Today provided yet another reminder that not every closely divided opinion splits the Supreme Court along ideological lines. In Carr v. United States, the Supreme Court held, 6-3, that the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), which requires convicted sex offenders to register with local authorities when they move from one state to another, […]
Archive | 2010
Waiting for the Kagan Papers
The Senate Judiciary Committee is waiting for the Clinton Presidential Library to release of over 100,000 of pages from Elena Kagan’s time in the Clinton White House. According to the AP, the documents will be released “in waves,” and some could be released to the public at the end of this week. The AP also […]
Shedding Light on the AZ Immigration Law
Opinions about AB 1070 — Arizona’s controversial new immigration law — are everywhere. Serious analysis? Not so much. Now several professors at the University of Arizona have just posted a preliminary analysis of the billon SSRN. It’s a useful paper, and they are soliciting feedback.
Pollak on Uniquely Israeli Stupidity
Noah Pollak: Those who sent an elite unit into a hostile confrontation armed with toy weapons made an incredibly stupid decision. And a uniquely Israeli one. In recent memory, Israeli military action has been violent but not decisive, bloody enough to provoke the outrage and condemnation of the world (at this point, a stubbed toe […]
Kagan “Not a Natural Academic”
The Chicago Tribune reports on the University of Chicago’s refusal to rehire Elena Kagan as a tenured member of its law faculty after her stint in the Clinton White House. “She’s just not a natural academic, period,” said Richard A. Epstein, a prominent libertarian and longtime professor at the University of Chicago. “She is a […]
Pro-Palestinian “Peace Activists”
Incredibly (and stupidly), Israeli officials believed the protesters’ claims that they were mere humanitarian peace activists with no violent intent (in fairness to both Israel and the protesters, it appears that the violent passengers were on only one of six boats). An embedded reporter with YNet News sets the scene: Officials estimated that passengers will […]
Maldives: “Islamic Foundation Calls for Death Sentence if Apostate Fails to Repent”
From Minivan News, a Maldivian site: The Islamic Foundation has called for self-declared apostate Mohamed Nazim to be stripped of his citizenship and sentenced to death if he does not repent and return to Islam. Nazim claimed he was “Maldivian and not a Muslim” during a public question-and-answer session with Islamic speaker Dr Zakir Naik, […]
Gaza Blockade Violence News You May Have Missed
Reading the news this morning, I got a big dose of he said/she said, with Israeli spokesmen claiming that its naval personnel were attacked with clubs and knives, perhaps even live fire, from one of the “peace activist” boats, and spokesmen for the blockade runners claiming, for example to the New York Times, that they […]
More Interesting DNA Information
from my 23andMe genetic profile. The three populations I most resemble from a genetic perspective (besides other Ashkenazic Jews, and, I assume, likely Sephardic Jews as well) are Druze, Bedouin, and Palestinian.
Good jazz, free
EJazzNews sends out an email with a free sampler of jazz every week. Full tracks, zip file of mp3s, no DRM. Good stuff, too, by my unadventurous lights. This week’s, EJN 13, featured several torchy female jazz singers and a scatting male singer that were talented and new to me. Better than Pandora, which has […]
More on the SG’s Brief in U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. Candelaria
Like Stewart, I am interested in the Solicitor General’s decision to file a brief recommending cert in U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. Candelaria. I recommend readers to his post (and the comment thread), even if I don’t agree with every point. Here are my initial thoughts on the SG’s filing. The Supreme Court’s CVSG request […]
Sunday Song Lyric
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, so I thought I’d blog “Memorial Day” by James McMurtry off of his critically acclaimed album Childish Things. It doesn’t focus so much on the reason for the holiday as the dysfunctional dynamics of holiday family get-togethers. Here’s the chorus: It’s Memorial Day in America Everybody’s on the road Let’s remember […]
“Congress Should Reapportion Representatives Only on the Basis of Citizen Populations”
So urges an op-ed published today in the L.A. Times. The op-ed mostly criticizes the counting of illegal aliens in the apportionment, but its actual recommendation is to not count any noncitizens, so that “the votes of citizens in all parts of the country are as nearly equal as possible.” (The op-ed likewise argues that […]
If you like the BP spill, you’ll love cyberwar
BP has had another agonizing failure as it tries to stop the massive oil deep under the Gulf of Mexico. The President, meanwhile, is taking heat for the disaster and his apparent paralysis in the face of crisis. The consequences of the spill are devastating, and compensation is well beyond the resources of BP, even […]
The Solicitor General Lays an Egg
Before the fuss over Arizona’s immigration law, there was a different fuss over a different Arizona immigration law. Now the first fuss is coming back to haunt the Obama Administration, the professionals in the office of the Solicitor General, and maybe even Elena Kagan. That first fuss was over the Legal Arizona Workers Act, a […]