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The continuing resolution that I wrote about yesterday could have a big impact on the federal government’s procurement of IT equipment from Chinese companies. As described in an earlier post, the resolution includes a provision that bars purchases of an “information technology system” that was “produced, manufactured or assembled” by entities “owned, directed, or subsidized by the People’s […]

The VC posting page has been down for much of today due to technical problems. These problems have now been solved and – hopefully – will not recur. We apologize for any inconvenience. We will have a good deal more to say about today’s Proposition 8 oral argument shortly. Stay tuned!

At the oral argument today in Hollingsworth v. Perry, Justice Scalia repeatedly questioned Ted Olson on when same-sex marriage became unconstitutional. From the transcript: JUSTICE SCALIA: I’m curious, when -­ when did — when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted? Sometimes — some […]

The audio is here.

Over at SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein writes: The bottom line, in my opinion, is that the Court probably will not have the five votes necessary to get to any result at all, and almost certainly will not have five votes to decide the merits of whether Proposition 8 is constitutional. Several Justices seriously doubt whether the […]

This morning the Supreme Court handed down Florida v. Jardines, the case on use of a drug-sniffing dog at a suspect’s front porch to sniff around for narcotics inside. Held, in a 5-4 decision by Justice Scalia: Entry onto the porch was an unconstitutional search because it was a physical intrusion into the curtilage around […]

I do not want to shock readers of the blog, but Washington is a spin city where many politicians and pundits say a policy will deliver a set of results without really believing it. It would be very beneficial to counter this band of dissemblers with an army of people focused on the accuracy of […]

Good to know our betters know what’s best for us:

Anger over Chinese cyberespionage continues to mount in Congress, and it’s beginning to show in legislation. Not just the bills Congressmen introduce, the ones Congress passes.  Demonstrating remarkable bipartisan angst about Chinese hacking and the risks in Chinese high tech equipment, Congress has added tough sanctions to the continuing resolution that funds the federal government […]

Relentless and accelerating technological change is the fundamental fact of our time. Your smartphone today is more than a thousand times powerful and a million times less expensive than all the computers at MIT in 1965. This exponential increase in computational power is continuing. It represents both a boon and a danger to society. Such […]

Question:  From whom or what is Section 3 of DOMA defending traditional marriage? Honest answer:  From states who have recognized same sex marriage. See the federalism problem yet?

I have some questions for Jonathan (or anyone else), along the lines of my previous comments on DOMA and federalism: 1. Suppose DOMA defined “channels” to mean “navigable-in-fact waterways, as well as all interstate and intrastate waters including (but not limited to) intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, […]

In his post Nick again asserts that Congress has an power to define terms for purposes of federal law:  “If DOMA is unconstitutional, it is because this particular federal definition of “marriage” offends some substantive constitutional provision. But that has nothing to do with federalism.”  But there is no enumerated Definitions Power in the Constitution. […]

Ed Whelan has a post today on Bench Memos rejecting the argument made by Walter Dellinger (and endorsed to some degree by Michael McConnell) in an amicus brief that proponents of Proposition 8 defining marriage as limited to a man and wife lack standing to defend the proposition they sponsored and campaigned successfully to see […]

Last week, the Kentucky Supreme Court disbarred noted Ohio plaintiffs’ attorney Stanley Chesley. The WSJ Law Blog reports: The state’s highest court on Thursday sanctioned Mr. Chesley, 76 years old, for professional misconduct, accusing him of cheating clients out of millions of dollars in a widely followed settlement of a diet-drug lawsuit. The court stripped […]