Archive | August, 2009

One of President Obama’s first acts as President was to sign legislation overturning the Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber and make it easier to file pay discrimination claims. As David Ingram reports, this may have been a sign of more to come, as Congressional Democrats are seeking to undo several […]

I am clueless about FOIA and related law, but would be interested in knowledgeable responses to the following question. Is there a mechanism by which an individual can find out, or require the government to disclose, whether he or she has been named (or some web posting, statement, or other form of speech of the […]

That’s the question I put to a someone close to the admissions process at a reasonably selective school recently. His/her reply, which he/she would be the first to admit was deliberately highly exaggerated for maximum epigraphical effect is below (I’ve edited and cleaned up a disjointed conversation, so this is not a literal transcription). You […]

Columnist Charles Lane – full disclosure, an old friend and a journalist who I have admired going all the way back to his Central America days in the 1980s – has a striking piece in today’s Washington Post, “Undue Influence: the House Bill Skews End-of-Life Counsel.” About a third of American adults have some form […]

here. Rappaport is a leading scholar of late 1700s constitutional thinking — much more expert in the field than I am.

Late last month, I taped a couple new podcasts for the Independence Institute’s iVoices.org: One is on the Thune Amendment, to create national concealed carry reciprocity; the bill fell a little bit short of the number of votes needed to beat a filubuster. The other is on my Senate Judiciary Committee testimony against the nomination […]

One of the (many excellent) comments on my accounting/lawyer post below asks the sensible question … given that many lawyers aren’t going to be back in school again, are there any helpful suggestions for texts that might be used on a self-teaching basis? Alternatively, are there any genuinely functional and free/cheap online courses that teach […]

When I blogged about the case, several commenters asked whether the ACLU would get involved. I’m pleased to say that the ACLU just filed a motion to file an amicus brief on our side: ACLU seeks to participate in this case to urge this Court to reverse the lower court’s decision that Appellant’s conduct was […]

From Justice Scalia’s & Bryan Garner’s Making Your Case: If your brief repeatedly refers to the Secretary of Transportation and mentions no other Secretary, it is silly to specify parenthetically, the first time you mention the Secretary of Transportation, “(hereinafter ‘the Secretary’).” No one will think that your later references to “the Secretary” denote the […]

This week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers asked the bloggers “How serious is each of the following challenges in selling health care reform?” Bloggers of the Left and the Right agreed that “Government-run health care” was the biggest challenge, and that “Too costly” ranked second. The challenge that I ranked as greatest, “Nothing for […]

Democratic legislators are complaining vigorously about the push-back they are receiving on health reform during town hall meetings. House Majority Leader Pelosi stated that reform opponents were “carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare” and dismissed them as “Astroturf” rather than a grassroots movement. An editorial cartoon in the Washington […]

In Kazemzadeh v. U.S. Attorney General (11th Cir. Aug. 6), Kazemzadeh — an Iranian citizen — claimed asylum because he had converted to Christianity, and said he faced persecution in Iran. The Board of Immigration Appeals rejected the claim, largely because it concluded that Iranian persecution of converts away from Islam was in fact very […]

Instead of yellin’ and shoutin’, how about pressing your Representative for the following commitment: you will not vote for any final health care bill until its been published on-line and available to the public for debate (and for you to read!) for at least one month. I’d love to see a Congressman try to explain […]

The Cato Institute’s David Rittgers explains one of the more disturbing aspects of the new federal “hate crimes” law passed by Congress. States and the federal government are considered separate sovereigns. If someone has broken both state and federal laws, he can have a day in court in both systems. . . . A trial […]

Law schools typically used to require a basic one semester class – often pass-fail – on accounting for lawyers. I took it, then concluded I needed something more advanced outside of the law school curriculum. But at a minimum, the accounting for lawyers class, while not requiring much in the way of actual accounting, introduced […]