Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Anthropomorphic Mexico

WASHINGTON — In June of 2010, four boys were playing in the dry bed of the Rio Grande that separates El Paso from Juárez, Mexico. The international borderline, unmarked, runs through the middle of the culvert. The boys dared one another to run up a concrete incline and touch the barbed wire of the American […]

How likely is it that Donald Trump, if elected, would serve more than a few months of his term? How likely is it that he will even continue as the nominee much beyond the convention?

My opinion is that Trump is suffering from what I call “Attention-Seeking Deficit Disorder.” He doesn’t want to serve. He doesn’t want to be president; he wants the attention that accompanies the campaign. And now, I think he’s rather afraid that he might win. [Laughs] I don’t think he knows what he’s going to do […]

Samuel Alito Thinks There Has Been a Constitutional Right of Four People to Marry One Another at Once Since 1967. Interesting.

Justice Kennedy said he was concerned about changing a conception of marriage that has persisted for so many years. Later, though, he expressed qualms about excluding gay families from what he called a noble and sacred institution. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. worried about shutting down a fast­moving societal debate. Justice Samuel A. Alito […]

The Supreme Court and Politics–Especially the current conservative majority’s appropriation of the First Amendment in the service of Republican Party electoral victories

Dan Crawford emailed me this morning with a link to Linda Greenhouse’s op-ed in today’s New York Times, titled “Law and Politics,” and asked me to post about it.  A more apt title for the op-ed, which a headline writer rather than Greenhouse (whose bailiwick is the Supreme Court) titled, would be “The Supreme Court […]

The Kosher Butcher Who Was Not a Person Until He Incorporated Himself*

Religious liberty, [Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals] Judge Tymkovich wrote, cannot turn on whether money changes hands. “Would an incorporated kosher butcher really have no claim to challenge a regulation mandating non-kosher butchering practices?” he asked. — Court Confronts Religious Rights of Corporations, Adam Liptak, New York Times, today Why, yes, Judge Tymkovich, of course […]

Adam Liptak, gun legislation, the Supreme Court

More on gun legislation and law: …the bottom line is that Liptak’s spot-on, and that I think that the Supreme Court will use that Illinois case that Liptak discusses to make clear that the Second Amendment is not absolute. The Illinois statute bars carrying any weapons in public, even unconcealed ones. I think that, 5-4, […]