If there’s one problem to racing a super-cool electric motorcycle, it’s that pit stops tend to be a bit slow. After all, in the time it takes a regular hot rod to refuel, you’ve probably only gained one or two percent of charge. That’s why Zero Motor…
Tired of losing cell signals or incurring roaming charges? All of that’s about to become a thing of the past with the upcoming goTenna, a pocket-size device for picking up and bouncing signals via VHF radio waves from IOS and Android devices.
I didn’t realize how excitable I can really get about the simplest things until I went to Ireland. One of my favorite sights-and there’s plenty of them-are Dublin’s colorful architectural collection of doors sprawling throughout the city. I could have easily spent hours getting lost, peeking in between streets and peeling back every corner of public buildings and private residences to find a door in every color. A door scavenger hunt would have been the perfect addition to our itinerary if there was more time. I would have definitely been on board for that one. Eyes wide with camera in tow. I took notice pretty quickly of the multi-colored entryways early on from a distance during my taxi ride from the airport and then up close and personal during our strolls around the city. Bright red doors. Turquoise doors. Emerald green. Electric Yellow. Royal Blue. Doors with intricate doorknobs. Yes. Yes. And yes. More please! You really couldn’t miss them even if you tried. Amazed that no two adjacent doors were the exact color, I frequently stopped to snap photos and then had to run to catch up with the rest of my group. “I just love a good door!” was my key phrase each time I passed a picture worthy one and needed to pull out my camera. The only problem was that they were all picture worthy in their own unique way. Should I plan a trip back to Dublin just to discover more doors?!
The history behind the Georgian Doors
The story of how these doors ended up splashed with rich colors, bringing the perfect dose of effervescence to Dublin’s street scenes is an intriguing one in and of itself and one that really resonates with what I’m a big believer in-individuality. Dating all the way back to the 1700’s during the Georgian Dublin time period (1714-1830), an era that describes the architectural style of the city’s buildings and also marks the beginning reign of King George I to the death of King George IV, Dublin became very prosperous while also rising to become the largest city in the British Empire after London. As the city’s affluence built, so did its elegant style of architecture. New chic Georgian homes were being developed beyond the medieval town and initially were given strict architectural guidelines. At that time, each building maintained the same uniform look and lacked any originality. Eventually, to break away from the strict structural rules, residents began adding their own personal flair to their doors. Colorful painted doors with ornate knockers and elegant fanlights above the door was a result of this push for individuality.
Best places to spot the prettiest doors
While I definitely didn’t even hit the tip of the iceberg with my own door discovery, I’ve done quite a bit of digging to find some key locations I’ll want to explore the next time I visit Dublin to continue my search for more:
Merrion Square– Considered one of the city’s finest surviving squares and located on the southside of Dublin city center
Fitzwilliam Square-located in the south of Central Dublin and the last of the five Georgian squares built
Baggot Street– Runs from Merrion Row to Pembroke Road and is divided into two sections; Lower Baggot Street is where the Georgian architecture can be found while Upper Baggot boasts mainly Victorian architecture
Leeson Street-Located near Central Dublin and is also divided into two parts (by the Grand Canal), Lower and Upper Leeson
Search on my friends. Search on for more doors!
Have you ever been to Dublin? Where did you spot some of the best doors?
Photo Credit: all collages provided by Discover Dublin Doors
This post originally appeared on Jaimee’s blog, This Way North
For more travel stories check out:
Postcards From Dublin: St. Patrick’s Day in the Georgian City
That Time I Slept in a Treehouse and Went Ziplining (Video)
Exploring [and Surviving] the Cave at Enchanted Rock
By Andrea Servadio, Co-Owner Fitdog Sports Club
One of the most common mistakes dog owners make is not giving their furry friend enough exercise, which can lead to boredom and potentially neurotic and destructive behaviors. In fact, many owners mistakenly rely on doggy daycare as the primary source of their dog’s daily exercise. And it’s totally understandable; daycare is an easy and convenient solution for busy doggy parents. Unfortunately, while daycare provides benefits like social stimulation and opportunities for play, it is not an effective platform for keeping Fido fit, especially for active breeds and puppies.
A doggy daycare’s goal is to maintain a calm and safe place for dogs to interact. When dogs have too much pent up energy it can cause negative interactions in daycare. For example, a dog with pent up energy will fixate on playing and releasing energy (think “zoomies”). When dogs enter the play area in this mode, they immediately elevate the energy of the pack and often times harass other dogs to play. This causes chaos and disruption in the pack environment, which is not well received by senior pack members.
