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Judge Mark Filip, an outstanding District Court Judge in the Northern District of Illinois, has been nominated by the President to serve as the Deputy Attorney General (the #2 spot at DOJ, in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Department). I have mixed views on this one. Based on what I know of Filip, […]

I will be in Israel for the next week, so blogging may be light during that time. I am going to present a paper on democracy and international human rights law coauthored with Northwestern University lawprof John McGinnis at the Minerva Center conference on international human rights law at Hebrew University. Our paper builds on […]

Sotheby’s rebounded from its disappointing Impressionist auction with a smashing auction of more recent works: LED by a record-breaking Jeff Koons sculpture and a $US46 million Francis Bacon canvas, Sotheby’s has roared back from a dismal Impressionist sale to score the highest total in its history at a contemporary and postwar art auction. Bacon’s Second […]

Paul Caron has the data, based on the U.S. News rankings.

The quote is drawn from this CBS News story, with results that CBS labels “stunning.” And the story claims that the stunning results indeed remain robust when one controls for sex. Here’s the data on the Methodolgy page: Results for 2004 Overall Rates Veterans: 17.5 to 21.8 per 100,000 Non-Veterans: 9.4 per 100,000 Male Rates […]

Did you ever need lists of citations to respond to frivolous legal arguments? The ADL’s website offers this helpful start. Thanks to commenter “Another Roger” for the link.

Over at Balkinization, Marty has a very interesting post on the nature and goals of the Justice Department’s internal Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigation into the warrantless surveillance program.

With over 2,000 votes cast, Fred Thompson has a commanding lead in the VC straw poll. The vote, however, is quite fractured, with Thompson receiving only 23.1% of the vote, followed by Ron Paul, Barack Obama, and Rudy Guiliani at 18.2, 17.3, and 16.8%, respectively. Hillary trails badly at 7.1%, in a virtual tie with […]

Judge Easterbrook is at his most amusing when rejecting frivolous arguments, and he shows himself in fine form in today’s tax protestor decision. Hat tip: Decision of the Day.

JTA (the Jewish Telegraph Agency) reports: “This country is not a theocracy,” Dean said. “There are fundamental differences between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party believes that everybody in this room ought to be comfortable being an American Jew, not just an American; that there are no bars to heaven for […]

Decision of the Day discusses the latest reversal of District Judge Manuel Real. The Ninth Circuit’s reversing opinion concludes: “Justice suffers when judges act in such an arbitrary fashion. We apologize to the parties and admonish the district judge to exercise more care and patience in the future.” For more on the controversial Judge Real, […]

I am a big fan of ESPN. As a general rule, I find ESPN’s coverage of sports that I follow closely to be better, fairer, and more accurate than the regular media’s coverage of the legal and political issues that I’m most familiar with. Today, however, ESPN.com made a fairly serious factual error. In its […]

At Concurring Opinions lawprof Kaimipono Wenger raises some interesting points in response to my post on the US Army’s efforts to use eminent domain to take over 400,000 acres of land belonging to Colorado ranchers in order to build a new training ground for troops. In particular, he questions my suggestion that the Pentagon should […]

This is interesting:   The Bush administration has apparently changed policy and cleared the way for the Justice Department to restart an investigation into the government’s no-warrant electronic surveillance program, a department official told Congress on Tuesday.  The Justice Department said it will investigate the conduct of lawyers involved in the wiretapping program.  For months the White House […]