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Iain Murray explodes the hype over the purportedly “classified” Pentagon report, featured in the British press and noted in the blogosphere, that allegedly concludes global warming is a greater threat than global terrorism. In reality, the report was prepared for the Pentagon by futurist consultants to examine the potential implications of an extreme and highly […]

The part of me that said, “Don’t post this,” was defeated by the part of me that cannot stop chuckling: Thanks to Jerry McCusker at Machine in the Ghost for creating it and Instapundit for the post that inspired its creation. My only quibble is that my guitar was a cherry red Gibson ES335 with […]

I was editing a draft of my own article, and I came across the phrase “Catching people who violate criminal bans on leaking tax information . . . .” Uh, that’s the same as “Catching people who illegally leak tax information . . .”; and the latter version is shorter, simpler, and more active. Why […]

Tim Sandefur cites the following footnote from a judicial opinion: To the extent BAM has successfully persuaded me of the fundamental soundness of its position, that success should not be attributed, in any degree, to its counsel’s unrestrained and unnecessary use of the bold, underline, and “all caps” functions of word processing or his repeated […]

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition as “harassment”? According to a UPI story, A sixth-grader in Belpre, W.Va., started a three-day suspension from school Tuesday for sharing Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit edition with his pals. Justin Reyes, 12, brought a copy of the magazine to the Belpre Middle School last week, which education officials said was a violation […]

From Devore v. City of Philadelphia, Civ. No. 00-3598 (Feb. 20, 2004), where a magistrate reduced part of the fees to which a lawyer would have been entitled: The Defendants vehemently take exception to Mr. Puricelli’s fee of $300 per hour. . . . Mr. Puricelli’s written work is careless, to the point of disrespectful. […]

Massachusetts courts have said that Massachusetts must recognize gay marriages. Say this begins to happen; but Massachusetts voters amend the state constitution to essentially abolish the preexisting marriages. (This need not be the case — they might just prohibit ones but retain the old ones, or change the existing ones into civil unions, but say […]

A reader mentioned to me that this issue has come up again — some people are arguing that Congress should preserve certain statutes (this time, the Defense of Marriage Act, but in the past this has been suggested as to the Pledge, anti-abortion legislation, and so on) against Supreme Court invalidation by stripping the U.S. […]

I just finished Victor Davis Hanson’s Ripples of Battle, which details three lesser-known battles: Okinawa (1945), Shiloh (1862), and Delium (424 B.C.) As usual, his description of the battles and surrounding events are fascinating. But the thesis is that these battles, though not as much discussed as others, have had ripples extending up to today. […]

Just read the opinions in Locke v. Davey, which held that states may discriminate against religious programs in distributing generally available benefits, and I think Justice Scalia’s dissent is far more persuasive than the Chief Justice’s majority opinion. The one good thing I can say about the case is that the opinions are short enough […]

When people refuse to talk about something potentially incriminating — even when it’s in a social context, rather than in court or to the police — they say the “take the Fifth.” But why don’t they take other Amendments instead, too?      When you don’t want to go to church with someone, you can take the […]

VC readers will know I am skeptical of many government interventions. But I view asteroid protection as a genuine public good. Budget deficit or not, we are not spending enough money to address this problem. Here is a story about a recent near miss. Here is a group calling for greater asteroid protection, with Dana […]

Putting aside the anti-Semitic implications of the view that a small band of Jewish “neocon Likudniks” somehow managed to manipulate the clueless goyim in the Bush Administration to invade Iraq on behalf of Israel, two stark facts demonstrate the absurdity that any sort of Likudnik lobby is controlling U.S. foreign policy: (1) Yasser Arafat is […]

Here’s an interesting comment by Justice Jackson, concurring in McDonald v. United States (1948). Jackson (who was also joined by Justice Frankfurter) argued that the police violated the Fourth Amendment by surreptitiously breaking into an apartment without a warrant, and without much of a showing of exigent circumstances; and he concluded this analysis thus (paragraph […]

From District of Columbia v. Colts (1930), a Supreme Court case where the issue was whether a criminal offense was merely a “petty offense” and thus not subject to the constitutional jury trial guarantee (emphasis added): An information filed in the Police Court of the District of Columbia charged the respondent, Colts, with having operated […]