November 16, 2011

Pre-Occupied with the First Amendment

In keeping with its inconsistent and often incoherent agenda, the Occupy Wall Street movement now occupies hundreds of areas other than Wall Street. The occupied zones tend to be public parks and plazas rather than financial centers. This creates a d...

September 12, 2011

Extradite the Lockerbie Bomber

The United States has only a limited ability to influence whether calm or chaos follows the ascension of the new regime in Libya.  But there is one thing we can and should try to influence: the fate of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of...

August 6, 2011

Civil Gideon: An Idea Whose Time Should Not Come

The U.S. Supreme Court recently revisited the heavily disputed territory of "Civil Gideon" -- the doctrine delineating when, if ever, indigent civil litigants are legally entitled to counsel appointed and paid for by the state.  The name "Civil ...

May 7, 2011

Who Botched John Galt?

"This movie was made with the permission but not the participation of the estate of Ayn Rand."  -- Disclaimer at the end of the movie Atlas Shrugged, Part IWhy not?The estate of Ayn Rand purports to safeguard her intellectual legacy....

March 6, 2011

The Strength of Nations

The strength of nations has emerged, for much of history, from mastery of physical resources.  Early humans who learned to make stone weapons earned an advantage over those using wooden ones.  Their successors who leaned to learn to use bro...

November 7, 2010

A Difficult Season for Freedom of Speech

Comedy Central, which famously dabbles in outrageous content, found a "South Park" episode including Mohammed in a bear suit too outrageous and censored the show after receiving threats of violence from Muslim extremists targeting the show'...

June 20, 2010

Now He Tells Us!

As the Senate weighs the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, the interest shown in the 46,000 pages recently released by the Clinton Presidential Library reminds us that confirmation is a one-shot deal.  Once confirmed, with very rar...

February 7, 2010

Lawfare

Last month, Baroness Patricia Scotland, Attorney General of the United Kingdom, addressed the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and promised her audience that she would try to stop her country's police from arresting visiting Israeli dignitaries. The fa...