New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has an interesting column describing some of President Obama’s evolving positions on executive power. He now engages in many of the same practices that he and numerous other liberal Democrats denounced as unconstitutional in the days of the Bush Administration: When George W. Bush was president of the United […]
Archive | June, 2012
The Plan for Posts and Comment Threads When the Health Care Cases Are Decided
It’s likely that the health care cases are going to come down either tomorrow (Monday) or more likely later in the week, such as Wednesday or Thursday. We’re expecting a lot of posts and a lot of comments when the cases come down. The high likelihood of lots of posts on the mandate cases from […]
Discussing the 17th Amendment on the Bob Zadek Radio Show
I”ll be on the Bob Zadek radio show this afternoon at noon Pacific/3:00 Eastern to discuss the 17th Amendment. You can listen on the radio or on the web here (and I understand it will be archived there as well).
Why do they hate us?
What explains Muslim anti-Americanism? Those on the right say it’s our freedoms. Those on the left say it’s our resort to military force. The debate just looks like an artifact of American political debates. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to discover that Muslim antiAmericanism is really just … an artifact of local political debates. […]
Peter Orszag’s Case for Compulsory Voting
By Ilya Somin on June 24, 2012 11:05 am in Democracy, Elections, Political Ignorance, Public Opinion
In a recent op ed, former Obama adviser and Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag argues that the the United States should make voting compulsory: The U.S. prides itself as the beacon of democracy, but it’s very likely no U.S. president has ever been elected by a majority of American adults. It’s our […]
Poor Prognostication
Northwestern University political science professor Jacqueline Stevens writes in today’s NYT: It’s an open secret in my discipline: in terms of accurate political predictions (the field’s benchmark for what counts as science), my colleagues have failed spectacularly and wasted colossal amounts of time and money. The most obvious example may be political scientists’ insistence, during […]
Privacy’s death toll
A new look at the Vioxx debacle suggests that HIPAA’s privacy regime may have contributed to 90 thousand unnecessary heart attacks and 25 thousand premature deaths. Vioxx, the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug once prescribed for arthritis, was on the market for over five years before it was withdrawn from the market in 2004. Though a group […]
“It’s a Buyer’s Market at Law School”
In the National Law Journal, Karen Sloan reports on how the drop in law school applications this year has law schools scrambling to fill slots — and offering unusually generous scholarships necessary to try to maintain U.S. News numbers. It begins: It’s not unheard of for a law school facing a bloated incoming class to […]
OSHA targets shooting range
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued a citation, along with a proposed fine of $111,000 fine (OSHA press release here), against Illinois Gun Works–a gun store and gunsmith business which has a shooting range and teaches safety classes. HT Instapundit and David Codrea. In a November 2009 article for the NRA magazine […]
Scrutiny Land
If you are bored to tears by the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause, and are curious about how the Supreme Court has gutted the Fifth and Fourteen Amendment’s protection of “liberty,” you might be interested in my Michigan Law Review article, Scrutiny Land. There I explain how the Court purports to be protecting […]
David Blankenhorn Changes His Mind About SSM
Over the past few years, David Blankenhorn has been a leading intellectual opponent of same-sex marriage. In 2007, he published The Future of Marriage, which in my view is the most persuasive book opposing it. In 2009 he was the leading testifier in favor of Prop 8 in the Perry litigation. His view was never grounded in anti-gay attitudes, however. […]
Scrutiny of Dartmouth’s Investment Practices and Conflicts of Interest on the Board
Over the past few weeks there has been an emerging brouhaha about the investments of Dartmouth’s endowment in the firms of members of the board of trustees. This is an issue about which I expressed concern as a matter of sound institutional governance. The issue rose to a higher level a few weeks ago when […]
My Politico Interview on the ACA Challenge
The Politico has a new series of videos on the Affordable Care Act Challenge. Here is the interview they did with me: The rest of the interviews are here.
Mostly Out Until July 4
I’ll be on a family trip until July 3, and will be doing little or no blogging, and probably won’t have a chance to answer e-mail until I return. I might have a chance to post something about the Stolen Valor Act case after it’s handed down, though I’m not sure even about that. But […]
President Obama’s Deferred Action on Immigration (and OLC)
Charles Krauthammer has a column today taking President Obama to task for his recent decision to “lift the shadow of deportation” from otherwise law-abiding undocumented aliens who came to the U.S. as children and allow them to “request temporary relief from deportations and apply for work authorization.” (For DHS’s page on the program, see here.) […]