Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied Texas’ request for a temporary reprieve from federal ethanol mandates. Under the energy law signed late last year, 9 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel must be blended into gasoline between Sept. 1, 2008, and Aug. 31, 2009, to meet a national Renewable Fuels Standard. Texas Gov. […]

Col. Morris Davis (who we’ve blogged about before here and here), posted some comments on the Hamdan verdict at Opinio Juris: The jury sentenced Hamdan to 66 months. The judge gave him credit for nearly 61 months of time served, so he has less than 6 months remaining on his sentence. Hamdan won in the […]

I first saw Shirley Manson perform with the short-lived band, Angelfish in a show a the 9:30 Club in D.C. They were opening for another band (Live or Sugar, if I recall correctly). I don’t remember her band all that much, but she was awesome. Angelfish disbanded, and Manson went on to much bigger things: […]

Death row inmate Richard Wade Cooey III is mounting an interesting challenge to his pending execution: He claims he is too overweight to be executed by lethal injection. Cooey’s public-defender attorneys filed a lawsuit in federal court Friday contending that his weight, the difficulty of finding veins suitable for lethal injection, and a drug he’s […]

The Washington Post‘s “PostGlobal” has an interesting article on the rise of heavy metal music in the Muslim world. Heavy metal has had a more powerful and controversial appeal than perhaps any other element of Western culture that has taken hold in the Muslim world. It might seem strange that a genre of music long […]

Professor Bainbridge has written an open letter to AALS Executive Director Carl Monk on the proposed boycott of one of the hotels under contract for the AALS annual meeting in San Diego. It nicely summarizes why the AALS should not — indeed, cannot — acquiesce to the proposed boycott if it is to remain a […]

The NYT reports on the firebombing of two researchers’ homes in Santa Cruz, California. Authorities believe animal rights activists opposed to biomedical research are responsible for the attacks. About 5:30 a.m. Saturday, two small bombs ignited outside the researchers’ homes. In one of the attacks, a vehicle was destroyed in a faculty member’s driveway. At […]

Joel Achenbach has a fairly sensible column today on climate change and natural disasters. Somewhere along the line, global warming became the explanation for everything. Right-thinking people are not supposed to discuss any meteorological or geophysical event — a hurricane, a wildfire, a heat wave, a drought, a flood, a blizzard, a tornado, a lightning […]

The California Attorney General’s office is leading a group of state attorneys general and environmental groups that will sue the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to regulate greenhouse gases from ships, planes, and agricultural and industrial equipment. Now that greenhouse gases are considered air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, they maintain, the EPA is […]

Professor Joel Mintz reports on some good news: earlier this month, EPA and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) signed a Memorandum of Agreement with respect to the EPA’s library system. Under that agreement, all of the closed EPA libraries, including EPA’s main headquarters library, its chemical library, and the libraries in EPA Regions […]

I suppose there’s no accounting for the musical taste of seven-year-old girls. for some reason, they can’t get enough of Hannah Montana and High School Musical. Fortunately, Ellen’s tastes span a broader spectrum. Among her current faves is “It Can’t Rain Every Day” off of P.O.D.‘s latest album, When Angels & Serpents Dance. It’s like […]

The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a notice of intent to sue the Fish & Wildlife Service challenging the listing of the polar bear as a “threatened species” under the ESA on behalf of the California Cattleman’s Association, California Forestry Association, and the Congress on Racial Equality. There’s more on the planned suit here. While […]

My brief essay, “Perverse Incentives and the Endangered Species Act,” is this week’s “policy commentary” on the Resources for the Future website. Those who have followed my work on the subject (e.g here and here), won’t see anything new. But the short piece might be a useful summary of the ESA’s primary failings, at least […]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued an interesting opinion, In re Navy Chaplaincy, concerning standing to challenge the Navy’s alleged favortism for Catholic chaplains. The majority opinion by Judge Kavanaugh begins: A group of Protestant Navy chaplains sued the Navy, alleging that the Navy’s operation of its retirement system discriminates in […]

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe has an interesting article in today’s WSJ on the Supreme Court’s decision invalidating the death penalty for child rape and its potential reconsideration by the Court. Here’s a taste: Emphasizing the evolving character of what constitutes an “unusual” if not an unduly “cruel” punishment, the court rested its condemnation of […]