A bill pending in the South Carolina Legislature would provide that, Members of the General Assembly may use athletic clubs or gymnasiums owned by a state or local agency, entity, commission, or institution without charge. The sponsors are Reps. Williams, Jefferson, Brantley, and Hodges.
Archive | 2010
Republican Voters Often Have Ignorant and Irrational Views – And so do Democrats
This recent Daily Kos-sponsored poll showing that large proportions of self-identified Republican voters hold irrational and extremist views has gotten a lot of attention recently. In the above-linked post, Markos Moulitsos writes that the results are “startling.” There are some methodological problems with the survey (see here and here). In my view, the most important […]
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Recused, it turns out, if the brother is Justice Stephen Breyer and the other brother is Judge Charles Breyer. As Tony Mauro (Legal Times) reports, “Breyer makes it a practice to recuse in cases that were handled by his brother Charles, a federal trial judge in the Northern District of California.” My quick search for […]
Ninth Circuit Upholds Jail’s Routine Strip Search / Visual Body Cavity Search Policy
A very interesting and important decision, in Bull v. City & County of San Francisco (en banc). Because it’s 6-5 on the merits (Judge Graber joined the majority as to qualified immunity, but agreed with the dissent’s underlying constitutional argument), and because it appears to deepen a circuit split, there’s a good chance that the […]
Carl Gustav (the Weapon, Not Jung or the King) Makes Its First Appearance in a Published Case
See Chief Judge Kozinski’s concurrence in Bull v. San Francisco — and it’s as a hypothetical, not just because the case happened to involve such a weapon. The weapon was once mentioned as “Carl Gustaf” in an unpublished case, State v. Gustafson, 2003 WL 1566493 (Mont. 2003) (no apparent relation). UPDATE: Thread winner from commenter […]
NYT on Impact of Campus Gender Imbalance
There’s an old joke in conservative circles that the New York Times headline on the last day of time would read “World Ends: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit.” I had to think of that joke when reading this New York Times article on how the shortage of men on college campuses is impacting the social lives […]
E-mail software bleg
Microsoft Outlook has worked well for me on somecomputers, but has always been troublesome on one of them. I tried upgrading to the Outlook 2010 beta, and that’s been a horror story. Accordingly, I humbly solict recommendations about an e-mail software program for accessing several POP accounts. Thanks.
Should the Eurozone North Bribe the Eurozone South to “Temporarily” Leave?
One theoretical way out of the Greece fiscal crisis for the Eurozone might be to apply standard Coase Theorem logic and find a way in which Germany could, under whatever face-saving language is necessary, bribe Greece to withdraw from the Euro. The intent would be to get Greece off the Euro so that it could […]
Bronner and the N.Y. Times
There’s a bizarre controversy brewing over the fact that New York Times Middle East reporter Ethan Bronner’s son has decided to volunteer for the Israeli military. Anti-Israel activists are arguing that this means that Bronner will be tempted to bias his reporting in favor of Israel and the IDF, rendering his reporting non-objective, or at […]
Who’s to Blame for Nomination Bottleneck?
President Obama entered office with a nearly unprecedented opportunity to remake the federal courts, but he has yet to take advantage of it. The President has only made 38 judicial nominations, and the Senate has only confirmed 14. Who is to blame for the slow pace? It depends on who you ask — and when […]
Jockeying Over the Next Nominee
The WSJ‘s Jess Bravin has an interesting article on a debate within Democratic circles over President Obama’s next Supreme Court pick. Democrats gearing up for a possible Supreme Court vacancy are divided over whether President Barack Obama should appoint a prominent liberal voice while their party still commands a large Senate majority, or go with […]
Reid’s Reversal on Recess Appointments
The Politico reports: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used to consider recess appointments “an end run around the Senate and the Constitution” — so much so that he kept the chamber open during breaks to prevent President George W. Bush from making any more of them. But with a Democrat in the White House, and […]
“Birther” claim about Obama and the Bush National Guard hoax: Fruit of the same poisonous tree?
So suggests John Avalon, in a Daily Beast column “The Secret History of the Birthers.” He traces birtherism to a Texas woman named Linda Starr, who was a Hillary Clinton delegate to the 2008 Texas state Democratic Convention. Avalon writes that Starr “was also cited as a key source for CBS’ discredited election year investigation […]
Union Marching in Different European Directions
This is a very fast note on the question of European political economy raised in my last post. It’s not intended to be exhaustive, and yes, it is pretty conclusory. My impression over many years as an international law professor who bridges the public and private law divides; not a specialist in EU law but […]
“A Mediocre Criminal, but an Unmatched Jailhouse Lawyer”
In the New York Times, Adam Liptak has a Sidebar column on the remarkable story of Shon Hopwood. I have particular reasons to find the story compelling, as I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with Shon on briefs and I was clerking the Term that the Supreme Court decided Fellers. But it’s a really […]