If you have a high-energy dog, you want to exercise him or her before daycare, so he or she does not have to rely on playing with other dogs to release energy.
Here are 5 ways to help your dog play and expend energy so he or she is ready for positive social interactions at daycare.
Now get out and enjoy some play time with your dog!
Doing business around Los Angeles can be a pleasure or a pain, often pending the traffic. I’ve been making notes of the places where I can enjoy an amazing meal while waiting out the 405. Lately, I’ve found that I’m not “stuck in South Bay,” I’m just “hanging out in Hermosa” — at least until the freeways clear.
The dining scene in Hermosa Beach has kicked it up a notch in recent years. My new favorite is Hot’s Kitchen, which features simple dishes — burgers, tacos, fries — and turns them into something worthy of Instagram. Executive Chef and co-owner Sean Chaney was recently in the news when he defied the California ban on foie gras and succesfully litigated to have it overturned. Chaney updates the menu on a monthly basis, but the most popular items usually remain.
Not far from Hot’s are two of my other go-to favorites from Chef Tin Vuong — Abigaile and Little Sister. Abigaile is all about small plates but is heavy on gastropub fare — so bring an apetite or meet some friends. Little Sister is a little more spicy and tad more adventurous — a decadent blend of East and West.
But since mere words won’t do the food in the South Bay justice, here’s a slideshow that may convince you that getting stuck south of LAX just might make your day.
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WASHINGTON — After their first official meeting earlier this month, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and President Barack Obama faced cameras together in the East Room of the White House. One man’s country had once given Osama bin Laden safe haven to plan 9/11; the other’s destroyed that refuge and propped up an entirely new government in Afghanistan, losing over 2,000 soldiers and spending over $1 trillion in the process. Standing side by side, Ghani and Obama sought to show that the U.S. investment in a secure Afghanistan would ultimately prove successful.
Optimism about U.S.-Afghan relations was high, with U.S. officials and analysts describing Ghani as just the ally the U.S. needed to stabilize Afghanistan and finally end the Taliban insurgency.
But the outcome of the U.S. effort will not depend only on leaders in Kabul and Washington. Afghanistan’s future also relies on a third player, a volatile actor that has interchangeably assisted and undermined Washington’s efforts in the region: Pakistan’s army.
The U.S. and Afghanistan have known for years that peace will not be possible unless the Pakistani military wants to make it happen. The army command is almost solely responsible for the country’s national security, even though there is an elected civilian government in Islamabad. The military also holds the key to Afghan stability, since it would be the key interlocutor in any peace agreement between Ghani’s government and the Afghan Taliban, with whom the Pakistani army has maintained close ties.
The trouble is that no one is sure what the military will do.
The Huffington Post interviewed a number of Pakistani politicians, retired military officials and analysts who suggested that the increasing focus on regional stability has allowed the military to exercise more dominance than it has at any point since 2008, when the last period of direct army rule ended. The army’s recent moves, these experts argue, show that it is keen to reassert its power, despite its insistence that it supports the civilian leadership.
For the U.S. and Afghanistan to rely more heavily on Pakistan’s army would affirm this creeping control. Moreover, the military is among the U.S.’s most controversial counterterror partners: For years, it has maintained that it is helping the U.S. fight extremists in Afghanistan, even while its ties to some of those very extremists are publicly known.
Despite all this, both Kabul and Washington are now warming to the idea that Pakistan’s military can fix the region’s troubles, rather than exacerbate them. One of Ghani’s first visits abroad after taking office was to Pakistan — and his first stop there was the military headquarters in Rawalpindi. In the wake of continued skepticism, Ghani has expanded intelligence cooperation, entrusted the Pakistan army with training Afghan cadets and, allegedly, frozen an arms deal with Pakistan’s chief regional rival, India.
At the joint press conference, Obama noted the improved coordination between the three countries and commended Ghani’s “bold leadership in reaching out to Pakistan, which is critical to the pursuit of peace.”
As the U.S. prepares to end its longest-ever overseas war, the Obama administration faces a question that could pit America’s historic values against its security interests: Is it willing to trust Pakistan’s army — and to compromise democratic civilian rule in Islamabad — in exchange for a secure Afghanistan?
Pakistani armed forces march during the Pakistan Day parade in Islamabad on March 23, 2015. Their procession marked the first formal military march on Pakistan Day since military rule last ended. (Photo: Metin Aktas)
“The elected government remains in place but has few powers, and no longer rules the country,” wrote Ahmed Rashid, a prominent Pakistani analyst, in the New York Review of Books’ Apr. 2 issue. “The media, opposition political parties, Parliament, and the intelligentsia are trying to resist the gradual military takeover but they are weak and ineffectual.”
