stcynic
Posts by this author
February 1, 2006
Eugene Volokh had a couple of posts a few days ago about anti-religious speech and a movement to regulate it around the world. It begins with the UN Commission on Human Rights urging nations to "take resolute action to prohibit the dissemination through political institutions and organizations of…
February 1, 2006
Okay, okay, I admit that it's not sound sport to agitate such an obviously challenged cretin, but Dembski's experiment with DaveScot as his "blog czar" - he's actually signing his email that way, folks - just gets funnier and funnier. Yesterday he apparently lost his mind and put up a post…
January 31, 2006
I am having an extended debate with Jimmy G in the comments on this thread over the nature of the 9th amendment. Jimmy's argument is that the 9th amendment must be read as a federalism provision and that the "unenumerated rights" mentioned in it are limited to those rights found in state…
January 31, 2006
I'm glad to hear that Orac, surgeon/scientist and great blogger, is moving his blog, Respectful Innocence, to the ScienceBlogs domain soon. Welcome to the neighborhood, Orac. You get to those the first cookout when it warms up.
OOPS. I meant to say Respectful Insolence, of course. I did not intend…
January 31, 2006
A friend sent me a link to this article in Newsweek about Jerry Falwell's Liberty University being the #1 debate team in the nation, knowing that I know the debate world pretty well and would find it interesting. My response to the article is: uh, no. Not even close. I'd love to know how this…
January 31, 2006
Robert Kagan, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, has a fascinating article in the Weekly Standard called I am Not a Straussian. Jon Rowe cited it at Positive Liberty and I had to read it. It's quite amusing to read, but I think he has a serious point to make about how much of…
January 31, 2006
Jason Kuznicki reminds us yet again why he is one of the clearest thinkers and best writers in the blogosphere with this post using Akhil Amar's book as a jumping off point to discuss Whiggism vs cynicism in historical analysis, particularly as it concerns the U.S. Constitution.
January 30, 2006
I love watching C-SPAN on days like today when the hypocrisy of both parties is on full display. The Democrats go on about not having enough time for adequate debate when everyone knows that the attempted filibuster has nothing at all to do with that. The Republicans talk about the undue and…
January 30, 2006
Sandefur has posted the first criticism of Amar's new book on the Constitution and does an excellent job of handling Amar's far too expansive view of the commerce clause. While all four Positive Liberty contributors are big fans of Amar's scholarship, this is one area of his book that really jumped…
January 30, 2006
Larry Farma has left a long comment in response to my post about the DI's claim that Judge Jones should not have ruled on the scientific status of ID in the Dover case. Because that post is getting old and the comment is so long, I figured it should be moved up top and responded to in its own post…
January 30, 2006
While I'm on the subject of originalism and constitutional interpretation, I really should link to Timothy Sandefur's brilliant article in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy entitled Liberal Originalism: A Past for The Future and to Randy Barnett's equally brilliant article, An…
January 30, 2006
James Ryan has a very interesting review of two books that critique originalism as a compelling theory of constitutional interpretation available at SSRN (it will be published in the Stanford Law Review soon). One of the books he reviews, Active Liberty, is written by none other than Supreme Court…
January 29, 2006
Like most Americans, I remember quite vividly watching the Challenger disaster on television. I don't think I watched it live, but of course it was on every channel within minutes of the explosion. I had two connections to this event, one from the past and one in the future. 8 months before the…
January 29, 2006
John Pieret has also done an excellent job of fisking Michael Francisco's claim that Judge Jones should not have ruled on the question of whether ID is science. He makes many of the same points I make, but in more detail. He included one argument that I intended to include but forgot as well.…
January 28, 2006
We have a new bill here in Michigan that contains language that sounds very objective and unconnected to ID, but that will obviously pave the way for the introduction of ID (or at least common ID arguments) into science classrooms. HB 5606 apparently replaces HB 5251, which was introduced last year…
January 28, 2006
The Scienceblogs techies have fixed something I asked them to fix regarding how to quote what someone else wrote when answering it in a comment. You can now use the blockquote tag in your responses and I think this is the best way to organize a comment to make clear what is being responded to. To…
January 28, 2006
DarkSyde continues his interviews with pro-science advocates at DailyKos, this time with my good friend Wesley Elsberry being the victim. Very much worth reading, and worth following his advice and joining organizations like the National Center for Science Education. The NCSE's budget is dwarfed by…
January 27, 2006
Thanks to spyder for pointing me to this really excellent essay by Michael Berube on academic freedom and the threats to it currently. It's very long but worth the trip.
January 27, 2006
So I'm having a conversation with my buddy Dan this morning about constitutional law and while talking about how a strict formalist would argue that the only part of a court ruling that is truly binding is the court's holding alone, not the explanation for that holding (or "dicta"), I get this…
January 27, 2006
The Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Division, also known as their blog, has a new writer. His name is Michael Francisco and he's a second year law student at Cornell. His first contribution to the ongoing diatribe against Judge Jones' ruling in the Dover case is the subject of this post. In…
January 26, 2006
Via Radley Balko comes this frightening story of a legal system out of control:
Fairfax County's police chief said yesterday that one of his officers accidentally shot and killed an optometrist outside the unarmed man's townhouse Tuesday night as an undercover detective was about to arrest him on…
January 26, 2006
I don't know how many of my readers have been in a public high school lately, but one of the things I've noticed in the schools I've been in is the presence of "safe space" signs around the school. They began in response to incidents that happen routinely in schools where a student who is gay, or…
January 25, 2006
I really should just start a daily column on the latest nonsense from the StopTheACLU folks. Here's their entry for today.
The ACLU is receiving a TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR SETTLEMENT as compensation for suing the government over the way names get on the no fly list after two whiny little…
January 25, 2006
Timothy Sandefur has the first in what will be a series of posts by all of us at Positive Liberty about Akhil Amar's new book, America's Constitution: A Biography. Sandefur was kind enough to buy copies of this book and send them to me, Jon and Jason so we could all read it and comment on it. I'm…
January 25, 2006
The UN Economic and Social Council is a group of non-governmental organizations that work to find solutions to social problems around the world and facilitate greater respect for human rights and human liberty. There are over 2100 NGOs involved with the council and recently two more applied for…
January 25, 2006
Clayton Cramer is also discussing the Polk County "free speech zone" situation, partially in response to my post on the subject. Along the way he manages to give a perfect demonstration of the kind of nasty, simplistic and unjustified rhetoric that he is so infamous for. After falsely claiming that…
January 25, 2006
Bob Murphy, an economist, has an article at the thoroughly loathsome LewRockwell.com (please don't try and tell me the people who write for that site are libertarians; that collection of southern nationalists and whackos is anything but libertarian) about what he terms "typical objections to…
January 24, 2006
If you haven't heard the little snippet of Keven Federline's attempt to rap that has leaked out on to the internet, you have to find it. It's brutally bad. Don Knotts would have more street cred as a rapper. Federline, better known as Mr. Britney Spears, is shaping up to be a major embarrassment…
January 24, 2006
Brian Ross of ABC News is usually one of the better investigative journalists in the mainstream media. I generally like the fact that he digs hard for information and doesn't let go of a legitimate story even if the 24 hour news cycle has forgotten about it in favor of covering the latest J-Lo…
January 24, 2006
I mentioned a few weeks ago the situation at the University of Wisconsin where the university told dorm RAs that they could no longer host bible studies in their dorm rooms because they were afraid that would make them less "approachable" to other students. This was a ludicrous argument then and it…