Author Archive | David Kopel

The National Academy of Sciences has issued yet another report reaffirming the basic scientific consensus about genetically engineered food: It’s safe. The NAS has (once again) concluded that what matters is the product, not how it was produced. This means that for regulatory purposes it should be irrelevant whether a given food product was produced […]

Can you waive an argument that your oppponent waived an argument? Apparently so, according to this decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In U.S. v. Delgado-Garcia, the court found that the defendants, who were charged with conspiring and attempting to bring illegal aliens into the country, waived most of the […]

I will admit to not being the biggest fan of organized labor. (Threats against one’s life and one’s family as a child will do that to a guy.) Even setting aside my visceral hostility to unions, I was schocked to come across this report (third item) that John Kerry is now opposed to secret ballots […]

I saw “The Bourne Supremacy” this weekend, the sequel to the spy-thriller hit “The Bourne Identity.” I enjoyed the film, especially the frenetic car chase, even if it had even less to do with the Robert Ludlum book upon which it was based than the first one. (For the record, Ludlum’s “The Bourne Identity” is […]

I’ve been listening to Everlast‘s “Whitey Ford Sings the Blues” a fair amount of late. This album was Everlast’s reemergence as a solo artist after his tour with the hard-edged Irish rap group, House of Pain. (In his first incarnation he was an ’80s b-boy, and part of Ice-T’s Rhyme Syndicate.) Although I hadn’t listened […]

Mark Kleiman complains that the WSJ editorial page is “full of Bush lit” for suggesting that the Joseph Wilson controversy might have a legal bearing on whether the leaker of Valerie Plame’s identity can be prosecuted. As evidence, he cites a news story in yesterdays WSJ which reports: Whether or not it damages [Wilson] or […]

That seems to be the implication of the “money quote” Daniel Drezner highlights from David Victor’s CFR monograph on climate change policy.

I concur with Orin’s post below that the ideological mix of judges on lower courts does not explain their response to the Blakely decision. Exhibit A to WIll Baude’s argument is Paul Cassell. As an academic, Cassell was an advocate of the sentencing guidelines, yet he was one of the first federal judges to find […]

Michael Moore sought to use The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in Fahrenheit 9/11. As Moore tells the story: At the end of the film Bush says “Fool me once, shame on… me. I won’t get fooled again.” Clearly that moment demands that we hear Roger Daltrey scream, “Won’t get fooled again!” That’s how I […]

In response to my post on statutory rape law in Brazil, a reader from the Phillippines informs me that the Phillippine penal code provides that in cases of rape “the subsequent valid marriage between the offender and the offended party shall extinguish the criminal action or the penalty imposed.” I find this a little less […]

Last week, the WSJ ran an op-ed by University of Chicago law professors Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule that could best be described as anti-anti-torture memos. Although not defending the specific conclusions of the individual OLC memos on torture, the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to enemy combatants, and so on, the op-ed strongly challenged […]

David Frum calls Spiderman 2 “the great pro-Bush movie of the summer.” I’ll at least agree with Frum that it was a great summer movie. Update: A reader e-mails this comment: Frum does seem to be stretching here. Last I checked Peter Parker was an orphan who is struggling to pay for college by delivering […]

Yesterday’s print WSJ contained a front page (middle column) story on a bizarre statutory rape case. Dr. Boadyr Veloso, a “politically prominent” physician, was convicted in 2000 for staturoy rape of seven girls, and sentenced to ten years and eight months in prison. In February 2004, however, Dr. Veloso was released and his sentence nullified. […]

“Get Born” by Jet has to be one of the best rock debut albums in quite some time. You can hear their influences (Rolling Stones, the Kinks, AC/DC, Oasis) throughout the album, yet it remains fresh and new. The lyrics aren’t the most profound, but they work with the music. This is true rock and […]

It is hard to think of a more appropriate song lyric for the Fourth of July than the national anthem. While everyone knows the first verse to Francis Scott Key’s Star Spangled Banner, hardly anyone knows the second (let alone all four). Of note, the anthem was written during the war of 1812, not the […]