Pakistan watchers say Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who gained power in May 2013 in the country’s first-ever democratic transition, has seen his authority steadily eroded by a charismatic leader who shares his name but is no relation: army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif. Since he landed the job in November 2013, the general has become a darling of U.S. policymakers and solidified his popularity among the public by getting tough on the Pakistani Taliban. Sharif has also engaged more with Kabul — a shift facilitated by Ghani, who is much more willing to cooperate with Pakistan than his predecessor, Hamid Karzai.
Still, many Pakistanis are alarmed by the military’s expansion of power.
Nazish Brohi, a Karachi-based researcher and activist who has studied the Taliban-affected Swat region in northwestern Pakistan, told HuffPost earlier this year that she worried the country’s civilian leadership was “ceding space” to the army. Even before Gen. Sharif took charge, she said, the military had been using security concerns to justify consolidating its power. She believes that the Pakistani Taliban’s massacre of more than 130 schoolchildren in Peshawar in December 2014 made that approach even more effective.
“If you say no to one [security-related measure], it’s seen as a rejection of everything: you’re saying no to the push against terrorism, and hence you’re siding with the terrorists,” she said.
Asked about Gen. Sharif’s more aggressive targeting of the Pakistani Taliban, Brohi said she does not doubt the army’s present commitment to fighting the extremists. Still, she and others are wary of becoming too enamored — particularly because, as she emphasized in a January op-ed, the last period of military rule in Pakistan did not prevent extremist expansion.
Brohi pointed specifically to a constitutional amendment, passed after the Peshawar attack traumatized the country, that set up a separate system of military courts for terror suspects. Critics of the law say it damages the country’s fragile judicial system, violates international legal standards and leaves citizens vulnerable to abuse.
According to Brohi, the law’s success is especially alarming because it showed elected representatives willingly handing over power to the military. “We’ve had coups before,” she said. “This time it’s through the democratic process.”
Pakistani army troops arrive to conduct an operation at the Peshawar military school under attack by Pakistani Taliban gunmen on Dec. 16, 2014. (Photo: Mohammad Sajjad)
An incident earlier this month involving the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, one of the political parties that supported the military courts law, illustrated just how costly the military’s expansion of control might be. Although the MQM has a controversial record, having previously been linked to murders and organized crime, it has garnered praise as a rare and consistent anti-extremist voice and has traditionally frustrated the army with its talk of democracy.
Haider Abbas Rizvi, one of the party’s leading parliamentarians and its chief spokesman, told HuffPost in January that his party embraced the military courts because “in extraordinary times we have to take extraordinary measures.” Rizvi said he saw “goodwill” from army leadership and was not concerned about the possibility of a full military takeover.
But then the army came for his party. On March 11, a paramilitary force controlled directly by the military stormed into the party’s headquarters and raided homes in the surrounding neighborhood. The army said the raid uncovered hidden arms and suspected murderers. Residents of the area claimed they were subjected to excessive force. Rizvi called the incursion “a transgression of authority.”
Pakistan’s security services have cracked down on the MQM before, so it was no surprise that the group remained in the army’s crosshairs even after it expressed support for the military courts. But the incident came at a time when the military has said its chief focus is terrorism. The incident sparked concern about how broadly Rawalpindi might start defining terrorist elements, given its growing power — and whom it could confidently target with impunity.
To Mosharraf Zaidi, a prominent Pakistani newspaper columnist, the raid looked less like a counterterror effort and more like a blatant show of military power.
MQM has a lot to answer for, but equating it to violent religious extremists smacks less of analytical error & more of prejudice.
— Mosharraf Zaidi (@mosharrafzaidi) March 11, 2015
Pakistani paramilitary officials escort handcuffed Aamir Khan, a leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement political party, out of a court in Karachi on March 12, 2015.
Yet as controversial and damaging as the military’s actions may be, its future moves will matter greatly as Pakistan and Afghanistan prepare for a future without the U.S. serving as referee.
Ghani has recognized this importance in recent months by trying to show goodwill towards Gen. Sharif. And the Pakistani military has reciprocated. In a striking first for an army that has long scorned Afghanistan’s capabilities, it directly requested Afghan assistance with the Pakistani Taliban after the Peshawar school attack. After Afghan forces captured six militants connected to the massacre, Pakistan’s army publicly gave the Afghans credit for their success.
