Author Archive | Ilya Somin

I’ve been debating this question with Ed Whelan over on NRO’s Bench Memos blog. Setting aside the question whether gay marriage is a good or a bad idea, I argue that FMA proponents have not demonstrated the sort of federal interest that would justify federal intervention, let alone a change to the Constitution. Here are […]

Although some country stations refuse to play their music, the Dixie Chicks seem are doing okay. Their new album hit number one in sales on the Billboard charts this week, and also topped the country album charts. Either their fans don’t care about the trio’s politics — or they do care, and the Chicks are […]

This Saturday I will be speaking at the Skeptic Society conference “The Environmental Wars: The Science Behind the Politics,” hosted by Dr. Michael Shermer at the California Institute of Technology. My talk is titled “The Fables of Federal Environmental Regulation: A Re–examination of the Reasons for Federal Environmental Regulation.” Other speakers at the conference include […]

An interesting and potentially important post-Kelo public use case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (hat tip to Wright Gore, President of the Western Seafood Co., who brought this case to my attention). In Western Seafood Co. v. City of Freeport, part of a property owner’s lot is being […]

Hunter College epidemiologist Philip Alcabes has an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing against an “abstinence only” approach to nicotine. “Like other abstinence campaigns (alcohol prohibition, sexual abstinence before marriage, just saying ‘no’ to drugs), this one is both moralistic and ineffective,” he argues. Instead Alcabes suggests public health advocates should be willing to promote […]

Miriam Cherry offers up some of her favorite lines from her students exams and papers. My favorite: “The common law is like a baby. It grows and grows until someone comes along and stops it.”

A reader points me to this amusing item in the Philadelphia Inquirer: Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing. “This volatile and dangerous source of energy” is no answer to the country’s energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the “threat” […]

OpinionJournal.com presents a Memorial Day essay by Christopher Hitchens. Here’s a taste: it was only after the doughboys returned in 1918 that the former Confederate states dropped their boycott of America’s original “Memorial Day,” proclaimed by Union commander Gen. John Logan in May 1868. And here one can note the bizarre manner in which war–which […]

Professor Bainbridge remembers his grandfather.

This Intel Dump post by Philip Carter provides some valuable, Memorial Day food for thought. (Link via Mark Kleiman.)

Jonathan Adler’s recent post cites Matthew Yglesias’ challenge to academics who support open immigration. Yglesias writes: I’ll believe that this is all about altruism when I see an open letter from economists we scrap the complicated H1B visa system and instead allow unrestricted immigration of foreign college professors without all these requirements about prevailing wages, […]

An excellent paper by Tim Sandefur summarizes the disappointing results of the political backlash stimulated by Kelo v. City of New London, which upheld the use of eminent domain to transfer property from one private citizen to another for purposes of “economic development.” In the aftermath of Kelo, many commentators, including Judge Richard Posner and […]

I have now returned from Argentina (as well as brief side trips to Brazil and Uruguay). I’m not going to attempt to describe the tourist sites, as many other people can do that better than I could. But one of the most amazing places I saw was the Iguazu National Park, which spans the border […]

Prominent columnist Michael Kinsley writes: So, what’s the lesson [of United 93]? Is it to defy authority and follow your own instincts in an emergency? If so, we haven’t learned it. For a while after 9/11 there was talk of changing the official policy regarding hijackings and to start encouraging the passengers to whack the […]

Fleeing from the hordes of rampaging federal judges angered by my suggestion that their salaries don’t need to be raised, I am leaving for Argentina on Sunday. Blogging will be light (and possibly nonexistent) for the next 2 weeks. However, for South American VC readers (perhaps there are at least a few!), I will be […]