Author Archive | David Bernstein

My colleague Ilya Somin notes that unlike the Jewish community as a whole, Jews from the former Soviet Union overwhelmingly supported President Bush. Ilya writes: “I’m still waiting for the political payoff for our loyal support. For example, instead of naming a Hispanic supreme court justice, why not name Eugene Volokh?” Sounds great to me.

I’ve been reporting on the Professor Joseph Massad controversy at Columbia, which you can follow via the links below. I’ve reproduced, via Juan Cole, Massad’s statement in his own defense, which I will mostly let speak for itself. My quick comments: The difficulty with Massad seems less that he is anti-Israel, as such, and I’ve […]

ChillingEffects.org reproduces a complaint letter from the owner of PenisEnlargement.com to google, apparently asking google to remove links to a competing site that allegedly illegally copied some of the sender’s copyrighted content. My heart bleeds for this poor victim of copyright infringement.

Steve Bainbridge’s post, discussed below, cites Russell Kirk’s famous insult of libertarians as “chirping sectaries.” This reminded me of my college days, when I was testing out various political philosophies. I decided to spend Spring Break (yes, it was a wild college life for me!) reading the three books National Review consistently referred as the […]

Steve Bainbridge manages to write Barry Goldwater out of the conservative movement. Only “annoying libertarians,” you see, think the federal government has no business dictating morality to the public, or thinks it’s beyond the government’s constitutional power to do so. I still remember back around 1981, when Goldwater was told that Jerry Falwell said that […]

A nice review of my You Can’t Say That! in Choice, which publishes reviews for academic libraries. Excerpt: How does US political culture in the 21st century accommodate the conflicts between freedom of speech, association and religion, and the various state and federal antidiscrimination laws? Bernstein (law George Mason Univ.) superbly navigates the rough waters […]

If, as Eugene and others have suggested, it was voters who turned out to vote against gay marriage who gave Bush his margin of victory in Ohio, it lends credence to the theory that the reason Kerry and Edwards both noted that Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter was to discourage turnout among precisely these […]

The Volokh Conspiracy and I are featured prominently in this post-election column in the Newark Star-Ledger. Money quote: That idea [that the Federal Government should embrace “traditional values”] is anathema to those who take the Constitution seriously. It’s not simply a question of separation of church and state, said Bernstein, but “a separation of everything […]

My wife is selling an O’Connor bobblehead on Ebay. We will donate the proceeds from this one to Israel’s Red Magen David, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. Its resources have been stressed by its role as the first responder to terrorist attacks (the organization runs Israel’s ambulance service). If you don’t want the […]

Those interested in tort reform issues should head on over to the Point of Law blog tonight, where Wally Olson and friends will be live-blogging state tort reform ballot initiatives.

This morning, I was still unhappily contemplating whether to vote for Bush or Badnarik (the Libertarian) when my wife (who has Democratic tendencies), told me that she was so disgusted with the candidate selection that she was going to write in my name, and that I would make a better president than any of them […]

Consider this article next time you hear someone whining about Israeli checkpoints on the West Bank.

A poster distributed at Northeastern Illinois University, as part of a tribute to Sheikh Yassin,, via Little Green Footballs. Yassin, lest we forget, was, as “spiritual leader” of the Hamas terrorist group, directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians. Other than Arafat, Yassin is likely also the individual most responsible for […]

With Chief Justice Rehnquist ill and Republicans facing the possibility of a loss of the presidency, it’s time for those of us not at all pleased with the prospect of a President Kerry appointing Rehnquist’s replacement to put the blame squarely where it belongs: on Rehnquist. The man has been on the Court for over […]

This is the most depressing presidential election for a libertarian since 1972. Maybe it’s worse than 1972, because that year one could, with good conscience, vote for Libertarian candidate John Hospers. This year, the Libertarian candidate is embarassing. And Ralph Nader has become a parody of the man who once supported some forms of deregulation […]