Author Archive | David Bernstein

Here’s the police report. And here’s an article from the Boston Globe detailing Gates’s accusations of racism. Draw your own conclusions [but note that we have a full statement from the cops, and we don’t have Gates’s side of the story. Here is Gates’s version of events. FWIW, even if the cops’ story is 100% […]

This video has almost 1 million YouTube hits, but it’s new to me. Pretty shocking stuff; the Fed is lending trillions of dollars, with apparently no oversight, even internally.

Let the Democrats put forward three different health care reform proposals. Let the Republicans put forward two different proposals. Find five states to volunteer. Each state adopts one of the proposals. Wait several years. See if any of these proposals worked out well, and if so, which one seems best, and why. Learn from this […]

Candidate Obama, June 2008, in front of AIPAC: “And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” Obama Administration, July 2009: “The United States views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction.” [I’ve edited slightly to […]

Inter Press Service Bernstein maintained that “it’s extremely unwise for a human rights group to raise money in a totalitarian country, even from human rights advocates in that country.” Whitson said the claim had no grounds, noting that the notion “that any money from Saudi Arabia is tainted because it comes from a country with […]

Kevin Jon Heller, an American teaching international criminal law in Australia [corrected], has been on a campaign at his blog to discredit my posts about Human Rights Watch. It’s therefore worh reprinting an exchange from the comments on one of his posts on the issue: Commenter: Putting aside Professor Bernstein’s post, are your comfortable with […]

Human Rights Watch’s fundraising in Saudi Arabia has cast a welcome light on the organization’s anti-Israel agenda. Much of the response among HRW’s defenders has been along the lines of, “how dare you attack a human rights organization? Typical right-wing Zionist crap, attacking the messenger.” This criticism, of course, presumes that HRW is acting in […]

Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic follows up on the controversy surrounding my piece on HRW’s fundraiser in Saudi Arabia. Goldberg reprints some rather remarkable email correspondence with Kenneth Roth, director of HRW, which is worth reading in full. But here’s the conclusion: In other words, yes, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division […]

In his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote, “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Do you agree?

I blogged in June about a trip a delegation from Human Rights Watch took to Saudi Arabia, where Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa division, spoke at an event at which funds were raised for HRW. She highlighted HRW’s work in Gaza, and HRW’s battles with “pro-Israel pressure groups in […]

Inside Higher Ed has a story about the ongoing controversy over Thio Li-ann of the National University of Singapore, who will be teaching International Human Rights at NYU as a visitor this Fall. As IHE report, she is an “outspoken opponent of gay rights. Thio has argued repeatedly and graphically that her country should continue […]

I just dropped my daughter off at “tot” day camp, and discovered that courtesy of Uncle Sam, she’ll be getting a free USDA lunch. But it’s not like the federal government ever wastes money or anything. UPDATE: I should add that camp ends at 12:15, so there is really no need for the camp to […]

In the latest issue of Regulation, Richard Epstein has a scathing review (go to page 3) of Robert Bork’s latest book, a collection of his writings over several decades: what is so striking about Bork’s collection of ipse dixits is that they never rest on the close and careful reading of text that the originalist […]

Ha’aretz has a story that makes Netanyahu sound like a loon (which, given Ha’retz’s political perspective, is exactly how they want to make him sound). According to the story: “He thought that his speech at Bar-Ilan would become mandatory reading at schools in the United States, and when he realized that Obama gave no such […]

Damon Root has an interesting review of this book, which the publisher describes as explaining “the major themes of the anti-racist, classical liberal tradition of individual liberty and equality.”