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Archive | 2010
Harry Reid and the Case Against Adopting Expansive Definitions of Racism, Round II
Conservative commentator Melissa Clouthier responds to my post on the Harry Reid incident and the dangers of expanding the definition of racism here. Clouthier admits that Reid’s remarks were not actually racist, but she believes that conservatives should attack them as such anyway: Noting that President Obama turns the jive on and off is no […]
Comstock and National Security Detentions
By Ilya Somin on January 12, 2010 11:41 pm in Commerce Clause, Federalism, Necessary and Proper, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Co-blogger Ken Anderson asks: Here’s my question to the VC Staff: Are there any implications of Comstock, in the hearings, briefs, arguments, suggesting that anyone involved is weighing this up at least partly in terms of implications for what it might mean down the road for a Congressional national security administrative detention statute or authority? […]
Kindler, Gentler Cost-Benefit Analysis
In the new issue of Regulation I review Retaking Rationality: How Cost Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health by NYU’s Richard Revesz and Michael Livermore, a progressive defense of cost-benefit analysis, albeit reformed to make it more regulation-friendly. My review is available here (beginning on the third page of the PDF). […]
Did the Penguins Cheat?
FSN in Pittsburgh allegedly withheld video tape from NHL officials during the review of a contested goal, only to show the video to fans after the goal had been disallowed and play resumed. The NHL is reviewing the incident.
How “Negro” Became a Taboo Word
In response to the controversy generated by Senator Harry Reid’s reference to “Negro dialect,” Brian Palmer has an interesting article on Slate covering the history of how “Negro” became a taboo word. I was already aware that Negro gave way to “black” in the late 1960s in part due to the influence of the Black […]
Comstock and National Security Implications for Detention?
By Kenneth Anderson on January 12, 2010 6:59 pm in Civil Rights, Counter-Terrorism Policy, Executive Branch, Federalism, War on Terror
(Update: Thanks to Ilya for his post above, and Orin for his comment below to this post. Bottom line is that Comstock does not have national security implications.) Could I put a question to the VC staff who are following Comstock? For those of us in the national security area, the whole matter of continued […]
Google pulling out of China?
According to a variety of sources, including Google itself, it appears that Google has made a decision to pull all of its operations out of China. The official Google blog notes a number of cyber-attacks on Google infrastructure in China, apparently targeted at obtaining information about Chinese human rights activists, and notes: We have taken […]
John Yoo on The Daily Show
You can watch it here.
Assessing the Comstock Oral Argument
Corey Rayburn Yung has a detailed discussion of today’s Comstock oral argument. See here and here. He also predicts a 6-3 victory for the government. Other analysts gave widely differing predictions. Regular VC readers may recall that Comstock is the case where the government is defending a statute allowing it to civilly confine “sexually dangerous” […]
Self-Defense and the Kansas Abortion Case
There has been lots of media attention to the Kansas abortion case, in which defendant Scott Roeder plans to tell a jury that his slaying of Wichita doctor George Tiller was voluntary manslaughter. Typical is this New York Times article. The defendant plans to argue that what would otherwise seem to be cold-blooded, first degree murder was in […]
Kevin Jon Heller on Carl Schmitt and Nuremberg
Over at Opinio Juris, my co-blogger Kevin Jon Heller has a post on the German political theorist Carl Schmitt and the history behind his brush with a Nuremberg prosecution at the end of the Second World War. It is drawn from research for Kevin’s book on the Nuremberg trials; given the interest that law professors […]
Oral Argument in United States v. Comstock
This morning I went to the oral argument at the Supreme Court for United States v. Comstock, a potentially important federalism case that we’ve blogged about here before. The issue in the case is whether Congress has the Article I power to set up a system of civil commitment for sex offenders after their federal […]
TSA Playset
I somehow missed this toy when shopping for my girls this holiday season. (HT: Veronique de Rugy)
Court Reverses in Smith v. Spisak
By Jonathan H. Adler on January 12, 2010 10:58 am in Criminal Procedure, Habeas, Sixth Circuit, Supreme Court
The Supreme Court released one opinion today — and it was not the eagerly anticipated Citizens United. The Court released another habeas decision instead. In Smith v. Spisak, a unanimous Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s grant of death-row inmate Frank Spisak’s habeas petition. Justice Breyer wrote the opinion, and […]