Disney Does Narnia

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:00:00 GMT
# Took the kids to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night. This is Disney's rendition of the first of the seven volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. They did a pretty good job of it. It was unbelievable to see a teenager who'd never handled a sword before survive a battle, but no more unbelievable than fawns and talking animals and a witch turning people into stone and a risen-from-the-dead lion in a world inside a wardrobe.

# Google now does movies, and, unlike movies.yahoo.com, which I've been using until now to find times for the theatres near me, Google's page remembers your zip code, so you don't have to type it every time. Each movie links to reviews and the IMDb page. They don't show the small theatres, though.

# Edward Hasbrouck's blog - Appeals Court hearing on airline ID requirement - Mr. Hasbrouck attended the Gilmore v. Gonzales hearing in the 9th District Court. It appears that the judges are going to rule on the case. It also appears that they don't understand the distinction between asking a person to identify himself, demanding that he identify himself, asking for an identification card, and demanding that card. Mr. Gilmore did identify himself, by presenting a ticket bearing his name. What he refused to do was produce an identification card, the demand for which Mr. Hasbrouck nicely argues is a Fourth Amendment issue. [picks]

This case is not, therefore, about anonymous travel, an interesting but irrelevant side issue that was raised in this morning's argument. It's not about whether Mr. Gilmore could be asked for ID (he was, in effect, when he was asked to present a name-identified non-transferable ticket) or whether Mr. Gilmore could be sanctioned for failing to identify himself (he did identify himself).

The issue in this case is specifically about the legality of the search embodied in the demand for tangible evidence of identity, and the lack of due process embodied in the secrecy of the "rule" requiring production of ID credentials (whose existence, even today, government counsel would "neither confirm nor deny") and the lack of any publicly-disclosed criteria as to what evidence of identity is sufficient, or how its sufficiency is to be determined.

A demand, by or at the behest of the government, to take out something on or about your person (but not otherwise in public view), and display it for their inspection, is a search -- whether that demand takes the form of, "If you have any pot in your pockets, show it to me," or "If you have any ID cards in your pockets, show them to me".

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