Director Sidney Lumet died this morning at the age of 86. Among his many films were the classics “12 Angry Men,” “Network,” “Serpico,” and “Dog Day Afternoon.” His last film was “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.” His later work may not have rivaled his early classics, but he was a tremendous filmmaker with a […]
Author Archive | Jonathan H. Adler
Kagan’s Recusal Manuevers
While serving as Solicitor General, Justice Elena Kagan allegedly began maneuvering to avoid having to recuse in any eventual challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, months before her nomination was announced — indeed, even before she was told she was under consideration — according to a series of documents released in response […]
Oral Arguments as “Overbooked Cable Television Show”
Adam Liptak’s latest “Sidebar” column discusses the changing nature of Supreme Court oral arguments: If you didn’t know it was a Supreme Court argument, you might think you were seeing a catastrophically overbooked cable television show. The justices of late have been jostling for judicial airtime in a sort of verbal roller derby. . . […]
Future of Collective Bargaining – Call for Papers
The Case Western Reserve Law Review is sponsoring a symposium and call for papers on “The Future of Public and Private Sector Collective Bargaining.” My colleague Jacqui Lipton has posted details here.
Review of R. Pielke’s “The Climate Fix”
The latest issue of Regulation contains my review of Roger Pielke Jr’s The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You about Global Warming. I found the book to be a very welcome contribution to the discussion of climate policy, particularly given Pielke’s unblinkered assessment of the climate challenge. Here’s the conclusion from my […]
Impeach Them All
Attorney Bruce Fein, who briefly worked in the Reagan Justice Department, is advocating for the impeachment of President Obama for authorizing military strikes in Libya, Politico reports. He has even drafted an article of impeachment. This is nothing new for Fein, however, as he also called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice […]
Wisconsin Supreme Court Race
This year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race between incumbent David Prosser and challenger JoAnn Kloppenburg is reportedly the costliest in the state’s history. With the court’s ideological balance at stake, outside groups poured millions into the race, turning it into a proxy battle over the Governor Walker’s efforts to restrict public employee collective bargaining rights. To […]
State Geologist Told to Shut the Frack Up
Ronald Bailey reports that the New York State Department of Education is muzzling the state’s “top geologist,” Langhorne “Taury” Smith, because he dared to question environmentalist attacks on the use of hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”) to extract natural gas from shale deposits. This prompted a green backlash which, in turn, cause the state education department […]
Independent Assessment Finds Warming Too
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched to conduct a re-evaluation of the surface temperature record in order to resolve persistent debate over the reliability of prior analyses and provide an open record that could form the basis for future scientific research. The effort is led by several respected scientists, including UC Berkeley physicist […]
Flast Exception Still Stands
This morning the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, in which the Court held, 5-4, that Arizona taxpayers lack standing to challenge the provision of tax credits for contributions to organizations that subsidize tuition at private religious schools. Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the majority reasoned that the taxpayers […]
The New Transparency as Opaque as the Old
It sounded like an April Fool’s joke: President Obama accepted a “transparency” award behind closed doors. Only as many are learning, it’s easier for a Presidential candidate to promise transparency than it is for the federal government to deliver. (Ditto for Congressional leaders.) As Charles Ornstein and Hagit Limor wrote in the Washington Post this […]
The New Unicameralism
The Hill reports that House Republicans appear to have forgotten how a bill becomes law. Specifically, on Friday the House narrowly passed the “Government Shutdown Prevention Act,” a bill that, among other things, purports to make a House-passed spending bill become law should the Senate fail to act. As Ed Morrissey notes, this is like […]
Where the Jobs Are (and Aren’t)
From an op-ed in today’s WSJ by Stephen Moore comes a startling statistic: “More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined.” UPDATE: As is clear from the comments, there are many ways to spin the significance of this statistic. I found it significant as much […]
WI Judge Puts Collective Bargaining Bill on Hold Again
Yesterday, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi held that the controversial state legislation curbing public employee collective bargaining rights has not taken effect despite its publication by the Legislative Reference Bureau, the Journal-Sentinel reports. In a brief order, Judge Sumi declared: Based on the briefs of counsel, the uncontroverted testimony, and the evidence received at […]
Meanwhile in Wisconsin, Another TRO
The state of Wisconsin had begun to implement the controversial bill that curtails public employee collective bargaining rights by charging state employees more for health insurance and ceasing to collect union dues from state employee paychecks, but the legal proceedings continued. This afternoon, Dane County judge Maryann Sumi issued another TRO against further implementation of the […]