The new cooperation is a notable shift from previous years, when Kabul and Islamabad would accuse one another of harboring extremists, particularly during Karzai’s tenure.
Retired Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani, a former Pakistani national security advisor and ambassador to the United States, noted the unprecedented level of dialogue between Gen. Sharif and the new Afghan administration.
“On counterterrorism operations, on working with Afghanistan, it seems the military here is taking a lead,” he told HuffPost.
But Durrani also noted that this improved relationship notably excludes Pakistan’s elected civilian leadership.
“The political leadership has to also get into the issue,” he said. Asked whether he was confident in the civilian government, he chuckled. “That’s a bad question, if you get what I mean.”
Security cooperation and high-level meetings are taking place between the two neighbors for the first time in years, and both Kabul and Washington are anticipating that Rawalpindi could facilitate long-awaited peace talks with the Afghan Taliban. The extremist group sought refuge in Pakistan after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, and its leadership has maintained relations with the Pakistani army. That connection has survived even as the homegrown Pakistani Taliban — the group behind the Peshawar attack — has become more powerful and directly challenged the military.
Washington policymakers have become more receptive to the idea of the Pakistani army serving as an intermediary with the Taliban, a marked departure from the U.S.’s prior posture. Previously, many in the U.S. had accused the army of tacitly helping to hide al Qaeda operatives and supporting the insurgency inside Afghanistan, saying the military had no genuine interest in improving the security situation. But with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan looming, Washington is more willing to concede that Rawalpindi’s much-maligned ties to extremist groups can be used to push fringe groups to the negotiating table.
President Barack Obama smiles as Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani speaks during their joint news conference on March 24, 2015. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin
Indeed, it’s easier to be positive about Pakistan these days, particularly after Gen. Sharif’s visit to Washington late last year. The army chief made a positive impression: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he sees Sharif as “a very superior individual.”
Sharif “sold his story” to U.S. policymakers, Durrani said, and conducted effective damage control.
A top Senate aide told HuffPost that the army chief went as far as committing to U.S. lawmakers that he would clear out elements of the military who were suspected of supporting extremists — including in the seemingly untouchable Inter-Services Intelligence. That promise tacitly acknowledges Pakistan’s earlier, more controversial approach to Afghanistan and, if fulfilled, would be a crucial shift.
Whether or not they want Gen. Sharif to play such a central role, Kabul and Washington seemed to have reached a similar conclusion: Working with his army is better than not consulting it at all.
“The question is not what [Pakistan] can or can’t do, the question is what happens if you exclude Pakistan from the conversation,” said Shamila Chaudhary, who served as Obama’s National Security Council director for Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2010 and 2011, and is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. “Pakistan is very good at playing a spoiler role in any of these kinds of conversations, and when they’re excluded from the conversation or excluded from having the information after the fact, that’s very frustrating for them because so much of this impacts their national security posture.”
Still, if the U.S. begins once again to lean on Pakistan’s military, it will be a complex and controversial process.
Washington famously cooperated with Pakistan’s last two military dictators. Working with Gen. Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s to counter the Soviets in Afghanistan, the CIA helped to forge the Taliban, while the U.S. turned a blind eye to the general’s flailing democratic opposition. The Bush administration adopted a similar approach after 9/11, when it treated then-dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf as a chief counterterror ally, only pressuring him to engage with opponents once his rule already seemed to be in jeopardy.
The message to Pakistanis was clear: With the military in charge of those issues that the U.S. cared about, it would be the military that the U.S. reached out to.
President Barack Obama and members of the national security team receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1, 2011. Photo: Pete Souza
Pakistan’s army has been accused for years of supporting terror groups, chiefly those targeting neighboring India, and some of these allegations have been verified by former U.S. intelligence officers. Many in the U.S. suspected that American aid money was going to the very forces the U.S. was relying on Pakistan to help fight.
Those suspicions reached their peak in 2011 after the U.S. discovered Osama bin Laden hiding comfortably in a compound outside Abbottabad, Pakistan. The raid led to a devastating breakdown in U.S.-Pakistan relations. Pakistanis saw it as an illegal breach of sovereignty, while to many in the U.S., the incident proved that Pakistan had been using billions in aid to foster extremist forces in the region. Musharraf, who led the country from 1999 to 2008, later admitted as much. “Whoever wishes to be angry, let them be angry — why should we bother?” he said in an interview with Pakistani television.
