Author Archive | David Bernstein

I’ve only given investment advice once on the VC, and that was back on August 1, when I suggested that a good home for “speculative money” would be Jan. 2007 puts on homebuilding stocks. As you can see from these three-month charts, this was a very good call, though I should have suggested October or […]

When the Harriett Miers was first announced, I noted that the common thread between her and John Roberts was that they were both likely to uphold the use of executive power in the War on Terror, having both served faithfully in the Executive branch. I’m currently reading Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, and I […]

Tim Sandefur dissects it in Liberty Magazine.

This otherwise only mildly interesting essay by Eric Hobsbawm on diaspora Jewry raises once again the issue of why Karl Marx is commonly considered to have been a Jew. My understanding is that Marx’s parents converted to Christianity, and Marx was raised and educated as a Christian. Marx also expressed notoriously ignorant, prejudiced and hostile […]

As a result of my enthusiastic review of Ken Kersch’s Constructing Civil Liberties posted yesterday, the book went from 400,000 to as high as 932 on Amazon yesterday. I don’t know how many books that represents, but still, wow! Book reviews, radio talk show appearances, etc., will rarely move an academic book that high. Methinks […]

Here’s my very enthusiastic review, out in the current American Historical Review: This is a relentlessly interesting book, one that can’t help but change the way the reader understands twentieth century American constitutional development. As Kersch persuasively argues, for much of the late twentieth century, American constitutional history was dominated by a whiggish narrative in […]

Cruising around the blogosphere lately,* I’ve been amazed that there seems to be something approaching a consensus choice among conservatives and libertarians (at least those who blog and who contribute to comments sections of blog) for the Supreme Court: D.C. Circuit judge and former California Supreme Court justice Janice Rogers Brown [eds. acknowledgement: but for […]

I’ve seen a lot of silly theories put forth by liberal bloggers and commentators about why the “conservative elite” opposes the Miers nomination. So let’s put the shoe on the other foot. How would the “liberal elite” have reacted if, instead of nominating Ginsburg or Breyer, Clinton, after promising to nominate Justices in the mode […]

Miers on the Federalist Society, from a 1989 trial transcript (via Drudge): Q. Ms. Miers, are you a member of any predominantly minority organizations, such as the NAACP, Black Chamber of Commerce, Urban League or any other predominantly minority organizations? A. Women minorities? Q. Well, maybe predominantly racial and ethnic minorities? A. No. Q. . […]

Human Events has published an opinion piece I wrote on President Bush’s suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act in the Katrina zone. When I last posted on this, commentors asked for a more detailed explanation of how Davis-Bacon, passed with the intent of keeping blacks from working on federal construction projects, still hurts minorities today. Here’s […]

You Can’t Say That! in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty.

I don’t always agree with Alan Dershowitz, but I’m with him in his battle against the execrable Norman Finkelstein, whom he eviscerates here.

lots of interesting stuff over at Overlawyered.com.

“She’s a better choice than [Alberto] Gonzales.” An acquaintance of mine, with close ties to top Republican lawyers, when asked to provide the best defense he’s heard of the Miers nomination.

In the Comments to my last post, commentator “Steve” writes: What bothers me is that there is not supposed to be a religious test for public office, and Republicans scream bloody murder every time a Democrat so much as mentions a nominee’s religion (this came up at the Pryor hearings). So it’s strange, in this […]