I found this gem in a comment thread at the blog of my collegue Jonathan Turley by commenter “Mick” at 4:42 am, May 22, 2010: How do you live with yourself? A supposed Constitutional expert that doesn’t know what a Natural Born Citizen is? I would say that you probably do. You know, and are […]
Archive | 2010
Assessing the Impact of State Constitutional Amendments Banning Gay Marriage
By Ilya Somin on August 30, 2010 11:27 pm in Constitutional Amendments, Gay Marriage, Judicial Power
In this post commenting on the revelation that former Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman is gay, Yale lawprof Jack Balkin argues that the recent spate of state anti-gay marriage constitutional amendments may significantly retard progress towards gay equality: [Ken] Mehlman was the chair of the Bush 2004 presidential campaign, which deliberately used opposition to […]
Brouhaha Over the Koch Brothers
An article by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker on the libertarian Koch brothers has received a great deal of attention, including this piece by Frank Rich. The bizarre point of both pieces seems to be to undermine David Koch’s efforts to become a respected member of New York “society” by harming his reputation among […]
Is the Excessive Fines Clause Incorporated Against the States?
From McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010): We never have decided whether … the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of excessive fines applies to the States through the Due Process Clause. See Browning-Ferris Industries of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U. S. 257, 276, n. 22 (1989) (declining to decide whether the excessive-fines protection applies […]
“Любви Моей Ты Боялся Зря”
This is for all our dozen or so (?) Russian-speaking readers — minus those who are already very familiar with this. For reasons that entirely elude me, I found myself thinking of a Russian song that I had heard when I was small, an entirely adult (not meaning dirty) song by Novella Matveyeva called “You […]
Tales from the Great Recession
The New York Times‘s stories on the Great Recession always seem to manage to find 20 somethings to interview who seem completely clueless about finances. Case in point: Through most of last year, Ms. Ben Othman could not find any work after she was laid off by a publishing company [but now has a somewhat […]
Koran-Burning Minister and Council on American-Islamic Relations Spokesman Play Into Each Other’s Hands
As I mentioned last week, Terry Jones — a minister at the ironically named Dove World Outreach Center — is organizing a burning of Korans to mark September 11. That strikes me as both largely pointless, non-substantive rudeness (as opposed to fair and substantive criticism of Islam, which would be perfectly proper) and as largely […]
Puzzle
I thought I’d repeat a puzzle that I first posted five years ago. Put these in order by moving the fewest names: Washington, Wilson, Johnson, Johnson, McKinley, Davis, Jackson, Taft, Kennedy Moving a name to between two other names, before the first name, or after the last name all count as one move. Thus, exchanging […]
Elections 2010 and 2012?
This is a purely political horseracing question, but I keep thinking about it every time I read another article talking about the 2010 elections. Much of the commentary on the 2010 election seems to take for granted that a big Republican win in Congressional elections in 2010 presages the trend for the 2012 Presidential election. […]
US Commission on Civil Rights Conference on Civil Rights in the 21st Century
On September 14, the US Commission on Civil Rights will be hosting a conference on Civil Rights in the 21st Century that may interest many of our readers. The event will be in Washington, DC, at the National Press Club [HT: My fiancee Alison Schmauch, a special assistant/counsel at the Commission]. There will be many […]
Monday Cave Bear Blogging
New scientific studies suggest that the extinction of cave bears was caused by humans rather than climate change, as previously thought [HT: Instapundit]: The cave bear started to become extinct in Europe 24,000 years ago, but until now the cause was unknown. An international team of scientists has analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences from 17 new […]
“Use of [Communist] Party Newspapers and Magazines as Toilet Paper Is Strictly Forbidden”
That’s the text of a sign spotted on the wall of a public tolet in China, reports Victor Mair (Language Log). (Mair’s translation is just “party,” but I added “Communist” since I take it that this is the party they had in mind.)
The Future of the European Union
The European Union has been one of the most interesting experiments in federalism of the post-World War II era. At present, the EU is a very weak federal government, if one can all it a government at all. In some ways, it is even weaker than US government was under the Articles of Confederation that […]
Sunday Song Lyric
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) will no longer allow D.C. metro riders to exit the system with negative balances on their SmarTrip cards. Instead, riders will have to use the cash-only “ExitFare” machines to pay the remaining fare. Before, a rider could exit with a negative balance but could not use the card […]
Converse and Obverse
Okay, now I can’t get my brain around it. In my post below, I wondered about converse versus obverse. Can someone do two things for me, in the language usage category. First, give me a clear definition of the distinction between the two. Second, and harder, I believe but maybe am wrong … give me […]