ANGELO CODEVILLA: Romancing the Sunni: A US policy tragedy in three acts; Act I.
Here’s Act II.
And here’s Act III.
Archive for 2016
January 6, 2016
RANDY BARNETT: The Significance Of Lysander Spooner. “Spooner’s approach to constitutional interpretation, construction, and legitimacy is as fresh today as it was in 1845. Indeed, it is more sophisticated and persuasive than the theorizing of most contemporary legal academics.”
CBS HYPES EARTH’S ‘CHRONIC FEVER’ IN EXTREME WEATHER SEGMENT: “Even when NASA states a weather pattern has not been caused by climate change, the media still can’t help bringing it up.”
Although perhaps things are getting worse, if CBS is saying that the earth has a “fever.”* I can remember when CBS said it merely had a cold:
* Does it need more cowbell? No, that’s NBC’s shtick.
HILLARY CLINTON WILL NOT SAY WHAT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DEMOCRAT AND A SOCIALIST IS, when asked by Chris Matthews.
She knows — of course she knows — but the truth would be far too uncomfortable for her to admit.
RICHARD POSNER: How To Fix Law School.
The first year of law school, usually so different from the student’s previous educational experiences, is bound to make a lasting, indeed a lifelong, impression.The first-year program at most law schools is demanding, though less than it used to be; current tuition levels tend to induce law schools to treat students more as customers than as plebes. I felt changed after my first year (1959–1960) as a student at the Harvard Law School—I felt that I had become more intelligent.The basic training was in learning how to extract holdings from judicial opinions in common law fields and how to apply those holdings to novel factual situations—in other words how to determine the scope and meaning of a legal doctrine.The courses were very difficult because the legal vocabulary was unfamiliar; the professors asked incessant, difficult questions, usually cold calling; the casebooks had very little explanatory material; and we were told not to waste our time reading secondary materials—and most of us were docile and so obeyed.That first year of Harvard Law School was active learning at its best.
We learned to be careful and imaginative readers; we learned that American law is malleable and relatedly that notions of public policy, and sheer common sense, were legitimate and important considerations in interpreting and applying legal doctrines.There were no references to systematic bodies of thought outside law, however, and statutes were rarely encountered and the Constitution never.The canvas broadened in the second and third years. But the courses in those years had much less impact on me, in part because the school tended to stack its best teachers in the first year, in part because a certain freshness had worn off, and in part because I devoted most of my time in my second and third years to the law review, which I found more interesting than most of the second- and third-year courses. But as I think back on those years I realize that another factor was that the common law really is the most commonsensical, intelligible, politically neutral body of American law, compared to which most of constitutional law, and most statutory law, are a muddle.
True.
ROGER SIMON SPOTS THE HIDDEN MESSAGE BEHIND OBAMA’S GUN CONTROL PROPOSALS:
But buried beneath the tracks of Obama’s tears was something much more significant than his paltry partisan fiddling with the gun laws. Take a look at the following excerpt from his speech and let’s play the old Sesame Street game, “Some of these things are not like the others.”
“Fort Hood, Binghamton, Aurora, Oak Creek, Newtown, the Navy Yard, Santa Barbara, Charleston, San Bernardino. Too many,” Obama said, ticking through a list of mass shootings since the 2011 Tucson shooting that killed six and injured more than a dozen more, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was in attendance in the East Room.
No doubt you got it in one. Two of those mass shootings (Fort Hood and San Bernardino) were perpetrated by jihadis motivated by fundamentalist Islamic ideology — while the others (not all very mass) were the work of common criminals and/or (to be blunt) nutcases.
Why is this important? It should be obvious that gun control legislation of any sort is absolutely irrelevant to jihadis. As has been demonstrated, they have had no trouble getting arms even in societies like Canada, Australia and France where the gun laws are far more stringent than ours. Indeed, they are able to obtain weapons of all sorts all across the globe. (Of course, criminals in general don’t have much trouble getting guns, but jihadis have a world-wide network of the sympathetic at their disposal.)
Read the whole thing.
IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? NORTH KOREA SAYS IT SUCCESSFULLY CONDUCTS HYDROGEN BOMB TEST:
North Korea says it has successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test, which if confirmed, will be a first for the reclusive regime and a significant advancement for its military ambitions.