U.S. lawmakers remain aware of that misadventure even as they now express increasing support for the military leadership. Weeks after Gen. Sharif’s Washington visit, Congress inserted a provision into the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act that requires Pakistan to clearly show how it is aiding U.S. counterterror efforts before it can receive aid. The caution indicates that while Washington seems more willing to rely on Sharif, the trust remains tentative. Still, an unreliable Pakistan seems better than no Pakistan at all.
With relations on the mend, officials have been less shy about praising the Pakistani army: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper <a href="
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/04/top-us-spy-intel-cooperation-with-pakistan-on-the-upswing/” target=”_hplink”>said last year that intelligence cooperation was on “the upswing,” largely thanks to new leadership in Islamabad and Gen. Sharif’s efforts to smooth ruffled feathers.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) spoke to HuffPost earlier this month about what Pakistan can offer the United States.
“They provide us eyes and ears that we don’t have,” Burr said. “With all of our partners, we have ‘trust but verify.’ I think it’s no different with Pakistan. They’re a vital partner in sharing intelligence with [the] U.S.”
“We’ve always had concerns about the intelligence agency in Pakistan and what they’ve been up to,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, referring to the secretive ISI. “I think we need to understand these relationships with our eyes wide open and understand there’s going to be some frailties and things that don’t exactly work out.”
Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Raheel Sharif at the change of command ceremony in Rawalpindi on November 29, 2013, during which he took over the country’s most powerful institution.
But with Washington happy to once again ramp up cooperation with Pakistan’s military for security reasons, concerns about internal threats to democracy are unlikely to gain much traction.
“Our main interests there are counterterror and national security issues,” said Chaudhary, noting that “all of those issues that the U.S. cares about in Pakistan are all kind of in the domain of the intelligence service and the military.”
Even though U.S. leaders have praised the country’s democratic transition, Chaudhury said, Washington knows its most critical partners in Pakistan are in Rawalpindi’s garrisons.
“We are dressing it up with other stuff,” she said. “But we should never kid ourselves … [democracy and development] are not the real reasons we’re in Pakistan.”
That leaves the U.S. once again hoping — despite the troubled history and warnings from within Pakistan — that the Pakistani military will help facilitate a stable future for the entire region.
But national security hands know that the region’s deep fissures will not be resolved by granting more power to men with guns.
“At the end of the day, you’re not going to change the tribal regions until you get economic development,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a prominent member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “You can’t just hold it by force alone. So an inclusive Pakistani government that can empower people is the ultimate antidote to this.”
Akbar Shahid Ahmed reported from Karachi, Pakistan, and Ali Watkins reported from Washington.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Chris Christie privatized the management of New Jersey’s lottery two years ago, he said its new overseers would “modernize and maximize” the games.
Instead, a lottery once ranked among the nation’s top performers is now lagging for the second straight year, trailing its state income targets by $64 million seven months into the current fiscal year. Meanwhile, the company running it has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire lobbyists and a public relations firm with close ties to the governor.
New Jersey lawmakers anticipated receiving nearly $1.04 billion in income from the lottery this year, a number reduced to just $955 million in a revised budget released this month. Having collected an estimated $510 million seven months into this fiscal year, the lottery is not on track to meet even its lowered expectations.
The shortfalls could mean budget cuts to programs directly funded by the lottery system — such as after-school care, programs for veterans and education for the deaf — should the lottery’s fortunes not improve.
The lottery’s woes are one piece of New Jersey’s fiscal troubles, which include transportation funding shortfalls and underfunded state pensions. At a state assembly budget hearing earlier this week, state Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff blamed the lottery’s underperformance on industry-wide trends and a shortage of big jackpots in multi-state games such as Powerball to drive sales.
Yet despite expanding its marketing budget and the number of stores at which tickets are sold, the lottery is still narrowly missing its goals — even on lottery tickets that aren’t dependent on such jackpots.
“Missing the mark so badly with all of these proven methods for generating lottery revenues is like spitting and missing the floor,” said John Kindt, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois who studies gambling policy and has been critical of lottery privatization.
In 2011, New Jersey paid Macquarie Capital Group, an arm of an Australian investment bank, $1.8 million to study its lottery and recommend improvements. Macquarie, which counted lottery privatization specialists like Gtech S.p.A. among its past clients, found that New Jersey’s lottery was one of the nation’s top performers — it had growing sales and the highest profit margins of any in the country.
Macquarie recommended privatization anyway, and then advised the state on setting up the bidding for the work.
