Radley Balko has an interesting piece at Huffington Post on the ways in which the War on Drugs creates perverse incentives for police departments: Arresting people for assaults, beatings and robberies doesn’t bring money back to police departments, but drug cases do in a couple of ways. First, police departments across the country compete for […]
Archive | November, 2011
Weird Comment by Justice Stevens
From the Oct. 31 issue of Time, re Citizens United: I feel strongly that the court made a serious mistake in finding that money is the equivalent of protected speech. If followed out to its logical conclusion, that would have provided First Amendment protection to the Watergate burglars. They were financed with campaign expenditures. Huh?
Israel’s Latest Crime?
According to leftist gay [judging by this piece, she obviously cares much more about leftism than about gay rights] activist Sarah Schulman, it’s the following: “Last year, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that the Tel Aviv tourism board had begun a campaign of around $90 million to brand the city as ‘an international gay […]
LAT on Justice Scalia and Criminal Defendants
David Savage of the LA Times reports that many criminal defendants should be thankful for Justice Scalia. In recent years he has led the charge for more strict enforcement of the Sixth Amendment‘s confrontation clause. This is but one example of how originalist approaches to constitutional interpretation do not always produce “conservative” results. Justice Scalia’s […]
CIA Officers Memorial Foundation Seeks Donations
The CIA Officers Memorial Foundation is seeking donations to provide educational support for children of CIA officers killed in the line of duty: CIA officers are asking people to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of the first American killed in the Afghan war by donating to help the children of their fellow fallen. […]
The Eurozone Crisis Is Also a Governance Crisis – Isn’t It?
Over the last few months, as the eurozone crisis has gathered steam, I have wondered (here and at the international law blog Opinio Juris) what the crisis means for the governance structures of the EU. One answer is, not much – the political leadership will somehow muddle through as it always does, on the basis […]
Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone
And here from our house in DC, we give thanks for the blue and sunshine beauty of the day, the moist and tender deliciousness of the turkey breast I cooked at 500 degrees F and all the dishes prepared by Beloved Wife and Everyone Else, for the attendance of my sister and her family at […]
Give Thanks — It’s Good for You
John Tierney explores yet another reason to be grateful: It will make you feel better. Thanksgiving may be the holiday from hell for nutritionists, and it produces plenty of war stories for psychiatrists dealing with drunken family meltdowns. But it has recently become the favorite feast of psychologists studying the consequences of giving thanks. Cultivating […]
Trial Court Upholds Canada’s Anti-Polygamy Law (Except as to Prosecution of 12-to-17-Year-Old Spouses)
Note that the law criminalizes polygamy, rather than just refusing to recognize polygamous marriages. Here’s the summary from Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause): In Canada, [a British Columbia trial court] today upheld most of Canada’s anti-polygamy law (Sec. 293 of Criminal Code of Canada) against challenges to it brought under the Canadian Charter of Rights […]
More content than the Wall Street Journal — and no paywall!
The Wall Street Journal recently published a round-robin dialogue on privacy featuring Jeff Jarvis, danah boyd, Chris Soghoian, and me. Our vibrant discussion was quite heavily compressed for publication, so two of the other participants have now published their contributions in full. Jeff Jarvis’s is here, and danah boyd’s is here. Publishing the full version […]
On Not Ignoring Unfavorable Precedent
Law students and lawyers — don’t let this happen to you (from today’s Gonzalez-Servin v. Ford Motor Co. (7th Cir.): In … Abad v. Bayer Corp., 563 F.3d 663 (7th Cir. 2009)[], we affirmed Judge Barker’s transfer of a similar case [to the one being litigated here] to the courts of Argentina under the doctrine […]
Cities Pay for Occupations
The AP reports: During the first two months of the nationwide Occupy protests, the movement that is demanding more out of the wealthiest Americans cost local taxpayers at least $13 million in police overtime and other municipal services, according to a survey by The Associated Press. The heaviest financial burden has fallen upon law enforcement […]
ClimateGate Part Deux – Continued
The NYT on the new release of climate scientists’ emails: The new e-mails appeared remarkably similar to the ones released two years ago just ahead of a similar conference in Copenhagen. They involved the same scientists and many of the same issues, and some of them carried a similar tone: catty remarks by the scientists, […]
60s sitcom themes: The hidden alien. The strange family that doesn’t know it is strange.
During the early and mid-1960s, a typical theme of television situation comedies was a character who is some way was different from everyone else, and whose difference (or whose very existence) needed to be concealed from almost everyone by the show’s protagonist. To wit: Mister Ed (1961-66). Mister Ed is a talking horse who belongs […]
Hank Greenberg Challenges Constitutionality of AIG Takeover
Former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg is suing the federal government challenging the constitutionality of the AIG takeover. From the WSJ: Mr. Greenberg’s lawyers on Monday sued the U.S. and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on behalf of Starr International Co. and other AIG shareholders. The lawsuits accused the Treasury Department and New York […]