In tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal is my op-ed, The Mistake That Is the Libertarian Party. Here are some excerpts: In 1972, the Libertarian Party nominated University of Southern California philosophy Prof. John Hospers as its first presidential candidate and ran Tonie Nathan for vice president. When Roger MacBride, a Virginia Republican elector pledged to Richard […]
Archive | November, 2012
Some Final Election Wildcards
The recent national poll news is overall bad for Romney, suggesting a reversal in momentum in favor of Obama. The one possible saving grace is that this momentum may primarily be an artifact of increased Obama support in Northeastern states where Romney was not competitive to begin with. The Pew poll, which shows Obama up […]
Michael Greve on the Proper Meaning of “Proper” in the Necessary and Proper Clause
By Ilya Somin on November 5, 2012 8:00 pm in Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Necessary and Proper
At the Law and Liberty Blog, my George Mason colleague Michael Greve has posted an insightful commentary on my forthcoming article analyzing the proper meaning of “proper.” Michael agrees with my conclusion that the individual health insurance mandate was improper, but takes issue with some of my reasoning: My colleague Ilya Somin has penned a […]
N.Y. Court Denies Parents’ Request to Change Last Name of Children
The problem? The parents wanted to change the children’s last name to a name other than either the mother’s or the father’s, plus (and it’s not clear how relevant this ended up being) they had changed one child’s name three years before. From In re Kobra, 2012 WL 5373490 (N.Y. City Civ. Ct. Oct. 26): […]
Richard Epstein and Glen Whitman on Libertarians and the Presidential Election
Well-known libertarian scholars Richard Epstein and Glen Whitman have recently weighed in on a question that has been much-debated in the blogosphere: Who, if anyone, should libertarians support in the presidential election. Epstein argues that we should support Romney as the lesser of the two available evils: In the final countdown to what promises to […]
Robo-Call in Russian — Badly Accented Russian
I just got a Russian-language robo-call supporting a candidate for the state assembly (Betsy Butler, the incumbent). I suppose it’s not that surprising — there are a lot of Russian speakers in L.A., some understand Russian considerably better than they understand English, and some might in any event be more influenced by a pitch in […]
Some Key Referenda to Watch
By Ilya Somin on November 5, 2012 4:58 pm in Elections, Eminent Domain, Post-Kelo Reform, Property Rights, War on Drugs
In addition to the presidential and congressional elections tomorrow, there are also some important referenda initiatives on the ballot in many states. They include several on issues of special interest to me and many VC readers: property rights and the War on Drugs. Here in Virginia, we have Question 1, which would strengthen protection for […]
The Twitter @ComfortablySmug Case: Are Bans on Circulating Lies About a Catastrophe Unconstitutional?
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports on this question, and quoting Prof. Fred Schauer (a leading First Amendment scholar), our coblogger Stuart Benjamin, and me. The relevant statute makes it a crime to “knowing the information reported, conveyed or circulated to be false or baseless,” “circulate[] a false report or warning of an alleged […]
ObamaCare Encourages Shift to Part-Time Workers
Today’s WSJ reports: Several restaurants, hotels and retailers have started or are preparing to limit schedules of hourly workers to below 30 hours a week. That is the threshold at which large employers in 2014 would have to offer workers a minimum level of insurance or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 for each worker. […]
Gov. Romney’s Statement About Indicting Ahmadinejad for Incitement to Genocide
Several people asked me what I thought about Gov. Romney’s statement during the third presidential debate about indicting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide: Secondly, I’d take on diplomatic isolation efforts. I’d make sure that Ahmadinejad is indicted under the Genocide Convention. His words amount to genocide incitation. I would indict him for […]
New Pew Poll Gives Obama a Three Point Lead
In my last post, I said that Obama should be favored to win the election, and suggested he has roughly a 65-70 percent chance of winning. My estimate of Romney’s chances was based in large part on his relatively strong showing in national polls, which still had him even with Obama late last week. Today, […]
The 4th Circuit Holding on Foreign Official Immunities in Yousuf v. Samantar
Muhammad Ali Samantar served as Defense Minister and later Prime Minister of Somalia, fleeing the country in 1991 and coming to the US in 1997. He was sued under the Alien Tort Statute and Torture Victims Protection Act under allegations of torture, extrajudicial execution, and illegal detention by government agents claimed to be under his […]
Telling Legislator, “If You Vote for This Law, We’ll Try to Defeat You in the Next Election,” Forbidden in Colorado?
That’s what Colo. Rev. Stat. § 24-6-308 seems to say: (1) No person engaged in lobbying shall: … (h) Attempt to influence the vote of a covered official in connection with any pending matter by threat of a political reprisal, including without limitation the promise of financial support of, or opposition to, the covered official’s […]
What Would It Have Meant to “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”?
Edward Niedermeyer has an interesting WSJ op-ed on what it would have meant to let GM and Chrysler go through a traditional bankruptcy process, and whether this would have meant giving up on the domestic auto industry (ignoring, for the moment, the existence of other auto manufacturing in the US) and industry employment. Here’s a […]
In Pursuit of Journalistic Negativity
A new report on media coverage of the presidential campaign from the Pew Research Center looks at the balance of positive and negative coverage of the major presidential candidates. Among the report’s findings: The study reveals the degree to which the two cable channels that have built themselves around ideological programming, MSNBC and Fox, stand […]