OK, I said my first post on the subject of Michelle’s book would come in a couple of hours, and would be about the book’s goals and method. I lied. I posted a message on my own blog yesterday that the cover of the book didn’t inspire much confidence that the book would be Fair […]
Archive | August, 2004
IN DEFENSE OF INTERNMENT, Part 1
Eugene was kind enough to invite me to guest-blog here today and tomorrow, and with the publication this week of Michelle Malkin‘s book “In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror,” it looks as though I’ll have plenty to write about. About which to write, […]
Velocious:
I can’t tell whether I’m amused by this word or annoyed by it, but it’s stuck in my head in either case. Yes, it does mean what you think it means (though the sources that I’ve seen suggest that it always has a jocular connotation; I haven’t been able to check my OED yet to […]
“When nerds get tattoos”:
GeekPress reports.
Center for Talented Youth:
I just gave a couple of talks about law this morning at the CTY summer program in L.A., and very much enjoyed it. The students, mostly 14- and 15-year-olds, seemed smart, engaged, and thoughtful; I know Jacob and Tyler have spoken highly about the program before, and my quick sense of it was also very […]
Pitching the Patriot Act:
Legal Times has an interesting article on the public relations campaigns being waged over the Patriot Act. An excerpt: While political spin is nothing new, the level of hype, hyperbole and outright hysteria surrounding the act is extraordinary. And with the presidential election months away and several key provisions of the Patriot Act set to […]
Using corporate logos in a film:
Apropos the JibJab controversy, reader James Barnett asks: Did the JibJab parody violate any laws regarding the unauthorized display of corporate logos? I’m assuming, of course, that they didn’t ask for Wal-mart’s or McDonald’s permission to include the store logos that pop up behind the American Indian. The answer is “no.” As a general matter, […]
Hold the presses! Hold the chalk-printing bicycles!
My former student Eric Soskin reports that chalking sidewalks does seem to be illegal in New York, the very place where the chalk-writing bicycle is scheduled to be deployed. N.Y. Admin. Code sec. 10-117 provides: No person shall write, paint or draw any inscription, figure or mark or affix, attach or place by whatever means […]
It’s a bicycle! No, it’s a printer!
My friend Haym Hirsh points to this story: Josh Kinberg . . . [has developed] a bicycle that receives text messages and prints them in foot-high chalk letters, then blogs a digital photo and GPS map of the printing, all while the rider cruises along. . . . Kinberg will officially roll out the bike […]
JibJab asks for declaratory judgment
that they did not violate the copyright in This Land Is Your Land. Sounds good — should be interesting to see what happens. And if the parties don’t settle, we might actually get a published opinion out of it, which could set a valuable (or awful, depending on what you think of its merits) precedent […]
Anticipatory Search Warrants:
I have read a lot of Fourth Amendment cases over the last few years, but today I learned something new: several courts of appeals have allowed the government to obtain and execute “anticipatory” search warrants. According to these cases, the government can get a warrant even if their case for probable cause hinges on some […]
Supreme Court agrees to hear the Blakely Sentencing Guidelines issue:
The Supreme Court just granted certiorari in U.S. v. Booker and U.S. v. Fanfan, and set oral argument for the first day of the new Term (as predicted here, though it certainly wasn’t an out-on-a-limb prediction).
The CIA / John Kerry connection:
From MidHudsonNews.com: While Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, and their families were having a “lite” lunch at Wendy’s in the Town of Newburgh Friday, drumming up local support right after the national convention in Boston, their real lunches were waiting on their bus. A member of the Kerry advance […]
Case notes — question for law review editors:
I’d like to add some material to my Academic Legal Writing book on (1) writing casenotes for publication, and (2) writing casenotes for a law review write-on competition, when the competition requires a casenote. I’m not wild about casenotes as a genre of legal scholarship — I don’t think they’re particularly useful to readers, and […]
The E-Mail Privacy Act of 2004:
A few weeks ago, I wrote a long post about the First Circuit’s recent wiretapping decision in United States v. Councilman. As I explained in that post, Councilman is a dangerous decision for Internet privacy; a statutory fix to correct the decision is very much needed. The first of several bills attempting such a fix […]