A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Law

  • The living Constitution

    Garrett Epps’ American Epic: Reading the U. S. Constitution is a fascinating, informative, lucid, provocative, and not infrequently humorous tour through the text of the Constitution, including all twenty-seven amendments. Epps, a lawyer, professor, and correspondent for the Atlantic, isn’t uncritically reverent toward the text–he recognizes that it can be confusing, opaque, and occasionally self-contradictory, Read more

  • HSUS and egg industry reach agreement on better treatment of laying hens

    This seems like a big deal: In an historic agreement reached today by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and the United Egg Producers (UEP), these long-time adversaries will work cooperatively to enact the first-ever federal law related to the treatment of chickens. It would also be the first federal law related to Read more

  • Priorities

    So, making it impossible to challenge secret government kidnappings (and possible torture) seems like it might be a way bigger deal than whether some nutjobs in Florida want to burn a Koran. Naturally, it’s gotten about 1/1000th the media coverage. Do check out this post at Lawyers, Guns & Money for some good analysis, though. Read more

  • From moderate Republican to liberal icon

    This New Yorker profile of Justice John Paul Stevens shows what a loss to the Supreme Court his (probably impending) retirement will be. My wife clerked for Stevens in 2007-2008, and I got to meet him on one occasion. He came across as a very gracious and obviously brilliant man. The article is also a Read more

  • What’s wrong with the filibuster

    The clearest case I’ve seen for why a de facto supermajority requirement for passing ordinary legislation is wrong, undemocratic, and unconstitutional. Read more

  • Judicial watch

    No insightful legal analyis from these quarters (I know enough lawyers to know how out of my depth I’d be), but, boy howdy, the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the SCOTUS sure is bringing out the best in the conservative movement and the GOP, isn’t it? Read more

  • Souter’s out, according to the Times

    I wondered why their were all those reporters hanging around the Supreme Court when I was out running this morning. Now I know. Read more

  • By (almost) any means necessary

    I thought this interview with Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. They’re like Greenpeace on steroids: they do everything short of harming people to stop whalers. In fact, Watson calls Greenpeace the “Avon Ladies” of environmentalism and compares their philosophy of “bearing witness” to standing idly by while someone’s attacked: They have this Read more

  • Not bad for week one

    Obama gives military’s interrogation rules to CIA (More here from NRCAT.) Obama orders CIA prisons, Gitmo shut Obama blocks some of Bush’s last-minute environmental decisions More of this, please. Read more

  • Fixing the imperial presidency?

    Here’s an interesting piece in the new Atlantic arguing that the Founders messed up in designing the presidency and offering some suggestions for fixing it. Despite the author’s suggestion that the abuses of the last 8 years might get the public interested in this, I’m skeptical, not least because it wouldn’t serve a particular institutional Read more