The big news story of the last 24 hours, of course, is the Senate Intelligence Committee’s sickening torture report. But you might also have heard about Wyo. Rep. Cynthia Lummis’s dramatic statement yesterday as a member of Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Jonathan Gruber/Marilyn Tavenner Obamacare hearing. The purpose of the hearing […]
I predict that the Supreme Court will grant the emergency request in the Texas voter-ID case, and reinstate the district court’s stay of enforcement until after the November election. Which, best as I can tell, makes me a minority of exactly one. I don’t have time to elaborate much, but I did address pretty thoroughly […]
Today’s example.
The shooting death by police of Ferguson, MO teenager Michael Brown, and what has happened in the aftermath, has been blanketing the news for the past few days. It’s a story about race, but it’s also become a story about the power of the state and how it’s wielded, and against whom. So my question […]
After taking a nearly-month-long hiatus from blogging here about legal issues, and blogging only very lightly about other things, I posted this controversial post last Friday and participated in a lengthy comments thread. The final comment of mine, in reference to some of the preceding comments of others and of mine, reads: A final point on this […]
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 […]
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 […]
Anecdotal evidence, the basis of so much journalism prior to the rise of the data movement and still, to my mind, over-relied upon — is just that: anecdotal. Roughly 65,000 people voted in the Cantor-Brat primary; Brat won by more than 7,200 votes. Assuming that what a non-scientific sample of 1, 10 or even 100 […]
Uh-oh, hedge fund managers and Goldman Sachs partners. Obviously, few of you are evangelical Christians. So this guy, who wants good markets, has his sights set on you. But, luckily not on that carried-interest tax-benefit thing y’all get to use, praise the Lord. So maybe you hedge-fund types can skip church again this Sunday, after […]