What’s the difference between more pork and a morepork?
Archive | May, 2013
Law Professor Salaries
Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog provides a table of law professor salary data reported by a handful of schools to the annual survey request from the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT); in addition to those reported salary figures (assistant professor, tenured professor, summer stipend), there are links to individual salaries at a number of […]
Prison reviews on Yelp
In my article Prison Vouchers, I speculated on information problems for prisoners choosing prisons (and the analogous problems for school choice) and how those might be resolved (some paragraph breaks added): Convicted defendants may not know the actual quality of prisons, just as parents may not know the actual quality of schools. Does this argument […]
John Villasenor on Domestic Drones, Airspace Safety, and Privacy Protection
John Villasenor – a professor of engineering at UCLA and a Brookings Institution senior fellow – has a new article at Slate on the domestic use of drones. (The article part of a conference held yesterday at the New America Foundation in conjunction with Arizona State University on domestic drone policy, with many fine participants; […]
Louisiana Supreme Court Rules Voucher Plan Violates State Constitution
In a 6-1 decision, the Supreme Court of Louisiana has ruled that a statewide educational voucher plan is unconstitutional. The decision is here.
“Judge Rips Obama’s Right-Wing Plan B Stance”
Salon has an interesting report on Tuesday’s court hearing before federal district judge Edward Korman in which the Administration sought to defend its newly announced policy of limiting the over-the-counter availability of Plan-B contraception to females 15 and older instead of removing all restrictions as Korman had previously ordered. A taste: This morning, Korman repeatedly […]
Testifying on cybersecurity before the Senate Judiciary Committee
I’ll be testifying this morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and terrorism. My testimony will touch on the Attribution Revolution in cybersecurity, the need to move from attribution to creative forms of retribution, and the need to give victims more leeway to investigate the hackers who attack them. Here are some excerpts: That […]
A Constitutional Law Lesson for Steve Benen
On Monday, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill that would bar state officials from enforcing any new federal gun laws. Via Kevin Drum, I see that the MaddowBlog’s Steve Benen calls the bill “crazy.” In this case, Texas’ nullification bill effectively hopes to freeze the status quo of federal gun laws in place […]
The Frequent Error Illusion
A commenter on the “non-believer epitaph” thread writes, “Epitaph” is probably used for “epithet” more often than “epithet” is. I can’t help but wonder if it’s only a matter of time before epithet becomes an archaic word and epitaph replaces it completely. This, I think, overestimates the frequency of the error. A quick Google search […]
Positive Rights, the Constitution, and Conservatives and Moderate Libertarians
Some recent conversations I’ve heard about “positive rights” and American legal traditions made me want to repeat something I’ve written before: While it’s true that the U.S. Constitution lacks some of the “positive rights” that people sometimes discuss under that label (e.g., a right to shelter, to medical care, to a subsistence income, and so […]
Same-Sex Marriage in Delaware
The state senate in Delaware is having a final debate on a same-sex marriage bill. The audio is available here, just click on “Senate in session.” The Minnesota state house of representatives will vote on a marriage bill on Thursday. UPDATE: The Delaware Senate just passed the bill, 12-9. The state house has already passed the […]
A Blue Ridge Bunker
Jess Bravin has an interesting report on the Cold War-era plans to relocate the Supreme Court to Asheville, North Carolina in the event of an enemy attack on Washington, D.C.
“The Non-Believer Epitaph”
From an AP story about trouble in Pakistan (thanks to Thomas Asch for the pointer): Most of the deadly attacks targeting Shiites in Pakistan have been carried out by a group affiliated with the SSP. Yet the renamed SSP is fighting elections as part of a coalition of six radical religious parties. Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi, […]
Of course, that explains everything …
Most people know that China’s largest telecommunications supplier, Huawei, has been largely excluded from the US market because of official allegations that it will enable Chinese cyberespionage and wiretapping. What none of us realized, apparently, is the real reason that Huawei’s been forced out. Luckily, the company’s head of Cyber Security, John Suffolk, is happy […]
D.C. Circuit Voids NLRB Posting Rule
This morning, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in National Association of Manufacturers v. National Labor Relations Board, struck down a new NLRB regulation requiring employers to post a notice of employee rights under the National Labor Relations Act on their properties and websites. Judge Randoph wrote the opinion for […]