Reason has an interesting debate on the question of libertarian political strategy. Should libertarians seek to forge an alliance with conservatives or liberals or neither? Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg and Tea Party leader Matt Kibbe argue for reconsituting the libertarian-conservative coalition that was badly frayed if not completely severed during the Bush years. Cato Institute […]
Archive | 2010
The Chronicle Review is Looking Into the June 27th Bellesiles Article
Late Monday afternoon, I received a one-sentence email from Liz McMillen, Editor of the Chronicle Review: I just wanted to let you know that we are looking into the questions you have raised in your blog post Friday about Michael Bellesiles’s article for us. Here is some background on Bellesiles’s June 27th article. Here is […]
Turns Out You Can Fight the Tax Assessor After All
From a person whose accuracy on this I can vouch for: The L.A. County tax assessor lowered our assessed property value for 2010, but not for 2009. (We’d prefer if our house kept gaining value, but if it does lose value, we’d like to see that reflected in a lower property tax bill.) We decided […]
Gun Show Second Amendment Case Remanded Back to Original Panel — Gun Show Organizers Unlikely to Win There
[UPDATE: For a new development that suggests that the panel might indeed change its mind, and the gun show organizers might indeed win, see this post.] In early 2009, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled (in Nordyke v. King) that the Second Amendment was applicable to state […]
More on McDonald and Issue v. Outcome Voting:
As a follow-up to David Post’s post last week on issue v. outcome voting, I direct you to a new op-ed in the National Law Journal by Cohen and Stearns. Did I happen to mention that David’s article with Salop (along with other contributions to the literature) are discussed in some detail in the book […]
And, In the End . . .
The World Cup final (and the Dutch) are both taking well-deserved beatings in the blogosphere – it was not a very beautiful game to watch, thanks largely to the unrelentingly nasty play of the Dutch. Jonathan Wilson over on SI.com summarized it nicely: At least after an ugly, unpleasant game, the World Cup had the […]
Different Rules for Different Subjects
The most recent usage thread led to two comments that I think might shed some insight into prescriptivist — or ostensibly logic-based — arguments about language: [1] [T]here’s times when you want a prescriptivist. My daughter works at a fruit processing plant. They produce beverages and premixes for beverages. Besides checking the incoming and outgoing […]
Incompatible Trilemma Arguments
I have always appreciated the structure of the classic “problem of evil” argument – appreciated it on aesthetic and elegance grounds. You perhaps recall the general formulation: all powerful, all knowing, and all good. Any two are compatible with the existence of evil; not all three. There are many forms of argument roughly set up […]
Russian Art Curators Convicted for Blasphemy, Fined
For more on the case, see this post from a few days ago. The conviction was for “committing acts aimed at inciting national hatred and strife,” but, as I argue in that post, this provision has essentially been interpreted as a ban on use of religious images that sufficiently offends believers, which is why I […]
The “War on Science” Continues
The Bush Administration was often accused of waging a “war on science” because of various instances in which government officials sought to alter, spin, suppress, or manipulate scientific inquiries or findings for political purposes. Some of the charges were exaggeraged, but some were real enough. My favorite was the effort by a political hack at […]
Sotomayor’s First Term
Roberts Barnes of the Washington Post reviews Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s first term on the Supreme Court. The unsurprising finding is that she has been a reliably liberal justice in ideologically divided cases and, contrary to some expectations, her experience as a prosecutor has not made her noticeably more sympathetic to the government in criminal law […]
ClimateGate Revisited
Last week, the UK Independent Climate Change Email Review (aka the Muir Russell Review) released its report on the alleged scientific misconduct of climate researchers revealed by the disclosure of e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University. As the NYT reports, the review rejects the claims that the ClimateGate e-mails disclosed scientific […]
Sunday Song Lyric
I don’t follow celebrity divorces much, but one recent Hollywood split inspired a reader to recommend this week’s song lyric. He writes: “In the wake of Sandra Bullock’s marital betrayal by Jesse James, I was a little startled by this lyric to “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” (sung by Linda Ronstadt, not Warren Zevon, the lyrics’ […]
Department of Energy Inefficiency
The NYT has a cute item noting that the Department of Energy has had a hard time following its own advice on improving energy efficiency, such as by installing fluorescent lighting and auto-shut-offs.
Kagan Doesn’t Like Korematsu
During her nomination hearings, Elena Kagan carefully avoided offering a personal opinion about any Supreme Court decision. In a written response to questions from Senator Cornyn, however, she was willing to identify Korematsu v. United States as a particularly “poorly reasoned” decision. UPDATE: Jess Bravin of the WSJ reports that Kagan also doesn’t like Critical […]