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The Rockin’ Book Tour for Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty is back by popular demand–well, it’s back. This week I return to St. Louis for two appearances on Wednesday, May 12th. University of Missouri, St. Louis – 2:00pm-3:15pm in the McDonnell Conference Room, Social Sciences Building Rm. 331, UMSL (8001 Natural Bridge […]

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. This Spanish novel has been a sensation on the Continent. The premise? Imagine a satanic figure going around and trying to buy up and destroy all the book copies by an obscure author. The rest of the book unpacks the mystery. Recommended to those who liked […]

There are lots of songs written for or inspired by artists mothers. Some are celebrations of Moms and motherhood (as many should be), others are not. For today’s song lyric I’ve selected Pink Floyd’s “Mother.” It’s not the happiest song — Pink is getting ready to erect his personal wall — so don’t take this […]

Read this article for some speculations. If this post comes up OK, I’ll try something bolder and longer soon. Eugene has picked excellent new software, but I’m a technological idiot beyond belief. I’ve also just set up my Gmail account, so I am feeling very able this morning. Gmail strikes me as a clear improvement […]

We’ve just switched over to the new PowerBlogs software, which should be much more reliable for you than Blogger was (though there might of course be a few glitches over the next several days). PowerBlogs should also be more reliable and easier for us to use; there are a bunch of nifty new features (automatic […]

I have received some thoughtful replies to my response to Professor Bainbridge’s post, Should Conservatives Be Cheerful? including this Reply to Barnett by Professor Bainbridge, and his endorsement of Legislative Tyranny versus Judicial Tyranny by Owen at Southern Appeal. I believe that these post reflect some basic misunderstanding of the position (mine) with which they […]

Professor Stephen Bainbridge, of whom I have a very high regard, posts the following curious entry on his blog entitled, Should Conservative Be Cheerful? Insofar as one may draw inferences from his letter to the editor in today’s WSJ ($), Robert Bork still thinks we’re Slouching Towards Gomorrah, and he knows where to lay the […]

People have recently suggested that various officials (the Secretary of Defense, the head of the CIA, and others) should resign as a sign that they take responsibility for their policy errors, or for their failure to properly monitor their misbehaving underlings. I think that in general there’s a good deal to be said for such […]

Reader Michael Greenspan passes along this item that David Frum at National Review Online wrote a few months ago. I’m not a conflicts of law scholar (that’s the field that deals with these issues); I’m also not Andrew Sullivan, to whom the questions are addressed (and who dealt with them briefly here). But I know […]

Clayton Cramer responds well to the National Review Online article that argues: Why are we shocked by these images from Abu Ghraib, but when the victims are women (or gay men) the images are called pornography or “adult entertainment”? Why can we easily see the violations of human beings in one set of images, but […]

Clayton Cramer has the scoop. Chicago politicians about Chicago ordinary citizens: If they’re afraid of crime, they aren’t even allowed a handgun to defend yourself. Chicago politician about herself: If she’s afraid of crime, she’s “entitled to have a squad car parked outside her home on weekends because she was the victim of two recent […]

An excellent online chat, on the Washington Post site. (Rauch is the author of Gay Marriage : Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America. I’ve always very much liked reading Rauch’s work, largely because he’s thoughtful and sensible enough to acknowledge the strong points on the other side while […]

Prisoner abuse and the Guantanamo / Padilla / Hamdi cases: A couple of readers e-mailed to suggest that the prisoner abuse scandal might influence the Court’s judgment in the Guantanamo detainees case and the military detention cases (Padilla and Hamdi), because it might make the Court feel that the Executive Branch can’t be trusted. I […]

Apropos the Berkeley “racist” role-playing incident, reader Bob Woolley writes: A patient was once telling me about her recent visit to the ER. She waited a long time, then left without being seen. She was angry at the long wait. The hospital was in a part of town with a large population of Hmong immigrants. […]

Thus Blogged Anderson points to Jacob’s post on the subject, and says that “The indifference of the Conspiracy to the news from Abu Ghraib has been unsettling.”      I don’t think that anyone ought to be unsettled by our silence about the story — or to interpret it as indifference. I don’t see my role as […]