Puigdemont ignora que las Constituciones nacieron para limitar el poder político y someterlo al juez independiente

Puigdemont carga contra Llarena: “¿Es más importante un juez que dos millones de catalanes?” @lavanguardia https://t.co/S0TqsIR5vp

— The Catalan Analyst (@CatalanAnalyst) 10 de marzo de 2018

Cuanto más habla Puigdemont más pone en evidencia su ignorancia democrática.

A veure si ho entens d'una vegada, nen:

Las Constituciones nacieron para limitar el poder -sea del rey, del obispo o de la mayoría del pueblo- no para sacralizarlo.

Para ello, dividieron el poder del estado.

Por un lado, dieron al Parlamento la capacidad de controlar al Gobierno y de legislar con independencia del mismo.

Y, por otro, y más importante, instauraron la figura del juez independiente con capacidad para sancionar y enmendar al poder político. Es decir, como el actor que garantiza y hace efectivo el 'imperio de la ley'.

PODER JUDICIAL Y PARLAMENTO EN EL ESTADO DEMOCRÁTICO DE DERECHO

No quieren entender que, en el Estado de Derecho y la democracia, desde que se terminó l'ancien régime, el parlamento sólo tiene poder sobre el juez en tanto que legislador, es decir, sobre el contenido de las leyes.Las cuestiones de procedimiento, la administración parlamentaria y el resto de decisiones, en todas las democracias, están sometidas a control judicial.

Por eso, es el Juez instructor de los delitos quien puede decidir si un preso preventivo, tenga la condición que tenga, puede o no ser puesto en libertad. Es muy importante la consideración de que cuando Jordi Sánchez fue puesto en prisión provisional no tenía condición alguna de parlamentario; es más, estaba ya preso cuando fue incluido en las listas electorales, por lo que su prisión provisional le fue impuesta como ciudadano presuntamente infractor. Y que los parlamentarios autonómicos no tienen inmunidad ante el juez sino únicamente ante la policía; sí que tienen aforamiento. Ello es así porque son miembros de un parlamento autonómico que no es titular de la soberanía nacional, por lo que sus derechos no son idénticos a los de los miembros de las Cortes Generales, cuyos miembros representan a los titulares de la soberanía.

También es importante saber si Jordi Sánchez, en tanto que parlamentario y aunque esté en prisión provisional, goza de inviolabilidad e inmunidad parlamentarias.

Para ello es necesario fijar conceptos. ¿Qué es la inmunidad parlamentaria? Es una institución jurídica cuya naturaleza consiste en otorgar una esfera de protección frente a la justicia, es decir, que existe para que los miembros de las cámaras no puedan ser detenidos ni juzgados, con el fin de no alterar la composición de las mismas. Ello comporta dos elementos: la no detención si no es en delito flagrante y la necesidad de que, para procesarlos, se necesite que la cámara dé el "placet" o autorización (lo que se denomina suplicatorio).

Puede tratarse de inmunidad en cuanto que parlamentario o en cuanto a, hipotéticamente, Presidente de la Generalitat (o consejero).

La inmunidad, en cuanto que prerrogativa de los parlamentarios, se complementa con la inviolabilidad (no pueden ser perseguidos por las opiniones y los votos que expresen en ejercicio de sus funciones) y el aforamiento (sólo pueden ser juzgados por el tribunal que se establezca como competente para ello).

Los miembros del Congreso de los Diputados y del Senado tienen las tres prerrogativas (el aforamiento se sitúa en el Tribunal Supremo).

No es así en cuanto a los miembros del Parlamento de Cataluña, que tienen inviolabilidad y tienen aforamiento (ante el Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Cataluña si el delito se comete en Cataluña y ante el Tribunal Supremo cuando se comete fuera de ella) pero no inmunidad: pueden ser detenidos en caso de flagrante delito y para procesarlos no se necesita suplicatorio alguno. El Reglamento del Parlamento de Cataluña remite a lo que disponga el Estatuto de Autonomía al respecto. Similar regulación presentan los Estatutos de Autonomía del resto de las Comunidades Autónomas.

Quienes defienden que Jordi Sánchez (u otro de los presos o fugados) puede tener inmunidad (algunos la denominan inmunidad parcial o incompleta) se centran en la necesidad de la existencia de delito flagrante para ser detenido (art. 57.1 EAC). Ello hubiera sido necesario si le hubiera detenido después de ser elegido parlamentario, y no es así, porque se le detuvo antes incluso de que las elecciones estuvieran convocadas. Al haber sido detenido en territorio español (peninsular, islas, consulados o embajadas y naves o aeronaves de bandera española) y no precisarse el suplicatorio para poder procesarlo, Jordi Sánchez no puede tener inmunidad. Ha de atenerse a lo que disponga en Juez de Instrucción sobre su persona.

