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I purchased a Dell laptop a few years ago and it has been serviceable.  Except for one thing–the horrible integrated webcam.  The first was defective and had to be replaced.  Now my computer is telling me that it doesn’t detect any webcam.  As far as I can tell, the only thing worse than a Dell […]

Salimbene di Adam, in the late 13th century, quoted an anonymous source in his Cronica, commenting on the corruption in the Roman Curia: Accusative ad curiam si ceperis ire, Proficis in nichilo, si pergis absque dativo. The “nichilo” is a medieval spelling of “nihilo”, which shows us that they pronounced that “h” in late-13th-century Italy. […]

The Double Jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment provides that no person can “be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” Despite its text, the Double Jeopardy clause has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to allow both the federal government and a state government to bring […]

It’s United States v. Ali (D.C. Cir. June 11, 2013), and it cites an article by our own Eugene Kontorovich. Here’s the introduction: Ali Mohamed Ali, a Somali national, helped negotiate the ransom of a merchant vessel and its crew after they were captured by marauders in the Gulf of Aden. Though he claims merely […]

Google argues that the answer is “yes,” in this oral argument today in the Ninth Circuit in Joffe v. Google.   It’s an interesting question as a matter of statutory interpretation, largely because Congress wasn’t thinking about wireless Internet networks when it was writing about “radio communications.”  The statute reflects different carve-outs from different eras […]

The Washington Post has an interesting new poll out about public reaction to the recent disclosures that the NSA is getting access to all domestic call records, or at least all records held by particular telephone providers. I thought I would ask the Post’s poll question to readers here, and then hide the result of […]

The Center for American Progress and its affiliated 501(c)(4) Center for American Progress Action Fund often attack conservative and libertarian organizations as tools of corporate interests.  The latter’s Think Progress blog, for instance, has often suggested corporate donations undermine the credibility of CAP’s ideological adversaries.  This makes a recent report and follow-up in The Nation on […]

I will not be live blogging from the royal wedding here in Stockholm today; that simply would not be appropriate. For those who are interested, see Hello Magazine’s comprehensive coverage, here.

A reader e-mailed me about this story: The family of a future Marine from New Hampshire is upset that his high school will not allow him to wear his uniform to graduation. Brandon Garabrant will earn the title of [United] States Marine Friday after boot camp graduation. He will receive his diploma at ConVal Regional […]

In his post below, my co-blogger Stewart Baker points out DNI James Clapper’s statement about the FISC order requiring Verizon to turn over its entire call records database to the NSA. I was particularly interested in this paragraph: By order of the FISC, the Government is prohibited from indiscriminately sifting through the telephony metadata acquired […]

The Director of National Intelligence issued a statement late last night about the NSA collection flap.  It’s the smartest thing the government has released so far, and its justification for the program in question seems to confirm my speculation in Foreign Policy yesterday. First, large-scale collections give the government a way to screen for patterns […]

[This post is sheer speculation; I may be way off. Read accordingly.] Longtime readers will recall the dispute in 2005-2006 over the legality of the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, aka the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” which was revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times. Recall that several DOJ officials threatened to resign over […]