That same year, Gtech hired Wolff & Samson — the law firm of David Sampson, one of Christie’s long-time friends, whom the governor appointed to lead the powerful Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It also brought on board Mercury Public Affairs, a firm at which longtime Christie political strategist Mike Duhaime is a partner, to handle communications.
Northstar New Jersey, a joint venture led by Gtech, was the only bidder in late 2012 when the state formally sought a private company to take over the lottery’s management. Neither Northstar nor Gtech returned multiple calls and emails seeking comment.
The state’s Democratic legislature passed a law in May 2013 prohibiting Christie from privatizing the lottery without its consent. The governor vetoed the bill and moved ahead with the project. Northstar formally took over the lottery in October 2013.
Gtech’s lobbying didn’t stop when it got the lottery contract. Between 2012 and the end of last year, the company paid Wolff & Samson $460,000 to represent its interests. Wolff & Samson lobbyists did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.
Wolff & Samson reported meeting regularly with state officials in charge of the lottery over several years, according to lobbying records. In response to public information requests for emails or notes from meetings with Wolff & Samson, the state’s Treasury Department said no such records existed. The department later acknowledged the existence of a handful of emails, but refused to produce them.
Christie’s push to privatize the lottery was billed as a way to make it run more like a business, but Northstar today spends more and employs more people than when the lottery was run by the state. During the state’s last fiscal year, which included nine months of Northstar’s management, the lottery reported $45 million in expenses and fees — or $10 million more than the state’s administrative costs in the year before.
“The lottery believes Northstar is managing its expenses properly,” said Joseph Perone, a spokesman for the state’s Treasury Department.
Though Northstar fell short of its contractually set targets for income to the state by $55 million in the last fiscal year, the Christie administration unilaterally agreed to lower them — saving the company millions of dollars in penalties.
Perone said the state reduced the targets out of fairness, because the lottery was still recovering from Hurricane Sandy. The storm struck New Jersey in 2012, eight months before the Northstar contract was signed.
“As a taxpayer, I’d like to know why projections aren’t being met, and what steps are being taken to remediate the problem,” said Democratic Assemblyman Gary Schaer, a critic of the lottery privatization who chairs the state budget committee.
Schaer said his staff has struggled to get even basic updates on the lottery’s financials, and was only able to review the lottery’s most recent financial statements after The Associated Press provided his staff a copy of the lottery’s February report, which it obtained via a public records request.
Northstar’s performance in New Jersey echoed results in two other states in which Northstar runs lottery systems. The company fell just short of its targets in Indiana last year, and missed its Illinois lottery targets for three straight years before the state terminated the arrangement last year.
Despite that record, the minutes of New Jersey’s lottery commission — which serves at Christie’s discretion — reflect little criticism or questions of Northstar officials in attendance. Public discussions instead include updates on which of the lottery’s YouTube videos were the most popular.
“We’re not going to sit here today and talk contract issues,” lottery Executive Director Carol Hedinger said after the AP asked a question about Northstar’s management during a public meeting last week.
Officials continue to struggle with how to meet the lottery’s financial goals. At the lottery commission’s February meeting, Hedinger optimistically said lower gas prices could mean drivers spending more on lottery tickets, and that a series of big payouts would provide a welcome boost to sales.
“We’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” she said. The deal was shepherded by lobbying and public relations firms close to Christie. They received hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, while the lottery’s financial shortfalls could spell trouble for social programs that depend on the money.
State officials say this year’s lower earnings stem from an unlucky streak of low jackpots, and say private management will ultimately pay off.
Last week, I argued that the judicial restraint long advocated by conservatives has its roots in the Progressive era, drawing upon Professor John McGinnis’ recent paper, The Duty of Clarity, in support of my arguments. McGinnis’ paper criticizes on originalist grounds the “conception of judicial deference, often referred to as judicial restraint” held by Harvard professor James Bradley Thayer. Thayer’s teachings inspired an ideologically diverse line of restraint advocates, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Alexander Bickel, and Robert Bork.
So it was rather surprising to find Ed Whelan at the National Review praising McGinnis’ paper as an originalist case for judicial restraint. Equally surprising was Whelan’s claim that “there are hardly any modern advocates of judicial restraint” who adhere to the Thayerian approach that McGinnis criticizes. This is surprising because the default standard of review in constitutional cases — the so-called rational basis test — requires precisely the kind of reflexive judicial deference that Thayer endorsed, and I’ve yet to see any modern advocates of judicial restraint explicitly reject it on the grounds that it is excessively deferential.
