Author Archive | David Post

It occurs to me that it might not be too long before the phrase “phone call” disappears — more and more people aren’t using “phones” for their voice communications as much these days, with blackberries and Skype and all the rest. Though I suppose the phrase could survive and end up in the “hey, i […]

So Ozzie Guillen, the outspoken and outrageous (and very successful) manager of the Chicago White Sox, has been fined by the Commissioner of Baseball and sent to a re-education facility — oops, I mean “has to undergo sensitivity training” — for calling a local Chicago reporter a “fag.” [Here’s the ESPN story] I don’t know […]

The refs are working hard to screw the World Cup up, proving the wisdom of the old adage: “players win games, coaches lose games, and refs ruin games.” The patently absurd penalty called against the US in its game against Ghana was not the worst of it. My two candidates for the worst of it: […]

Nice article by King Kaufman over on Salon about scoring (in the World Cup, that is). As he points out, the statistic that the ESPN guys insist on throwing into our faces at every possible opportunity (i.e., “the team that scores first is 21-2-3 in this tournament so far!”) is basically meaningless; in a low-scoring […]

There is a single corner of the world where nobody is paying the slightest attention to the World Cup — what’s up with that? It’s not enough to say India and Pakistan don’t have “soccer culture” — China, and Korea, and Japan, and Thailand, and Togo, and Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia, and . . . […]

I feel like I unleashed a real torrent with my earlier posting about the manifold joys (not shared by all commenters, to put it mildly!)of the World Cup. Naysayers should watch the first five minutes of today’s Argentina-Serbia&Montenegro match for a perfect illustration of what I had in mind. Argentina scored a truly magnificent goal […]

As I am hardly the first to observe, Americans are finally catching on, this World Cup season, to soccer. It’s not only that the TV ratings are soaring — it’s that they (i.e., we) are finally developing the kind of passion for the game that everyone else in the world seems to have by genetic […]

A terrific, insightful piece by Roger Cohen today in the Int’l Herald Tribune on the political mess in Italy and why, in a sense, it matters.

In preparation for my stay in Italy this semester, I read, a few months ago, Alessandro Manzoni’s extraordinary novel “The Betrothed” (“I Promessi Sposi”). [In English, alas — my Italian is getting good, but it’s not that good …] It’s the great 19th-century Italian novel — every schoolchild reads it, everybody knows it inside and […]

Mike Livingstone has a nice summary here of what he (rightly, I think) calls “the most extraordinary day in recent Italian history” — yesterday, when the results of the election were announced and, simultaneously, Bernard Provenzano, the leader of the Sicilian mafia who had been in hiding for forty three years, was finally arrested. It […]

Davide Berretta, in today’s International Herald Tribune, has a very smart piece about Silvio Berlusconi (“Il Cavaliere,” as the press sometimes refers to him here in Italy) and the current national election campaign. Things have been getting a bit weird during this final week (voting is Sunday and Monday) of the campaign. First, in Monday […]

One fun thing about GMU’s Final Four run is that it has caused the national spotlight to fall on some of the centers of excellence here at GMU that had previously been little-known, including, of course the law school, but other programs as well. Another area, known to VC readers through our co-conspirator Tyler Cowen, […]

Much to my surprise and dismay, it appears that I have been badly misquoted by Federal Bankruptcy Judge (and former law professor) Bruce Markell regarding my testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding BAPCPA. Not only did Judge Markell grossly take my words out of context in a published judicial opinion but I understand that […]

In case you were wondering, the Bill of Rights Institute has a profile of the “Father of the Bill of Rights.”

George Mason’s stunning, amazing run through the tournament continues. We have now knocked out the last two champs and the winners of 3 of the last 6. Stunning, breathtaking results, and magical games. Yesterday was probably still the first chance most of the country had to see us play, as from what I read, CBS […]