Five Democratic Senators sent Defense Secretary Robert Gates a letter complaining about the Pentagon’s refusal to clean up contaminated military bases. Although federal law provides that the EPA has the final say if there is an interagency dispute over cleanup obligations, the Defense Department is refusing to comply, leaving these Senators upset. A Senate hearing […]
Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler
Fake Fed Stages Drug Raids:
A man claiming to be “Sergeant Bill” of the FBI staged a series of drug raids in Gerald, Missouri, “a Meth capital of the United States.” Sergeant Bill, it turned out, was no federal agent, but Bill A. Jakob, an unemployed former trucking company owner, a former security guard, a former wedding minister and a […]
Clearing the Checkerboard:
The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land are orchestrating a $510 million deal to acquire approximately 500 square miles now owned by Plum Creek Timber. The land will then be conveyed to the U.S. Forest Service, erasing the area’s “checkerboard” pattern of public and private ownership that is leftover from Western expansion. As […]
EPA v. DoD:
Today’s Washington Post has an interesting (and somewhat infuriating) story about a brewing conflict between the Environmental Protection Agency and the Defense Department over the cleanup of various military sites. The federal government is the nation’s largest polluter, and the Defense Department is responsible for more than its share of federal contamination. In theory, the […]
Is This Still a “Conservative Court”?
Last year, we were told the Supreme Court had become the “Court that conservatives had long yearned for and that liberals feared.” With the addition of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, there was now a more reliable five justice conservative majority — a “phalanx” in Ronald Dworkin’s words — that would push the law […]
Hands Off Energy Markets:
Sebastian Mallaby explains that politicians — including our major presidential candidates — need to (re)learn the lessons of the 1970s. Richard Nixon’s early-1970s price controls were a disaster. Administering the controls on energy alone took an estimated 5 million man-hours per year and punished motorists with gas lines. Repeating this experiment by clamping down on […]
Sunday Song Lyric:
What’s the top “law” song? According to ATL, it’s “I Fought the Law” as performed by The Clash. The song was originally recorded by Sonny Curtis and the Crickets, but was popularized by Bobby Fuller before being immortalized by The Clash. The lyrics are incredibly simple — the title is repeated again and again — […]
“Poorer, Older, and Dumber”:
Chester Finn on Ohio’s economic decline: Once known as the Mother of Presidents, Ohio is now getting poorer, older and dumber – and making all the wrong moves to reverse the situation. . . . Ohio already has the fifth-heaviest state and local tax burden in the country (up from 30th in 1990) and finds […]
Obama and Heller:
While Barack Obama appeared to endorse the Supreme Court’s Heller decision in the statement he released on Thursday, at other times he defended the constitutionality of D.C.’s gun ban. This leaves the Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz a bit befuddled. Barack Obama is under hostile fire for changing his position on the D.C. gun ban. Oh, […]
The Candidates on Heller:
Both Barack Obama and John McCain released statements on the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller. Obama: I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets […]
Don’t Give Me Your Talented, Your Smart , Your Educated Masses:
George Will laments how U.S. law keeps educated immigrants out of the United States. Two-thirds of doctoral candidates in science and engineering in U.S. universities are foreign-born. But only 140,000 employment-based green cards are available annually, and 1 million educated professionals are waiting — often five or more years — for cards. Congress could quickly […]
The Wondrous Water Closets of Japan:
Is Japan a model of energy efficiency for the United States to follow? Per capita energy consumption in Japan is far lower than here, but population density is part of the reason. The average American has more living space and travels greater distances. The average U.S. bathroom may also be miserly to state-of-the-art loos across […]
Florida to Buy U.S. Sugar:
The state of Florida has announced it will buy the U.S. Sugar Corporation for $1.75 billion so as to convert farmland to reservoirs. U.S. Sugar owns some 187,000 acres of land around Lake Okeechobee. The plan, which is part of the state’s Everglades restoration effort, is to convert much of this land from sugar production […]
If an E-Mail Is Unopened by the White House, Does It Still Exist?
The Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act made the eventual regulation of GHGs under the Act a foregone conclusion. Nonetheless, the Bush Administration has been dragging its heels in making the requisite legal findings that would trigger regulatory measures in […]
Claims Against Iraq Can Go Forward:
Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit released Simon v. Iraq, reversing the district court’s dismissal of various claims against the Iraqi government for mistreating hostages during the first Gulf war. Here is the introduction of Chief Judge Ginsburg’s opinion for the court: The plaintiffs in these two consolidated actions sued Iraq, […]