Thayer set forth his approach to judicial review in an influential 1893 article, The Origins and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law. In this article, Thayer articulated what became known as the “clear-error rule,” arguing that a court should only strike down a congressional statute if its unconstitutionality is “so clear that it is not open to rational question.” Thayer also believed that it would be improper for judges to undertake an independent inquiry into the factual predicates of legislation; rather, he contended that judges should always attribute “virtue, sense, and competent knowledge” to legislators.
Although Thayer appealed to early cases in support of his approach, he started from epistemological premises that were very different from those of jurists in the founding era, and, not surprisingly, he came to very different conclusions about judicial review as well. As McGinnis explains, while founding era jurists believed that doubtful questions concerning constitutionality could be rendered clear through tried-and-true interpretive principles and disciplined inquiry into the available evidence, Thayer believed that this was a fool’s errand. For Thayer, there was no discoverable “truth” about what the Constitution required in any context– he viewed the Constitution as pervasively indeterminate. Thus, he argued, the Constitution “does not impose upon the legislature any one specific opinion, but leaves open (a) range of choice; and whatever choice is rational is constitutional.”
If this language sounds familiar, it should. Although at the time Thayer’s teachings were, in the words of Learned Hand, “subversive” in their skepticism about judicial review, they soon worked their way into the very bedrock of American constitutional law. With the aid of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Thayer’s deferential approach –as embodied in the rational basis test– became our constitutional default across the board, not just in cases involving challenges to congressional statutes (as Thayer had advocated).
Holmes argued in his canonical dissent in Lochner v. New York (1905) that courts should not overturn legislation “unless it can be said that a rational and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute proposed would infringe fundamental principles as they have been understood by the traditions of our people and our law.” This dissent anticipated the formal adoption of the rational basis test as the default standard of review in constitutional cases that do not implicate “fundamental” rights or involve suspect classifications. In FCC v. Beach Communications (1993), the Court stated that under rational basis review, judges must uphold legislation “if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for it”; those challenging legislation must “negative every conceivable basis which might support it”; and the government need not justify legislation with “evidence or empirical data.” As the Court put it, the rational basis test is “a paradigm of judicial restraint.”
If McGinnis is correct that Thayer’s clear-error rule is, indeed, clearly erroneous (and I believe that he is), so, too, is the constitutional default described in FCC v. Beach Communications. (Whether courts consistently adhere to this toothless standard of review has, of course, been the subject of much debate.) According to Whelan, there are “hardly any” restraint advocates who believe that courts should strike down statutes only when their unconstitutionality is “so clear that it is not open to rational question.” If only it were so. To take just one of many possible examples, Whelan’s colleague, Matthew Franck, took me to task during a recent exchange for criticizing the clear-error rule, arguing that the rule is “as old, and as valid, as the Constitution it seeks to honor” and that “judges today should in fact work harder to conform to it.” More broadly, given that the rational basis test represents our constitutional default, one would expect to see restraint advocates vigorously criticizing it if they believed it to be excessively deferential. But Whelan himself has referred to a decision in which the judge relied upon the language of FCC v. Beach Communications as an example of court “properly applying rational basis review and judicial restraint.”
So, I would put the question to Whelan, as well as any other restraint advocates: Is the rational basis test excessively deferential? If so, what should we do about that?
Photo: Derrick Lytle
Zion sits on the throne of the Mighty 5 as Utah‘s most visited National Park, and for good reason. With 229 square miles of incredibly diverse landscape and wildlife, even the most dedicated explorer couldn’t experience all that Zion has to offer in a lifetime. Take our advice and be sure to hit up these six adventures on your next visit.
Hiking the Narrows
Photo: Stephen Marshall
Photographing the Watchman
Photo: Tiffany Nguyen
Twilight On Angel’s Landing
Photo: Derrick Lytle
Exploring The Subway
Photo: Chris Burkard
Climbing Observation Point
Photo: Idle Theory Bus
Scramble Up Lady Mountain
Photo: Michael Whitman
To discover your next outdoor adventure check out TheOutbound.com.
Last summer’s travels with my son was part social experiment, part field research on how sustainability is viewed through the eyes of a nine-year-old child. What I didn’t expect along the way was for me to gain a much better understanding of what he values most from these travel experiences, namely people, adventures and conversation.
Admittedly, it was a big task to organize a seven-week family journey through Cyprus, Greece, Croatia and Scotland. The fact that is was focused on sustainability, which to me means highlighting the cultural and eco-conscious characteristics of a country as well as its green modes of transport, made it even more intimidating. But in the end, it was worth it!