Por otra parte, los hay que confunden la privación de libertad como medida cautelar de aquella que deriva de sentencia. En este caso, en el de Jordi Sánchez o el de Junqueras y otros presos preventivos, no se puede aplicar la Ley General Penitenciaria, que es la que regula los permisos (ordinarios y extraordinarios) de los presos porque es de aplicación, según su primer artículo, a los "sentenciados a penas y medidas penales", es decir que para que les apliquen debe existir sentencia (no es necesario que sea firme). El Sr. Sánchez no ha sido juzgado todavía y no existe sentencia alguna al respecto, por lo que está todavía bajo la jurisdicción del Juez de Instrucción, en una causa calificada de "delito complejo", que tiene una duración mayor que la que correspondería a delitos simples. Por ello, será la decisión judicial, del Juez de Instrucción, en esta fase, la que regule cuando y cómo puede salir de prisión, ya sea como medida excepcional para un corto período de tiempo, ya sea porque el Tribunal Supremo estime que ya no son de aplicación las circunstancias que motivaron su puesta en prisión provisional. Pero no tiene "beneficios penitenciarios", que la Ley sólo regula para quienes han sido ya juzgados y sentenciados.

Pero ellos todo lo tergiversan y pretenden confundir, no sólo a los suyos, sino a la opinión internacional. De ahí que sea tan importante tener rigor jurídico en la explicación de estas situaciones.

TERESA FREIXES

¿Cuándo cambió el calentamiento de bueno a malo?

Ed Hawkins raised an interesting question on twitter today that has interested me for some time:

This led to a long twitter-spat involving Steve Mcintyre, Doug McNeall, Richard Betts and others.

In the past, warming was generally thought to be a good thing. Here are a few illustrations of this.

Arrhenius, 1904

In 1904, Arrhenius wrote that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels could be beneficial, making the Earth’s climates “more equable,” stimulating plant growth, and providing more food for a larger population.

Callendar, 1938

Guy Callendar ended his 1938 paper with

In conclusion it may be said that the combustion of fossil fuel, whether it be peat from the surface or oil from 10,000 feet below, is likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power. For instance the above mentioned small increases of mean temperature would be important at the northern margin of cultivation, and the growth of favourably situated plants is directly proportional to the carbon dioxide pressure (Brown and Escombe, 1905). In any case the return of the deadly glaciers should be delayed indefinitely.

Gordon Manley, 1951

Manley is best known for establishing the Central England Temperature (CET) record. In 1944 he gave a lecture and wrote a paper, discussed here, about warming, and in 1951 wrote another paper saying that “the present improvement appears to have set in about 1925-30”.

UNESCO Report, 1963

UNESCO published a long report in 1963 on Changes of Climate, with articles published in both English and French. There are several references to “amelioration”, such as “the finding of a climatic amelioration during the previous 100-150 years” (p 8) and “recent climatic amelioration” (p 327).

Barry and Chorley, 1970

Roger Barry and Richard Chorley wrote a textbook, first published in 1968, called “Atmosphere, Weather and Climate”. New editions of it are still available. If you look at the 1970 edition on Google books, you will find on page 277 the statement that “Unfortunately the latest evidence suggests that the warm period of the 1920s and 1930s has come to an end.” You won’t find that in the latest edition of course. At some later stage, that sentence was removed.

Hubert Lamb, 1973

Here’s an article from 1973 by Hubert Lamb (scroll down to page 17) in which he talks of the warming in the early 20th century “opening up new pastures and land for cultivation” and “increasingly genial conditions”. He goes on to say that “It soon became clear, however, that carbon dioxide was not the whole story” and “For the past 25 to 30 years the Earth has been getting progressively cooler again”. Lamb was of course the founder of CRU.

So it seems that it was a truth universally acknowledged that warmer climates were beneficial, until at least the 1970s. But then something happened in the 1980s. Decades, if not centuries, of science and common sense were overthrown and replaced with the vast, self-reinforcing, political bandwagon of groupthink that we have today.

Cien años después, la locura del horario de verano perdura

THE CONVERSATION.- One hundred years after Congress passed the first daylight saving legislation, lawmakers in Florida this week passed the “Sunshine Protection Act,” which will make daylight saving a year-round reality in the Sunshine State.

If approved by the federal government, this will effectively move Florida’s residents one time zone to the east, aligning cities from Jacksonville to Miami with Nova Scotia rather than New York and Washington, D.C.

The cost of rescheduling international and interstate business and commerce hasn’t been calculated. Instead, relying on the same overly optimistic math that led the original proponents of daylight saving to predict vast energy savings, crisper farm products harvested before the morning dew dried and lessened eye strain for industrial workers, Florida legislators are lauding the benefits of putting “more sunshine in our lives.”

