ACORN may have been trying to cover up which organizations are part of ACORN by scrubbing its website. Not only did ACORN and SEIU share board members, but until a month ago they appeared to share the same headquarters address in New Orleans: 1024 Elysian Fields Ave. This is, of course, the same address from […]
Archive | October, 2009
The State of Constitutional Theory on the Left and the Right
Participating in the Constitution in 2020 conference at Yale this weekend gave me a chance to consider the state of constitutional theory on the left. The contributors to the Constitution in 2020 book and many of the participants in the conference are well-known liberal constitutional scholars. My dominant impression is that there is a great […]
Robert Fisk: Countries Holding Secret Meetings To Replace the Dollar
In the (UK) Independent, Robert Fisk, who has wide contacts in the Middle East, reports on “secret meetings . . . by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on” an Arab scheme that “will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.” In the most […]
“Guns Did Not Protect Those Who Possessed Them from Being Shot in an Assault.”
So reports a press release posted at ScienceDaily.com, which also says, The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun. “This study helps resolve the long-standing debate about whether guns are protective or perilous,” notes study author Charles C. […]
What Manufacturers and Publishers Need To Do To Facilitate The Move to Electronic Delivery of Legal Books — Reducing Costs to Compete With Used Books
(This is part of a series; the earlier posts are here.) Electronic distribution has long been touted as making content cheaper for consumers. This has largely been true: Newspaper articles, including articles from out-of-town or foreign newspapers, are now largely available for free. So are many magazine articles. Many old books are available for free […]
What Manufacturers and Publishers Need To Do To Facilitate The Move to Electronic Delivery of Legal Books — Lifting Technological Barriers
(This is part of a series; the earlier posts are here.) To make e-readers most effective, manufacturers and publishers have to make some improvements to their technology and to their business models. Let me begin by focusing on readability. E-readers are still not quite as legible as paper. The Kindle 2 is a vast improvement […]
Blog Post Delivery by E-Mail?
I’ve been very pleased by the conversion to WordPress so far (more on that later), but one feature that isn’t yet working as well as I’d like is blog post delivery by e-mail. People can subscribe via FeedBlitz, but I couldn’t figure out how to set that up to (1) provide an option to deliver […]
Obama Administration Considering Tax Credits for New Hires
On the New York Times Caucus blog, John Harwood revealed that the Obama Administration is considering “a new package of tax cuts and other job creation measures.” Privately, Mr. Obama’s economic advisers are sifting options for a new package of tax cuts and other job creation measures to be unveiled in next year’s State of […]
Are Lawyers A Productive Part of Society?
The ABA Journal has this interesting thought attributed to Justice Scalia. Asked to comment on whether the quality of advocacy before the U.S. Supreme Court was too low, Justice Scalia is quoted as saying: “I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in […]
Op-Ed on the 17th Amendment
John Truslow has a good op-ed on the 17th Amendment in Roll Call. Nominally it is about the process for filling vacant Senate seats, but it also lays out the more general case for repealing the 17th Amendment. I had a short essay on the topic of Senate Vacancies in the Heritage Guide to the […]
More Ackerman on Politicizing the Military
Bruce Ackerman’s weekend Washington Post article criticizing General Stanley McChrystal was not the first time he has raised concerns about the involvement of currently serving military leaders in political debates about national security policy. In 2007, he wrote this article for the Financial Times criticizing comments by Major General Rick Lynch and President Bush’s use […]
What to Expect from Sotomayor’s First Term
The Washington Post asked several folks (including two conspirators) to opine briefly on what we should expect from Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s first term on the Supreme Court. The results are here.
Conference on Food Security, Precaution and Pesticides
On Tuesday, I’ll be in Washington, D.C. to speak at the AEI Conference “Science and Technology in the Balance? Food Security, Precaution, and the Pesticide Debate.” I’ll be discussing the problems with the precautionary principle. The full conference agenda and registration info are here.
First Monday in October
It’s now the first Monday in October here at “the seat of government,” Washington, DC. Section 2 of Title 28 of the United States Code tells me that means the start of a new United States Supreme Court Term today.
Moral Panics and Copyright Law
Thanks Eugene for allowing me to be a guest blogger. I wrote Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars for two reasons. The first is the reason I have written everything, to learn. For me, writing is a way to discipline my thought, to the extent I am capable of doing so. The second reason was […]