stcynic
Posts by this author
January 9, 2006
Radley Balko has come out against the Alito nomination and he makes some very valid points in the process. The one thing that really disturbs me about Alito is his deference to the other branches of government.
January 9, 2006
As I mentioned, I did get to hear a few minutes of Sen. John Cornyn's (R-Texas) opening remarks in this morning's Alito confirmation hearing and got a good chuckle out of it. As is common among partisans of both parties, he portrayed he and his party as motivated solely by a concern for truth and…
January 9, 2006
A friend sent me this item in the news this morning, which is appropriate given the recent discussions of using noms de plume on the internet. Under a new law signed by the President last week, sending any email or posting any messages that are "annoying" to others without revealing your identity…
January 9, 2006
I've had the Alito confirmation hearing on in the other room but I haven't been paying attention to them because, frankly, the opening statements by the senators on the committee are pretty much meaningless hot air. But as I was walking through the room I heard Brit Hume mention Robert Bork and I…
January 9, 2006
A reader gave me the heads up on this hilariously ridiculous rant from Gribbit at StopTheACLU. It can be summed up quickly in the following manner: "The ACLU are evil communists who hate God and God is going to strike them down for it." Needless to say, if you're going to argue for that idiotic…
January 7, 2006
Nick Matzke has a terrific post up at the Panda's Thumb about the DI's complaint that the judge in the Dover trial wasn't qualified to rule on the scientific status of ID. It's quite a silly complaint and Nick gives it the sarcastic attention it deserves. First, he quotes the DI's statement:
"…
January 7, 2006
Daniel Morgan has posted several items at his blog attempting to figure out the real life identity of "Mike Gene", a pseudonymous ID advocate who blogs at Telic Thoughts. Mike Gene has been a staple in the evolution/ID debate for many years. He's not really a Discovery Institute-type of ID advocate…
January 6, 2006
Writing at Dembski's blog, DaveScot refers to my post on him taking over that blog yesterday:
Be sure to read Ed Brayton's trackback pn Dispatches. The peanut gallery never fails to provide some laughs. Just to show Ed there's no hard feelings I approved his trackback. Let's see if he returns the…
January 6, 2006
We are forever being told by the Discovery Institute that they do not favor requiring ID to be taught in schools along with evolution. Bill Dembski doesn't appear to have gotten that memo because every time a politician comes out for that policy, he cheers them on. When President Bush came out in…
January 6, 2006
Jason links to this at PL and I had to comment here:
An executive committee member of the Southern Baptist Convention was arrested on a lewdness charge for propositioning a plainclothes policeman outside a hotel, police said.
Lonnie Latham, senior pastor at South Tulsa Baptist Church, was booked…
January 5, 2006
In my predictions for 2006 last week, I projected that the NCAA Final Four would be Duke, UConn, Villanova and Michigan State. So today I look at ESPN.com and they have 8 experts predicting the final four as well - and 6 of the 8 experts predict the exact same final four. Doug Gottlieb bizarrely…
January 5, 2006
This is classic. Reader Pieter B. found this and left it in a comment. Bill O'Reilly is whining like a schoolgirl over Letterman telling him he's full of crap the other night. But here's what O'Reilly was saying back in 2001 about Letterman:
The late-night program hosted by David Letterman is the…
January 5, 2006
First of all, if you're a sports fan (I know many of my readers aren't) and you didn't watch the national championship game last night, you missed a lot. Rarely does a game live up to the kind of hype we've heard over the last few weeks, but this one did. You want big time performances? How about…
January 5, 2006
Just after Christmas, Dembski decided to mothball his blog because it was taking up too much of his time. Now it's back, but you're not gonna believe who's in charge:
By popular demand this blog is back in operation, though with only limited participation in the future from me. Past contributors to…
January 5, 2006
I've just received an email with another batch of those delightful Worldview Weekend essays. Sadly, there are none by Kirk Cameron this time, but the other authors put together a strong effort to be as ridiculous as he is. This essay by Kerby Anderson, president of Probe Ministries, on the "myths…
January 5, 2006
