Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler

As I noted two months back, the Obama Administration has failed to make good on its promise for “Sunlight before Signing” — a promise that the text of all non-emergency legislation would be made available on the White House website for five days before the President would sign it. So have things improved since then? […]

There are quite a few legal academics in various positions throughout the Obama Administration. Nan Hunter has a fairly comprehensive list.

Weekend events at Kent State bring to mind Marx’s aphorism about events in history happening, twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. An end-of-year college block party spiraled out of control as police fired pellets and used pepper spray to break up hundreds of rioting students who sparked a string of […]

Rasmussen Reports has some interesting polling results on the treatment of detainees and release of the torture memos. Among their reported findings: 77 percent of voters say they have “followed news reports about the release of government memos about the Bush administration

I have never understood the appeal of “Friday Cat Blogging,” but I’m also not much of a cat person. Don’t worry. There will be no cat blogging here (at least not from me). But in the past few years a few readers have suggested (albeit in jest) a Sunday Cat Song Lyric. I don’t know […]

The Associated Press has an interesting story on the Justice Department’s effort to limit or overturn Michigan v. Jackson, which limits the ability of the police to initiate questioning of criminal defendants. The Obama administration is asking the Supreme Court to overrule long-standing law that stops police from initiating questions unless a defendant’s lawyer is […]

Eric has an interesting post commenting on John Tierney’s recent column on wealth and the environment. Eric notes that Tierney’s argument is overly simplistic, and that basic arguments about the correlation between economic growth and environmental performance may not apply in the context of global climate change. Fair enough, but I would also like to […]

An Ohio state senator wants to ban broadcasting the tapes of 911 calls on TV, radio, and the internet. He argues that some people may be reluctant to call 911 to report crimes for fear that the tape will be broadcast and their identity will be revealed. In some states 911 call tapes and transcripts […]

The White House Counsel’s office has grown ever larger since its creation sixty-some years ago. While the office has often staffed-up late term, particularly when a President is (as seems inevitable) subject to investigation or extensive oversight, the Obama Administration has already fully staffed the office with more than double the number of attorneys it […]

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will not allow the Federal Aviation Administration to keep data on airplane bird strikes secret. From the Washington Post: “I think all of this information ought to be made public. . . . We’re going to, you know, make this information as public as anybody wants it,” LaHood said in an […]

CQ’s Legal Beat reports the Senate Judiciary Committee will have a second hearing on the nomination of David Hamilton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on April 29. At the same hearing, the committee will consider the nomination of Andre Davis to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

National intelligence director Dennis Blair maintains that the coercive interrogation techniques approved by the controversial OLC “torture memos” generated valuable, [actionable] intelligence, but this fact was initially omitted from the material released to the media in conjunction with the most recent “torture memo” disclosures. As the NYT reports:

The WSJ reports there are over 20 million bloggers in the U.S., 1.7 million of which generate income, and under 500,000 of which make blogging their primary source of income.

The Supreme Court issued opinions in three cases today: n Ministry of Defense and Support for the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran v. Elahi, Shinseki v. Sanders, and Arizona v. Gant. SCOTUSBlog has early details here. I’ll leave substantive analysis of these three decisions to others. For now, I jsut wanted to […]

Former Clinton Justice Department official Walter Dellinger had an op-ed in yesterday’s WSJ arguing that all Executive Branch nominations deserve an up-or-down vote in the Senate. Whether Republicans or Democrats are in office, the loyal opposition should not frustrate a president’s ability to execute the powers of his office by denying an up-or-down vote to […]