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The inaugural Sunday Song Lyric seemed popular – it even spawned a Monday Song Lyric – so it continues. This week I chose something a bit more modern. It’s from one of the most under-rated songwriters of the last 20 years, Matt Johnson of The The. Though known for often drawing moody and melancholy soundscapes, […]

From the FoxNews.com, where you can read the whole thing. Civil Rights Undermined by Antidiscrimination Laws By David E. Bernstein This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The achievements of the civil-rights movement in bringing about a more just and equal society are undoubtedly well worth celebrating. However, these […]

From the Borowitz Report: The Democratic Party ignored the triumph of Senator John Kerry (D-Mass) in the New Hampshire primary last night and instead handed the Democratic nomination for President to the movie blockbuster “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” The Democratic nomination brings the film?s total number of nominations to […]

An interesting post at Blog 702 on the controversy over whether John Edwards made much of his wealth from bogus malpractice cases involving the representation of children with cerebral palsy. It’s obviously foolish to have such complex issues of medical causation being determined before a nonexpert jury in an adversarial process to begin with, and […]

An opinion piece by me in Insight on the News discussing a favorite topic: the clash between antidiscrimination laws and civil liberties.

Congratulations and best wishes to How Appealing’s Howard Bashman on his new venture. Let me just add the hope — which I am sure is shared by many in the blawgosphere — that running his own firm doesn’t detract from his most excellent blog.

From Thomas Friedman’s column this past Thursday:      Someone asks Mikhail Gorbachev how — in one word — he would sum up the Soviet economy. “Good,” he replies. In two words? “Not good.”

“In 1972, David Rosenhan, a newly minted psychologist with a joint degree in law, called eight friends and said something like, “Are you busy next month? Would you have time to fake your way into a mental hospital and see what happens?”…First, there was training. Rosenhan instructed his confederates very, very carefully. Five days prior […]

The Framers, by the way, were apparently quite aware of the risk that bribes can undermine institutional decisionmaking, and saw the need to craft institutions in part to minimize the risk of such bribery. See, e.g., Federalist Nos. 22, 43, 57, 62, 66, 68, and 83. The analysis is instructive, I think, in deciding to […]

My quote earlier today of Irving Kristol’s argument that advocacy of homosexuality should be constitutionally unprotected led me to look up again his entire comment. Here is the material most relevant to the free speech question (again from Sex and God in American Politics; What Conservatives Really Think, Policy Review (Heritage), Summer 1984): [T]hose local […]

Roger Simon urges bloggers to reveal who they will vote for in the upcoming election. I may vote for the Libertarian candidate, to protest the fact that government is growing out of control and neither party cares. I may vote for Bush, because despite his disastrous domestic policy, and a few questionable judicial nominations, I’d […]

During the run-up to Gulf War II, many people argued that we shouldn’t go to war without multilateral support — support from a broad range of foreign countries, either directly or as translated into support from the Security Council.      There are, I think, three possible reasons for this position. One is purely pragmatic: if we […]

I think the strongest case against Mel Gibson (based on the evidence below) is (as David suggested) that Mel Gibson’s phrasing was ambiguous and that he knows better, having been exposed to actual Holocaust denial. Since this is still circumstantial evidence, though, I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt so far. There’s […]

Dejafoo has the details, and a pointer. “Whereas the murder of Christ by the leadership of Israel formed the basis around which the religion of Christianity would be formed, now the murder of the descendants of those leaders at the hands of those professing to be Christians has supplanted what was the religion which helped […]

More attempts to suppress dissent in Europe: One of Belgium’s leading civil rights groups has announced it intends to sue Belgian cardinal Gustaaf Joos for violating the country’s anti-discrimination laws. Joos said in a recent magazine interview that he believed that 90-95 percent of gay people were “sexual perverts” and that the remainder needed help. […]