Archive | November, 2004

Bobby Jindal, whose parents came from India shortly before he was born, has just been elected to Congress, as a Republican. The first Asian-American Congressman was also Indian — a Sikh, born in India, named Dalip Singh Saund, a Democrat who was elected from California’s Imperial Valley (that’s the Southeast corner of the state) in […]

A recent lecture on the Court and its Justices delivered by Harvard Law School professor and former Solicitor General Charles Fried is available here via streaming video. Fried was one of my favorite professors in law school; watching his lecture makes me feel a bit like a 2L again.

A Slate article argues that it was right to report the exit polls, on the theory that this way voters get to know what the journalists know. Maybe so; I have no fixed opinion on the matter. But if you report 50-49 exit polls, and then report 51-49 numbers with subheads such as “Mucho flattering […]

Two conflicting reports. Patrick Lewis, a former student of mine who now practices in Ohio, writes: I disagree that Issue 1 [the anti-same-sex marriage measure] was decisive for Bush. Indeed, locally, one of the big stories was how the black vote was split — they voted for Kerry and against Issue 1. Indeed, many Catholic […]

So Vice Squad declares in reporting on Berkeley’s rejection of a ballot initiative that would have effectively ended prosecutions for prostitution.

The Agence France-Press (AFP) is reporting: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was “brain dead” and breathing only thanks to artificial life support systems, a French medical official said after conflicting reports as to whether he was alive or dead. In strictly technical terms, Arafat was “not dead,” the source told AFP on condition of confidentiality, adding […]

Professor Richard Seamon and his coauthor William Gardner have just put an interesting draft article on the Patriot Act on SSRN: Does (Should) The Patriot Act Raze (or Raise) the Wall Between Foreign Intelligence and Criminal Law Enforcement?, forthcoming in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Steve Bainbridge’s post, discussed below, cites Russell Kirk’s famous insult of libertarians as “chirping sectaries.” This reminded me of my college days, when I was testing out various political philosophies. I decided to spend Spring Break (yes, it was a wild college life for me!) reading the three books National Review consistently referred as the […]

Steve Bainbridge manages to write Barry Goldwater out of the conservative movement. Only “annoying libertarians,” you see, think the federal government has no business dictating morality to the public, or thinks it’s beyond the government’s constitutional power to do so. I still remember back around 1981, when Goldwater was told that Jerry Falwell said that […]

you probably don’t want to take a look at this.

An Oberlin College student passes on the following e-mail sent to the Oberlin student body from college president Nancy Dye in reponse to the re-election of President Bush: November 3, 2004 To the Oberlin College Community: Mark Twain once said that “If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom we need […]

Assuming that Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008, who will she pick as her running-mate? Some people would say Illinois Senator Barack Obama–an excellent speaker who could help bring out the black vote. But I’m putting my money on Colorado’s new Democratic Senator Ken Salazar. Salazar is a very dull public speaker, […]

From The Hill, via Wonkette:   That mysterious bulge on President Bush’s back during the first presidential debate was not an electronic device feeding him answers, but a strap holding his bulletproof vest in place.   . . . [S]ources in the Secret Service told The Hill that Bush was wearing a bulletproof vest, as he does most […]

Thanks to Dan Gifford for the pointer.

up right now over at Crooked Timber.