sign.

Reports of extended deadline are incorrect: it’s tonight at midnight. If you sign up on HCgov tmrrw, insurance starts 2/1, not 1/1.

— HealthCare.gov (@HealthCareGov) December 24, 2013

Like with Medicaid+Medicare, there’s a casework system for ppl who tried to enroll but couldn’t – considered on case by case basis.

— HealthCare.gov (@HealthCareGov) December 24, 2013

 

I’m confused now. The Hill reports somewhat contradictory information:

Monday was supposed to be the cutoff date for obtaining insurance coverage that takes effect on Jan. 1, but in the latest delay to the law, the administration said people who have begun the enrollment process would have an extra day to complete it.

Now officials say there’s even more flexibility on the timeline for people who have had trouble enrolling.]

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare spokeswoman Julie Battaile said in an email on Tuesday that consumers that tried and failed to get in before the deadline could contact the call center to petition for leniency.

“We have developed a robust casework process to address individual inquiries, respond to specific situations, and help consumers transition to new coverage,” she said. “Consumers will hear directly from their health plan about the date their coverage is effective.”

I can’t even keep track anymore.