Archive | December, 2004

Phil Carter and Owen West offer their take on Iraq/Vietnam casualty comparisons in Slate. Their conclusion: After factoring in medical, doctrinal, and technological improvements, infantry duty in Iraq circa 2004 comes out just as intense as infantry duty in Vietnam circa 1966—and in some cases more lethal. Even discrete engagements, such as the battle of […]

AltaVista, I recall, let you search for a word or phrase near another word or phrase — but now that feature is gone. Can anyone recommend some search engines that have this useful feature, and that don’t have huge countervailing handicaps? If you have a specific (and verified) suggestion, please respond in the comments to […]

Rand Simberg has a good post on Intelligent Design (ID) (tip to Instapundit): How science works is by putting forth theories that are disprovable, not ones that are provable. When all other theories have been disproven, those still standing are the ones adopted by most scientists. ID is not a scientific theory, because it fails […]

AND THE AGE OF CONSENT: [UPDATE: Since posting this, I have concluded that Justice Ginsburg was likely the victim of a drafting error, and the report’s critics, including me, themselves erred in not seeing the error. More here.] Several days ago, I ran across an allegation — one which has been repeated in quite a […]

I am not exactly comforted by Jim’s comparison of the number of U.S. deaths in Iraq and the number of U.S. deaths at the height of the Vietnam War. While the casualty rate in Vietnam is considerably higher than the rate in Iraq, Jim’s comparison led me to realize that the differences are smaller than […]

Criminal Appeal and Sentencing Law & Policy have posts up on California’s new Megan’s Law sex offender locator website. The website explains:   As a result of a new law, this site will provide you with access to information on more than 63,000 persons required to register in California as sex offenders. Specific home addresses are […]

While it offers little if any substantive argument on behalf of libertarianism, this web page by Ken Schoolland and Lux Lucre provides an interesting graphical presentation of the libertarian position. For more information about the project of which this is a part click here. (Hat tip Brainwacker)

I was away when the story broke about the National Research Council releasing its report on the effects of gun laws on violence, though I saw Stuart Benjamin’s nice post on it when I returned. The focus of Stuart’s comments were the report’s criticisms of John Lott’s work, though he also mentioned my role in […]

Frankly, I have been somewhat ambivalent in reading the criticism of the Associated Press (AP) for running photos of the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians by terrorists in Iraq. Much of the discussion has focused on how much of a tip the AP photographer had; if he knew of an assassination attempt before it occurred […]

A New York Times article on how some Democrats are suggesting that the party de-emphasize abortion in its political message contains this quote: And Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said Republicans had “been successful at painting the view of the pro-choice movement as abortion on demand — and nothing can be farther from the […]

over at the Leiter Reports this week, and has asked for suggestions about blogging topics. UDPATE: Judge Posner will be covering jurisprudential and philosophical issues during his guest-blogging stint, so I assume that topic recommendations should be limited accordingly.

FWIW on Fox News Sunday yesterday, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard made his annual prediction: Michael McConnell to be nominated to succeed William Rehnquist as Chief Justice of the United States. He further predicted no filibuster. Given Kristol’s sources, this sounds more like a trial balloon than misdirection.

Over at Stay of Execution, Scheherazade has a good post on the lessons to be drawn from Jeremy Blachman’s ability to draw a great deal of attention with his fictional blog about life as a law firm partner: [T]he three big lessons for me are: 1) the blog as a medium has an inherent credibility. […]

Ann Althouse reports on a man who walked around the Madison Capitol for six hours on Christmas Eve with a sign saying 1300, the approximate number of US deaths so far in the Iraqi War, which is not yet 2 years old. It is important to remember the lives lost, the families ruined, and the […]

Many bloggers embrace the view that the mainstream media tends to ignore the blogosphere. “We’re a threat to them,” the argument runs, “so those old media elites are trying to pretend we’re not here.” Maybe that was true a year ago. If I’m not mistaken, however, in the last few months there has been a […]