Author Archive | Jim Lindgren

Spitting Report, Part II: Landing at Civilian Airports and Other Problems With Attempted Debunkings. 1. BACKGROUND: In my first, somewhat speculative post on the stories about servicemen and veterans being spat upon during the Vietnam era, I suggested that perhaps Professor Jerry Lembcke had not fully understood the limitations of LEXIS/NEXIS, the most popular service […]

It was a pleasure to see Ann Althouse at the New York Law School conference yesterday. Ann has a post today on a disturbing line of attack on John McCain’s website, which uses as much black, white, and gray as possible: John McCain has an aesthetically pleasing website, which is distinguished by the very low […]

At Balkinization, Brian Tamanaha has an interesting post on common misunderstandings of Legal Realists. It resolves some contradictions that I had never understood (in part, I had taken Jerome Frank, who is a bit of an outlier, as a typical Realist). Llewellyn’s point was that the Realists were indeed critical of mechanistic accounts of judicial […]

Hundreds of Vietnam-era veterans have publicly claimed in recent decades that they were spat on by citizens or anti-war protesters because of their military status, either before they went to Vietnam, when they were on leave, or after their returned from overseas. Yet several journalists and at least one scholar, sociologist Jerry Lembcke of Holy […]

There is a flap about whether returning Vietnam veterans were really spat upon (via Instapundit). One commenter at Countercolumn says that Bob Greene, a former Chicago columnist, wrote a column in the 1980s saying that it was a myth. He received so many stories of spitting that he interviewed the purported victims and wrote a […]

As Merle Kessler once observed: “Football players, like prostitutes, are in the business of ruining their bodies for the pleasure of strangers.” Now come claims that Bill Belichick pressured one of his players to practice against the advice of the trainer, causing permanent brain damage (NY Times): Former New England Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson said […]

There has been a recent dust-up between Linda Hirshman on one side and Mark Schmitt and Ann Althouse on the other. (Count me as a fan of both Linda’s and Ann’s scholarship.) If I am reading correctly, there seems to be an impression that women’s votes seldom determine the outcome of presidential elections. Usually both […]

On the 217th anniversary of the first session of the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts is speaking to the first-year Constitutional Law classes at Northwestern Law School. In an easygoing talk without notes, Roberts began by making some relatively conventional comments about Marbury and judicial review, observations more in the traditional “heroic” mode that […]

More on the Duke case: I was reading a long, stirring letter/post from a Duke alum, who identifies herself as Meadow (posted on Liestoppers): Last spring, one of the only groups that stood up against a tirade of prejudices were the members of the Duke Women’s Lacrosse team, led by their courageous coach, Kerstin Kimel. […]

If bloggers were eligible for Pulitzer Prizes for journalism (they aren’t unless their blogs are hosted on newspaper sites), I would nominate Brooklyn Professor KC Johnson, who blogs at Cliopatria and Durham-in-Wonderland, for his coverage of the Duke case. No self-respecting journalist would think of writing anything long and evaluative on the Duke case without […]

Here is the AP’s initial write-up, and Lyle Denniston has this early analysis on SCOTUSBlog. The AP reports Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts seemed particularly hostile to the petitioning states’ arguments. Denniston concurs, and suggests that Justice Kennedy’s vote will likely determine whether the petitioners have standing. Now it’s time for the Georgetown program […]

Inside Higher Education reports that a group of students and professors at the University of Minnesota Law is upset that University of St. Thomas professor Robert Delahunty is scheduled to teach at Minnesota next semester. Their objections center on Delahunty’s tenure at the Office of Legal Counsel, where he was a career civil servant. At […]

This morning I have the “opposing view” column in USA Today arguing that the Court should reject the petitioners’ arguments in Massachusetts v. EPA. The editors take the contrary position here. [As an aside, it was quite a challenge to say something meaningful about the case in 350 words. Simplifying the issues is one way […]

Today’s New York Times urges the Supreme Court to force the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. It is worth a careful read. The Bush administration has been on a six-year campaign to expand its powers, often beyond what the Constitution allows. So it is odd to hear it […]

Robert Samuelson joins the ranks of those unimpressed with the analysis presented by the Stern Review. Stern’s headlined conclusions are intellectual fictions. They’re essentially fabrications to justify an aggressive anti-global-warming agenda. The danger of that is we’d end up with the worst of both worlds: a program that harms the economy without much cutting of […]