Author Archive | David Post

Mike Wilbon, in today’s Washington Post sports pages, reports that in the 17 presidential elections since 1940, the incumbent party has prevailed whenever the Washington Redskins won their last home game prior to the election, while the incumbent party has been turned out whenever the ‘Skins lost their last home game before the election. [With […]

As those of you who followed the dust-ups here on the VC after some of my earlier postings critical of Sarah Palin will not be surprised to hear, I’ll be pulling the Obama lever on Tuesday – and quite enthusiastically, too. I consider myself a “pragmatic libertarian” – I’m not a big fan of the […]

Do any commenters have information about when this term was first used, and who thought it up? The earliest use in a court case I have found is in a New York decision in 1964, but there appear to be prior uses starting at least in the 1950s. There is an urban legend that the […]

I happened yesterday to have a long drive up the East Coast, during which I spent a fair bit of time listening to AM radio — mostly sports talk, some of the news or other talk stations. It’s an interesting take on things, the AM radio take. In about an hour and half of the […]

Not to take attention away from pressing matters like the collapse of the world economy and the end of life as we know it here on earth, but . . . even those of you who are, like me, casual Red Sox fans gotta love those Tampa Bay Rays, who may be on the verge […]

Did I miss it, or is nobody even paying lip service to the idea that only the Board of Directors can make decisions for (banking) corporations of the kind the banks have apparently made by “accepting” the Treasury’s latest plan? As I understand things, Bernanke, Paulson, Geitner and the other gov’t officials met with the […]

On today’s NY Times op-ed page, Tommy McCall has a very interesting graphic on the performance of the stock market under Democratic and Republican presidents. Each of the two parties has been in control of the White House for 40 of the last 80 years; on average, during Democratic administrations, the S&P index has increased […]

In a recent post, Eric Posner asks a very interesting question: No one who believes that the government exploited fears after 9/11 to strengthen its security powers is now saying that the government is exploiting financial crisis fears in order to justify taking control of credit markets. No one who thinks that government would use […]

A bit over-the-top, but Richard Dooling’s essay in today’s NY Times (“The Rise of the Machines”) has some ring of truth to it, to my eyes. It blames the financial crisis, in effect, on computers — or, more precisely, on the networked machine intelligence without which the complex financial instruments now unraveling before our eyes […]

For obvious reasons, those on the left have seized on the Troopergate report as evidence of Gov. Palin’s shoddy tactics and unfitness to serve as Vice President. That’s entirely predictable. But how about the libertarians? You’d think that libertarians would be concerned about a charge that a state executive abused her executive power for personal […]

During the brouhaha over some of my recent “Sarah Palin is an embarrassment” postings — I’m quite certain we set the Volokh Conspiracy record for number of comments on a single posting (419 at last count) — one dubious reader (who shall remain nameless – you can look it up easily enough if you’re interested) […]

A genre of humor of which I was previously unaware (courtesy of my daughter): elementary particle jokes. So a neutron walked into a bar and says, “i’d like a beer, please.” And the bartender gives him one and the neutron says, “thanks, how much?” and the bartender says, “For you? No charge.” So one ion […]

I’ve been thinking about co-conspirator Eric Posner’s analogy (see chained post) in regard to the recent Treasury Dep’t moves in the banking bailout: It is now clear that Treasury will take a more aggressive approach. Not only will it buy commercial paper; it will buy equity in banks. . . . People call this process […]

I’ve been teaching copyright law for more than a decade, but I just noticed something most peculiar in the Copyright Act that I’m not sure has a parallel anywhere else in the US Code. Here’s the background. Section 101 of the Copyright Act defines a “Work Made for Hire” as either (1) a work prepared […]

Here’s Gov. Palin during the debate with Sen. Biden: “Now you [Biden] said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic. Patriotic is saying, government, you know, […]