stcynic
Posts by this author
Charles Krauthammer has a column in the Post about the differences between Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas. In the process, he points out how easy it is for politicians and advocacy groups to distort judicial rulings and why you should never accept at face value that an opinion is wrong just…
Here's a gem from her latest incoherent screed, this one about Mark Felt, whose daughter she feels the need to take shots at along with every other single mother in the country:
"I'm still a single mom," she explained, "I am not ashamed of this." She ought to be. See, the idea of marriage is to…
Reading this StopTheACLU page and some of their sister pages has proven to be good fun. One of the pages it links to is AmericanProtest.net, which contains this breathtakingly bad essay by Wayne Boettcher that attempts to debunk evolution. Even by creationist standards, this is really, really bad…
Anyone who has spent any time in Vegas - and let's just say I've been there a time or ten - has run the porno gauntlet down the strip having fliers for escort services and strip clubs shoved into their hands. But Jim Webber and Tom Griner can also be found among them, holding signs with messages…
Here are links to two fascinating articles. The first is by Salman Rushdie and it deals with the question of atheism and religion. The second is by the Slacktivist and it compares a recent statement from Ted Haggard, director of the National Association of Evangelicals, with quotes from the bible…
As many of my longtime readers know, I am generally a supporter of the ACLU. That doesn't mean I support everything they've ever done or will do - I do think they take on some cases that are pointless and even damaging to the cause of liberty - but on the whole, I think it's a very valuable…
Texas Governor Rick Perry, signing two pieces of legislation on Sunday at a church:
During the 1 1/2-hour program, Perry also signed a resolution to amend the Texas Constitution by banning same-sex marriages.
"Texans have made a decision about marriage and if there is some other state that has a…
Patterico left a comment below that harkens back to a prior exchange we had on the subject of the legitimate exercise of authority by the government. I thought I'd move it up here in the hope that we could continue that discussion and others could jump in as well. Patterico writes:
Where liberals…
I know that pointing out hypocrisy in politics is a bit like pointing out inconsistencies in movie plots. It's probably not sound sport, and it's entirely too easy most of the time. But sometimes you just have to laugh at how brazen someone can be at the pot and kettle game, and the recent…
Patterico has responded to the medical marijuana ruling and come to similar conclusions to mine:
I have read Gonzales v. Raich. And I'm not happy, either with the decision, or with my (usual) hero Antonin Scalia, who wrote an unconvincing concurrence. But I'm more and more impressed with Clarence…
This is pretty cool. SCOTUSblog has asked some of the more prominent legal bloggers to post there on the outcome of the medical marijuana case. They include Ann Althouse, Larry Solum, Orin Kerr and others. So it's all Raich, all the time for a while.
Over at the VC, David Bernstein has a quick analysis of the Raich decision that includes this statement:
Justice Scalia's concurrence, unlike Justice Thomas's dissent, does not address the original meaning of the Commerce Clause. This reflects a pattern with Scalia, apparent also in his…
As I'm sure everyone knows by now, the Supreme Court has ruled in Gonzales v. Raich, the medical marijuana case in which the real question was one of federalism and the reach of the interstate commerce clause. California passed a law allowing patients with certain illnesses who would benefit from…
Okay, not really fishing. I'm off to visit my best friend and see his kids play baseball and softball, respectively, so there'll be nothing new until tomorrow at least.
A blog called Patriots for Bush has linked to an article I wrote in a post about how thoroughly evil the ACLU is. "The American Patriot" writes:
The ACLU is the most unpopular entity in America next to the Klan and the Nazi's, I wonder how long it will be before they defend one of those two groups…
Stuart Buck has a post about People for the American Way's use of a case in disparaging Michael McConnell as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court. And I think he has a point:
If you do a search for "Judge Michael McConnell," one of the first results is this page from People for the American…
Steve "Feddie" Dillard, Grand Poobah of Southern Appeal, has revealed that a reliable source has told him that Chief Justice Rehnquist will be stepping down in the next 4 weeks. Feddie is pretty well connected in those circles, so I have no reason to doubt it. Besides that, it's what everyone is…
The Supreme Court issued an opinion yesterday in a major religious liberty case, Cutter v. Wilkinson. The case involves the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, passed by Congress in 2000, which said that jails and prisons could not "impose substantial burden on the religious…
Via Radley Balko comes this amusing link. The very right wing newspaper Human Events took a poll of prominent conservatives to get a list of the most harmful books ever written. The list was pretty much what you'd expect, with Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto in the top ten. I was…
Like most blogs, I link to a lot of newspaper and magazine articles that require free registration. Though free, these will often lead to spam emails, so people don't like to register and often avoid reading the articles as a result. There is a solution. Go to Bug Me Not, put in the URL of the…
The Massachusetts legislature overrode Mitt Romney's veto of a bill that cleared up state roadblocks on stem cell research yesterday. Before this bill, state law actually required stem cell researchers to get permission first from the local district attorney. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. The…
I know it's only the first of the month, but this one really can't be topped. I actually had made a note of this ridiculous column by Star Parker for a possible Idiot of the Month award. In it, she cites a study showing that 51% of Americans think abortion is immoral, but 63% of Americans support…
Stuart Taylor, the always excellent court analyst for the National Journal, has written a review of William Rehnquist as Chief Justice and the court he has presided over for 18 years. It's quite a thorough look for such a short article, both in terms of the legal analysis of the court's influence…
Jon Rowe has an excellent essay on fundamentalism and the moral paradox to which it leads.
Our old friends at the laughably named intellectualconservative.com are back with yet another ridiculous article on evolution. This time it's the tried and false "evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics" nonsense. For crying out loud, how many times does an argument have to be soundly…
Doug Stanhope has a bit on his new DVD about supporting the troops. He thinks the idea is silly, that you should only support people individually rather than in groups because the group may well include people who don't deserve support. An email that Andrew Sullivan received perhaps supports his…
Patterico has an interesting post up about last week's filibuster compromise that says that President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist sent conservative senators Lindsay Graham and Mike DeWine to join the 5 moderate Republicans in negotiating a compromise with the 7 Democratic senators.…
The US is hardly the only democracy in the world that seeks to limit the power of government, but we do have one thing that many of our fellow western democracies do not have - the first amendment. To the American mind, it's bracing to read about the existence of "human rights commissions" in…
Kelly Hollowell, the delightfully daffy columnist for the Worldnutdaily, has a new column up about the imminent discovery of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was the golden box that allegedly housed the Ten Commandments tablets and the rod of Aaron, and it has been the center of…
As I've written many times, censorship certainly does not always come from the right. The left has more than its fair share of Torquemade wanna bes, they just tend to couch their arguments in terms of diversity rather than morality. Case in point: a group of folks from the University of Arkansas is…