Danielle Citron Last year, Maryland law professor Danielle Citron published “Cyber Civil Rights” in the BU Law Review. Here’s the abstract: Social networking sites and blogs have increasingly become breeding grounds for anonymous online groups that attack women, people of color, and members of other traditionally disadvantaged groups. . . . Attackers manipulate search engines to […]
Archive | March, 2010
Ninth Circuit Decision in Marshall v. Stern (formerly Marshall v. Marshall):
On Friday, the Ninth Circuit handed down its decision in Marshall v. Stern (formerly Marshall v. Marshall). The Court held–correctly in my view–that the Bankruptcy Court’s decision in Anna Nicole Smith’s (formerly Vickie Lynn Marshall, whose estate is now administered by Executor Howard K. Stern) bankruptcy case that gave Smith half of Marshall’s estate (later […]
The Modest Role of the Warrant Clause in National Security Investigations
I recently posted a new essay, The Modest Role of the Warrant Clause in National Security Investigations, forthcoming in a symposium issue of the Texas Law Review. Here’s the abstract: Why is the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment so modest in national security investigations? This symposium essay argues that the Warrant Clause has a […]
Washington Post Q & A on Constitutionality of Health Care Bill
I just finished a live Q & A on WashingtonPost.com following up on my Washington Post column yesterday on the constitutional issues raised by the health insurance bill. It was pretty demanding to do it in real time, so please forgive any statements made in haste, but you might find it interesting. It is here.
What’s next for the Obama Administration?
At Pajamas Media, Victor Davis Hanson observes: There won’t be any more soaring rhetoric from Obama about purple-state America, “reaching across the aisle,” or healing our wounds. That was so 2008. Instead, we are in the most partisan age since Vietnam, ushered into it by the self-acclaimed “non-partisan.” But how could it be anything else? […]
The Stupak Solution?
On Friday, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) announced the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration had awarded nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to three Michigan airports to fund maintenance and improvement projects. Given the apparent consensus that the President’s Executive Order on abortion funding gave Rep. Stupak relatively little of what he sought on […]
Barack Obama sends me personal email thanking me for passing health care
I received the following email from Barack Obama personally Monday morning at 1:06am: James — For the first time in our nation’s history, Congress has passed comprehensive health care reform. America waited a hundred years and fought for decades to reach this moment. Tonight, thanks to you, we are finally here. Consider the staggering scope […]
Politically-Mandated Credit Card Interchange Fees Won’t Create Jobs (But They Will Hurt Consumers and the Economy):
In a recent commentary at Forbes.com, former Clinton administration economist Robert Shapiro argues that some 250,000 jobs would be created, and consumers would save $27 billion annually, by reducing the interchange fee charged to merchants for transactions made by consumers using credit and debit cards. If true, these are some incredible numbers. But incredible is […]
Did Anti-Semitism Prevent Hank Greenberg from Breaking Babe Ruth’s Home Run Record?
In this recent New York Times article, Howard Megdal revives the longstanding claim that anti-Semites on opposing teams tried to prevent Jewish Detroit Tigers slugger Hank Greenberg from breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1938 because of anti-Semitism: Evidence has finally been published that seems to resolve a 72-year-old mystery. When Hank Greenberg of […]
Just Wondering
Back during the Bush Administration, I created a couple of controversial posts pointing out that Bush had achieved several longstanding liberal goals, including a vast expansion of Medicare, and greater federal aid to, and control of, local education. However, he got very little credit from the liberal side for these achievements. On the Medicare front, […]
House Subcommittee Hearing on Drone Warfare
By Kenneth Anderson on March 22, 2010 1:04 am in Afghanistan, Counter-Terrorism Policy, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
In the midst of the healthcare debate in Congress, other business does go on (sort of), including a subcommittee hearing on drone warfare, at which I’ll be testifying, along with some other experts, including the author of the seminal Wired for War, which put the issue of robotics and war squarely on the table. I’ll […]
The Stupak Conundrum: Why Did the Stupakites Change Their Positions on the Health Care Bill in Exchange for a Meaningless Executive Order?
The House of Representatives just passed the health reform bill previously enacted by the Senate by a narrow 219-212 vote. They probably could not have done without the support of eight to nine Democratic pro-life congressmen led by Representative Bart Stupak, who agreed to support the bill just before the vote in exchange for an […]
The Abortion Deal
Final passage of the Senate health care bill in the U.S. House of Representatives was facilitated by a last minute deal over abortion funding. Specifically, the President agreed to issue an Executive Order reaffirming limits on federal funding of abortion. As I read the E.O., it does not appear to limit federal funding beyond those […]
Crisis, the Health Care Bill, and the Growth of Government
The passage of the health care demonstrates the ways in which economic crises create opportunities to expand the power of government, often in ways that have little connection to any effort to alleviate the crisis itself. Back in the fall of 2008, I expressed my fear that the combination of an economic crisis, political ignorance […]
Political Activity by Judges’ Spouses
It turns out that the debate about political activity by judges’ spouses (most recently raised with regard to Virginia Thomas’s new political advocacy group) is nothing new. The 1972 ABA Code of Judicial Conduct provided, in Canon 7.B(1)(a), that a candidate for judicial office “should encourage members of his family to adhere to the same […]