Author Archive | David Bernstein

More evidence that the smart money is betting against a “soft landing,” from today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription only): To get a lay of the land, we tracked down Kenneth Heebner, who since 1994 has managed the $1.2 billion CGM Realty Fund. It has the best 10-year record of all real-estate-focused mutual funds, according to […]

I know it’s a little late in the game, but I just read Freakonomics over the weekend. It’s a good read, and I applaud the authors for bringing economic reasoning to the masses (okay, the small percentage of folks who actually read nonfiction). On the other hand, in some ways I was underwhelmed. Some of […]

Elevate your Independence Day by reading this moving 1852 oration by Frederick Douglass in its entirety. There is so much to appreciate in this speech, it is difficult to select excerpts. But here is one passage I particularly like: But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility […]

By far the funniest part of this bit is at the very start. (Hat tip Right Coast).

Israel is poised to launch a major military operation in Gaza, which threatens to undo its withdrawal from that territory, and cause major civilian casualties (which, in fact, would serve the interests of the factions involved in the kidnapping), not to mention further casualties among IDF forces. What if, instead, Israel informed the kidnappers that […]

Seen on the Housing Bubble Blog: For Sale By Owner – The Ultimate Secure Home: Strategically located in the awesome San Juan mountains of Southwest Colorado, this patented steel-reinforced concrete earth home was built to withstand almost any natural or man-made disaster you can name. It is more secure, safe, and functional than any conventional […]

Lots of good stuff over on Agoraphilia by Glen Whitman and Tom Bell. I was especially taken with this post by Glen, entitled Moral Philosophy by Backward Induction. Here’s the gist: In intellectual circles, we usually regard moral philosophy as preceding political philosophy. We therefore address these two questions either (a) separately, or (b) in […]

This Friday, open to the public. I’ll be one of the speakers. Here are the details: Civil Rights Commission To Examine Affirmative Action in Law Schools 6/12/2006 5:37:00 PM ——————————————————————————– To: National Desk, Legal Reporter Contact: Manuel Alba of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 202-376-7700 News Advisory: Civil Rights Commission To Examine Affirmative Action in […]

I’ve just about finished reading historian Paul Moreno’s new book, Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History. I’m reviewing the book for the Independent Review, and will post a link when it’s published. But for now, I want to strongly (but briefly) recommend the book. In the course of researching my book, Only One […]

A few weeks ago I wrote about a segment I saw on Israeli t.v. about Palestinians who intended to commit suicide murders who had babies in Israeli prisons. My Hebrew is inadequate, but my Israeli hosts told me that (as I had understood) the pregnancies were the result of conjugal visits. A reader writes to […]

Jonathan Zasloff cautions against a rush to judgment, noting that the cause of the deaths has not yet been determined, and the incident may turn out to be another instance, like the death of 12 year old Mohammed al-Dura a few years back, in which Palestinian propaganda managed to turn manslaughter by inept Palestinians into […]

I couldn’t believe my ears, so I asked my Israeli companions to translate, in case I was completely miscomprehending (my Hebrew isn’t great), but they confirmed it. I was watching a show about life in Israeli prisons, and it eventually reached a segment about a wing of an Israeli prison where they incarcerate Arab women […]

That’s the focus of Chapter 12 of You Can’t Say That!, and I recently came across an interesting article discussing debate over the topic within the ACLU way back in 1972. (I’m supposed to be on a blogging break, but I’m packing and I’m afraid I’ll lose this article in the shuffle.) It’s from the […]

From the George Mason Law School website: Will earned his B.A. in Political Science from Monmouth University in 1996. As a student at Mason Law, Will graduated in the top 10% of his class and was a leader in many student activities. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the George Mason Civil Rights Law Journal and […]

I’ll be busy for the next month or so getting ready to leave Ann Arbor (as my visit at Michigan comes to an end), traveling to Israel, and then moving in to a new place. So, I won’t be blogging again until sometime in June.