Author Archive | Jim Lindgren

David Bernstein notes that Stuart Taylor criticizes Janice Rogers Brown merely for citing Richard Epstein’s Takings book in an opinion, a form of guilt by association. Bernstein notes that in the same opinion Brown also cites liberal Frank Michelman. This reminds me of something Michelman said to me in the 1980s when he came down […]

The New York Times has a strange story on Arianna Huffington’s new celebrity blog designed to compete with the Drudge Report. Yes, that’s what the story says: Among those signed up to contribute are Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane […]

My co-blogger Orin Kerr politely disagrees with my characterization of David Garrow’s article on Justice Blackmun as “fair, insightful, and scathing.” Kerr does not think that Garrow is “fair” to Blackmun, but then Kerr mainly argues that the evidence in Garrow’s piece is unpersuasive. Of course, “fair” and “persuasive” are different things. Indeed, one reason […]

David Garrow’s long-awaited analysis of Justice Blackmun’s papers is finally up on Legal Affairs. It seems fair, insightful, and scathing. It appears that Blackmun lacked the talent to serve on the Court, deferring to clerks much brighter than he was to an extent that is unacceptable. Further, things got worse in his last few terms […]

Tonight I took my daughter to Tom Stoppard’s Travesties (1975) at Court Theater, the professional theater on the University of Chicago campus. My wife stayed home, as she usually prefers to do on weeknights. It is an extraordinarily witty play set in Zurich (mostly in 1917) involving a supposed British consul, James Joyce, V. Lenin, […]

The sometimes unreliable Debka.com, which had the best inside reporting on the Syrian pullout from Lebanon, is now spinning a new tale about developments in Syria: Assad Launches Secret DeBaathification. Syrian president Bashar Assad is trying to turn his back on the fiasco of his exit from Lebanon and shore up his regime by a […]

Steven Calabresi and I have a Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed advocating 18 year term limits for Supreme Court Justices, which anticipates the Duke conference on ours and other such proposals that will be held on Saturday. Our op-ed is now online at OpinionJournal.com (quick, free registration required). The draft of our manuscript can be […]

I’m off later today to Duke for this weekend’s conference on Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices, where Steve Calabresi and I will be presenting our paper advocating a constitutional amendment for 18 year term limits. On Wednesday, I presented at the University of Wisconsin on the scandal involving Michael Bellesiles’ Arming America. One of […]

Debka.com, which is usually pretty good on infighting in Lebanon and the Palestinian held areas (though not always reliable), is reporting that Syria is faring poorly in Lebanon (it is only a headline, so you have to scroll down): [Our] military sources report complete collapse of pro-Syrian political and intelligence structure in Lebanon and abrupt […]

Last week there was another probably forged memo that was attributed to Republicans, even though the NY Times reported that Democratic staffers were spreading it around. This one involved the supposed Terri Schiavo talking points. John Hinderaker has the story (tip Instapundit). UPDATE: A reader points me to this story indicating that the memo did, […]

Tim Lambert has a new post on John Lott’s 2002 study of Defensive Gun Uses. It is worth reading, as are some of Lambert’s older posts on closely related issues.

In the New Republic, Steven Pinker (a Harvard psychologist) has a fascinating exploration of the Larry Summers affair, including a brief discussion of what Pinker sees as the possible merits of Summers’s statements about women in science (tip to Tony D’Amato). (Disclosure: my wife is a Ph.D. geneticist who is a medical school professor; she […]

Assad announced that he is pulling back Syrian troops to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. This entry from The Dream of Lebanon explains the stated reason for staying in Bekaa: Assad Withdraws 12,000 Troops, Keeping 3,000 Behind as Bekaa Garrison President Assad is expected to announce a major redeployment of the Syrian army in Lebanon […]

In my last post, I pointed out that, if one ignored the real difficulties of the spoken word, then almost anyone could be caught in lots of infelicities or passages that would look odd out of context, passages that were as bad as most “Bushisms.” I offered two “Slatisms” by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg (who […]

You would think that George W. Bush would make enough verbal gaffes that a journalist wouldn’t have to try to trick his readers into thinking that Bush is more inarticulate than he is. But Slate, under the direction of Jacob Weisberg, must come up with a Bushism of the Day to feed their feature and […]