Archive | December, 2004

Those interested in DDT — the miracle pesticide that saves human lives but threatened bald eagles and other raptor species — should read Ronald Bailey’s latest Reason column here. It is a thoughtful counterpoint to claims that DDT never had any impact on birds (see, e.g., here). To get to my prior posts on DDT, […]

but if so, it’s a pretty good legend. (Link: CrimLaw)

The Borowitz Report has the scoop.

Dahlia Lithwick (Slate) has a funny, readable, and interesting report of the oral argument.

Reader Jared Gross writes: I am writing to inform you of . . . [the] help you provided me, which has resulted in my Journal note being given an offer of publication. My own Journal . . . declined to print my note . . . . [But] another law review has made me an […]

In an appearance before Congress in February, when the controversy over Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl moment was at its height, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators. The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up […]

A French intellectual reviews of “Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship with France,” by John Miller and Matt Molesky for the New York Times and (translated from the original French) accuses the authors of “racism”: [t]he whole book is a mad charge (whose only equivalent I know is the fascist French literature […]

if you just focus on the right denominator. My former student Kevan Choset points to this AP item, on the MSNBC site: Although “Titanic” soared at the box office in 1997, according to a recent survey, it’s most memorable line — “I’m the king of the world!” — sunk.. British baker Warburtons posed the question […]

Commenting on the new blog Left2Right (see below), Prestopundit has an assignment for progressive intellectuals trying to understand the conservative mind: read some Hayek. If leftist and independent academics want to engage non-leftists, they might consider engaging the ideas that non-leftists take seriously. It’s hard to find a conservative who isn’t massively influenced by the […]

I e-mailed Jacob Weisberg to ask what he thought was Bushist about yesterday’s Bushism of the Day, and he graciously responded: The White House transcript didn’t have “to.” Hard to know what he actually said, but I’ll switch to the Post version to make it more readable. In any case, that is not the joke. […]

A very interesting exchange, between columnist Paul McMasters (of the First Amendment Center) and U Chicago lawprof and First Amendment maven Geoffrey Stone.

The Harvard Law Review, vol. 117, p. 481, counts the percentage of times that each pair of Justices voted together in the 2002-03 Term (apparently the number of times they joined the same opinion, not just reached the same bottom line — “the number of decisions in which the two Justices agreed in a majority, […]

Are you happy with the Volokh Conspiracy? Annoyed with it? Is there something you want to see more of? Less of? Tell us all about it. Although the VC doesn’t normally allow comments, I tend to like them. So I am opening up comments for this post to give you a chance to give us […]

The Wall Street Journal opines on the wine cases today.

CNN.com offers one summary. The key plank is to give illegal workers a three or possibly six-year temporary visa if they step forward with an [illegal] job in hand. When the temporary visa expires, then they have to leave the country. In the meantime they could apply for a greencard, although they would not receive […]