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I have been a big fan of President Bush’s judicial nominations, especially to the appellate courts. By and large, President Bush has appointed extremely capable and distinguished attorneys to the appellate bench. Indeed, the lowest ABA rating of any of Bush’s initial nominees was received by Roger Gregory, a Clinton appointee Bush renominated in a […]

Can a Western newspaper really publish a fawning obituary of Sheikh Yassin without mentioning a single one of his innocent victims? The Guardian can. Thanks to Scott Burgess for the pointer.

Ha’aretz reports: “Israel Defense Forces paratroopers caught a Palestinian boy, aged 12, wearing an explosive belt at the Hawara roadblock south of Nablus in the West Bank on Wednesday afternoon… The army believes that the boy was meant to detonate the belt near the soldiers or near the nearby army base.” This is not an […]

I believe Justice Scalia was correct not to recuse himself in the Energy Task Force case. His memo showed that many of the allegations were based on false premises. E.J. Dionne may believe that Scalia should recuse because of his close relationship to the administration (and his role in Bush v. Gore), fails to acknowledge […]

I received the following thoughtful response from a reader, an American now living in Europe: I agree with you that the President should be more forthright, but this almost never happens when in the midst of a war. I have been doing research into WWII and when the Germans launched the offensive that became the […]

I’ve recently reread Plessy v. Ferguson, and I was struck by some very libertarian language in the opinion that is almost always edited out of it by casebook editors: It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discriminate against either race, but prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored […]

Not a joke, read here. The bottom line?: “As of Wednesday, officials in the county of 79,000 people will begin telling couples applying for licenses to go elsewhere until the gay marriage debate is settled. “It may seem odd,” Benton County Commissioner Linda Modrell told Reuters in a telephone interview, but “we need to treat […]

See my post from yesterday. Ernest Miller writes: “Educated Guesswork has an insightful response to the ongoing Grey Album controversy (Infringing mixes). The proposal is that rather than distribute the fully remixed version of the Beatle’s White Album with Jay-Z’s Black Album, one could distribute the mechanical instructions for remixing the albums: a remix recipe […]

“The number of gays dismissed from the military under the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy has dropped to its lowest level in nine years as U.S. forces fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a report by an advocacy group. The military discharged 787 gay men and lesbians last year, according to the Servicemembers […]

In case you missed this essay by Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times of London, it is very long and very good. Read it from the beginning, but here is how it ends: It should be conceded immediately that the United States has been neither perfect in its conduct of the war nor innocent in […]

Mirror of Justice has some great posts on religious charities and the strings that may come attached with government aid, the Catholic Charities case, Catholic lawyers and the Church scandal, and more — much worth reading.

“Any country has the right to defend itself from terror. Israel has the right to defend herself from terror. And as she does so, I hope she keeps consequences in mind as to how to make sure we stay on the path to peace,” Bush said in his first public comment on Monday’s assassination of […]

What with coordinating over 40 speaking dates, I suppose a screw up was bound to happen. Due to an understandable miscommunication, both the Michigan and Notre Dame Federalist Society chapters scheduled my talk for tomorrow, Wednesday, March 24th. I am very grateful that faculty commentator Patricia Bellia and the Notre Dame Federalists agreed to reschedule […]

USA Today Scandal Update: This Salon story about Kelley’s fabrications is headlined, “Bloodthirsty Arabs, Vigilante Jews,” but no bloodthirsty Arabs appearing in any of Kelley’s stories are actually noted by the author. Rather, the story talks about a fabricated Pakistani child who wants to blow up the World Trade Center (Pakistanis are not, of course, […]

I had planned to blog about this over the weekend, but got side tracked. In light of the controversy over Clarke’s accusations and especially the administration’s response–and the discussion of it by my fellow Conspirators–I think Andrew Sullivan is on the right track. Though he is writing in the context of WMD’s it applies here […]