Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler

I am really into The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow. Don’t ask why, but I’m quite surprised how much I like the album — the whole thing. One of the singles is “Grounds for Divorce” — which is, we’re told, a cocktail. Here’s the first verse and chorus: I

More encouraging news from the San Francisco Chronicle: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama – who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana – will end raids on pot dispensaries in California. Asked at a Washington news conference Wednesday about […]

Tony Mauro reports that liberal groups and law professors, led by the Constitutional Accountability Center, are supporting gun groups in their effort to have the Second Amendment incorporated against the states. But these academics and the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, which filed a brief in the case, have not suddenly taken up the Second Amendment […]

Some conservatives have attacked President Obama’s pick for Deputy Attorney General, David Ogden, because he has represented some “controversial” clients, including Playboy and the ACLU. Former Reagan and Bush (41) Administration attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey think this is unfair. In the Legal Times they argue: The premise of this opposition is a familiar […]

This morning, in a lengthy per curiam opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted petitions of review filed by states and environmental groups against primary and secondary National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for fine particulate matter and remanded the standards to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). At the same time, […]

George Will thinks it would be better to repeal the 17th Amendment than to require special elections for Senate vacancies. Has he been reading Todd Zywicki?

The NYT reports: In a two-sentence filing late Friday, the Justice Department said that the new administration had reviewed its position in a case brought by prisoners at the United States Air Force base at Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital. The Obama team determined that the Bush policy was correct: such prisoners cannot […]

The WSJ reports on recent comments by White House climate czar (or, as I prefer, Energy Empress) Carol Browner: “EPA’s going to look at Mass. Vs. EPA and will make an endangerment finding,” Browner told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview. The Supreme Court ordered the EPA in the case to determine if carbon dioxide […]

The The’s Soul Mining has been one of my favorite albums for years. I still remember listening to it for the first time, on a beat up Panasonic cassette player in my freshman dorm room on the sixth floor of Bingham Tower. I love several songs on the album, “Uncertain Smile,” above all. (I also […]

Via How Appealing comes this interesting story: The Obama administration filed an emergency request with a federal appeals court Friday to stop a judge in San Francisco from allowing lawyers challenging the government’s wiretapping program to see a classified surveillance document. The document is the central evidence in the last remaining lawsuit over the legality […]

The Washington Post reports: A Pentagon review of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay military prison has concluded that the treatment of detainees meets the requirements of the Geneva Conventions but that prisoners in the highest-security camps should be allowed more religious and social interaction, according to a government official who has read the 85-page document. […]

The United States has dropped its opposition to an international treaty limiting mercury emissions, prompting agreement by over 140 nations to negotiate such a treaty. Formal negotiations will begin late this year, and U.N. officials hope to conclude the talks by 2013. The White House issued a statement saying a future treaty would use “a […]

Megan McArdle is on a roll discussing what we do, and do not, know about what really ended the Great Depression. See here, here and here. These posts remind me why she is one of my favorite bloggers.

Byron York reports on a brewing controversy over a little-noticed provision in the stimulus bill to create the Recovery Accountability and Transparency (RAT) Board. This entity would, among other things, have some degree of oversight over agency inspectors general and the Board’s chair would be appointed by the President. According to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), […]

The NYT‘s Room for Debate blog has posted a series of commentaries on the EPA’s decision to reconsider whether greenhouse gases must be regulated under the PSD provisions of the Clean Air Act. In addition to your humble blogger, contributors include Robert Hahn and Peter Passell, Nina Mendelsohn, and John D. Graham and Kenneth R. […]