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The latest Snowden leak story is in the Huffington Post.  It says that NSA thought about exposing the hypocrisy of Islamic extremist recruiters by revealing their financial greed or predatory sexual habits.  I’m quoted in support of considering such tactics, but the backstory of the interview may be more interesting. When one of the authors, […]

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission has issued its annual report. It reminds us that, while press and privacy campaigners have been hyperventilating over US intelligence programs, there are, you know, actual authoritarian governments at work in the United States — breaking into the networks of activists whom they dislike, newspapers whose sources they […]

My new post, Philosophical Objections to Prison Privatization: Israeli Supreme Court strikes down privatization statute on “liberty” and “dignity” grounds, is up on the Reason Foundation website. Here’s an excerpt: This month is the fourth anniversary of an important date in privatization history. On November 19, 2009, in Academic Center of Law and Business, Human […]

It appears that he is agin’ it (full document here). I’m not going to go into the wrongheaded economics here. Instead, what I think is curious about this document is a longstanding peeve of mine. Ever since the Galileo incident, the Catholic Church has generally tried to be careful to get its science right before it […]

Seth Barrett Tillman writes: The Senate’s use of the nuclear option pins any defects in the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) on the Democrats. Until the nuclear option was used, Democrats said that they had to pass an arguably defective bill because they could not get around a minority Republican-led filibuster in the Senate. In other words, […]

Or, well, maybe not. From the Washington Post: The Justice Department has all but concluded it will not bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing classified documents because government lawyers said they could not do so without also prosecuting U.S. news organizations and journalists, according to U.S. officials. . . . The Obama […]

According to the FDA, a soiled plastic cup is a medical device subject to its jurisdiction. In its seemingly infinite expanse, the FDA has issued a cease and desist letter to 23andMe stating: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is sending you this letter because you are marketing the 23andMe Saliva Collection Kit and Personal Genome Service […]

I’m pleased to say that my article on this subject is coming out next year in the Columbia Law Review. You can read the entire draft in PDF, but here’s the Introduction, with most footnotes omitted. (I’ll likely also blog some other parts of the article, but for now I thought the Introduction plus a […]

The Administration has set a goal in its effort to fix the troubled Obamacare website, healthcare.gov. By November 30, according to the Washington Post, the government’s goal is that 80% of users will be able to buy healthcare policies online. The 80% target moves the goalposts back from the President’s more confident statement earlier this month: […]

The stars are dead. The animals will not look. We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon. – W.H. Auden, 1937

Well, as if on cue–the OCC and FDIC have issued new guidance that places new restrictions on consumer access to Direct Deposit Advance products, which are functionally similar to payday lending but offered by banks. The main beneficiaries of new guidance, however, are not likely to be consumers, but payday lenders and bank overdraft programs, […]

Argentina remains upset that some of its creditors are none too happy with the South American nation’s 2001 default on its debt obligations.  As I noted here, some of Argentina’s creditors unhappy with the way in which Argentina sought to restructure its debt filed suit in the U.S. and prevailed, prompting Argentina to file multiple […]

On the off chance that you have not watched the 6 individual segments of my SCOTUSBlog “On Camera” Interview, here is the link to the interview in its entirety.

I just posted a new article on SSRN co-authored with Robert Clarke, former Comptroller of the Currency. It is entitled “Payday Lending, Bank Overdraft Protection, and Fair Competition at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” and will be forthcoming in Boston University’s Review of Banking and Financial Law. Here’s the abstract: Abstract:  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau […]

What has the Senate actually done so far, with respect to the filibuster? Some of the reports of what happened today say that the Senate has adopted “new rules” eliminating the filibuster for some purposes. I’m not sure that’s true, in a formal sense. As I understand what happened, the Senate voted to ignore the […]