Author Archive | David Bernstein

If you are thinking about moving in the foreseeable future, I urge you to bookmark Movingscam.com. Founded by the victim of a moving scam, the site warns readers away from known scammers, provides tips regarding how to find a reliable mover, has a list of reliable movers based on reader feedback, and has a discussion […]

Opponents of the use of the Due Process Clause to protect substantive rights, notably Robert Bork (see, e.g., Coercing Virtue p. 55), trace the origins of “substantive due process” to Scott v. Sandford. This is disingenuous (or perhaps ignorant) on two levels. First, there is ample evidence that Scott did not originate that the concept […]

According to WESH Channel 2, “Orlando is becoming one of the most difficult cities in America to sell a home for fair-market value.” Note to news editors at WESH: “fair market value” is the price at which buyers and sellers are willing to conclude a deal. If sellers can’t sell their homes, by definition they […]

Ashland University, a church-affiliated school denied tenure to an Objectivist historian because he did not support the “Judeo-Christian tradition.” A religious institution certainly has every right to enforce its ideology, but only in accordance with the contracts it signs with faculty. In this case, it appears that Ashland’s academic regulations made it far from clear […]

The New York Times has this piece on the superiority of British chocolate over American standards like the Hershey bar. What the article misses is that chocolate everywhere, not just Britain, is better than U.S. chocolate. Forget Belgium–even places that I wouldn’t have expected to be chocolate havens, like Israel and Greece, have basic chocolate […]

This Wikidedia entry brings back some fond memories of the late, great Action Park of New Jersey. Where else could a fourteen year old ride a go cart at highway speeds? I didn’t know that local doctors referred to it as “Traction Park,” but I’m not surprised. When I went with some friends in 1981, […]

“Frankly, Michael Moore is an example of why the health care system costs so much in this country. He clearly is one of the reasons that we have a very expensive system. I know that from my own personal experience,” said Huckabee, who lost more than 110 pounds and became an avid runner after he […]

Then read this article. The two most salient points are that becoming a tenure-track law professor is far from “retiring,” and the job is primarily “a writing job, not a teaching job.” If, for example, you have no law review publications, almost no one is going to take you seriously as a faculty candidate, and […]

From the amicus brief of the Committee of Concerned Social Scientists, State (New Jersey) v. Michaels, one of the bogus child care sex abuse cases of the late 80s and early 90s: After reading a number of these interviews, it is difficult to believe that adults charged with the care and protection of young children […]

Some comments to Ilya’s post on Brink Lindsey reminded me that I get puzzled when I see libertarian and conservative think tanks (and individuals) go ballistic whenever anyone suggests having the government require “universal health care.” See, e.g., the controversies in Massachusetts and California. It seems to me we already have universal health care; by […]

With the Mearsheimer and Walt book “The Israel Lobby” due out next month, I thought I’d preemptively discuss “the anti-Israel Lobby,” using a similarly broad definition for the “anti-Israel Lobby” as M & W do for the “Israel Lobby”. In the United States, the presumptive anti-Israel lobby includes the 20% or so of Americans who […]

Israeli political scientist Shlomo Avineri reminds us that “post-Zionism” among Israeli leftist academics is, for the most part, just anti-Zionism made more fashionable. The post-Zionists are the intellectual, and in many cases literal, heirs of the small but vocal anti-Zionist far Left that managed to accompany the Zionist movement to Israel. Even at the height […]

Happy 231st birthday to the USA, happy 40th to me, and, as of this past Sunday, happy blogversay to one of the oldest (and one of my favorite) legal blogs, Overlawyered.com. To be honest, when Wally Olson announced he was staring the Overlawyered site, well before the word “blog” was invented, I thought posting stuff […]

The Bernsteins are buying a house! I’ll blog more about this later (probably not until after the closing), but for now I’ll just say that the house meets our needs, at a price within our budget. For now, I’m focused on trying to get the mortgage rate. I have a mortgage broker my realtor recommends, […]

Inside Higher Ed has the details. This is a significant victory for those of us who have noted the ABA’s abuse of its accreditation power to impose arbitrary and often counterproductive rules on law schools. You can find previous discussions of the controversy here, here, here, and here. Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer.