A thoughtful acquaintance of mine sent around an e-mail expressing skepticism that what Mary Kay Letourneau did was all that bad. Many 12-year-old boys, he pointed out, would be quite happy to have sex with a 35-year-old woman. Perhaps this is even so for most 12-year-old boys, at least most of those who actually end […]
Archive | August, 2004
Eminent domain and state constitutional property rights:
My fellow Russkie lawprof Ilya Somin (George Mason) — part of the small but growing Russo-American invasion of the legal academy — passed along, at my request, this brief summary of the Hathcock case: The Michigan Supreme Court recently overruled one of the worst judicial decisions of modern times. In County of Wayne v. Hathcock, […]
IN DEFENSE OF INTERNMENT, Part 5:
If you were of a mind to unsettle the settled understanding of what led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans between 1942 and 1945, and restore some credibility to the now-discredited claim of military necessity, you’d need to do two things. First, you’d need to make at least a prima facie case of causation–that is, […]
Corporal Klinger should have thought of that!
According to AFP, A growing number of conscripts have to be dismissed from Finland’s armed forces every year due to an internet addiction that makes them unsuited for service, an official said on Tuesday. “It’s an increasing problem. More and more young people are always on the internet day and night. They get up around […]
Judges thanking externs:
I just noticed that Judge Harold Baer, Jr., in the Southern District of New York has a practice of thanking interns who worked on his opinions, e.g., “Sonia Wadhwa, a Summer 2004 Intern in my Chambers and upcoming second year law student at The George Washington University Law School, provided substantial assistance in the research […]
IN DEFENSE OF INTERNMENT, Part 4 (Or, “The Robinson Rebuttal”):
OK, enough about research methods and terminology and book covers. Let’s get to the meat of Michelle’s claim, shall we? Her argument is that intercepted and decrypted Japanese “chatter” about efforts (a small number claimed to have been successful) to recruit Japanese aliens (“Issei”) and American citizens of Japanese ancestry (“Nisei”) was “the Roosevelt administration’s […]
Religious discrimination:
A woman has apparently been fired by a Muslim-owned company because she ate pork on the premises. Is this illegal religious discrimination? No, just as a Christian-owned company’s firing an employee because he is a homosexual is not illegal religious discrimination. Antidiscrimination laws bar people from discriminating based on the employee’s religion. An employer may […]
Bloomington Pantagraph v. Michael Moore:
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; before that happens, I’ll copy it to a permanent home and update this post accordingly, […]
IN DEFENSE OF INTERNMENT, Part 4:
As I continue liveblogging my own thoughts about Michelle’s book “In Defense of Internment,” I’ll note a part of the book where I think Michelle is quite right. In her introduction (pages xiii to xxxv), or at least in certain parts of it, she makes the case that the civil liberties Left and representatives of […]
Landscaping Man:
Superhero? Supervillain? Neighborhood jerk? Promoter of public goods? My friend and felow libertarian lawprof Tom Bell (Agoraphilia) has the story.
Privacy law angle on “Scott Peterson ordered cable porn” evidence:
Apropos this story, here’s the Cable TV Privacy Act. Subsection (h) seems most on point — it suggests that the police could get this information via a court order (assuming it’s material, which it probably is, though I’m not sure that it’s tremendously probative), but cable company employees couldn’t themselves take the lead in alerting […]
Schwarzenegger settles lawsuit over bobblehead:
So reports the San Francisco Chronicle: Under the new agreement, Ohio Discount Merchandise Inc. can produce Schwarzenegger-the-politician dolls — without the gun. . . . The doll in question featured Schwarzenegger in a gray suit, white shirt and red tie. But he was also carrying what looks like an assault rifle and had a bullet-clip […]
Cyndi Lauper Live:
Went to see Cyndi Lauper at Wolf Trap last night. I wasn’t exactly eager to go, but my fiancee persuaded me. I thought of Lauper as an odd woman with a nice voice who had a few hits in the mid-80s, and then ruined her career with a series of bad p.r. moves, including getting […]
IN DEFENSE OF INTERNMENT, Part 3:
In her prefatory note to readers of her new book “In Defense of Internment,” Michelle Malkin says the following about the book’s goal: “This book defends both the evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast (the so-called “Japanese American internment”), as well as the internment of enemy aliens, Japanese and non-Japanese alike, […]
Eric Muller guest-blogging:
I’m happy to say that fellow lawprof Eric Muller (isthatlegal at bellsouth dot net), of IsThatLegal?, will be guest-blogging here today and tomorrow. Eric is pretty centrist, which probably puts him on the left compared to most of us Conspirators, and way on the right compared to most law professors; but more importantly, he’s knowledgeable […]