Archive | June, 2004

Our house is full of guests for William’s first communion tomorrow, so it seems a good time to address the communion kerfuffle, the controversy over whether public officials who support abortion rights ought to be able to receive communion in the Catholic Church. “Catholic” means “universal,” apparently in the sense that absolutely everybody is entitled […]

There’s much to condemn in George Soros’s recent statements (and actions), but Mark Kleiman is right to fault Tony Blankley for making Soros’s Jewishness part of the condemnation. On the June 3 Hannity & Colmes, Blankley had the following odd statements: . . . [L]et’s get back to Soros. This a man who blamed the […]

Gail Heriot’s post from Proverbs (just below) was well timed. Friday evening is the time, in traditional Jewish families, that husbands and sons read or chant that passage in full, as the household gathers for the Friday night dinner and the women light the Sabbath candles. “Eshet hayil mi yimzah?…” in Hebrew; literally, “A woman […]

My colleagues at the University of San Diego sometimes tease that I am “not a real woman,” evidently because I am conservative, a bit outspoken, and good at math. (One or two of them are not kidding.) Today, however, I feel decidedly like a woman and a virtuous one at that–at least as that term […]

Recently, the Supreme Court decided an important federalism case, Tennessee v. Lane. I previously blogged on the Right Coast about the minimalist conception of federalism that appeared to animate Justice O’Connor’s vote in that case. Here I want to discuss Justice Scalia’s interesting dissent. Tennessee v. Lane involved the question whether Title II of the […]

I continue to be puzzled by Slate‘s Kerryism of the Day feature. The column is largely about editing — about showing how Kerry’s speech is marred by his “caveats and embellishments” and how it could be improved (“translated into plain English”). The column also purports to use these “caveats and embellishments” as evidence of Kerry’s […]

The Spanish medals-for-nothing controversy is now apparently being dubbed “Medalla-Gate” in Spain (though, I suspect, at least partly facetiously).

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a new study on that most dreaded of standardized tests, the SAT, will soon be published in the Journal of Econometrics. According to the Chronicle, the study’s author “argues that SAT scores can ‘launder’ an applicant’s background, such as race and family income.” “‘If colleges do not wish […]

Blogging here from Carefree (the name of the town), Arizona, I see Will Baude is running an informal blogpoll on Crescat Sententia. Here is how he describes it: It’s time we found a neutral principle for picking a theory of Constitutional Law. I have one. Whose vision of the Constitution produces spiffier diagrams? Exhibit A: […]

I’ll be on the road almost continuously until 6/22 (Charlottesville, Postdam, Salt Lake City), and don’t anticipate blogging much or at all between now and then; e-mail will also go almost-entirely unread. One note on e-mail I’ve been getting: several people have written to confirm that “bobo” has been internalized as a French word over […]

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports (thanks to reader Chris in Austin for the pointer): A television advertisement for Democrat John Kerry’s presidential campaign appears to have violated copyright laws by broadcasting several photos from the Caller-Times book “South Texas Heroes.” . . . These veterans or their relatives say they did not give permission to […]

The New York Times coverage of Bush’s speech at the Air Force Academy is a special treat. Like a complete idiot, I hurt my back doing dead lifts in my garage, and so spent a fair part of yesterday on my back in the family room, looking for entertainment on the tube, and caught W’s […]

From Expatica.com, via Arthur Chrenkoff” and InstaPundit: The . . . [Spanish] Defence Minister handed back a medal he was given for his role in withdrawing troops from Iraq, it emerged Wednesday. José Bono sent a letter to the prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero saying he would give back the Cross of Military Merit, […]

From Ha’aretz: “Na’ama Al-Nahari, a woman of Yemenite origin, and five of her 12 children were smuggled out of the ultra-Orthodox township of Monsey, N.Y., on Tuesday and flown to Israel on El Al, in a Jewish Agency covert operation that had been in the works for a few months. According to the plan, a […]

Two major Watergate figures — nemeses of Richard Nixon — died this week: Archibald Cox, the Harvard law professor turned Special Prosecutor, and Sam Dash, Democratic counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee. Nixon’s dismissal of Cox as Special Prosecutor gave us the anti-Nixon bumper sticker “Impeach the Cox Sacker”.