Brian Beutler writes: So, by my count, the White House has, at various times, determined that the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments are unacceptable impediments to its violation of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, and, as such, chosen to wish them out of existence as if they were minor headaches […]

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Genius.

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Mother Jones links to the Sunlight Foundation’s Transparency in Government Act 2008, explicitly linking it to Larry Lessig’s Change Congress campaign, but noting that the proposed legislation “goes beyond” Lessig’s platform.  This is actually one of my reasons for skepticism about the project.  CC asks candidates to pledge to, among other things, “support reform to […]

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I have been (slowly but surely) plugging through David Kris and J. Douglas Wilson’s massive but absolutely invaluable National Security Investigations & Prosecutions—and let me give them a free plug here: It’s not a cheap tome, but anyone who wants to talk seriously about FISA really must have this book on their desk. The more […]

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Anyone notice this language in the new House FISA bill? SEC. 406. SURVEILLANCE TO PROTECT THE UNITED STATES. This Act and the amendments made by this Act shall not be construed to prohibit the intelligence community (as defined in section 3(4) of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 401a(4))) from conducting lawful surveillance […]

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The latest chapter in the hilarious misadventures of Concerned Woman for America Matt Barber involves blowing a fuse over an Illinois high school’s addition of the Tony- and Pulitzer-award winning play Angels in America to their curriculum.  Though Barber avers that it “takes a lot” to shock him, he writes (emphasis mine): The book is […]

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I’m fairly sympathetic to Stephen Bainbridge’s critique of Barack Obama’s conception of what makes for a good Supreme Court justice. According to Obama: We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, […]

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I’ve bitched about this before, but I find few things as tedious as legal analysis that reduces Supreme Court decisions to some hackneyed “people versus the powerful” cartoon. Especially when it yields what ought to be guffaw-inducing laments that a recent ruling interprets “the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause — which was adopted for the express […]

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Forgive me while I play catchup, especially as I expect others have already made this point, but the commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence, while obviously meant to tread a kind of middle ground, seems less defensible to me than an outright pardon would’ve been. The only way to spin this as anything other than […]

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A New York Times editorial today condemns “three bad rulings” by the Supreme Court. One is the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” decision, which the Times calls a “mangling of sound precedent and the First Amendment.” Another, and the primary target of the editors’ ire, is the Wisconsin Right to Life campaign finance ruling, which “opened […]

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