On TNR.com, Jeff Rosen has a thoughtful response to the criticism engendered by his New Republic magazine essay on Chief Justice Roberts. I just wish to offer five points in response: Rosen inaccurately claims that, in the Raich case, I asked the Court to reverse Wickard v. Filburn. To the contrary, throughout that litigation, in our […]
Archive | May, 2012
The Secret “Kill List” and the President
My corner of the national security law world is abuzz today reading the outstanding New York Times article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will.” As Ben Wittes says at Lawfare, it is a richly textured, detailed look at how the administration approaches targeted killing […]
Well, that’s a relief
It turns out that the backdoor found in Chinese-made US military chips by Cambridge researchers might not be evidence of a planned cyberattack. The backdoor is probably there, all right, say other researchers, but that’s because backdoors are built into many field-programmable chips for debugging purposes. Once installed, they can’t be easily removed. Instead, manufacturers try to […]
The End of (the Debate Over) Evolution
Noted paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey predicts the “debate” over evolution will end within the next few decades. As Leakey sees it, scientific evidence in support of evolution will continue to accumulate to the point where “even the skeptics can accept it.” I am not so sanguine, as I don’t believe skepticism of evolution is driven by […]
George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin – A Likely Scenario
TalkLeft’s Jeralyn Merritt, a criminal defense attorney, has gone through the discovery and witness statements that have been released in the George Zimmerman trial and has produced what she thinks is the “most likely scenario” of what happened between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin on that fateful night. Her conclusion, “Zimmerman should prevail on classic […]
CIA Remembrance Ceremonies
While we are celebrating Memorial Day and the armed forces, hold a thought for agents of the CIA, which last week held its annual remembrance for those lost in service of the CIA, and attended by hundreds of CIA staff and family members. This year the CIA added a new star to its memorial wall […]
North Korea’s Gulags
CNN has a good story on North Korea’s system of prison camps, modeled on the Gulags of the Soviet Union, but possibly even worse: Watching the public execution of his mother and older brother, Shin Dong-Hyuk thought the punishment was just. They had planned to escape the North Korean labor camp they were being held […]
Elizabeth Warren and Fisher v. University of Texas
At least one point of interest having nothing to do with Warren herself has arisen from the controversy over Massachusetts Senate candidate’s Elizabeth Warren’s dubious self-identification as “Native American”, and whether she so self-identified to position herself to be a beneficiary of affirmative action. One of Warren’s defenders, a law professor at the University of […]
The New York Times and Janet Robinson’s $24 Million Exit Package
New York Magazine has a lengthy, fascinating article – yes, even tantalizing, if, like me, you follow the business side of media and were once a NYT Co shareholder – in the current issue on the inside process by which Janet Robinson, the ex-NYT Co CEO, was forced out in December 2011. Fired, however, with […]
Remembering Mike Landes & the Hoover-Schrum Grade School Band of Calumet City, Illinois
Today our thoughts are with our veterans, but I am also remembering [WWII veteran] Mike Landes, the director of the Hoover-Schrum Grade School Band in Calumet City, Illinois. Mike started me on clarinet in the second grade and it was a major character forming part of my life until I graduated in eighth grade. We […]
Etiquette of Memorial Day Observance
Further to my last post, wishing everyone a Happy Memorial Day, a commenter chides the use of “Happy Memorial Day” and, by implication, the idea of a happy holiday: I do not believe malice is intended, but do you not see a conflict with placing “Happy” within the phrase involving Memorial Day? It’s not a […]
Happy Memorial Day
Jewel Kilcher and Garth Brooks singing the old Ian & Sylvia standard, Someday Soon – you remember, “Just out of the service, and he’s looking for his fun, Someday soon, going with him, someday soon.” I thought about this song after chatting with a National Guardsman in Reno airport a week ago, home to see […]
George Will: “Liberals put the squeeze to Justice Roberts”
In today’s Washington Post: In one of his characteristic conniptions about people who frustrated him, Theodore Roosevelt, progressivism’s first president, said of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that.” TR was as mistaken about Holmes’s spine as are various progressives today about Chief Justice John […]
The Return of Heckler v. Chaney?
Back in the 1980s, some death penalty abolitionists came up with the clever idea to sue the Food and Drug Administration to force the regulation of drugs used for lethal injection. Because drugs used for lethal injection could not be considered “safe and effective” for this use — at least not as far as the […]
Enlisting Coase in Defense of the Individual Mandate
“Poor Ronald Coase.” His famous essay. “The Problem of Social Cost” is the most cited law review article of all time, but it’s also the most mis-cited. “My point of view has not in general commanded assent, nor has my argument, for the most part, been understood,” Coase himself wrote in The Firm, the Market, […]