Archive | June, 2009

NRO has posted a copy of the White House talking points defending Sonia Sotomayor that were provided to GOP Senators in advance of the judge’s early meet-and-greets on Capitol Hill.

In a forthcoming article for America’s 1st Freedom, I detail Harold Koh’s expressions of strong support for severe anti-gun laws, his stated intention to use his government position to promote such laws, and various techniques of transnationalism by which he could, as Legal Adviser to the U.S. Department of State, advance his agenda.

A recent poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org finds that German public opinion of the United States has improved notably in recent months. Asked if the U.S. is playing “a mainly positive or mainly negative role in the world,” the positive side won 44% to 34%. Last year, “mainly positive” had only 20% support. An amazingly high 89% […]

One view (at first endorsed by Andrew Sullivan, though later changed to “see[ing] the deeper point”): I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims […]

From In re the Termination of Parental Rights to MyKarla M. (Wisc. Ct. App. June 2): MyKarla was born in Antigo in August 2004. A few days after MyKarla

So the Ninth Circuit has just held in Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights v. City and County of San Francisco. I argued likewise when the matter first arose, though I also disapproved of San Francisco’s resolution on nonconstitutional grounds.

Bankruptcy judge Arthur Gonzalez has permitted an appeal by Indiana pension funds to the Second Circuit on his ruling allowing a sale of the company to Fiat. According to the NYT: The judge, Arthur J. Gonzalez, said that an appeal that sought to block the sale to Fiat could be heard directly by the United […]

Today the state legislature passed, and the governor quickly signed, a same-sex marriage bill. (It becomes effective January 1.) Six states now permit the marriages of gay couples under state law. Three of those have done so by legislative action. Congratulations to New Hampshire Freedom to Marry, which lobbied for the bill, and to gay […]

An interesting decision of the U.S. Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals (U.S. v. Harvey), handed down two months ago but just now appearing on Westlaw: In [U.S. v. Marcum], C.A.A.F. held that constitutional challenges to Article 125, UCMJ, 10 U.S.C.

The NRA reports that it filed its petition for certiorari in NRA v. City of Chicago today, the day after the Seventh Circuit handed down its decision. (The NRA had 90 days to file.) UPDATE: I’ve uploaded the petition here.

The Seventh Circuit decision (from Chicago), holding that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to the states, is covered in a nearly-800-word story today. The Ninth Circuit decision (from Northern California) this April, holding that the Second Amendment does apply to the states, wasn’t covered at all by the Times at the time. [UPDATE: I realized […]

The Duc de Saint-Simon, in his famous Memoirs, wrote of his opposition to Louis’ embrace of John Law’s “System” of a French state bank issuing paper money, back when Law proposed the scheme in 1715. The estimable Saint-Simon noted, with extraordinary shrewdness, that such a “System,” a state bank with the ability to issue fiat […]

Continuing with the discussion of Jewish attitudes towards intermarriage with blacks, co-blogger David Bernstein and Ta-Nehisi Coates (in one of the posts that started this exchange) suggest it would be useful to compare Jewish attitudes with those of other whites. We do in fact have data on the percentage of whites who would oppose a […]

I have finally had the chance to read Jeffrey Toobin

If you, like me, think that the Senate majority leader might want to read something written by Judge Sonia Sotomayor before he votes to confirm her to the Supreme Court, which opinion should he read? We know he’d prefer not to read any, as he said so. Yet given that Reid does not believe in […]