Archive | June, 2009

A delegation from Human Rights Watch was recently in Saudi Arabia. To investigate the mistreatment of women under Saudi Law? To campaign for the rights of homosexuals, subject to the death penalty in Saudi Arabia? To protest the lack of religious freedom in the Saudi Kingdom? To issue a report on Saudi political prisoners? No, […]

The NYT reports that provisions of the new tobacco legislation likely to be signed by President Obama this week is certain to face a First Amendment challenge in federal court. While bill sponsor Rep. Henry Waxman claims it was “carefully drafted” to survive court scrutiny, the legislation contains provisions virtually identical to some struck down […]

As Jim relates below: My understanding is, is that the Iranian government says that they are going to look into irregularities that have taken place. We weren’t on the ground, we did not have observers there, we did not have international observers on hand, so I can’t state definitively one way or another what happened […]

The leader of the free world has now spoken on Iran (text via L.A. Times blog): Remarks on Iran by President Obama during a White House photo op, June 15, 2009 Obviously all of us have been watching the news from Iran. And I want to start off by being very clear that it is […]

A commenter on the New Jersey parental profanity ban thread writes: Geez, they didn’t even bother to criminalize “offensive speech” yet, going directly from “hate speech” to “abusive to your own d*mned kids” speech. But, hey, it’s all for the children. The Village has to start raising them sometime, and you might as well not […]

In today’s New York Times, leading legal reporter Adam Liptak has an informative article about Sonia Sotomayor’s dubious property rights decision in Didden v. Village of Port Chester, which I previously criticized here and here. In Didden, a court of appeals panel headed by Sotomayor upheld the condemnation of two businessmen’s property because they refused […]

Senator Cornyn thinks she may have. [Note: I have no intention of linking to every Cornyn question of the day. I linked this one because it raises an interesting issue that I have not seen discussed in the context of the Sotomayor nomination.]

Under the 1958 federal Switchblade Act, switchblade knives are not importable into the United States, and may not be shipped across state lines. On May 21, U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) proposed the revocation of four previous Ruling Letters; the effect would be a drastic expansion of the definition of non-importable knives. The organization […]

N.J. Stat. Ann. § 9-6-1 provides that, “Abuse of a child shall consist” of, among other things, “the habitual use by the parent or by a person having the custody and control of a child, in the hearing of such child, of profane, indecent or obscene language.” § 9-6-3 makes such abuse a crime.

An eminently predictable result under current First Amendment law (Griswold v. Driscoll, D. Mass., June 10, 2009), but still worth noting, I think, for the clear First Amendment defense of leaving curricula to the political process (in the second to last paragraph of the excerpt below): (Show more details.) In 1998, the Massachusetts Legislature directed […]

It couldn’t be worse timing, but Dennis Ross, the US envoy to Iran, is being reassigned. People don’t know exactly why Ross is being ousted. It might be because he was thought to be too hawkish, or too pro-Israel, or simply because Iran didn’t want to accept Ross as an envoy because he is a […]

Those are the three choices offered by Robert Samuelson in a scathing piece on the Obama administration

In President Obama

CNBC is reporting that the US Treasury Department is proposing to require that issuers of securitized loans retain 5% of the security. Thus, they remain partly on the hook if they make bad loans and try to flip them to others. At first glance, this seems like a good idea to me.

The New York Times believes legislation passed by Congress granting the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products is an “enormous victory for public health.” For reasons I explain in this NRO article, I am not convinced the legislation does much for public health, let alone the public good. Among other things, the legislation could […]