stcynic
Posts by this author
March 12, 2004
Ladies and Gentlemen, are you ready for your headliner? You've seen him on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and on the HBO special of his sold out tour with Eugene Volokh and Glenn Reynolds, The Barristers of Comedy. Please welcome, from Yale University, Professor Jack Balkin:Because the Federal…
March 12, 2004
Rob McEwen has left a comment on a post that has slipped way down the page, and as it's worth responding to and fisking in some detail, I thought I'd bring it up top to answer it.
Pre-script: Turns out this guy left this same comment, word for word and breathless exclamation point for breathless…
March 11, 2004
To those of you who come here to read my views on science and religion and politics, this post will probably come as something of a shock. But in the process of dealing with a very painful situation, my thoughts have turned inward. That turning inward is fueled also by the fact that next week will…
March 11, 2004
Jonathan Rowe, this month's guest blogger on Tim Sandefur's Freespace Blog, is in the middle of reading Randy Barnett's Restoring the Lost Constitution, and he's blogging about it. I have not read the book yet, but Barnett is probably my favorite constitutional scholar. The other day I mentioned…
March 10, 2004
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave a speech at a conference in New Orleans yesterday. Among other things, he said the following:"It is literally true that the U.S. Supreme Court has entirely liberated itself from the text of the Constitution," Scalia said at a conference Uptown on the merit…
March 10, 2004
I guess those who wondered just how far the depravity of the ACLU would go have their answer. We should have known that the slippery slope that the ACLU was on due to defending the rights of the KKK and NAMBLA would eventually lead to them defending even the likes of Jerry Falwell. Now remember,…
March 10, 2004
The Senate is once again holding hearings on a constitutional amendment banning flag burning. It's nice to know that in an age of 500 BILLION dollar deficits and terrorism around the world, this is what our elected leaders are wasting their time on. But of course, it's an election year and these…
March 9, 2004
From Brian Caplan, the Libertarian Purity Test. I scored 35, which makes me solidly libertarian, but I tend to agree with Tim Sandefur (who scored 96, making him a hardcore libertarian) that the test tends to assume that only anarcho-capitalists are "true" libertarians.
Joe Carter is compiling the…
March 9, 2004
The blogs interested in legal issues seem to be once again debating an issue, this time "judicial activism". As I mentioned in a post yesterday, the Boston Globe had a Sunday article on it quoting one blogger, Randy Barnett, and it seems to be spreading throughout the blogosphere. Barnett, of…
March 8, 2004
Paul Myers has a wonderful post about his experience, as a Philadelphia native, eating a cheesesteak sandwich in Minnesota. It contains this paragraph:You know, I don't think evil is loud or vicious or fiery or alarming. True evil is bland. It's tedium and boredom and mindrotting monotony. It's the…
March 8, 2004
The Boston Globe had an article written by Dave Denison about judicial activism on Sunday. The results were mixed. On the one hand, Denison does a fine job of illustrating what I have said previously (here and here, among other essays), that claims of "judicial activism" rarely have any objective…
March 7, 2004
Ryan Boots, of the Soundfury blog, has decided to vent his spleen about gay marriage. Basically, he doesn't like it one bit. And typical of those who oppose gay marriage, his arguments against it run the gamut from the outright false to the profoundly silly. He begins by saying:I am weary of having…
March 6, 2004
I came across this blog while following links and all I can say is "wow". Ironically, it has the fluffy name "Sunny Days in Heaven" while its author seems to be advocating a civil war to stop the advance of civil rights for homosexuals. In a post yesterday on this blog, the author is discussing a…
March 5, 2004
Since most of the opposition to gay marriage seems to be coming from fundamentalist Christians who claim that gay marriage is opposed to God's word, maybe it's time to write a constitutional amendment based on the biblical model of marriage. If we're going to turn to God's word for our laws, we can…
March 5, 2004
"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."Robert Heinlein
March 5, 2004
