Where is the Obama administration currently on the Ottawa Landmines Ban Convention? The question is on the public table with the opening in a few days of the Cartagena Review Conference, the second diplomatic conference to review the treaty. The Ottawa Convention banning landmines was opened for signature in 1997 and entered into force in […]
Archive | November, 2009
One of My Favorite Song Passages,
from Leonard Cohen: So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed It would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed
Are Judges Really Immune when Taking Kickbacks?
Earlier in the year I posted a story about a particularly revolting episode of judicial corruption in Eastern Pennsylvania. I wrote: Eastern Pennsylvania has a terrible reputation for judicial corruption and venality — the stories one hears from practitioners and others around Philadelphia are truly awful, with bags full of money and all the rest. […]
Five New OLC Opinions
On the day before Thanksgiving, the Office of Legal Counsel posted five new opinions on its website that had been signed between one day (!) and eleven weeks earlier. This is further evidence that the Office is putting a premium on publishing its opinions roughly contemporaneous with their signing; that can be quite an administrative […]
Excess Ethanol
Congress demanded oil refiners use more ethanol, but meeting the federal targets is going to be a problem. Now it’s up to the EPA to ease the mandate. Will they act?
More Responses to the CRU E-mail Leaks
Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, responds to the leak of e-mails and other documents from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit with a statement (posted on Dot Earth). He writes in part: The unfortunate incident that has taken place through illegal hacking of the private communications of […]
Unintentional Robo-Humor
An unintentionally funny piece of compliment spam I just saw in our spam filter: last Friday I’ve just enter to search horny sluts and get your The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Is Sex More Likely To Be Emotionally Traumatizing for 17-Year-Old Boys or Girls? post as a result! That’s what exactly what I […]
Data Sharing and Climate Change Research
[Note partial correction below, noted in the UPDATE.] I know next to nothing about climate change questions, which is why I almost never blog about them. But the recent discussion of the East Anglia CRU e-mails touches on a matter that I have studied a bit, though not much — standards related to the sharing […]
Unintentionally Ironic Book Review of the Week
Professor Stephen Howe of Bristol University reviewed Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People in the Independent. The review itself says nothing of particular interest, and any discussion of the origins of the demographic origins of modern Jews people that doesn’t reference the genetic evidence is doomed to be worthless. But here’s the unintentionally […]
“Saved or Created 4 Turkeys”
Belated Happy Thanksgiving to Volokh readers. Although I probably should have posted this yesterday, here is a video of the President’s annual turkey pardon first initiated, as he notes, by the George H.W. Bush. In a moment of self-deprecating humor, he refers (at 2:20) to his having “saved or created four turkeys.”
Christian Group Sues Over Alleged Denial of Right to Leaflet at or near Street Festival in Michigan Town
That might sound like this case, in which an Arab Christian group sued over an anti-leafleting rule at the Arab International Festival on Dearborn (Michigan) city property. But the new case involves Christians who specialize in proselytizing to Jews; who allege that they were barred from leafleting and otherwise speaking in publicly accessible public streets […]
A Sad but Interesting Case, Involving Parental Discipline and Possible Self-Defense
Matter of Corey Mc. v. Tanya Mc. (N.Y. App. Div. Nov. 24): [T]he mother appeals from an order of disposition of the Family Court, Queens County …, which, upon a … finding that she had neglected the child Corey Mc., and derivatively neglected the child Tyler Mc., placed the children in the custody of the […]
300 Years Behind the Times
From the L.A. Times: When the popular 46-year-old Lebanese psychic Ali Sibat went on-air and made his predictions about the future, the phone lines of the satellite television station Sheherazade used to be flooded with calls. But … while on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia last year, Sibat was [arrested] by religious police in the holy […]
Happy Thanksgiving
… to all our readers, commenters, and fellow conspirators. And please be careful on the roads today and over the weekend. It is a foggy morning here in DC. Thanksgiving is the greatest American holiday – uniting a very loose sense of Providence and Bounty and Plenty, family and commonweal, the sharing of food and […]
How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims
Today is Thanksgiving. And there is no better time to remember an underappreciated lesson of the original Thanksgiving: that the Pilgrims nearly starved to death because of collectivism and eventually saved themselves by adopting a system of private property. Economist Benjamin Powell tells the story here: Many people believe that after suffering through a severe […]