Archive | July, 2004

Noam Scheiber is clearly right that it’s a bad sign for Bush that he’s still struggling to shore up and rally the conservative base (posts here and here). I think his characterization of the political tactics and stakes are all just right. But there’s something odd in his diagnosis of how relations between Bush and […]

Eugene’s observation the other day that, contrary to current conventional p.c. wisdom, rape is a crime of sex as well as violence, reminded me of the last time I got into an argument about this. As Eugene pointed out, statistics show that rape is highest among girls and women in their late teens and early […]

Dan Drezner and Bruce Bartlett and Matthew Yglesias all enthuse about the idea of a Presidential challenger naming a shadow cabinet. Matt identifies some disadvantages: The first is simply that the vetting and decision-making process would distract key campaign staff at a moment when they have the non-trivial task of running a presidential campaign. The […]

I’m off on a family vacation from today until Sunday the 25th, and won’t be regularly blogging or even checking my e-mail. Please hold any messages you want to send me until Monday the 26th; if they’re sent before then, they’re likely to get lost among all the other stuff that will pile up. The […]

I’m very pleased to say that Cathy Seipp (Cathy’s World) and Neal Whitman (Agoraphilia) have agreed to guest-blog here alongside the other Conspirators from today until Sunday the 25th. Cathy and Neal aren’t lawyers, economists, or political scientists like the rest of the (nonanonymous) Conspirators — Cathy is a journalist and Neal is a linguist […]

Anyone want to place bets on whether the pressure of the blogosphere will shed light on the Terror in the Skies article I linked to earlier today? Instapundit linked to it today at 5:22 pm, and it has now reached Andrew Sullivan, Little Green Footballs, Hugh Hewitt, here, and no doubt lots and lots of […]

I’m very pleased that the Conspiracy has made it as one of the “Must Reading” blogs onto a new list of law-related Weblogs (“the EDDix 50”). Check out the other law blogs as well, especially if you’re a lawyer — some of them seem to have specialty focuses that you might find useful.

in Britain at least — that’s the title of a New Statesman article by Simon Sebag Montefiore (who is also the author of the recent Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. I can’t speak to whether this is accurate, but a friend of mine whose judgment I trust passed it along, so I thought […]

Daniel Strahan claims that the spelling errors in Judge Wilkerson’s “gays and lesbians should be put in some type of a mental institute” letter were the fault of the newspaper. Mr. Strahan assures me that he saw the original letter, the text of which he put here, and those spelling errors (marked with “[sic]”‘s in […]

A reader says that suspending a driver’s license because the driver told his doctor that he drank over a six-pack of beer a day “[s]ounds like the movie ‘Minority Report.’” “[B]ecause you like to have a few beers, even a few too many beers, you’re considered guilty of driving drunk before the fact?” I’m not […]

I’m not sure what to make of this story, as I am unfamiliar with its source. Maybe it’s bogus, or much ado about nothing. On the other hand, maybe it’s not. Thanks to Instapundit for the link.

A reader points out that the federal DOMA does two things — it essentially (1) says that states need not recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages, and (2) says that the federal government does not recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages. The first provision, of course, is said to be an exercise of Congress’s power under the Full Faith […]

For my law and literature class I would like to use an autobiography of a lawyer, judge, or other prominent legal figure. The standards are the following: 1) It must be well written and broadly literary, 2) It cannot be longer than four or five hundred pages, 3)It must be at least moderately entertaining to […]

Read Tim Wise passes along this; I’m not sure what the legally right answer is (it turns a lot on administrative law and due process questions related to revocation of generally available licenses, which isn’t exactly in my field), but it seems worth thinking about: A man who told doctors at a hospital that he […]

Via Brian Doherty, Liberty Magazine’s R.W. Bradford provides a detailed, morbidly fascinating, and ultimately depressing account of the Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention… and reassures me in my decision to look elsewhere than the LP for a presidential candidate this year.