Okay, I didn't see Bill O'Reilly's appearance on the David Letterman show two nights ago, but I did see O'Reilly whining about it on his show last night and I frankly laughed my ass off. Apparently Letterman told him that he thinks about 60% of what he says is crap, which strikes me as a tad too…
January 5, 2006
David Schraub points out something interesting while linking to my post about Douglas Laycock going to U of M law school and being a grad of Michigan State:
Interesting factoid revealed--he attended Michigan State University as an undergrad. Know who else did? Constitutional law and Church/State…
January 4, 2006
My buddy Dan just emailed me about this, having read about it on Brian Leiter's law school blog. The University of Michigan Law School has scored a major coup by hiring Doug Laycock away from the University of Texas. Prof. Laycock is one of the leading constitutional scholars in the nation,…
January 4, 2006
It appears that the ACLU has finally seen the handwriting on the wall. Under the withering attack of the crack investigative reporters at the Worldnutdaily and StopTheACLU, they've finally just come out and admitted that they are engaged in a war on Christmas. Indeed, it appears to be worse than…
January 4, 2006
One of the most fascinating aspects of the last couple weeks since the Dover ruling came down is surveying just how low some of the IDers are willing to go to attack Judge Jones. It's all the more interesting because when he was assigned the case they were quite happy about the selection. After all…
January 4, 2006
I don't know what the deal is with Alabama judges, but Tom Parker of the Alabama Supreme Court seems to want to follow in Roy Moore's footsteps. After a recent case that he had recused himself from went against what he'd hoped, he wrote an op-ed piece blasting his fellow justices for "surrender[ing…
January 3, 2006
Here's a definite Robert O'Brien Trophy candidate, Linda Kimball. She is the author of this hilariously ridiculous essay. I found out about it because Gerard Harbison, the self-proclaimed Right Wing Professor, linked to my debunking of the famous Patrick Henry "founded not by religionists" fake…
January 3, 2006
Radley Balko uncovered this and posted the text on his blog. It's from the Dallas Morning News, October 20, 1999, while he was campaigning for President:
Gov. George Bush said he backs a state's right to decide whether to allow medical use of marijuana, a position that puts him sharply at odds with…
January 3, 2006
Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who has spread a lot of money around Washington buying favors, has plead guilty to several Federal counts today and is turning state's evidence. I guarantee you there are many legislators on the Hill right now quaking in their boots. Expect several major indictments of…
January 3, 2006
Our old friends at StopTheACLU are back at it again with a new and entirely inaccurate attack. They link to a post by AJ Strata that purports to demonstrate the "stunning hypocrisy" of the ACLU. Here's the specific allegation:
What stunning hypocrisy is eminating from the ACLU! They are calling for…
January 3, 2006
Sandefur posted an unusually important bit of information about the NSA wiretapping scandal at Positive Liberty the other day. Quoting Robert Levy, a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute, he established that the FISA law explicitly said that warrantless wiretaps were only allowed during the…
January 2, 2006
I've never tried this before, but I thought I'd start out the new year with some predictions about a wide number of things. It'll be interesting to look back next year and see how I fared. Here they are:
1. The Democrats will pick up many seats in the November elections, possibly enough to retake…
January 2, 2006
As I've mentioned before, I am on the ReligionLaw mailing list run by Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy. It's a valuable resource for many reasons, but especially because I get to interact with and hear the views of some of the preeminent legal scholars on church/state issues, including Doug…
January 1, 2006
Article3Groupie, the hypothetical transsexual wit behind the terrific blog Underneath Their Robes is back in business for the new year. You may remember that this blog, which purported to be written by a catty and sarcastic female, was actually written by David Lat of the US Attorney's Office in…
January 1, 2006
Jay Wexler, a colleague of Randy Barnett at Boston University law school, has compiled the first study of how funny each Supreme Court justice is. He did so by counting up the number of times each one of them said something that provoked laughter during oral arguments in the 2004-2005 term. And to…