Archive | August, 2004

Yesterday, the government filed its brief in Ashcroft v. Raich, the medical cannabis case I have been litigating, which is now before the Supreme Court. It contained no surprises but it continues to be disappointing to witness a Republican administration so completely uninterested in federalism (just as it was disappointing when the Clinton Justice Department […]

Stop the Bleating (note the connection to the American Shepherd post below) reports. Take the speculation about the judges’ likely preferences with a grain of salt — it is, as the blogger makes clear, indeed sheer speculation, and it’s quite hard to infer judges’ views on this question from their general political leanings.

Last week, I posted this item (go to the earlier post to see the links): I’ve had the nastygram sent by the Pantagraph to Michael Moore, complaining about Moore’s alleged partial fictionalization of a Pantagraph headline put up here. (The page will disappear soon, so you might want to avoid linking directly to that page; […]

Nick Gillespie (Reason’s Hit & Run) reports on the Department of Homeland Security’s new mascot: Reports USA Today: Starting next month, children in grades 4 though 8 and employers nationwide will be asked to help get families and companies better prepared to respond to a crisis. In schools, on the Internet and in TV and […]

A troubling element of affirmative action as currently practiced is the refusal of many who practice and defend it to acknowledge what that current policies, especially in universities, require significant racial preferences. Instead, they claim that affirmative action serves as a mere “diversity” tiebreaker among essentially equally qualified applicants. A case in point is a […]

Seen yesterday in my neighborhood: “Other than eliminating Slavery, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism, what has War ever accomplished?”

Warning: Will only be of interest to the very few readers who are familiar with cert pool memos.

Slate‘s Explainer has a nice item explaining nonunanimous criminal juries, which have indeed been held to be constitutional. I’d just add two small items: The Sixth Amendment has been read as mandating unanimous juries in federal courts, though not state courts (one of the relatively few ways in which the Bill of Rights has been […]

So holds the California Supreme Court, in an opinion that I’m just starting to read. Here’s Howard Bashman’s (How Appealing) summary: The vote on declaring previously performed marriages void was 5-2; the court was unanimous in holding that the Mayor of San Francisco lacks the power going forward to allow same-sex couples to marry in […]

The latest issue of Engage: The Journal of the Federalist Society Practice Groups, is now online in PDF format. Among much else of interest, it contains reviews of Eugene’s Academic Legal Writing (PDF page 159) and my You Can’t Say That! (PDF page 154).

In her latest guest column in the New York Times, Dahlia Lithwick has fallen for one of the often-alleged-but-still-false claims about the Patriot Act. She writes:   [W]hile I’m not reflexively opposed to the entire Patriot Act, two provisions do serve more to quell protest than terrorism.  One section invented a broad new crime called “domestic terrorism” […]

What’s with ESPN these days? First, the Scrabble meltdown, now this–“Browns Quarterback Jeff Garcia says a comment made by ex-teammate Terrell Owens implying that he is gay is ridiculous and untrue.” I just hope it doesn’t disrupt Garcia’s performance for my fantasy football team (I had injury-prone underachieving TO last year).

There is a remarkable op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today. It’s called “Kerry Up, Markets Down.” (You can view it at http://www.aei.org/news/filter.,newsID.21046/news_detail.asp. For some reason, powerblogs is not letting me insert links.) In it, the author notes that there has been an inverse relationship between the S&P 500 and the value of a “Kerry […]

As noted in Wine Wars, Part 2, nothing in the text of the 21st Amendment specifically repeals the dormant Commerce Clause, nor does it specifically repeal only the dormant Commerce Clause and no other provision of the Constitution. Nonetheless, some conservatives have argued that the dormant Commerce Clause is not “in” the Constitution but is […]

The San Francisco Chronicle reports: It wasn’t a four-letter word, but it was close enough to cause a stir at the National Scrabble Championship Thursday. In the final round, eventual champion Trey Wright played the word “lez,” which was on a list of offensive words not allowed during the tournament. Normally, no word is off-limits, […]