It’s absurd – and fitting – that a century later, opponents and supporters of daylight saving are still not sure exactly what it does. Despite its name, daylight saving has never saved anyone anything. But it has proven to be a fantastically effective retail spending plan.

Making the trains run on time

For centuries people set their clocks and watches by looking up at the sun and estimating, which yielded wildly dissimilar results between (and often within) cities and towns.

To railroad companies around the world, that wasn’t acceptable. They needed synchronized, predictable station times for arrivals and departures, so they proposed splitting up the globe into 24 time zones.

In 1883, the economic clout of the railroads allowed them to replace sun time with standard time with no legislative assistance and little public opposition. The clocks were calm for almost 30 years, apart from an annual debate in the British Parliament over whether to pass a Daylight Saving Act. While proponents argued that shoving clocks ahead during summer months would reduce energy consumption and encourage outdoor recreation, the opposition won out.

Then, in 1916, Germany suddenly adopted the British idea in hopes of conserving energy for its war effort. Within a year, Great Britain followed suit. And despite fanatical opposition from the farm lobby, so would the United States.

From patriotic duty to moneymaking scheme

A law requiring Americans to lose an hour was confounding enough. But Congress also tacked on the legal mandate for the four continental time zones. The patriotic rationale for daylight saving went like this: Shifting one hour of available light from the very early morning (when most Americans were asleep) would reduce the demand for domestic electrical power used to illuminate homes in the evening, which would spare more energy for the war effort.

On March 19, 1918, Woodrow Wilson signed the Calder Act requiring Americans to set their clocks to standard time; less than two weeks later, on March 31, they would be required to abandon standard time and push their clocks ahead by an hour for the nation’s first experiment with daylight saving.

It didn’t go smoothly. In 1918, Easter Sunday fell on March 31, which led to a lot of latecomers to church services. Enraged rural and evangelical opponents thereafter blamed daylight saving for subverting sun time, or “God’s time.” Newspapers were deluged by letter writers complaining that daylight saving upset astronomical data and made almanacs useless, prevented Americans from enjoying the freshest early morning air, and even browned out lawns unaccustomed to so much daylight.

Within a year, daylight saving was repealed. But like most weeds, the practice thrived by neglect.

In 1920, New York and dozens of other cities adopted their own metropolitan daylight saving policies. The Chamber of Commerce spurred along this movement on behalf of department store owners, who had noticed that later sunset times encouraged people to stop and shop on their way home from work.

By 1965, 18 states observed daylight saving six months a year; some cities and towns in 18 other states observed daylight saving for four, five or six months a year; and 12 states stuck to standard time.

Actress Barbara Lawrence reminds television viewers to set the clock ahead, from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m., on April 29, 1956. AP Photo This wasn’t exactly ideal. A 35-mile bus trip from Steubenville, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia, passed through seven distinct local time zones. The U.S. Naval Observatory dubbed the world’s greatest superpower “the world’s worst timekeeper.”

So, in 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which mandated six months of standard time and six of daylight saving.

Great for golf – but what about everyone else?

Why do we still do it?

Today we know that changing the clocks does influence our behavior. For example, later sunset times have dramatically increased participation in afterschool sports programs and attendance at professional sports events. In 1920, The Washington Post reported that golf ball sales in 1918 – the first year of daylight saving – increased by 20 percent.

And when Congress extended daylight saving from six to seven months in 1986, the golf industry estimated that extra month was worth as much as US$400 million in additional equipment sales and green fees. To this day, the Nielsen ratings for even the most popular television shows decline precipitously when we spring forward, because we go outside to enjoy the sunlight.

But the promised energy savings – the presenting rationale for the policy – have never materialized.

In fact, the best studies we have prove that Americans use more domestic electricity when they practice daylight saving. Moreover, when we turn off the TV and go to the park or the mall in the evening sunlight, Americans don’t walk. We get in our cars and drive. Daylight saving actually increases gasoline consumption, and it’s a fallacious substitute for genuine energy conservation policy.

Lawmakers in Florida, of all places, ought to know that year-round daylight saving is not such a bright idea – especially in December and January, when most residents of the Sunshine State won’t see sunrise until about 8 a.m.

On Jan. 8, 1974, Richard Nixon forced Floridians and the entire nation into a year-round daylight saving – a vain attempt to stave off an energy crisis and lessen the impact of an OPEC oil embargo.

But before the end of the first month of daylight saving that January, eight children died in traffic accidents in Florida, and a spokesperson for Florida’s education department attributed six of those deaths directly to children going to school in darkness.

Lesson learned? Apparently not.