Melanie Kirkpatrick on the Thanksgiving politics of the New Deal.
Archive | November, 2009
More Monbiot on CRU E-mail Leak
George Monbiot has a follow-up to yesterday’s column on the lead of e-mails and other documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. It begins: I have seldom felt so alone. Confronted with crisis, most of the environmentalists I know have gone into denial. The emails hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) […]
A Great Line
From an opinion by the Supreme Court of Wyoming, describing a drunken party that led to a fight (with the great sentence in bold): On June 12, 1996, at about 10:00 or 11:00 a.m., Duckett went to the home of Mary Carlson bearing his guitar and a 12-pack of beer. Duckett, Carlson, and her boyfriend, […]
Private Sector Experience of Cabinet Secretaries (Updated and Purged)
(Update and big deletion and purge, December 2, 3009.) After discussions with the person who created the chart, I’ve decided to take it down and the rest of my commentary as well. He tells me that he has had a chance to re-think the whole thing, and thinks it was a big mistake to try […]
No Fowl Committed
John Podhoretz via Facebook: “Obama pardoned the presidential turkey today. That was appropriate. I don’t think, however, that he should have bowed to the turkey.”
Commas and Periods — Inside Closing Quotation Marks or Outside Them?
A reader asks: I’m trying to finalize a “stylebook” for briefs our office files and am stuck on one thing and am asking around for views of people who might have an opinion to share. Given your interesting takes on language and usage, I’d love to get your thoughts. The issue is whether to use […]
Commoner and Cleverer
I just read a Language Log post on the recurring debates about whether the “Xer” comparative form of various adjectives is correct, or whether one has to say “more X.” The post is in general quite worth reading, but here’s a particular passage that I was quite amused by: Back in August 2005, Jon Lighter […]
McDonald amicus briefs: Academics, Congress redux, and California District Attorneys
By David Kopel on November 25, 2009 3:20 pm in Congress, Constitutional History, Fourteenth Amendment, Guns, Seventh Circuit
Thirty two amicus briefs in McDonald v. Chicago have been filed so far, and they are all available at the Chicago Gun Case website, run by the Second Amendment Foundation (which is one of the parties in McDonald). My brief is also available on SSRN. The next brief (Chicago’s) is not due until Dec. 30, […]
An Unpersuasive Word
“Obviously.” In my view, the word “obviously” should only be used in arguments when the point asserted is generally beyond debate. Consider an example. When discussing judicial nominations, you could say, “Obviously, Obama has the constitutional authority to nominate anyone he wants.” The word signifies that the point is a shared view that isn’t genuinely […]
N.Y. Times on “The Invention of the Jewish People”
On Monday, Patricia Cohen of the Times discussed Shlomo Sand’s claptrap, The Invention of the Jewish People. Cohen, who based on prior writings and my prior correspondence with her, is a left-winger who likely has a fair amount of sympathy for Sand’s political views, bends over backwards to be “even-handed.” Nevertheless, if you read Cohen’s […]
Joyce Foundation Funded OSU 2nd Amendment Center Expires
Professor Joseph Olson has confirmed that the Ohio State University’s Second Amendment Research Center has apparently expired. In the words of Monty Python, it is an ex-Center. Its URL [http://www.secondamendmentcenter.org] is out of service and the OSU operator had no information. The Center’s director, historian Saul Cornell, this year moved on to a chair at […]
Getting Blog Posts (for the Conspiracy and Other RSS-Producing Blogs) in Your Outlook Inbox
I just came across a way of doing this that works for Microsoft Outlook 2007 users — it might be obvious to many of you, but I hadn’t known this was possible. Go to Tools / Account Settings / RSS Feeds, click on New, enter the RSS address (for us, it’s https://volokh.com/feed), click on Change […]
California & Nevada District Attorneys’ Brief in Support of Incorporation of the Second Amendment
The brief, of (among others) 34 California DA’s, 8 Nevada DA’s, three Western sheriffs (two from California and one from Arizona), and a couple of California police officers’ groups, is here. It was interesting for me to note that it include DAs from all the Southern California counties except Los Angeles and Riverside, and including […]
So . . . Where Are The (Argued) Supreme Court Opinions?
As Thanksgiving draws near, I began wondering where the argued Supreme Court opinions are. Sure, we’ve had three per curiam summary reversals, but usually by this point in November, we’ve had at least an opinion or two released in an argued case. The next hand-down opportunity comes on November 30, and if we get an […]
“Climategate” and the Social Validation of Knowledge
By Ilya Somin on November 24, 2009 5:42 pm in Climate Change, Political Ignorance, Politicizing Science
Recent evidence that prominent climate scientists have tried to intimidate academic journals into not publishing papers submitted by “climate change” skeptics have caused a major brouhaha in the ongoing political battle over global warming. At least some of the scientists in question certainly seem to have put ideology above the search for truth. The effort […]