Archive | September, 2004

Following this post, several readers have asked me where the press got the idea that the recent court decision in New York invalidated a major part of the Patriot Act. I assume the main source is this ACLU press release, which begins: In ACLU Case, Federal Court Strikes Down Patriot Act Surveillance Power As Unconstitutional […]

Congratulations to Governor Arnold for vetoing a counterproductive piece of legislation in California that would have imposed new disclosure requirements on pharmaceutical benefits managers. As the FTC noted in an analysis of the bill (from the press release): The staff analysis finds that AB 1960 is likely to have an adverse effect on consumers in […]

Some may have noticed that I have been blogging a lot less of late. There are probably several reasons for this, among which is the work I have been doing on Ashcroft v. Raich, the medical cannabis case now before the Supreme Court. Our brief is due in 2 weeks and, this weekend, we made […]

A belated welcome to my friend Jim Lindgren of Northwestern. Jim and I were once on the same faculty at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and it is good to be colleagues again. I am sure the same attention to factual detail that led to Jim’s exposure of the fraudulent gun ownership data of Michael Bellisiles […]

No, not really. But is it too much to ask that when the mainstream media reports on court decisions that they properly identify the law that is struck down and the Administration that is rebuked? Apparently it is, at least if the Thursday morning papers are any guide.   As I noted in my post below, […]

–INDC Journal has interesting interviews with the reporter and producer of the CBS story spreading the email selective service hoax. It is surprising that they can’t see that spreading a hoax that has been debunked might be more than a tad irresponsible.

As if CBS isn’t in enough hot water already after running two stories in one month based on phony documents, MoveOn.org has started a lobbying campaign to get CBS to run yet a third false story (hat-tip Kerry Spot). This one, on the attempts by Iraq to get Yellowcake uranium in Africa, was bumped from […]

District Judge Victor Marrero of the Southern District of New York issued a 122 page opinion in Doe v. Ashcroft yesterday invalidating 18 U.S.C. 2709, the “national security letter” provision of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, on Fourth and First Amendment grounds. This is big news: it might require heavily increased reliance on the controversial […]

Blogs seem to be getting the attention of the mainstream media. To get some idea of how long this has been happening, I ran month-by-month searches for use of the word “blog” appearing in the Westlaw ALLNEWS database covering the last two years. (The ALLNEWS database is a database of newspapers, more or less). You […]

[Silly mathematical error of mine deleted; thanks to those who explained to me my mistake.]

Here’s a letter from Senators Cornyn, Chambliss, and Graham to Senators Hatch and Sessions: September 29, 2004 The Honorable Orrin G. Hatch Chairman Committee on the Judiciary 224 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 The Honorable Jeff Sessions Chairman Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts Committee on the Judiciary 335 Russell Senate Office […]

I’m told that Johnnie Cochran has been quite ill, which undermines my speculation that he might want to argue his First Amendment case in the Supreme Court.

Oh, and the National Review, Oct. 11, 2004, lists us in the “second rank” of its Blog Guide (quite rightly behind the much more popular Drudge Report, InstaPundit, Andrew Sullivan, kausfiles, and OpinionJournal) (thanks to reader Stephen Dillard): VOLOKH CONSPIRACY www.volokh.com UCLA law prof parades his libertarian-leaning academics. And everyone loves a parade!

Todd Seavey reports: FYI: The Sept. 30 – Oct. 7 issue of the megapopular stuff-to-do listings magazine TimeOutNY has a feature listing forty or so suggested sources of info during the prez campaign, and it includes Volokh.com and Instapundit.com (as well as AndrewSullivan.com and Antiwar.com, interestingly, but almost everything else is lefty). Another reminder you’re […]

I posted on CBS’s new problems with its pushing an email letter without pointing out that it is a hoax. If you want to see how these hoax emails prey on the gullible, consider this letter (scroll down) to the editor of the Northeast Times (Philadelphia area) from last June. It is from Beverly Cocco, […]