Author Archive | David Bernstein

Washington Times: Few noticed last week when, during the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, the three leading candidates bolted from left-liberal orthodoxy with a pledge to enforce the Solomon Amendment. “There’s a federal statute on the books which says that, if a college or university does not provide space for military recruiters or provide […]

Daytona Beach News-Journal: Local residents Arline and Richard Pendl have been trying to sell their home in Sunrise Oaks for nearly a year. But no serious takers have surfaced for the four-bedroom, 2,600-square-foot home with a double garage…. So while they wait, the Pendls have dug in their heels and dropped their asking price to […]

Sixty years ago, when Egypt occupied Gaza, it refused to grant the local Arab residents, native Gazans and refugees from the Arab-Israeli war of 1947-48, citizenship. Instead, the Egyptian government intentionally cut them off from Egypt and kept them impoverished, so they could be used as a propaganda and military weapon against Israel. When Israel […]

Apparently, a student editor was assigned to write about Philip Morris USA v. Williams, but thought this far too mundane a topic. Here’s the first paragraph: The history of the Fourteenth Amendment is one of hierarchy and capitalism. In the Amendment’s first 139 years, courts have consistently used it to perpetuate dominant notions of class […]

Capital University law prof, former FEC Commissioner, and Romney supporter Brad Smith has this to say about why so few conservative law professors have jumped on the McCain bandwagon: I think that conservative law professors, who as I say, probably care more about the issue of judges and are on average in a better position […]

A “study” out of Columbia Law School, trumpeted in a law school press release, boldly states that based on LSAC data African American and Mexican American matriculation in law schools declined between 1992 and 2005, even though more law school slots are available overall due to the opening of new law schools. There are some […]

I haven’t been watching this PBS documentary series (mostly because I don’t watch t.v.), but a q & a with the writer/director raises a question. He writes, “Jewish Americans are probably the most liberal of any white ethnic group, and that liberalism dates from this deep attachment to F.D.R., the New Deal and the liberal […]

It has somehow become part of conventional wisdom that Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 presidential campaign with a blatant appeal to southern racism by engaging in a vigorous defense of “states’ rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. I’ve read it myself so often I was sure that it […]

As I’ve discussed previously, Senator Obama’s church’s magazine, The Trumpet, recently honored Louis Farrakhan at a banquet for his devotion to “truth.” The magazine quoted Obama’s “spiritual mentor,” Rev. Wright, as praising Farrakhan for his “astounding and eyeopening” analysis of the “racial ills of this nation,” a “perspective” that is “helpful and honest.” Farrakhan, of […]

David Beito at Liberty and Power wonders why Ron Paul isn’t using his financial resources to project a libertarian message. Though I was only 13, I still remember hearing a radio ad for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ed Clark, the most successful (1% of the vote in a five-way race with Reagan, Carter, Anderson, and […]

The problem with a suit like this is that it costs the plaintiff nothing, because the Yale Law School clinic is paying the bill, and would cost a typical defendant (Yoo says that he has friends who will defend him for free) lots to defend. Even if the clinic loses, and badly, it gets publicity […]

Given all the criticism that been leveled in the Left blogosphere at Richard Cohen (see, e.g., this compilation) for raising the issue of Obama’s close ties to a minister and church that praise and honor Louis Farrakhan for his “honesty” and devotion to truth, I’m sure glad that prominent liberal bloggers, and leading Cohen-basher Andrew […]

Obama: “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decisions with which I agree.” The Senator assumes wrong. As I noted […]

The issue is quickly hitting the mainstream, as the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen has a column today that starts: Barack Obama is a member of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama’s spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright’s daughters serve as […]

I’ve been reading some recent blog posts, linked by Instapundit, about Barack Obama’s church, the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, an Afrocentric church that preaches what the New York Times calls Black liberation theology. The senior pastor (and former pastor) of the church is one Jeremiah A. Wright. Rev. Wright, who, according to […]