Over on Catallarchy, Jonathon Wilde has a very thoughtful discussion of how a polycentric legal order provides genuine checks and balances to prevent abuses of power. Here is how it begins and ends: I have nothing but the highest respect for most of the Founders. They were learned men who integrated the cumulative available knowledge […]
Archive | September, 2004
Roundups of arguments about the alleged forgeries:
For those who are interested, check out Peter Duncan’s site and Rathgate. On the other side, try these items defending the documents here, here, and .
Wow:
From the New York Times, an article entitled “C.I.A. Unit on bin Laden Is Understaffed, a Senior Official Tells Lawmakers“: Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did […]
Better living through recycling:
Yesterday Slate posted this item, with the front-page teaser “Sorry, Hoss: You Have No Right To Bear Arms”: Wake Up, Little Uzi Is there an individual right to carry a gun? Posted Monday, Sept. 13, 2004, at 10:44 AM PT With the 10-year-old ban on assault weapons set to expire tonight, debate rages yet again […]
Craftsmen, Bureaucrats & Plagiarists:
In response to my post below on Professor Ogletree’s plagiarism, Fabio Rojas writes: During grad school, I discovered there were two modes of “legitimate” academic work: craftsman and bureaucrat. The craftsman worked alone, or with one or two colleagues, to carefully write papers and books. This is the “classic” scholar approach. When you think of […]
Things are even worse than you could have imagined:
Jonathan Rowe points to this column by Les Kinsolving (WorldNetDaily), complaining about Vice President Cheney’s support for his lesbian daughter: [W]hat if Mr. One-Heartbeat-Away in the White House had a daughter who was a masochist who fell in love with a sadist? (And she loved being beaten, as much as her lover enjoyed beating her.) […]
MORE ON SMART PEOPLE AND KERRY:
In the spirit of debate (and further data), I post a spirited riposte that I received from Jeremy Bloom of “It is Written” on Jim Lingren’s comments (which I passed along earlier): But there’s a fallacy here. Do we really care what the average education level is? Of course not – it’s no more relevant […]
A different sort of forgery:
Geitner Simmons (Regions of Mind) remembers some Cold War-era forgeries.
Forgeries or not?
I’ve generally avoided the substantive question of whether the CBS documents were forged, because I have no special expertise on it, and because others already have it well in hand. But I do want to pass along something that Jim Lindgren, a lawprof at Northwestern whom I very highly respect, sent to me. These are […]
Possible criminal violations by the memo forger
(if the memos were indeed forged): As I’d mentioned a few days ago, it’s surprisingly hard to find laws that prohibit this sort of forgery. Using false statements, including forgeries, to get money or many other valuable things is surely illegal. But the law generally does not criminalize lies as such, when what you’re trying […]
DO “SMART PEOPLE” SUPPORT KERRY?
Jim Lindgren writes in with this comment and question on the article I referenced yesterday, which contained the priceless assertion by a Princeton University Professor that he is not surprised that most “smart people” support Kerry. Jim comments: Actually, it should be far from obvious that smart people would so overwhelmingly support Kerry, since Republicans […]
So Much for Full Disclosure:
The White House claimed to have all the records relevant to Bush’s National Guard service last February (see my prior post on documents here). Now we know that wasn’t true (and some were right to suggest the White House was still hiding stuff). At the same time, here’s additional evidence that Senator Kerry has not […]
“Public Interest and Human Issues”:
An interesting category used by a law school to classify its professors (alongside more traditional ones such as “Criminal Law,” “Family Law,” and “Litigation/Dispute Resolution”). I’d have thought that all law (yes, even animal law) involved, at bottom, human issues . . . .
“DOES IT SURPRISE ME THAT SMART PEOPLE SHOULD BE SUPPORTING KERRY? NO.”
The words of Princeton computer science professor Andrew Appel, in an article in the Daily Princetonian regarding the heavy pro-Kerry tilt in giving by Princeton faculty and employees. The sole donor to the Bush campaign isn’t even a professor, but an employee of the government relations office. Perhaps even more astounding, donations to “Other” (Nader, […]
Multilateralism:
Lee Smith (Slate) has an interesting piece on the subject.