The Washington Post tried to defend Jamie Gorelick against “Mr. Ashcroft’s Smear,” but fails. While the Post pretends that Ms. Gorelick’s 1995 memo, and the subsequent guidelines, did not erect a “wall” between intelligence and law enforcement, it misses the larger point. At issue is not whether Ms. Gorelick played a postive or negative role […]
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Metro: Fixed Rail Versus Buses:
Against my better judgment (given what I think is an overheated real estate market), I am househunting in Arlington, Virginia. Houses that are walking distance to the Metro are attracting the most speculative fervor, with traffic jams forming at open houses. So, I started researching which neighborhoods were in what I assumed were on less […]
About to be on the Michael Reagan Show,
criticizing the proposed Victims’ Rights Amendment.
Litigation as a military tactic:
Here’s the question I ask people who think that the Guantanamo detainees have a right to petition civilian courts for habeas corpus. Let’s say that we weren’t dealing with several hundred detainees, but with tens or hundreds of thousands, as was the case during World War II. If one of them has the right to […]
Save the Planets:
Today’s Slate Explainer answers the question: “Who’s Our Planetary Protection Officer? And what the heck does he do?” Cool.
“Fucking Brilliant” Regulatory Strategy:
Until Janet Jackson’s breast appeared for .7 seconds (an FCC friend tells me that FCC staffers watched it dozens of times to count the number of frames containing an image of her breast), FCC penalties for broadcast indecency were rare and relatively small. Only three fines since 1999 were greater than $50,000. The fifth-highest fine […]
How Appealing: Howard Bashman’s blog, How Appealing — which has quickly become the leading U.S. source of hot legal news about interesting recent cases — is now here, hosted by Legal Affairs. If you’re a lawyer, a law student, or a legal academic and you haven’t seen it, be sure to check it out.
Why don’t bloggers get many review copies?
Co-blogger David (immediately below) raises the question of why bloggers don’t get many review copies of books. In part some publishing houses may think of blogs and the Internet as threats, rightly or wrongly. They prefer not to think about us, and they prefer not to have to tell their bosses: “These are interesting outlets, […]
The Publishing Industry and Blogs (They Don’t Get it, Yet):
I find it a bit odd that I’ve been blogging for the VC for almost a year but have not made it on to any publisher’s review copy lists. The VC has a “circulation” of over ten thousand readers a day, many of whom, judging by my email, are professors, attorneys, or law students. That’s […]
Republican and Democratic brains:
I’ve been waiting for researchers to do MRI scans on people when they vote or look at political ads. The New York Times reports on precisely this latter experiment: “The researchers had already zeroed in on those [9-11 and war] images and their effect among Democrats on the part of the brain that responds to […]
The Confusion: The Slithery D writes: You wouldn’t know it from the unprecedented silence of the boys at the Conspiracy, but the Confusion, book 2 of the Baroque Cycle, appeared in book stores last week. Well, one reason I haven’t been blogging much is precisely that I’ve been busy reading The Confusion. I thought Cryptonomicon […]
Oklahoma State University faculty council approves speech code:
The Daily O’Collegian reports that the OSU faculty council approved a speech code banning, under the rubric of “racial or ethnic harassment,” any acts “hostile toward the dignity of an individual, carried out on grounds related to race, color, ethnicity or national origin,” or that “unreasonably interfere[] with the work or academic performance of those […]
U.S. v. Lara:
The most exciting passage in the opinion Eugene blogs below is, as far as I’m concerned, in Thomas’ concurrence. “I cannot agree that the Indian Commerce Clause “provide[s] Congress with plenary power to legislate in the field of Indian affairs.” At one time, the implausibility of this assertion at least troubled the Court, see, e.g., […]
The Supreme Court on the Treaty Power:
The President has the “Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur” (U.S. Const., art. II, sec. 2, cl. 2.) The treaties then become the “supreme Law of the Land” (art. VI), and Congress may enact legislation that is necessary and […]
My Iraqi update:
I don’t usually blog on Iraq, if only because I have never been there. Nor do I have any Arabic at all. But lately there has been so much talk about how the war is going. Jacob (below) writes about who has and hasn’t changed their minds. Perhaps an outsider’s perspective on the whole matter […]