In a thoughtful post below, Orin suggests that we don’t know enough about the federal government’s seizure of the AP’s records. As Orin notes, the Justice Department has special rules for this sort of thing. Yet there are reasons to doubt whether the government followed these rules. Among other things, the government is required to […]
Archive | Press
Justice Department Seized AP Phone Records
By Jonathan H. Adler on May 13, 2013 8:04 pm in Executive Branch, Freedom to Gather Information, Press, War on Terror
The AP reports: The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and […]
National Security Law in the News
By Eugene Kontorovich on November 25, 2012 11:51 am in Constitutional Law, Counter-Terrorism Policy, Criminal Law, Executive Branch, International Law, Military, National Security, Press, Targeted Killing
National Security Law in the News: A Guide for Journalists, Scholars, and Policymakers is a new book published by the ABA’s Standing Committee on Law and National Security and Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. Despite the title, the book should be of interest to a general audience, as it offers a concise, broad plain-language overview […]
How Syria is Iran’s route to the sea
By David Kopel on October 24, 2012 2:29 am in Counter-Terrorism Policy, Iran, Israel, National Security, Presidency, Press, Terrorism
“Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.” So said Mitt Romney at the Monday debate. The Associated Press, The Guardian, The Telegraph, New York, U.S. News, Brad DeLong, Rachel Maddow’s Maddowblog, Comedy Central, and The Daily Kos promptly seized the opportunity to show off their superior geographical knowledge, pointing out that Iran […]
Peter Gleick’s Possible Involvement in Drafting Fake Heartland Document: Either Not Investigated or the Relevant Results Not Released
After an investigation commissioned by the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick has been reinstated as its President. The Institute released a carefully worded statement saying that the investigation supported what Gleick had said “regarding his interaction with the Heartland Institute.” Gleick had eventually admitted that he had pretended to be a board member of Heartland to […]
Even Worse Than We Had Hoped: Inside Local TV News
Note: This is the second of two book “reviews” I’ve been hoping to do since about August, but my fall got so busy with actual paying work that they were both pushed off until the delightfully slow week between Christmas and New Years. “First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers” was the first, […]
Are people with concealed handgun carry permits a menace to society?
According to the New York Times, the answer seems to be “yes.” An article in yesterday’s Times by Michael Luo collects some anecdotes about misbehavior by a few licensees in North Carolina. The Times article has some numbers in it, and it provides the number of North Carolinians with carry permits (240,000). After a thorough […]
Suggestions for your periodical reading list
Although on-line reading continues to grow, many people still enjoy old-fashioned printed periodicals. In the spirit of gratuitous advice, here are some suggestions for print subscriptions. First of all, if you’re conscientious about registering for the frequent flyer program every time you step on an airplane, you may accumulate a few thousand points on various airlines which […]
USA Today Refuses to Correct its Misrepresentation of My Statements About the Individual Mandate Litigation
I regret that I must report that USA Today refuses to correct the misrepresentation of my views about the individual mandate litigation that I pointed out in this post. I pointed out the mistake in e-mails to Joan Biskupic, the author of the article in question, and the editors of USA Today. Both refused to […]
Misquoted in USA Today
By Ilya Somin on April 14, 2011 8:33 pm in Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Media, Press
One of the dangers of commenting on hot-button legal issues is that reporters will sometimes misquote you. That happened to me in today’s front-page USA Today story on the individual mandate litigation by prominent legal reporter Joan Biskupic, which cited me as follows: George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin argued at a recent forum […]
The Chronicle Review is Looking Into the June 27th Bellesiles Article
Late Monday afternoon, I received a one-sentence email from Liz McMillen, Editor of the Chronicle Review: I just wanted to let you know that we are looking into the questions you have raised in your blog post Friday about Michael Bellesiles’s article for us. Here is some background on Bellesiles’s June 27th article. Here is […]
Michael Bellesiles’s Newest Tale
In its June 27, 2010 issue, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an essay by Michael Bellesiles, Teaching Military History in a Time of War: Yet the reality of teaching in wartime, most particularly at a working-class college such as Central Connecticut State University, is that war has touched the families of many of our […]
How the “Independent” Fourth Estate Has Failed in its Critical Duty
Fourth installment in a five-part series on Silverglate’s book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. In a discussion on WAMU Radio yesterday, host Kojo Nnamdi noted that vagueness in the federal criminal law has recently made “strange bedfellows” of the political left and right. This same “emerging consensus” was also the […]
Academics for the Second Amendment brief in McDonald
By David Kopel on November 23, 2009 2:52 pm in Congress, Constitutional History, Fourteenth Amendment, Guns, Press
Available here. Co-authored by Joseph Olson (Hamline), David Hardy, and Clayton Cramer. Key point: From 1789 to 1860, popular and legal understanding of the Second Amendment became much less militia-centric. Well before Reconstruction, the Second Amendment was considered to be mainly a guarantee of a right to own and carry guns for personal protection. Back […]
NYT Policy on Illegally Acquired Documents
The NYT‘s environmental blog, Dot Earth, covered the disclosure of e-mails and other files from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, noted that the files are available on various other website, but did not reproduce any files on its site. As Andrew Revkin explained in the post: The documents appear to have been […]