Author Archive | Jim Lindgren

According to the AP: U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, the senior judge in the United States, was reported alert and fully recovered from a seizure and fall at his seaside summer home, in which he experienced minor scrapes but no serious injuries. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Monday that Roberts, 52, would remain overnight […]

As I write, it’s still Sunday night in the US, but it’s Monday morning in Asia. Asian stock market trading so far: ^N225 Nikkei 225: DOWN (1.00%) ^SSEC Shanghai Composite: UP (1.95%) ^STI Straits Times: UP (0.21%) ^AORD All Ordinaries, DOWN: (0.43%) ^HSI Hang Seng: DOWN (0.19%) ^JKSE Jakarta Composite: DOWN (0.01%) ^NZ50 NZSE 50: […]

More political turmoil in Japan after Sunday’s Elections (via Reuters/CNN): Hawkish Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to stay in his post despite a crushing defeat for his ruling camp in an upper house election, but policy gridlock loomed and Abe’s grip on his job was still uncertain. Voters outraged at a string of government […]

Congress is considering increasing farm subsidies, but limiting the ability of couples making over $2 million a year to collect them: A prominent San Francisco patron of the arts, Constance Bowles — heiress of an early California cattle baron, widow of a former director of UC Berkeley’s Bancroft library and a resident of Pacific Heights […]

As general background on the history of the nondiscrimination ideal, the best place to start is Andrew Kull’s prize-winning The Color-Blind Constitution (Harvard Press). Kull details the rejection of the color-blind version of the 14th Amendment in favor of what was viewed at the time as the weaker and less radical version that was adopted. […]

In a follow-up to the work I’ve co-authored on Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices, I’ve been looking at the effects of any US Supreme Court retirements on the overall age and tenure distribution on the Supreme Court. Many people assume that, if a Democrat wins the White House in 2008, there might be one […]

I read Randy Barnett’s last post on the nasty attacks he received after his views were misconstrued either by a reporter or a blogger (or both). One of the funniest evenings I ever spent with Randy was at an AALS convention when a prominent historian told Randy and me about his work, which he said […]

At Gerry Beyer

There is a fascinating, though minor, scandal brewing over at CNBC. CNBC has delayed announcing the winner of its Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge contest, which ended a week ago, because of allegations of cheating in the form of a version of after-market trading. With a $1,000,000 annuity as the prize, the contest proceeded in two […]

CNBC, the financial channel, is running a stock trading contest with a million dollars as the prize. It begins with a 10-week contest with over 250,000 contestants so far, followed by a 2-week finals period with 20 finalists, who start anew with no carry-over of profits from the 10-week “regular season.” Trades in a fictional […]

There is an academic meme that seems to have spread without citations to any military regulations or published collection of stories that would support it: that returning soldiers reporting being spat upon often claim to have flown directly from Vietnam into civilian airports in situations where such flights would not have happened (or would have […]

I was reading through KC Johnson’s blog last night and something absolutely floored me. A reader asks: Take a look at the mini-script at the bottom of the Group of 88 ad. It states in part: “We thank the following departments and programs for signing onto this ad with African & African American Studies: Romance […]

In a 2005 Boston Globe op-ed, Professor Jerry Lembcke appears to claim that he had smashed (as false) previous stories of spat-upon Vietnam veterans (I wish he had indicated which ones). In the Globe, Lembcke attacks one account that indeed includes some ridiculous statements by the supposed spitting victim: STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are […]

Professor Jerry Lembcke asserts that it would have been highly unlikely that soldiers or veterans were spat upon because relations between soldiers and the antiwar movement were generally very friendly. This post raises some serious problems with Lembcke’s use of one 1995 study by Beamish et al. to support this claim. In particular, Lembcke somehow […]

The 1968 Walker Report—Rights in Conflict, the official federal commission report on the 1968 Democratic Convention that came out a couple months after it ended—was made famous by its initial branding of the Chicago police’s spectacular brutality during several periods in the long week as a “police riot.” The behavior of the Chicago police was […]