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Excellent Dahlia Lithwick piece on the oral arguments in the Pledge of Allegiance case.

Stephen Bainbridge makes a good point: In arguing the Pledge case, plaintiff Michael Newdow opined that: His daughter would be singled out by not saying the Pledge, and would be coerced to participate. “Imagine you’re a third-grader in a class of 30 kids. That’s enormous pressure to put on a child” to conform, Newdow said. […]

Thorpe’s American Charters Constitutions and Organic Laws 1492-1908 is an excellent resource, and it looks like it’s now mostly online, together with some more recent state constitutions. (Thanks to Clayton Cramer for the pointer.)

Matt Rustler, no enemy of self-defense rights, has some interesting details. (If the link doesn’t take you to the right post, scroll down to “MORE CORRUPTION IN EUROPE.”).

A follow-up on the observation that there are few flags with any orange and brown on them, with thanks to many readers who responded: Addition: Pink and purple seem scarce, too. Explanations: The chief explanations seem to be (1) medieval heraldic conventions, (2) relative visibility from a distance, and (3) the relative cost of various […]

The Invisible Adjunct. Visit there and say good-bye.

David’s excellent point below is not just applicable to antitrust. Rather, it is the proper mode of analysis for all public policy questions, and it deserves to be reiterated. Too often policy arguments proceed as follows: A) the market “fails” because it does not produce the theoretically optimal result, therefore B) government intervention is necessary. […]

This year, as most years, teaching John Locke got me thinking about the Pledge of Allegiance. One major issue in thinking about Locke’s Second Treatise is the difference between express and tacit consent. Most people most of the time only tacitly consent to the government they’re living under. They accept the protection of the laws […]

This post by Kieran at Crooked Timber on antitrust law and libertarianism leads to the following thoughts: The right way to look at antitrust law is not whether economic theory suggests that particular monopolies can and will exist that can, in theory, be corrected through government action, to the benefit of both consumer welfare and […]

Instapundit is doing a nice job keeping up with the problems with Dick Clarke’s book and testimony here (and scroll up for more). I agree with Stuart that serious criticisms of the government’s failure to detect and prevent the atrocity of 9/11 should be taken seriously. But many of the “serious allegations” turn entirely on […]

Updates to my Scalia plane ticket post are here. UPDATE: Air travel guru Gary Leff e-mails to note that Scalia’s round-trip ticket most likely originated in New Orleans, and not D.C., because “forgoing the outbound and using the return portion of a ticket only . . . is generally NOT acceptable even in the case […]

We live in a partisan world, of course, and so it is no surprise when partisan Republicans attack Richard Clarke. But I find the attacks from Rush Limbaugh and other partisans particularly disappointing. For most aspects of economic and social policy, ordinary citizens have access to the same data as the decisionmakers (e.g., unemployment figures, […]

How do University of Chicago students spend their spring breaks? Well, Crescat’s Amanda Butler went to the oral arguments for Newdow, and files this extended report. UPDATE: Will Baude and Amy Lamboley went to the Met instead, though Will spent last Spring Break at the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Slate has sent a reporter to cover […]

So why do so few countries’ flags have brown or orange on them? Are those just objectively, cross-culturally ugly or non-patriotism-inducing colors?

Maggie Gallagher has a seriously confused piece in the Weekly Standard that starts off by suggesting the danger that gay marriage will lead to polygamous marriage. She even throws in an Islamic bugaboo, wondering how long it will take Islamic leaders to recognize that the U.S. is not serious about enforcing its marriage norms and […]