Our sometime co-Conspirator, Stuart Banner (Law, UCLA) has been named one of this year’s Guggenheim Foundation Fellows. The new class of inductees also includes three political scientists/ theorists: my Chicago colleagues Carles Boix (Political Science) and Mark Lilla (Social Thought), and my former teacher Jeffrey Herbst of Princeton. One other noteworthy (and worthy) honoree is […]
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Obscenity and spam:
One correspondent suggested that a porn crackdown is needed because of the prevalence of porn spam: Prior to spam, porn was only available if you really wanted it. If you didn’t want to watch it, turn the channel, don’t buy the magazine, don’t rent the video. But spam changed that. Now porn shows up in […]
A bit more about the federal government and obscenity:
The chief defense that I’ve seen of the federal government’s obscenity crackdown (for instance, see Clayton Cramer’s post, though several other correspondents made the same point) is that it may decrease the availability of porn through non-Internet commercial channels: cable, for instance, or hotel pay-per-view. But so what? If you think porn is bad for […]
Religious hate crimes:
The Daily Ablution has an interesting report on how the Times (London) is reporting religious hate crime statistics. The facts from the British government report: Number of cases finalised by 31 March 2003: 18 . . . . Actual or perceived religion of the victimMuslim 10Sikh 2Hindu 2Jewish 1Jehovah’s Witness 1Christian 1Not Stated 1 The […]
Refusing to “Respect and Value” Homosexual Coworkers:
A federal judge has awarded back pay and damages for emotional distress to a Christian employee who objected to his employer’s policies requiring him to “respect and value” the differences of his gay colleagues. Specifically, Albert Buonanno objected to language in an AT&T Broadband employee handbook stating that “each person at AT&T Broadband is charged […]
2d Amendment Article Makes SSRN Top Ten:
My article, Was the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Conditioned on Service in an Organized Militia?, has made the ALL TIME HITS SSRN Top Ten Downloads for Law School Research Papers – Public Law & Legal Theory series. You can see the entire list here and can download it here. Here is the abstract: […]
Height Disparities:
Interesting New Yorker article, found via Alex at Marginal Revolution, discussing the fact that Europeans are growing taller, but Americans are not. The article claims that any population can grow to the same height as any other (height is not genetic, but based on nutrition), and concludes that Americans are not growing taller due to […]
Obscenity crackdown — what will the next step be?
So here’s what I wonder about the Justice Department’s planned new obscenity crackdown. As we know, there’s lots of porn of all varieties out there on the Internet. I don’t know how much of it is produced in the U.S., but even if it’s 80%, and every single U.S. producer is shut down, wouldn’t foreign […]
Liberty Fund meets Bloggers Downtown:
No, that is not the name of a Jamaican dub album; rather it describes my next three days. I am organizing a Liberty Fund conference in Washington and I have invited some leading bloggers to attend. Discussants will include Daniel Drezner, Megan McArdle (JaneGalt.net), Randall Parker (Futurepundit.com), Alex Tabarrok (MarginalRevolution.com), and David Nishimura (Cronaca.com). We […]
A bit more on Kennedy’s “Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam” remarks:
Some more support for my point below — driving home today I heard Kennedy’s remarks compressed down to “Iraq is George Bush’s Vietnam,” by none other than NPR. Not a word about the whole deception context; just that one line. So either NPR is being way out of line, recklessly quoting someone in ways that’s […]
Apropos Kennedy’s “Iraq is Bush’s Vietnam” remarks:
I realize that this is in a different venue than his original statements, but it nonetheless seems potentially relevant to figuring out what Kennedy meant in his original comments: McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said Iraq was different from Vietnam because there “is desire on the part of the people of […]
Demands that reporters erase a tape:
The AP reports: Two reporters were ordered Wednesday to erase their tape recordings of a speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a Mississippi high school. Scalia has long barred television cameras from his speeches, but does not always forbid newspaper photographers and tape recorders. On Wednesday, he did not warn the audience […]
No-Fly List,
which is apparently just a Hassle-Fly List: Timothy Noah in Slate has a nice article on the subject. I don’t know enough about the lawsuit or the list to opine intelligently on it, but Noah’s piece seemed worth reading. For a contrary view, read the ACLU’s press release. By the way, if the No-Fly List […]
Hyderabad:
I’m pleased to report that my Freedom of Speech and Intellectual Property: Some Thoughts After Eldred, 44 Liquormart, and Bartnicki has been reprinted in The ICFAI Journal of International Business Law, published by the ICFAI Law School, apparently at its Hyderabad campus. I remember once, when I was very young, seeing a map in which […]
“Hardball” Bingo:
Condoleezza Rice is going to testify tomorrow. Many people (myself included) will be interested in what she has to say and have not already made up their minds about her and her testimony. But many others have made up their minds — notably, the partisan talking heads who populate shows like “Hardball.” They already have […]