So here’s what I wonder about the Justice Department’s planned new obscenity crackdown. As we know, there’s lots of porn of all varieties out there on the Internet. I don’t know how much of it is produced in the U.S., but even if it’s 80%, and every single U.S. producer is shut down, wouldn’t foreign […]
Archive | April, 2004
Liberty Fund meets Bloggers Downtown:
No, that is not the name of a Jamaican dub album; rather it describes my next three days. I am organizing a Liberty Fund conference in Washington and I have invited some leading bloggers to attend. Discussants will include Daniel Drezner, Megan McArdle (JaneGalt.net), Randall Parker (Futurepundit.com), Alex Tabarrok (MarginalRevolution.com), and David Nishimura (Cronaca.com). We […]
A bit more on Kennedy’s “Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam” remarks:
Some more support for my point below — driving home today I heard Kennedy’s remarks compressed down to “Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam,” by none other than NPR. Not a word about the whole deception context; just that one line. So either NPR is being way out of line, recklessly quoting someone in ways that’s […]
Apropos Kennedy’s “Iraq is Bush’s Vietnam” remarks:
I realize that this is in a different venue than his original statements, but it nonetheless seems potentially relevant to figuring out what Kennedy meant in his original comments: McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said Iraq was different from Vietnam because there “is desire on the part of the people of […]
Demands that reporters erase a tape:
The AP reports: Two reporters were ordered Wednesday to erase their tape recordings of a speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a Mississippi high school. Scalia has long barred television cameras from his speeches, but does not always forbid newspaper photographers and tape recorders. On Wednesday, he did not warn the audience […]
No-Fly List,
which is apparently just a Hassle-Fly List: Timothy Noah in Slate has a nice article on the subject. I don’t know enough about the lawsuit or the list to opine intelligently on it, but Noah’s piece seemed worth reading. For a contrary view, read the ACLU’s press release. By the way, if the No-Fly List […]
Hyderabad:
I’m pleased to report that my Freedom of Speech and Intellectual Property: Some Thoughts After Eldred, 44 Liquormart, and Bartnicki has been reprinted in The ICFAI Journal of International Business Law, published by the ICFAI Law School, apparently at its Hyderabad campus. I remember once, when I was very young, seeing a map in which […]
“Hardball” Bingo:
Condoleezza Rice is going to testify tomorrow. Many people (myself included) will be interested in what she has to say and have not already made up their minds about her and her testimony. But many others have made up their minds — notably, the partisan talking heads who populate shows like “Hardball.” They already have […]
They’re letting anyone on a jury these days:
From People v. Blake, a California Court of Appeal case decided yesterday: After a nine-day crime spree a jury convicted appellant, Tom Blake, of ten counts of robbery, one count of attempted robbery, one count of carjacking, one count of burglary, one count of petty theft with a prior and one count of vehicle theft. […]
More on gambling self-bans:
I posted on this a couple of days ago; here’s more, from an AP story, thanks to reader Philip Gallagher: Virginia Ormanian burned through most of her retirement savings playing slot machines in Detroit casinos last year — something she should not have been allowed to do. The 49-year-old gambling addict had voluntarily banned herself […]
More on the Claremont hate-crime-or-was-it? David Bernstein blogged about this last month — Kerri Dunn, a Claremont professor who reported being the target of anti-Semitic vandalism, is now being accused of staging the whole incident — so I thought I’d pass along an update, from the L.A. Times: [Dunn] went on to receive a law […]
More on post-military jobs:
Gary Leff writes, apropos my post yesterday: Eugene’s counterexample [of military flyers going to work for the airlines] is better than he realizes, because in fact military charter work is very common. American Trans Air alone did over $200 million in military charter business in 2003. Forbes attributes an increase in military charter work as […]
Kennedy and “Bush’s Vietnam”:
What did Sen. Kennedy mean when he said Iraq is “Bush’s Vietnam”? Various people have suggested that he meant that Iraq will go as badly for the U.S. as Vietnam did. InstaPundit writes that a blog named “USEFUL FOOLS says that Ted Kennedy is trying for a Tet rerun, with help from the media and […]
The latest from Camille Paglia:
“The visual environment for the young, in short, has become confused, fragmented, and unstable. Students now understand moving but not still images. The long, dreamy, contemplative takes of classic Hollywood studio movies or postwar European art films are long gone. Today’s rapid-fire editing descends from Jean-Luc Godard, with his hand-held camera, and more directly from […]
Is this entirely fair?
Is it right to say, as the post says that Tyler links to below, that the “nationalize health care” view is silly on its face because we already have a 65-70% (estimated) public health care system? Trent writes: How do we define and measure the types of health care systems?I think this is the easy […]