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I appreciated Jonathan Adler’s link on Saturday to the remarkable ABC News story about Dan Levin, then the acting head of DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, who underwent waterboarding and concluded, as Jonathan noted, that “waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision . . . [that] […]

[In conjunction with the release this month of my new book, Stem Cell Century: Law and Policy for a Breakthrough Technology” (more info here), I’ll be blogging about policy issues related to stem cell research and regenerative medicine occasionally over the next several weeks.] Election season in the 21st Century seems to inevitably bring a […]

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, ’twas his intent to blow up the King and the Parliament. Three score barrels of powder below, Poor old England to overthrow: By God’s providence he was catch’d With a dark lantern and a burning match. Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring. Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the […]

Over 90% of George Mason students who took their first Virginia bar exam last Summer passed, besting in-state competitors William & Mary, Washington & Lee, University of Richmond, and, for the first time, the University of Virginia. (Last year, our students beat everyone’s but Virginia’s). And yes, George Mason is a “national” law school that […]

Voting for the 2007 Weblog Awards is open. The Conspiracy was nominated for “Best Law Blog.” Under the rules, you are allowed to vote once for each category every 24 hours, so you can vote again if you have not yet voted today. I am not saying you should necessarily vote for the VC. Other […]

Ever use a word thinking it’s commonplace, only to learn from listeners’ blank looks that it’s obscure? Just happened to me in class Friday with “catspaw.” It surprised me, though quick Nexis and Google searches confirm that it is indeed pretty uncommon; I found only about 15 references, setting aside proper names, in all Nexis-accessible […]

In my last post about vampires, I recommended Paul Bibeau’s Sundays with Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man’s Quest to Live in the World of the Undead. I’ve now finished the book, and here are a couple more funny snippets: “I was having parties, orgies with hot Dutch girls, and going to England on […]

These final set of comments are, like the earlier ones, thoughtful and helpful. I had not previously seen debated the anonymous petition/brief issue. There was only one comment that I recall that posed a specific question back to me, which I will try here to respond in this final blog. The question concerned the percentage […]

My recent post about a lecture by Dr. Matthias Kuentzel on the connection between Naziism and modern Islamic radicalism garnered a lot of interests from readers, so I thought I’d mention that Kuentzel’s book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Naziism and the Roots of 9/11, has now been officially released, though Amazon doesn’t have it in […]

Senator Fred Thompson appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this morning. The transcript is here. One thing I found notable about the interview was Thompson’s explicit commitment to federalist principles. Here is how he described his views: I think people ought to be free at state and local levels to make decisions that even Fred […]

1550, Spain’s King Charles V, after hearing arguments in the Vallodid debate, decided that Indians could be enslaved and exploited with few humanitarian limitations. Could a kind commenter please supply me with a cite for the above statement? I know there’s stuff about Vallodid on the web, but I need a published book or scholarly […]

Former Bush economic adviser Gregory Mankiw discusses three “true but misleading statements about health care that politicians and pundits love to use to frighten the public.” 1. The United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, which has national health insurance. 2. Some 47 million Americans do not have health insurance. […]

Judge Evan Wallach — former JAG, renowned expert on the law of war, and designer of this web site on the subject — provides a history lesson on the U.S. government’s treatment of waterboarding in today’s Washington Post: The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government — whether acting alone before […]

Bob Bauer comments on the short-lived Colbert campaign for President at More Soft Money Hard Law. His post begins: So the South Carolina Democratic party has concluded that Stephen Colbert may not appear on the Democratic primary ballot. It did not think his candidacy was a laughing matter, and it thought this precisely because the […]

For those who, like me, take an inordinate interest in all things Italian (I spent a semester in Bologna during the run-up to last year’s Presidential election, and hope to spend a good deal more time in that extraordinary country in years to come), a couple of recent books have caused a sensation in Italian […]