This morning, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton issued a preliminary injunction blocking key provisions of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect on the grounds that these provisions are likely to be preempted by federal law. The Arizona Republic reports: Key parts of Senate Bill 1070 that will not go into effect Thursday: • The […]
Archive | 2010
Orin’s Opinion on Obama Birthday Email is Based on Factual Error
In a post below, Orin Kerr expresses his opinion that he does not find the Obama birthday email even “a bit creepy.” While certainly entitled to his own opinion, he is not entitled to his own facts. Orin writes: As far as I can tell, Jim received this e-mail because he signed up to be […]
A Creepy Campaign E-mail? Not to Me.
In his post below, Jim suggests that the e-mail he received from the Obama campaign about celebrating the President’s birthday is “a bit creepy”: [A]sking millions of Americans to sign a birthday card for the President suggests a tone-deafness about the cult of personality. If we lived in a dictatorship, getting millions of subjects to […]
Michelle Obama Asks Me to Sign President Obama’s Birthday Card
I received the following email from First Lady Michelle Obama: SUBJECT: Will you sign Barack’s birthday card, James? James — Every year, our family tries to come up with a fun way to wish Barack a happy birthday. And this August 4th, when he turns 49, I have something new in mind. This has been […]
Scheduling Note for Law Students at GW and Penn
I’m going to be a visiting professor at Penn in the Spring 2011 semester, and I wanted to get the word out about course scheduling changes in light of it (with my apologies for using the blog for such a limited audience).
Understanding Inception
Inception is a great movie. Perhaps one of the greatest of all time. You should see it without reading reviews, or learning anything about the film beforehand. For those of you who have seen it, some thoughts about various meanings are below the fold.
CEI Letter Opposing CARE Act:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has organized a timely letter opposing the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness (CARE) Act. The aim of the law is to largely overturn Granholm v. Heald by making it easier for states to sustain discriminatory barriers to interstate commerce by shifting the burden of proof to challenges to discriminatory laws. It would […]
Good-Faith Exception for Changing Law Likely Headed to the Supreme Court
Earlier this year, I blogged a lot about the circuit split that has emerged on a critical question of Fourth Amendment law: Whether the good-faith exception to the Fourth Amendment applies when a police officer conducts a search that was considered lawful at the time it occurred that is later recognized as unlawful before the […]
Wikileaks and “Top Secret America”
Julian Sanchez and I just recorded a dialogue on bloggingheadsTV about the wikileaks affair and “Top Secret America.”
Tenure and Faculty Self-Selection Reconsidered
In a recent post, Orin (relying on an argument by H. Lorne Carmichael) cites faculty self-selection as an argument for tenure: The basic idea is that tenure is a necessary evil because faculties vote on who to let join them: If professors know that their own jobs will be in jeopardy if they hire someone […]
Tenure and Faculty Self-Selection
Ilya has been doing some recent blogging about tenure, and I thought I would flag what seems to me the most persuasive argument in its favor: Academics are the best judges of who is a good academic, and tenure is necessary to ensure that a group of academics will hire the best person to fill […]
Oliver Stone Apologizes
A message from Stone, via his p.r. agency: In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret. Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact […]
Monday Bear Blogging
Ellen (9) and Madeline (2) saw their first wild bear today: a Cinnamon black bear south of Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. Appropriately enough, it’s a Monday, the day for bear blogging. The picture is below.
ISI College Student Essay Contest:
Some college readers might be interested in ISI’s College Student Essay Contest: “Totalitarianism, Tweets, and Turf: Human Community in an Age of Techno-Globalism.” It is inspired by Robert Nisbet’s book, “The Quest for Community.” I read it back in college and remember thinking it was a pretty interesting discussion of the importance of civil society […]
Speeding Ticket Bleg
I received a speeding ticket today (corner of Route 50 and N. Edison, eastbound on 50, laser sped trap, for our Northern Va. readers). I happened to have glanced at my speedometer at the bottom of the relevant hill, and the officer claimed that he clocked me way above that speed at the top of […]