Adventures that focus on a country’s history and culture
I decided to plan an itinerary that would include cultural performances, wildlife encounters, adventures such as kayaking and biking, culinary tasting, and history (something that just happens to be a personal fascination for my son).
His passion is learning all about the American Revolutionary War and our Civil War history. So, I expanded the idea, and in the end, some of his trip highlights in Greece were visiting the archaeological ruins in Athens (a few of which could be found even at various metro stops), in Delphi where he learned all about how the Oracle dispensed advice to “worthy” men, and in Thermopylae, which was the site of the 5th Century BC battle between the Persians and Spartans depicted in the movie we had recently seen, 300.
In Cyprus, we visited Nicosia, which is considered the last divided capital of Europe. He played games with his distant cousins and received first-hand accounts of the events in 1974 that divided the island in half. He learned some mythology about Aphrodite who was the goddess of love, beauty and eternal youth, hiked along the Adonis Trail, and marveled at the best-preserved mosaic floors of the Mycenaean Era (12th Century BC) that depicted the life, love, war and personal triumphs of the day.
In Croatia, my son loved walking on the old city walls of Dubrovnik and learning from our guide about the city’s use of diplomacy (and payouts to all the empires) throughout the ages. There may have been new rulers at each turn of the century, but the people’s willingness to work with them prevented the destruction of their beautiful city. That notion made an impact on him.
In Scotland, he was thrilled to dress up as a warrior at Urquhart Castle and to learn about the mysteries (and science that has debunked the myths) of Loch Ness. We researched his heritage to find his clan colors and he learned the real reason why Scottish clan chiefs created the Highland Games – it served as a way to keep men battle ready in between clan wars.
Learning that sustainability means different things in different countries
Along the way, we witnessed what having a sustainable lifestyle meant. Generally in Greece, Cyprus and Croatia, sustainability translated to a more personal construct of preserving all things local rather than living what we in the United States have come to know as a green lifestyle filled with hybrid car or public transportation use.
For example, in the Istrian region of Croatia, which was once an area governed by Italy, my son thoroughly loved the idea of taking an old train track line and re-purposing it into 123 kilometers of very scenic biking and hiking trails.
The trails meandered through various villages that offered fantastic fare made with locally sourced ingredients. He made friends with the children, whose parents owned the restaurants or small hotels, and learned all about the sentiment that local foods were generally considered healthier than ones imported from other parts of Europe. He even became hooked on the taste of local truffles, especially when they were freshly grated on pasta!
He also learned that in Greece and Croatia, children and young adults were always encouraged to learn local songs and perform local dances so that they would not forget their heritage, and wondered if there were any local songs or dances particular to Washington, DC.
Then, in Scotland, he saw how sustainability was taken one step further to include improving a community’s livelihood. My son noticed the emphasis on extensive wildlife conservation and nature reserve programs, re-use of raw materials, and the consistent encouragement by the community for residents to donate unused furniture and clothing so others could re-purpose them.
Finding out that people’s kindness and conversations stand out above all
With all of this exposure to different cultures, languages, food and sentiment about sustainability, I would occasionally ask my son what was standing out for him. After a while, the same themes of the kindness of people, his fun outdoor adventures and how he enjoyed our personal conversations would continuously come up.
For example, we rented a house in Cyprus that was managed by a farmer who lived next store. My son remembered how kind the farmer was when he gave him carte-blanche each day to pick all the honeydew, tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini, and peppers he wanted.
He remembered the evenings when he playing pick-up soccer with other local children within the old city walls of Dubrovnik and he loved the evenings at the lodge in the highlands of Scotland where the meals were served family-style and the discussions ranged from soccer to conservation to politics (especially since we were visiting just before the vote for Scottish independence).
Also, due to his aforementioned interest in history, we had a fascinating conversation about how since ancient times, Cyprus had changed hands from one empire to another and he began to understand the connection between money, power, and war asking whether it applied to places like the Ukraine (a story that was in the news a lot last summer).
We had insightful discussions about how each national leader has the responsibility to understand history because otherwise, they’re doomed to repeat it. He may have only been nine, but he was thinking about issues of social responsibility and the characteristics of good leadership, which I attribute to this extended trip.
My takeaway for memorable family vacations
The main lesson that I learned is that whether you decide to travel to Europe, South America, Africa, Asia or within your region at home, kids remember the feeling of connecting with other people who share a similar interest whether it be soccer, history, biking, or delicious food, and especially appreciate time with you, as their parent.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.