A line from Leonard Cohen, one of my favorite singer-songwriters — entirely incompatible with my temperament (and my mood tonight, which is quite cheerful), but I like it nonetheless: This is an old song about the little there is. Even where there was a lot, there was a little. But now that there is a […]
Archive | September, 2012
Draft Executive Order on Cybersecurity Leaks
Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller reports that he’s seen a draft of the executive order on cybersecurity. What he describes is quite plausible: The order creates a council chaired by DHS to coordinate the mission. This provision would be a defeat for the business lobbyists who fought to keep DHS from getting a central cybersecurity […]
Baby Boomers and Strategic Defaults
Interesting survey here. 88% of respondents self-classify themselves as “strategic defaulters” and 68% say the walked away because the property fell in value (in contrast to hardship and being unable to make their payments, at least as I read the survey). 97% say they would recommend the same course of action to others. Interesting quote […]
Privately-Run Cities in Honduras Prepare to Launch
Honduras has reached formal agreement that will allow private investors to begin building three privately-run cities in Honduras. This has been in the works for some time and it is an intriguing prospect to see it so close to going live. One fascinating thing about these private cities is that the hypothesis is that the […]
Funny Spam Book Ad
Here’s a piece of spam I got promoting a self-published book; note the last sentence I quote below: We all know about the Nigerian scams, namely the infamous 419 code. Well I have unearth a full story exploiting the scams, and this book could possibly put a lot of mischievous Nigerian scammers out of work […]
The Tea Party and Libertarianism
In this recent Cato Institute paper, Emily Ekins and David Kirby make an impressive case that the Tea Party movement is “functionally libertarian” force within the GOP. They collect extensive survey data showing that about half of self-identified Tea Party supporters are libertarian rather than social conservative (they support individual freedom on the social as […]
District Court Rejects New Rules Limiting Gitmo Detainee Access to Attorneys
Yesterday Judge Royce Lamberth rejected the federal government’s effort to place restrictions on Guantanamo detainee access to their attorneys. Specifically, the government maintained it was the Executive Branch’s prerogative to limit attorney access for those detainees not currently seeking habeas relief. (Those detainees with ongoing habeas proceedings were unquesitonably subject to a 2008 Protective Order […]
Maryland Legislator Calls on Private Employer to Order Employee to Stop Talking About Same-Sex Marriage
See this letter from Del. Emmett C. Burns to the owner of the Baltimore Ravens. The letter is on Maryland House of Delegates stationery, begins with “As a Delegate to the Maryland General Assembly and a Baltimore Ravens Football fan,” and then closes with this: I am requesting that you take the necessary action, as […]
Autonomous Vehicle License Application Form
It’s Nevada DMV form OBL326; so far, I’ve only heard of licenses being given to Google (May 7, 2012), but I imagine there might be others by now as well. I don’t know of any gag license requests, aimed at just getting something to put on one’s wall, but I do think a special bonus […]
The Very Model of an Amateur Grammarian
From The Stroppy Editor: The very model of an amateur grammarian (With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan) I am the very model of an amateur grammarian I have a little knowledge and I am authoritarian But I make no apology for being doctrinarian We must not plummet to the verbal depths of the barbarian I’d […]
Originalism and Affirmative Action
By Ilya Somin on September 7, 2012 11:20 am in Affirmative Action, Constitutional Theory, Fisher v. University of Texas, Originalism
In this recent SCOTUSblog post on the upcoming Supreme Court case of Fisher v. University of Texas, David Gans and UCLA law professor Adam Winkler take conservative originalist opponents of affirmative action to task for ignoring originalism in their arguments against the constitutionality of racial preferences for minorities. They particularly single out Supreme Court Justices […]
Democratic Platform Abandons Civil Liberties
Changes to the Democratic Party platform regarding the status of Jerusalem and the mention of God may have received the most attention, but there are other platform changes that should be of greater concern to libertarians. As Adam Serwer documents at Mother Jones, the 2012 Democratic Party platform largely abandons the commitment to civil liberties […]
Constitutional Law Professors: 87% Support Same-Sex Marriage, But Only 54% Believe It Is Constitutionally Mandated
By Dale Carpenter on September 7, 2012 11:08 am in Academia, California, Constitutional Law, Sexual Orientation, Supreme Court
Eighty-seven percent of constitutional law professors back marriage for same-sex couples, and 7 out of 10 believe the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, but only a slight majority of 54% think the federal Constitution requires states to recognize same-sex marriages. That’s the result of a survey of 485 constitutional law professors that I […]
Maine Sues Over Medicaid MOE Requirements
NFIB v. Sebelius may be over, but the litigation against the PPACA continues. The latest lawsuit comes from Maine, which is challenging the constitutionality of the “maintenance of effort” provisions which require that states maintain whatever Medicaid eligibility standards they had in effect as of the PPACA’s enactment in March 2010. Failure to maintain these […]
Star Trek and the Law
This recent post has an interesting list of legal citations to Star Trek. Unfortunately, however, the author inexplicably omitted Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s discussion of Vulcans in the oral argument for last year’s video games case.