Tomorrow morning at 10am, I will be testifying before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security about the need to narrow the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I have submitted my written testimony, and it is available here. It begins: The current version of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) […]
Archive | November, 2011
BREAKING – High Court to Hear Health Care Challenges
By Jonathan H. Adler on November 14, 2011 10:06 am in Health Care, Individual Mandate, Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in several of the health care cases, granting the Florida’s, NFIB’s and the federal government’s petitions, including consideration of the Tax Injunction Act issue, and granting extended argument time. I suspect SCOTUSBlog will have a full report shortly. NOTE: Here is SCOTUSBlog’s health care litigation page, and here is […]
Explaining the Diminishing Returns to Non-STEM Higher Education
As Generation Jobless tries to figure out where its job possibilities went, we might consider possible relationships between higher education and return on investment. I want to limit these possibilities to graduates of four year institutions in non-STEM subjects, rather than the important but separate issue of college non-completion rates. Consider the following, noting that […]
Court Rejects Occupy Sacramento’s Challenge to Ordinance Barring Park Use Between 11 pm and 5 am
The case is Occupy Sacramento v. City of Sacramento (E.D. Cal. Nov. 4, 2011) (just posted a few days ago on Westlaw); technically, the decision holds that Occupy Sacramento hasn’t shown a likelihood of success on the merits — the standard used when plaintiffs seek a temporary restraining order — but the court’s reasoning suggests […]
Undemocratic?
It turns out that various politically active, generally far left-wing Israeli NGOs, some of which deny the very legitimacy of the Israeli government, get funding from various European governments (see, e.g., this detailed NGO Monitor Report, which focuses only on funding through the EU itself; member states provide substantial additional funding). Some of these organizations, […]
The Wages of Cowardice
David French on the Penn State child molestation scandal. It was cowardly for a 6′4″ graduate assistant to witness the rape of a child by an older man and not only take no action to stop it but also not even call the police. It is a symbol of extended adolescence — no, extended infancy […]
Book review, “Election 2012: The Battle Begins”
Back in the olden days, readers interested in the history of a presidential race would have to wait until the year after the election to read a book about it. Theodore White created the genre of presidential campaign books with The Making of the President 1960. It was published in 1961. White wrote three more […]
Insights on School and Career Choices from the Student Loan Bond Market
The Wall Street Journal’s outstanding series on the job market, college, and young people (“Generation Jobless”) continues today with an interview with a leading investor in the student loan bond market. I asked a while back for reader help in finding examples of student loan bond documentation – and my thanks to the commenters who […]
Penn State
I have nothing useful to add about the awful events at Penn State, both the child molestation and the failure of various people to properly intervene to stop it. But I do want to second Jonah Goldberg’s disgust at the rioting students, rioting that just adds an extra level of nastiness and moral failure to […]
Interesting Threat-of-Future-Bad-Conduct Case
In the Matter of the Detention of Danforth (Wash. Nov. 10, 2011) raises an interesting question about when someone with a history of sex crimes can be coercively incarcerated as a sexually violent predator based on his statement that he is worried that he’ll commit another crime. The facts: Danforth, “a 64-year-old, mildly retarded blind […]
UNESCO Reprimands Israel Over Israeli Newspaper Cartoon
That’s the cartoon that led to UNESCO’s reprimand. The cartoon was, according to the newspaper (Haaretz), “a riff on the government’s anger at UNESCO’s decision to accept Palestine as a full member,” and I’m pretty sure it didn’t seriously call on Israel to bomb UNESCO, or have any likelihood of leading Israel (or anyone else) […]
Tattoos as Speech
The act of tattooing is generally protected by the First Amendment, holds Coleman v. City of Mesa (Ariz. Ct. App. Nov. 3, 2011, following a Ninth Circuit decision from last year and disagreeing with several federal district court decisions and appellate decisions from Indiana, New York, and South Carolina. The reasoning sounds quite right to […]
Justice Stevens Defends Kelo
The WSJ‘s Jess Bravin reports on an interview with recently retired Justice John Paul Stevens in which he defended his “most unpopular opinion” — Kelo v. New London — from recent criticism by Justice Antonin Scalia (see here and here). “It’s the most unpopular opinion I ever wrote, no doubt about it,” Justice Stevens said […]
The Keystone Pipeline Precedent
Others have commented on President Obama’s decision to punt on the Keystone XL pipeline project. Ordering additional review pushes the decision past the next election and enables the Administration to evade responsibility should the project ultimately fail. As those who study environmental law know, delays of this sort are often enough to derail major projects […]
Omelas State University
Science-fiction writer John Scalzi compares the events at Penn State to Ursula LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” His comments are refreshingly direct. Tthe invocation of Omelas is apt, with a few qualifications. There was only one child who suffered for Omelas, and here it was failing to save the child(ren) that sacrificed […]