Co-Conspirator Jonathan has already remarked below on the seeming collapse of the media-academic-NGO-international organization-et al. global warming coalition in-between last year’s Copenhagen meeting and this year’s much-subdued Cancun event. I broadly agree with Jonathan, and with Margaret Wente, on whom he comments, on the policy merits. I also think the right approach to climate change […]
Archive | 2010
Wikileaks and the Demise of the Diplomatic Cable
I think my Opinio Juris co-blogger Peter Spiro is probably right that one of the collateral consequences of Wikileaks is the demise, or anyway acceleration toward the demise, of the traditional diplomatic cable. But this episode will surely make cables look less attractive still. It’s one thing to understand that your work will come to […]
Since When is Congress Not Part of the U.S. Goverment?
Joe Klein: It is hard to imagine what uber-patriotic Republicans would be doing if Democrats were intervening on behalf of a foreign country against the United States government. But here we have the Republicans, newly tumescent with their House majority, attempting to interpose themselves on the side of Israel against the President. This echoes criticism […]
Speaking of Wikileaks
According to State Department legal advisor and former Yale Law School dean Harold Koh, the Wikileaks document dumps “place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals – from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information.” The harm to U.S. diplomatic and military interests is said to be quite […]
Sensible Column by Barry Rubin on Airport Security
One key point: the threats to airline security have come from abroad, and the U.S. should be focusing on flights coming from foreign countries. I had been thinking along the same lines. If nothing else, if domestic-based terrorists did want to blow up some planes, but airport security was too intense, what would stop them […]
Saudis and Other Arab States Want U.S. to Attack Iran’s Nuclear Program
So say documents leaked by Wikileaks. This shouldn’t be very surprising, but over the last several years I’ve seen many, many commentators (update: as has Jeffrey Goldberg) claiming that the only parties plugging for U.S. military action against Iran are Israel and its American “Likudnik” supporters. [Update: Omri Ceren provides some examples of “experts” who […]
Justice Stevens on the Death Penalty
As I read Justice Stevens’ essay on the death penalty, linked to below by Jonathan Adler and now posted online, the Supreme Court’s striking down the death penalty in 1972 was an example of the Justices “appropriately . . . just trying to interpret the Constitution.” On the other hand, the 1991 decision permitting victim-impact […]
Saving Environmentalism from Itself
Margaret Wente writes: Mercifully, nobody will pay attention to the climate conference at Cancun next week, where a much-reduced group of delegates will go through the motions. The delusional dream of global action to combat climate change is dead. Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme is dead. Chicago’s carbon-trading market is dead. The European Union’s supposed reduction […]
Justice Stevens on Capital Punishment
Adam Liptak has an interesting article in today’s NYT previewing an essay by retired Justice John Paul Stevens in which he explains why he no longer believes the death penalty, as practiced, is constitutional. In a detailed, candid and critical essay to be published this week in The New York Review of Books, he wrote […]
Are the New TSA Airport Scans and Pat-Downs Unconstitutional?
By Jonathan H. Adler on November 28, 2010 10:26 am in Airport Security, Fourth Amendment, War on Terror
Orin’s colleague Jeffrey Rosen argues in today’s Washington Post there is a “strong argument” that the Transportation Security Administration’s use of full-body-image scanning devices and more thorough pat-downs are unreasonable searches and seizures prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. Although the Supreme Court hasn’t evaluated airport screening technology, lower courts have emphasized, as the U.S. Court […]
The Monopoly of Our Time?
Is Settlers of Catan the “board game of our time” as Monopoly was eighty years ago? the great board game of this era is The Settlers of Catan. That game, which came out in Germany in 1995, is not a household name like Monopoly, and given that electronic games have eclipsed board games, it may […]
“Standardless Vulgarization” Leading to “Surpassed Languages Go[ing] Under”?
A commenter writes, Of course language evolves. It is so ironic that the apologists for standardless vulgarization should parade this undeniable reality as though it were a justification or motivation for rushing headlond to a modern Tower of Babel. Language must serve as a medium for exchange of information, a store of data, and a […]
Share, Oh Readers, My Shock and Dismay …
To find myself watching the Michael Crichton 1995 movie, Congo, with Beloved Wife – which is not a bad movie and I’m a fan of the late MC, may he rest in peace, but – contemplate my shock and dismay to see the film describe the laboratory as being at Berkeley, and then all the shots […]
“[Volokh’s] Attack on Decent Speech and the Attacks His Spiritual Cousins Would Have Brought on Morals”
The Recency Illusion thread produced this comment: First, Volokh would have us believe that against all usage, usage is all that matters. Now, we hear that it is improper to lament the contemporary decline in the order of the language because, in times before that order was fully established, the order did not exist. Imagine […]
Addendum to the Bankruptcy for States (David Skeel) Post
I stuck this in as an update to the David Skeel post below, but I think it is a sufficiently different point that it warrants its own post. (And thanks to Glenn for the link.) So: Co-Conspirator Todd notes the Stanford Law School conference on the Constitution and the Financial Crisis, at which both he […]