Finally finished the latest (though certainly not the last) round of edits on this, filled in a bunch of blanks, and sent it out to a bunch of law reviews; it’s also available here. I’ve really enjoyed working on the piece, but I’m very, very glad to get it out of my hair, at least […]
Archive | September, 2004
Swiping Doorknobs and the Fourth Amendment:
Talkleft links to an interesting story about some Fourth Amendment cases currently winding their way through the lower courts. The question is whether the police need a warrant to swipe a person’s home doorknob with a drug-detecting cloth; the police then test the cloth to see if contains microscopic particles of a controlled substance. You […]
Acceptable amount of falsehood:
The correspondent I mentioned in the post below, after asking me “What is an acceptable number [of injuries from gunshot wounds]?,” also wrote, apropos this post: Also, regarding the quoting of the police chief- 1) Do you really expect him to say, ‘Nobody has an inalienable right to run around with a gun equipped with […]
Acceptable numbers of injuries:
A reader writes, responding to my post about spinal cord injuries: Regarding your recent post on spinal injuries and gunshot wounds, I am wondering what is an acceptable level of gunshot-inflicted wounds. For me, the level is extremely low — about equivalent to the number of injuries that are created by, say, policemen in the […]
Now this is pretty bad (if the police chief is quoted correctly):
According to ABCNews.com, Nothing gets Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton more impassioned than talking about the impending expiration of the 10-year-old assault weapons ban. “Nobody has an inalienable right to run around with a machine gun,” he said. “I’m sorry, that’s insanity!” . . . As I mentioned below, the assault weapons ban is […]
Spinal cord injuries and gunshots:
The Reuters story I mentioned below reports: Amy Sisley, an emergency room doctor at the University of Maryland Medical Center, speaking on behalf of Physicians for Social Responsibility . . . said 90 percent of spinal cord injuries in the United States are caused by gunshot wounds and noted that $1.8 billion a year is […]
Help! I’m being oppressed!
It just struck me: The professor of journalism ethics who was complaining about “assault[s]” and “attack[s]” on the media — the assaults and attacks being in the form of public criticism of alleged media bias — also complained about how some hypothetical story is “nothing but a Pentagon publicist’s brainstorm seized on by right-wing bloggers.” […]
Newspaper editorials that don’t know what they’re talking about:
The Spoons Experience points to the opening paragraph of this this Chicago Sun-Times editorial: How ridiculous is the notion that private citizens should be able to tote machine guns? It takes someone with extreme positions like Alan Keyes to righteously argue that cause. Most Americans — Democrats and Republicans — are against claiming Second Amendment […]
Attacks and assaults on the media:
A Washington & Lee journalism ethics professor denounces an “assault” on journalists’ “commitment to do [their] best to determine and tell the truth,” an “attack,” a “compelling danger.” What is that fearsome danger? It’s hard now even to write for publication without being uncomfortably aware of just how thoroughly what you say is going to […]
Organic Food Ain’t All That:
The Los Angeles Times ran an interesting story about organic food over the holiday weekend. The piece opens noting the explosive growth in the organic food industry over the past several years, but then asks (and answers) the money question about organic food: as organic products — and their claims to superiority — have grown […]
Hussein’s Gun:
In response to this post on whether Kerry’s receipt of a shotgun at a campaign rally violated federal law, several readers asked about President Bush’s possession of a gun that formerly belonged to Saddam Hussein. The gun is kept in the White House, according to this report. Yet, according to the President’s remarks at a […]
Fine objective journalism on the assault weapons ban:
Check out this Reuters story: Gun control activists, health care advocates and law enforcement groups geared up on Tuesday for a last-ditch effort to prevent a 1994 ban on assault weapons from expiring next week, but even its most ardent backers acknowledge the drive is all but futile. But the influential National Rifle Association gun […]
What do you do with a court opinion like this?
(Warning: Pretty technical legal stuff ahead.) Florida has enacted the Florida Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which presumptively mandates religious exemptions from generally applicable laws that end up substantially burdening religious beliefs. (The government can rebut this presumption by showing that denying the exemption is necessary to serve a compelling government interest.) A Boca Raton city […]
A bit more on Malkin and Muller:
Michelle Malkin has a post that argues that Eric Muller and Greg Robinson have made factual errors in things they’ve posted in various places, including on this blog. Muller and Robinson in turn have posted on the subject here. It may be somewhat old news, but since it involves claims of errors, including ones that […]
Does It Matter Where You Went to College?:
Gregg Easterbrook offers some thoughts, and Matthew Yglesias comments.