Archive | September, 2009

Is it just me, or is that headline just a bit rhetorically over the top? (No, the last link doesn’t make a moral analogy, just an analogy in the rhetoric.) “New low”; “right-wing media minions” (why not “nattering nabobs of negativism“?); “fearmongering” — just a bit much for a credible debunking, it seems to me. […]

The BLT has a story about a federal criminal case in which the Government forgot to indict in the conjunctive — that is, it forgot to turn “or” into “and.” According to the story, DOJ is going to re-indict the case to avoid the error. It may be easier for DOJ to do that, but […]

According to Fox News, The commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Education ordered a review on Friday following the posting of a YouTube video depicting school children singing the praises of President Obama. Video of the students at the Burlington, N.J., school shows them singing songs seemingly overflowing with campaign slogans and praise for “Barack […]

An e-mail from a reader reminded me again of this debate — some people argue that “A times less than B” is “mathematically incorrect,” “simply wrong,” and so on. The theory is that “times” refers to multiplication, so “5 times less than B” to mean “B/5” is mistaken, though “5 times more than” to mean […]

During the Bush years, we constantly heard the refrain, pushed especially by Paul Krugman, that the government was doing incompetent and corrupt things because conservative Republicans “don’t believe in” government. Put the government in the hands of true-believing liberal Democrats, and incompetence and corruption will virtually disappear. This always struck me as foolish, in part […]

Boston Globe: A large military spending bill moving through Congress contains a little-noticed outlay for Boston that has nothing to do with national defense: $20 million for an educational institute honoring late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. It’s not like the U.S. isn’t broke or anything, and it’s not like the Kennedys aren’t filthy […]

until the Supreme Court decides whether to grant certiorari in the Second or Seventh Circuit cases. The order is here. According to Declan McCullagh (CBSNews.com), “The justices are scheduled to discuss those cases on September 29, and are likely to announce their decision [on whether to hear the cases] soon after.”

(Note: I am delighted to put up this guest post by my Washington College of Law, American University colleague Amanda Frost, on the new DOJ policy on the state secrets doctrine. Amanda has done important academic writing in this area, including this 2007 Fordham Law Review article, as well as other areas related to federal […]

The Justice Department filed a memo today making the case for detaining terrorist suspect Najibullah Zazi. It’s a pretty riveting read. Of particular interest to me was the important role of computer forensics. By analyzing Zazi’s computer, the government was able to reconstruct Zazi’s web browsing history and show the details of the alleged plot […]

Yale Law School has organized a conference on The Constitution in 2020, a much-discussed recent book that puts together contributions by numerous prominent left of center scholars on the future of constitutional law. To their credit, the conference organizers have chosen to invite scholars with a wide range of viewpoints to the conference, including some […]

Some people have argued that (1) statutes and constitutions should generally not be read in ways that render particular provisions superfluous, and (2) therefore the Free Press Clause should be read as providing special protection for the institutional press, beyond what the Free Speech Clause provides for other speakers. I generally agree with point (1), […]

I was also pleased by this footnote from the Fourth Circuit’s free speech / funeral picketing decision: Neither the Supreme Court nor this Court has specifically addressed the question of whether the constitutional protections afforded to statements not provably false should apply with equal force to both media and nonmedia defendants. The Second and Eighth […]

Max Feinberg’s will provided that all his property would go into a trust. During his wife Erla’s life, she’d get income from the trust. When she died, the property would go to their descendants, but providing that any descendant who married a non-Jew, and whose spouse didn’t then convert to Judaism within a year of […]

Here’s the report:   Najibullah Zazi, the Denver man believed to be the central figure in a terror plot against the New York City transit system, has officially been indicted on charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against persons or property in the United States, CBS 2 has learned.   Zazi was scheduled to […]

Here’s the report, published Tuesday. An excerpt from the Summary: The two main criteria which the courts would likely look to in order to determine whether legislation is a bill of attainder are (1) whether “specific” individuals or entities are affected by the statute, and (2) whether the legislation inflicts a “punishment” on those individuals. […]