Archive | April, 2004

Co-blogger David (immediately below) raises the question of why bloggers don’t get many review copies of books. In part some publishing houses may think of blogs and the Internet as threats, rightly or wrongly. They prefer not to think about us, and they prefer not to have to tell their bosses: “These are interesting outlets, […]

I find it a bit odd that I’ve been blogging for the VC for almost a year but have not made it on to any publisher’s review copy lists. The VC has a “circulation” of over ten thousand readers a day, many of whom, judging by my email, are professors, attorneys, or law students. That’s […]

I’ve been waiting for researchers to do MRI scans on people when they vote or look at political ads. The New York Times reports on precisely this latter experiment: “The researchers had already zeroed in on those [9-11 and war] images and their effect among Democrats on the part of the brain that responds to […]

The Confusion: The Slithery D writes: You wouldn’t know it from the unprecedented silence of the boys at the Conspiracy, but the Confusion, book 2 of the Baroque Cycle, appeared in book stores last week. Well, one reason I haven’t been blogging much is precisely that I’ve been busy reading The Confusion. I thought Cryptonomicon […]

The Daily O’Collegian reports that the OSU faculty council approved a speech code banning, under the rubric of “racial or ethnic harassment,” any acts “hostile toward the dignity of an individual, carried out on grounds related to race, color, ethnicity or national origin,” or that “unreasonably interfere[] with the work or academic performance of those […]

The most exciting passage in the opinion Eugene blogs below is, as far as I’m concerned, in Thomas’ concurrence. “I cannot agree that the Indian Commerce Clause “provide[s] Congress with plenary power to legislate in the field of Indian affairs.” At one time, the implausibility of this assertion at least troubled the Court, see, e.g., […]

The President has the “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur” (U.S. Const., art. II, sec. 2, cl. 2.) The treaties then become the “supreme Law of the Land” (art. VI), and Congress may enact legislation that is necessary and […]

I don’t usually blog on Iraq, if only because I have never been there. Nor do I have any Arabic at all. But lately there has been so much talk about how the war is going. Jacob (below) writes about who has and hasn’t changed their minds. Perhaps an outsider’s perspective on the whole matter […]

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Saw this movie last week, and thought it was so-so. I very much liked Being John Malkovich, an earlier Kaufman movie; thought Adaptation was interesting but not as good; and thought Eternal Sunshine was pretty weak. The main plot element is creative on its own, but it can’t carry […]

Hellboy: Just saw it yesterday, and didn’t much like it. I enjoy action movies, and I rather liked Spiderman and X-Men 2, so I’m not against movies based on comics. But this one was pretty disappointing — formulaic, without much wit or innovative detail to make it fun despite the formula.

In my earlier post (now corrected), I neglected to mention that I will be speaking on Saturday at 1:00pm in Washington DC at the 2004 NORML Conference, which will be held at The Hamilton Crowne Plaza Hotel. I will mainly be discussing the case of Raich v. Ashcroft that I argued in the Ninth Circuit. […]

Last week, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy made a strong case that Jamie Gorelick had no place on the 9/11 Commission. Having been appointed and having already participated in the proceedings thus far, whether Gorelick should resign from the Commission altogether, or recuse herself from any consideration of the Justice Department’s role (or lack thereof) […]

According to this Newsweek story, high-ranking Bush Administration officials, most prominently Cheney and Rumsfeld, have argued for stripping Americans suspected of aiding Al Qaeda of their rights and holding them indefinitely as “enemy combatants.” They have met with strong resistance from SURPRISE! John Ashcroft and others in the Justice Department, who both remember that the […]

An obvious point, I guess. But if you’re going to write an article claiming that “a growing faction of conservatives is voicing doubts about a prolonged United States military involvement in Iraq, putting hawkish neoconservatives on the defensive and posing questions for President Bush about the degree of support he can expect from his political […]

but my wife’s. Sebastian Mallaby has an interesting article in today’s Washington Post entitled “Visions of US Aid,” in which he looks at the index created by the Center for Global Development for measuring the contributions that the world’s richest countries are making to the well-being of the world’s poorest. Interesting — and, as my […]