Archive | September, 2004

I got an e-mail from a blogger mentioning this post, which faults Mayor Bloomberg for urging arrested protesters to plead guilty. The newspaper article about Bloomberg’s statements says: Everyone arrested during the Republican convention “might as well just plead guilty and go on” rather than take their fight to court, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday. Hundreds […]

The New York Times reports that After days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a “60 Minutes” report that raised new questions about President Bush’s National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night. The officials, who asked not to be identified, […]

This is an update to yesterday’s post on Maureen Dowd’s Sunday New York Times column No Stars, Just Cuffs, about “Sue Niederer, 55, of Hopewell, N.J., [who] got handcuffed, arrested and charged with a crime for daring to challenge the Bush policy in Iraq.” It turns out that the charges against Niederer were dismissed by […]

I just read Larry Solum’s post on hypotheticals that Orin praised, and I agree: It’s a great post that every incoming law student — and maybe even some who have been in school for a year or two — should read. UPDATE: Or to really persuade you, following the lead of Larry’s post itself, it’s […]

Over at Legal Theory Blog, Larry Solum has a terrific post on why law professors ask hypothetical questions. If you’re a first-year law student, or just interested in legal education, be sure to check it out.

Ralph Luker has notes on two recent books on the subject, which cover Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and more. From the Grapevine’s preliminary look at galleys, it appears that Hoffer [one author] finds larger patterns of plagiarism in the work of Ambrose and Goodwin than they were initially charged with. He does apparently find Bellesiles guilty […]

Maureen Dowd’s latest New York Times column, “No Stars, Just Cuffs,” describes what appears to be a terrible violation of the First Amendment:   In World Wars I and II, gold star mothers were the queens of their neighborhoods, the stars in their windows ensuring that they would be treated with great respect for their sacrifice […]

My local Borders confirmed it.

please include the entire text of the post as well as the particular post’s URL: This makes it much easier for us to read the post — and thus much more likely that we will read it and consider linking to it.

Reuters reports from India about a man who was denied an unusual bail request:   Court Denies ‘Sex Bail’ for Prisoner   AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) – An Indian court has refused to release a Muslim, charged over the train torching that triggered Gujarat’s Hindu-Muslim rioting two years ago, so he could go home to have sex with […]

A CBS News poll reports that women favor Bush 49-42; since the total margin for Bush is 50-41, this suggests that the margin for men must be around 51-40 or thereabouts, which means there’s really no gender gap. A Newsweek poll from Sept. 9-10 showed likewise showed no gender gap (there, the gap was 0%, […]

Conservatives often accuse liberals of “moral relativism.” Now I surely disagree with most liberals on many specific moral issues. But I’m puzzled about exactly what the commonly heard charge of moral relativism in general, as opposed to a charge of moral error on a particular issue, means. I take it that it can’t be that […]

Should Ralph Nader be on the ballot? Should other third party candidates? I think so. I have a hard time identifying a principled reason for making it so difficult for independent candidates to get on the ballot. Of course there have to be rules and thresholds, but the thresholds need not be so high and […]

My favorite cop show, The Wire, premiers this Sunday on HBO. The first season of this series was simply the best cop show I had ever seen on television. The second season slipped a tiny bit as it expanded its focus from the Baltimore projects–where real “POL-ice” spend much of their time–to the docks where […]

From the Financial Times, an article on the possibility that the Bush Administration may be considering military strikes against Iran: US debates military strikes on ‘nuclear Iran’ The Bush administration’s warnings that it will not “tolerate” a nuclear-armed Iran have opened up a lively policy debate in Washington over the merits of military strikes against […]