Update appended. —- You may have seen this photo before. It was taken last August at the scene of a dog fighting raid, and it has been used in ASPCA advertisements all around the Internet and on TV. It can be hard to look at—a small, vulnerable puppy tied to a heavy chain, alone and […]

The above is an extract from a 2012 National Academy of Social Insurance publication entitled Social Security: What do Americans Want. There is much to see and read in this publication and I urge people to take a look at this longish PDF of 57 pages and many Tables, of which this is just one. […]

Update to the Hobby Lobby decision comes as a result of a SCOTUS injunction the day before the 4th of July 2014 The nonprofit Wheaton College filed a petition to keep it from having to a file self-certification document certifying it is a religious organization and should be exempt from having to provide contraceptives. Sotomayer […]

As we will show, Congress provided protection for people like the Hahns and Greens by employing a familiar legal fiction: It included corporations within RFRA’s definition of “persons.” But it is important to keep in mind that the purpose of this fiction is to provide protection for human beings. A corporation is simply a form […]

Paul Krugman has two sentences on the money in this article on Kansas, ALEC, and failed economics: The real lesson from Kansas is the enduring power of bad ideas, as long as those ideas serve the interests of the right people. … But the effect won’t last long, because faith in tax-cut magic isn’t about […]

Here are my confused thoughts about the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn decisions. Unfortunately, I am Waldmann not Mann and don’t know anything about the law. I will pretend that there is some logic behind the decisions. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby the majority found that Hobby Lobby has religious freedom — […]

I haven’t read the opinions, concurrence, or dissents in either Hobby Lobby or Harris v. Quinn, so these comments are based on news summaries and quick commentaries by others.  But the biggest surprise in Hobby Lobby, I think, is the express approval, in the opinion and in Kennedy’s concurrence, of HHS’s on-the-fly setup devised in […]

In an email this morning, Bill H asked me whether I know much about a case called Harris v. Quinn, in which the Supreme Court will announce the likely 5-4 majority’s ruling tomorrow.  I responded: I know LOADS about it, Bill, and wrote about it–and about a bizarre comment by Alito during the argument on the […]

Each week I get an email from Slate telling me what the latest articles are there, this one caught my attention; Richard Posner on Roberts” For those of you who may not know, Richard Posner writes articles on the economy; but, he is also an 7th District Appeals Court Justice. The 7th District is the […]

From the BBC comes a note on a crowd control drone:      South Africa-based Desert Wolf told the BBC it had secured the sale of 25 units to a mining company after showing off the tech at a trade show. It is marketing the device as a “riot control copter” that can tackle crowds […]