I thought that providing government health care and welfare payments to al Qaeda’s favorite Canadians, the Khadr family, was just misplaced Canadian generosity: “Family members have spoken scornfully of Canadian society, as they receive medical care and welfare payments that keep them in a pleasant apartment in Toronto,” the Washington Post once noted. Turns out, […]
Archive | 2010
Approaching Arguments That Have A Racist Past
Like Eugene, I received an e-mail recently from a student who will be a 1L at Harvard Law School this fall. Like the student who e-mailed Eugene, this student is somewhat worried about the environment he’ll find when he enrolls. He writes: I’m an incoming student at Harvard Law next year. And even though I’m […]
A View from an Incoming Harvard 1L
Here’s a message that I got in response to the earlier posts on the Harvard e-mail controversy. I do not know the author personally, but I thought it was worth passing along; I certainly saw no cues suggesting that it was insincere or otherwise not credible: I wish I were a tenured professor, and was […]
Why we aren’t putting Omar Khadr on trial
Omar Khadr turned to terror early in life. He was only fifteen years old in the months after 9/11, but he spent them laying mines for al Qaeda in Afghanistan — and allegedly throwing the grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer, a Special Forces medic. Khadr was pulled from the rubble, patched up, and sent […]
What Will Kagan Say about AZ Immigration Law
While controversy rages over Arizona’s recently passed illegal immigration law, the Supreme Court is considering whether to hear a legal challenge to an earlier Arizona immigration measure signed into law by then-Governor Janet Napolitano, and wants to hear the Solicitor General’s views. As the LA Times reports: In November, the justices asked Kagan to file […]
Matt Welch on the Immigration Law
Matt Welch at Reason writes: I have sympathy for people who are freaked out by desperate immigrants and ruthless smugglers trampling over their property in southern Arizona, and as I’ve said elsewhere, us pro-immigrant types too easily skate over rule-of-law objections. Federal immigration policy is a failure, and poses real public policy challenges that no […]
Arizona Revises Immigration Law
Well that was quick. In response to criticism, Arizona has made a few changes to its controversial illegal immigration law. The LA Times reports: The initial law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer last week, required police to determine a person’s immigration status if officers formed a reasonable suspicion about their legality during any “lawful contact.” […]
Victims of Communism Day
Today is May 1, May Day. Back in 2007 and 2008, I advocated the idea of transforming this long-time communist holiday into Victims of Communism Day – a day of remembrance for the victims of history’s bloodiest ideology. This year, several bloggers are joining in an effort to commemorate the occasion. Jonathan Wilde of Distributed […]
The Sound of Crickets Chirping
So the New Republic published the most thorough critique to date of Human Rights Watch’s record on Israel this week. Contrary to its typical belligerency, HRW has not responded [beyond this tepid and largely unresponsive letter to TNR from a co-chair of HRW’s Middle East advisory committee, who is not an employee of HRW, but […]
Words I never expected to write
Dick Durbin is right. The Senate Democrats have proposed immigration reform that includes a biometric identity card, and Sen. Durbin is defending the decision. “People understand that in this vulnerable world, we have to be able to present identification,” Durbin said to The Hill. “We want it to be reliable, and I think that’s going […]
Judging a Person Based on a Single Forwarded Personal E-Mail
To my mind, the most troubling aspect of the Harvard e-mail controversy is how many people feel comfortable publicly judging someone based on a single forwarded private e-mail. I can see judging a person based on a law review article they wrote, or an op-ed they penned, or public speech they made. All of these […]
Civil Unions in Hawaii?
The state legislature has voted to grant same-sex couples the same benefits and rights as married couples under the title “civil union.” Apparently fearing claims of discrimination, which have not succeeded elsewhere, the state legislature also made civil unions available to opposite-sex couples. It’s not known whether the governor will sign the bill. Hawaii touched off the […]
Taboo and Not Taboo at Elite Universities
Anthropologists tell us that one window into a society is what is and is not taboo in that society. It’s interesting to look at America’s elite universities in this context. Let’s take examples of people and ideas that are not taboo, just from things that I’ve blogged about: Being the head of an enemy, terrorist […]
4. On a Bus in Kiev
I remember very little about my childhood in the Soviet Union; I was only seven when I left. But one memory I have is being on a bus with one of my parents, and asking something about a conversation we had had at home, in which Stalin and possibly Lenin were mentioned as examples of […]
3. The Practical Costs of Condemning Openness to Distressing Answers on Factual Questions
I’ve blogged a good deal so far about why I disapprove of the condemnation of the student who e-mailed a couple of friends saying that she “absolutely do[es] not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent.” But let me turn to a more practical problem with […]