Do you have any record of this?

We measure virtually everything with a simple number these days. What's your credit score?

I really can't speak for California, but in the Northeast US ( Pensylvania and North ), Tenure == Due Process.

In my area, a new teacher ( 3years in some states, 5 in others) can be fired or "non-renewed" without a stated reason. In practice, new teachers are given good reviews mid-year and booted without comment or useful feedback. Such would-be teachers are almost unemployable after this, and the lack of feedback means that they can't work to address preceived flaws in case they do find a way to work again.

Experienced teachers can be dismissed for any legal reason. This is usually some combination of illegal activity (bank robbers can't be teachers usually), immoral behavior (porn stars are not encouraged to continue a teaching career), incompetence (yep, you can lose your job for incompetence), and insubordination (boss tells you to be on time, you aren't...). Of course, cause has to be documented. And except for the first two (illegal, immoral), a single incident is generally not sufficient grounds for action. This is good, a single parent complaint should not end a teacer's career.

The "problem" is that when ANYBODY is terminated for cause, their terminaion can be appealed in the state courts. This is not unique to teachers, but unions are in a good position financially to challenge these terminations, and so they do so nearly every time. Ex-employees of private firms generally cannot afford the legal fees to do this, and so generally don't challenge. The union provides the resources to access "due process".

The legal appeals process favors the district if the situation is well documented and if all of the rules were followed. The key to this is making sure that you have administrators with time to spend on process. A solid HR staff can help backstop this. Of course, the only thing that voters and unions agree on is that administration is a waste. And HR looks like more administration. Districts lose these cases a lot because administrators have other priorities and so don't do a great job with documentation or process.

In my current state, employees terminated for cause are not permitted to collect unemployment insurance. Private employers are more likely not to name a cause and accept the bump in their unemployment costs. This also tends to discourage lawsuits ( a bird in the hand...). School systems don't usually have this option with tenured (due process enabled) staff.

Big private companies tend to have the middle managment, HR types, and processes in place to cover themselves when they want to terminate for cause and contest unemployment. Small companies do not, but don't contest.

It's that simple.

Libertarians are... whatever they say they are. They don't need to be defined by you; certainly they do not need to be defined into a corner as you are attempting to do here. Yes, the ideas you've discussed have been promulgated by those who would call themselves Libertarians, but these ideas are not necessarily true of all, or even most modern would-be (l)ibertarians.

The Libertarian Party has adopted questionable policy perspectives in part because they have never had a serious chance of participating in government. (l)ibertarians who have wanted to govern (in the USA...) have had to, by necessity, find a place in one of the parties that were willing and able to do so. With the expansion of programs like the NSA's data collection, with the emergence of private data, with the expansion of all of government, it's really not surprising that more people would want a third option. It may be possible for another party to participate.

You could call them Democrats who feel that Obama and co. are guilty of massive overreach.
You could call them Republicans who feel that Bush and co. were guilty of the same.
Democrats will probably call them backwards racists.
Republicans will probably call them anarchists.
But if they all start to call themselves (L)ibertarians, watch out.

But no True Scotsman expects that to happen.

Also, If he hadn't stayd his ruling, the NSA would have rushed to the appeals court and gotten an emergency stay. And it would have been granted too. By staying his own ruling, he is just doing the reasonable thing. Whatever the collective opinion of slashdot, this is a ruling that would require a substantial change on (relatively) longstanding POLICY. The appeals court WILL want to look at this. They will write opinions. They may send it back to him on a technicality, but it will go back to the appeals court again either way. It WILL be appealed to the supreme court.

Staying his ruling gives his opinion a better chance of standing on appeal. He appears reasonable, decisions by unreasonable people are easy to overturn, & the reverse is true as well. And I'm sure even appeals judges remember if they have to miss an important event to rule on an emergency stay made necessary by an unreasonable judge.

Failing to stay the ruling would have been a dick move and would not have made any diference. Unfortunately.