Archive | August, 2004

A couple of readers pointed me to this file, which they say contains the Air America gun control debate I was involved in last Friday. I haven’t yet been able to check it myself, or to figure out where in the file the debate starts, but I thought I’d pass it along in any event. […]

In 1996, Representative Jim McDermott obtained a tape of an illegally intercepted cellphone call between Representative John Boehner, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, and other members of the House Republican leadership. McDermott turned the tape over to the New York Times, which published a story on the tape’s contents, and Rep. Boehner sued. The district court initially […]

The contemporaneous debates in Congress over the proposed but never enacted §3 of the 21st Amendment further indicate that the purpose of §2 was to restore the constitutional balance disrupted by the 18th Amendment by returning local police power authority to the states, but not to grant to the states new powers to interfere with […]

I recently came across Kremen v. United States, 353 U.S. 346 (1957), an old Fourth Amendment decision. FBI agents located a fugitive in a secluded cabin; after arresting the fugutive and two other men, agents seized the entire contents of the cabin and sent the contents off to FBI headquarters. The Supreme Court issued a […]

Slate has the story on the exacting sand standards required by serious beach volleyball competitions. Surprisingly interesting.

At last, we get to the 21st Amendment. Section 1 simply repeals the 18th Amendment (“Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.”). Section 2 of the 21st Amendment provides, “Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States […]

A journal article the very title of which makes one cringe: O’Halloran RL, Dietz PE: Autorerotic fatalities with power hydraulics. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 38:359-364, 1993. UPDATE: Reader Jeff Driscoll found the abstract on the Web. I’m not sure that I’m glad he found it — reading it just triples the “ow!” factor for me […]

is guest blogging over at Lessig Blog. Don’t miss it.

United States v. Marcum, just decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, (1) declines to decide whether the Lawrence v. Texas right to sexual autonomy generally applies to members of the armed forces, and (2) holds that a noncommissioned officer can be punished for engaging in nonforcible oral sex with a […]

Christopher Hitchens writes: John Kerry actually claims to have shot a fleeing Viet Cong soldier from the riverbank, something that I personally would have kept very quiet about. He used to claim that he was a witness to, and almost a participant in, much worse than that. Maybe there’s part of the story that I’m […]

An excerpt: Ironically, the profiling measures Malkin advocates today, such as selective monitoring of aliens and visitors from countries with terrorist links, are moderate and fairly sensible. She is right that it’s ludicrous to invoke Japanese internment as a parallel. But surely, defending something as extreme as mass internment can only undermine her case. The […]

Some people have e-mailed to ask whether I know of any audio recording or transcript of the Air America gun control debate I did last Friday. The answer is no, but Publicola was blogging the debate as he was listening.

Something — I don’t know what — recently reminded me of Rudyard Kipling’s We and They, so I thought I’d post it: Father and Mother, and Me, Sister and Auntie say All the people like us are We, And every one else is They. And They live over the sea, While We live over the […]

Ok, if you haven’t seen it yet, Family Guy is one of the funniest shows of all time and it is coming back to Fox this fall. FG is not for those who are easily offended and, do not–repeat, DO NOT–watch the Family Guy if you have PC sensibilities. Anyway I just learned of a […]

In the era before the 18th Amendment, the state and federal governments had thus reached a general accommodation on the balance of authority between the state police power and national commerce power. The states had the authority to regulate purely local affairs, such as rules governing the manufacture and consumption of alcohol, especially with respect […]