The Toomey-Manchin Amendment which may be offered as soon as Tuesday to Senator Reid’s gun control bill are billed as a “compromise” which contain a variety of provisions for gun control, and other provisions to enhance gun rights. Some of the latter, however, are not what they seem. They are badly miswritten, and are in […]
Archive | April, 2013
“A Bad Time for Press Freedoms”
The Columbia Journalism Review has an interesting interview with James Goodale, former general counsel and vice chairman of The New York Times and author of the forthcoming book Fighting for the Press. Goodale is very critical of the current Administration’s hostility to press freedoms — “Worse than Nixon” — and the relative lack of critical […]
Is a Wind Turbine a Nuisance?
Wind turbines may be a promising low-carbon power source, but the communities in which they are sited do not always welcome them with open arms. Residents of the Forest hills subdivision in Washoe Valley, Nevada, were none to pleased when one of their neighbors planned to erect a wind turbine to power his home. They […]
The Kermit Gosnell Multiple Murder Trial
Conor Friedersdorf and Megan McArdle write about this at The Atlantic and The Daily Beast, respectively; an excerpt from Friedersdorf’s item: The grand jury report in the case of Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I’ve read. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is […]
The Debate About to Heat Up Over HRW’s Call to Ban “Killer Robots,” AKA Autonomous Weapon Systems
By Kenneth Anderson on April 13, 2013 7:13 pm in Human Rights Watch, International Law, National Security, Robotics, War and Armed Conflict
(And: thanks to Instapundit for linking to the new policy essay by Matthew Waxman and me from the Hoover Institution, referenced at the end of this post, Law and Ethics for Autonomous Weapon Systems – thanks Glenn!) Last November, two documents appeared within a few days of each other, each addressing the emerging legal and […]
Cathy Young on the President and Kamala Harris, “Donglegate,” and Neo-Victorianism
A very good column, at Reason.com. UPDATE: Well, that was an embarrassing typo in my post title (Harass instead of Harris). But it was just a typo, from posting when tired, not some deep comment on my part.
Luxembourg: The Steve McQueen of Cybersecurity
Here’s the scant good news on cybersecurity It’s getting harder for attackers to hide. The same security weaknesses that bedevil our networks can be found on the systems used by our attackers. A shorter version is something I call Baker’s Law: “Our security sucks. But so does theirs.” That’s good news because, with a little gumption, […]
Interesting Student Speech Case
A reader e-mailed me yesterday to ask me what I thought about Taylor v. Roswell Indep. School Dist. (10th Cir. Apr. 8, 2013). I’m inclined to think that it’s about right, but in any event the facts seemed interesting enough to be worth a post. It all started with some students who opposed abortion, and […]
New Scholarship on Originalism and Discrimination
By Ilya Somin on April 12, 2013 6:30 pm in Affirmative Action, Constitutional Theory, Originalism, Racial Discrimination, Sex Discrimination
For a long time, the conventional wisdom among legal scholars has been that an originalist interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment would require courts to uphold laws that discriminate against women and laws banning interracial marriage. While these arguments were once advanced by defenders of sexism and Jim Crow laws, today they are usually used as […]
God Forbid That There Be “Live Shooting of Guns” on Television
One other thought about Sen. Chris Murphy’s request that Fox News cancel plans to broadcast the NRA 500 NASCAR race — one of Sen. Murphy’s complaints is that The race not only brings national attention to an organization that has been the face of one side of this heated debate, it also features the live […]
“When Will Politicians Find Courage to Ban Automatic Weapons?”
The answer to this question is pretty much 1986 (whether that’s a matter of “courage” or not), when automatic weapons — i.e., machineguns — were largely banned. There is an exception for pre-1986 automatic weapons, of which there are relatively few, since they have been heavily taxed since the 1930s. As a result, automatic weapons […]
Senator Urges Fox Not to Air NRA-Sponsored Race
Here’s the letter, from Senator Chris Murphy (of Connecticut): Dear Mr. Murdoch: I write today to urge you to not broadcast NASCAR’s NRA 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on April 13th. This race, which is being sponsored by the National Rifle Association (NRA), is going to take place during the Senate’s consideration of legislation to […]
Reflections on One Month of Twitter
I announced last month that I had joined Twitter, using the account @orinkerr. One month and 100 tweets later, I’ve enjoyed the experience so far. I joined Twitter mostly because lots of people in the cyber/privacy world use it, so I figured it was good way to follow and interact with folks in the field. […]
The Dukes of Hazzard and Braveheart in the Eleventh Circuit
On Wednesday, Judge Pryor handed down a Fourth Amendment decision in Myers v. Bowman that begins: This appeal presents the question whether three officials in a rural county of Georgia are entitled to a summary judgment against a complaint that they violated the civil rights of a father and son who had been involved in […]
The Volokh Conspiracy: Emory Law Follies 2013 version
My Emory Law students, for their Follies 2013 show (the best I’ve seen in the four years I’ve been at Emory), have their own take on the Volokh Conspiracy.