Just to alert anyone who happens to come across another blog on this site, Patriot Edition, by a man named Billy Kess. Billy is a guy I've chatted with in a political chatroom for a while. I never liked him much. He's pretty much a braindead rightwinger. But I was nice enough to help him get his…
March 5, 2004
The late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun left all of his papers to the Library of Congress, as is customary, and asked that they be relased on the 5th anniversary of his death on March 4, 1999. That release was made this week. For avid court watchers like me, this is an opportunity to get a…
March 5, 2004
I'm a huge college basketball fan, as some of you may know. It's the only sport I really watch religiously. In fact, the most holy of holidays - March Madness, Baby - are almost upon us, praise be to Alaa Abdelnaby (and if you get that obscure reference, you're either a major Duke fan like me or…
March 5, 2004
Once more into the breach, dear friends. Rusty has posted a reply to me on the subject of evolution and morality, but the issue is really whether evolution equates with atheism or not. I'm getting a bit tired of hashing and rehashing this with both he and Ilona, primarily because they keep moving…
March 5, 2004
In the conversations with Ilona, one point has come up repeatedly and I wanted to address it in more detail. This is the question of the role of naturalism in science. Ilona, and Rusty as well, fail to understand the distinction between methodological naturalism(MN) and philosophical naturalism(PN…
March 4, 2004
Ilona has responded to my latest response in two places. First, in a comment in response to that post, and second in a post on her own blog. Rather than posting response and counter-response as in past entries, I'm going to try and just subdivide this into the issues under dispute so that they'll…
March 4, 2004
My oldest and dearest friend, Rick, recently got the most unexpected news. Rick has never really had a family like the rest of us have. His biological father left his mother when she was pregnant with him and he has never met him (they now live in the same city and Rick knows where he lives, but…
March 4, 2004
Rusty from New Covenant has replied to my post replying to his post in response to comments at the end of my post. Did you follow that? Drugs help, I promise. The upshot of the whole thing, and the issue under dispute, is that Rusty thinks it's "inconsistent" for anyone who accepts evolution to be…
March 3, 2004
Ilona of True Grit has replied to my response to her comments left on my blog. This time she is replying on her blog. This is her second reply to me, and I think two things are becoming clear and they are the two reasons why I think she fails to make compelling arguments. First, she has a very…
March 3, 2004
Came across an interesting article about the possibility of Scalia replacing Rehnquist as Chief Justice if Rehnquist decides to retire. The article is a bit dated, being from November 2002, at a time when many were speculating that the Chief Justice would retire after that term expired in Summer…
March 2, 2004
Gary Petersen of Country Keepers has responded to my post concerning him yesterday. In that post he claims that my reference to evidence that the earth is 4.55 billion years old "just doesn't stand up to a sound, thorough evaluation." He further states:I believe the evidence found in the world…
March 2, 2004
Sunday's New York Times had a fascinating article about the growth of local citizens groups to fight the ever-increasing challenges to evolution in public schools. I found this of particular interest because I co-founded one of those groups, Michigan Citizens for Science, 3 years ago. We are…
March 1, 2004
From Paul Myers comes a link to a new blog by University of Chicago physicist Sean Carroll. From his academic webpage, it's obvious that he is interested in the intersection of religion and science and I hope he writes on that subject extensively on his blog. Welcome to the blogosphere, Sean.
March 1, 2004
For anyone who thinks that Roy Moore isn't in this for the money, fame and power, check this out:Saturday night, ushers with red, white and blue buckets collected donations as the emcee assured people. "We're not keeping any of it. It's all going to the judge," he said. So does the $50 it cost to…
March 1, 2004
As a follow up to my fisking of Bill Federer's nonsense about Darwin and racism, here's an interesting new article. There is a new edition of Darwin's Descent of Man being published with a forward by Jim Moore and Adrian Desmond. The two Darwin biographers argue that one of the reasons why Darwin…