The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity — the entitity which reviews and approves accreditation agencies — has serious concerns about the American Bar Association, evan as it re-approved the ABA’s role in accrediting law schools. several members of the committee expressed reservations about approving that […]
Archive | June, 2011
Pakistan-US Counterterrorism Relations
US ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, who has been arguing within the administration for integrating US counterterrorism operations more closely with Pakistan’s military forces, might want to consider the following two stories. The Washington Post: Pakistani Intelligence Announces Its Full Cooperation With U.S. Forces During Upcoming Top Secret June 12 Drone Strike On Al-Qaeda At […]
May Congress Extend the FBI Director’s Term?
FBI Director Robert Mueller’s ten-year term expires later this year. President Obama would like to keep him in the job, however, so he is asking Congress to extend Meuller’s term by two years. This is a somewhat unusual request, even if the President’s justification — the desire for continuity — is eminently reasonable. Senator Charles […]
Wisconsin’s War on Craft Brewers
Wisconsin legislators wrote a provision into the state’s budget legislation barring brewers from owning wholesale distributors. The measure is allegedly intended to prevent Anheuser-Busch from purchasing distributors and expanding its presence within the state . (Wisconsin is MillerCoors territory.) But while focused on Budweiser, the restriction threatens some of the state’s craft brewers and would […]
Seeking Advice on Buying Cheap Used Desktop Computers for a 7-Year-Old
I’d like to buy a cheap used desktop computer for my 7-year-old. It doesn’t have to be fancy; he’s mostly using it for word processing, drawing, and some light Internet research, plus occasional computer games (which we tell ourselves are educational). And I would like it to be cheap, because odds are high that he’ll […]
Do Police Officers Conducting a Search Have Fourth Amendment Rights Not To Be Secretly Taped by Government?
No, says the district court in United States v. Wells, 2011 WL 2259748 (N.D. Okla. May 12, just posted on Westlaw). Here’s the situation: A Tulsa police officer is being investigated for supposedly stealing money and drugs. The FBI sets up a sting, in which an undercover officer plays a drug dealer. The officer and […]
UCLA Researcher Wins Skirmish in Attempt to Get California Bar Passage Records
My colleague Rick Sander — who is also an occasional guest-blogger on this blog — has for years been trying to get California Bar records that could help him test his “mismatch hypothesis”: the hypothesis that race-based preferences that let black and Latino students get into higher-ranked law schools actually end up hurting the very […]
Ninth Circuit Panel Finds (by 2-1 Vote) That Jordanian Government Acquiesces in Honor Killings, Holds Jordanian Woman May Not Be Deported
The decision came Wednesday, in Suradi v. Holder; it’s not unprecedented, but my sense is that such decisions are rare enough to be noteworthy. An excerpt from the memorandum signed by Judges D.W. Nelson and Bybee, together with a dissent by Chief Judge Kozinski: Iman Khalil Suradi (“Suradi”), a native and citizen of Jordan, petitions […]
X Y (or X Y Z) Is Neither
It’s famously said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Preparing my Torts readings for the fall, I noticed that “criminal conversation” is neither criminal (it’s the name of a tort) nor a conversation. What are some other examples?
“M.F. Husain Went Into Self-Imposed Exile After Threats by Hindus Offended by His Work”
The Christian Science Monitor has an obituary of M.F. Husain, said to have been one of India’s leading painters. The story goes into some detail about Husain’s having gotten physical threats and been sued based on his work: The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, a group whose goals include stopping the “denigration of Hindu righteousness,” protested his […]
New Biography of Gandhi Banned in Indian State
I had missed this when it happened in late March; a column in Sunday’s The Hindu has more details: Great Soul, the Mahatma’s new biography by Joseph Lelyveld, happens to be the latest entrant in the Indian hall of ‘shame’ following a whole series of other books, the recent ones including Jaishree Mishra’s Rani, and […]
Latin and Greek for election season
To summarize the Latin for election season, we have: Nominabamini a Romney meaning “y’all were being nominated by Romney”, which you can expand into: “Nominabamini a Romney”, dixi eligenti Pawlenty meaning “‘Y’all were nominating being nominated by Romney’, I said to the person electing Pawlenty.” But my friend Chris Monsour suggests that, in Greek (which […]
“Lender Punishment Mustn’t Reward Defaulters”
My column in today’s Washington Times takes issue with the proposal to force lenders to write-down principal as a response to the robo-signing fiasco.
Aligning Compensation Incentives in Higher Education: Is Higher Education Debt or Equity?
Desperate times call for desperate creative fantasizing … isn’t one of the problems of our higher education bubble the poorly aligned incentives for the universities providing the eduction? They provide a service for a couple of years as an expert agent to poorly informed principals, charging them for the service upfront, whereas the outcomes are […]
Mississippi Supreme Court Reprimands Judge Who Sent Lawyer to Jail for Refusing to Say the Pledge of Allegiance
The opinion is here. For more on the case, see here and here.