A hydrogen bomb is more powerful than plutonium weapons, which is what North Korea used in its three previous underground nuclear tests.
“If there’s no invasion on our sovereignty we will not use nuclear weapon,” the North Korean state news agency said. “This H-bomb test brings us to a higher level of nuclear power.”
If true, the symmetry of the Norks announcing they’ve armed themselves with the H-bomb on the same day that Obama went full-Boehner while proposing disarming innocent Americans of their firearms is truly staggering. But then, when it comes to generating absurdity, there’s no way any satirist can compete with reality.
Or with the Obama administration, for that matter.
Speaking of which, in response to the State Department urging “North Korea to exercise restraint and refrain from further threatening actions,” James Taranto quips, “#YoureGonnaNeedABiggerHashtag.”
And you’re going to have move that red line yet again. “Today, President Park and I are reaffirming that our nations will never accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state,” President Boehner tweeted with a tear in his eye 80 days ago back in October.
In lighter news from the intersection of DC and the Hermit State, would-be Washington Post “fact checker” Glenn Kessler blindly retweets parody North Korean news agency account weighing on Donald Trump’s “Ted Cruise” birther shtick.
Layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors…
MICHAEL BARONE: Actually, Economist, the First Amendment does give people ‘a free pass to go round saying hateful things’.
The Economist’s writers and editors are mostly citizens of the United Kingdom, which doesn’t have a First Amendment, but as members of the press — and employees of a publication which has more readers in the United States than in Britain — they ought to be aware of American First Amendment law. It’s pretty astonishing and dismaying that with the use of the verb “points out” they indicate a complacent acceptance of the notion that speech repugnant to some people may be prohibited and with the phrase “self-styled defenders of the First Amendment” they suggest disapproval of those seeking to uphold the right of free speech. It’s particularly odd since the web version links to another Economist article decrying the new Polish government’s “purging the country’s public media.”
Why is it acceptable for a state university to prohibit free speech while it is unacceptable, or at least disreputable, for a government to shape the content of government-subsidized media? Does The Economist believe that freedom of speech only applies to ideas it approves of?
Actually, it’s even more disturbing that an American law professor would say what the Economist is agreeing with.
THE COMING BACKLASH: Migrants Molested Women In Cologne On New Year’s Eve.
It’s worth taking a moment, in light of the luridness of these allegations, to note that Deutsche Welle is an impeccably mainstream source, the German state-owned international broadcaster—the equivalent of BBC World Service or VOA. DW has an explicit mission to portray Germany as a “liberal, democratic state based on the rule of law.” Meanwhile, Henriette Reker, the Mayor, is an independent supported by the Greens as well as the CDU, and she has previously been stabbed by an anti-immigration extremist. In other words, these serious allegations are not coming from far-Right sources, but from the center of the German establishment.
These kinds of stories could well change the face of refugee politics in Germany. Thus far, Angela Merkel has been successfully playing “good cop” to her partner Horst Seehofer’s “bad cop“—a dance meant to secure the sensible center from the rise of fringe actors in Germany’s politics. That little dance may not be sustainable in the face of these kinds of reports.
Reality eventually asserts itself, ideology notwithstanding.
RICHARD EPSTEIN ON THE SUPREME COURT AND PUBLIC EMPLOYEE UNIONS: End The “Agency Shop.”
As a matter of first principle, unions are the source of two evils: unified, they wreak harm on public services; divided, they offer shabby treatment to their dissident members. In an ideal world, the Supreme Court would use Friedrichs to dismantle mandatory collective bargaining root and branch. But short of that, what the Court should do, and do unanimously, is set dissenting workers free from union domination by striking down all agency shop provisions.
I agree with FDR that public-employee unions are an inherent conflict of interest. I hope that under President Cruz, the GOP Congress will abolish them.
APPARENTLY 2015 WAS A GOOD YEAR FOR PATENTS: Here They Are, the Craziest Patents of 2015.
SOUND AND TEARS SIGNIFYING NOTHING: Comedians in Cars Getting Teary.
NO QUESTION SHOULD EVER BE UNMENTIONABLE: An Unmentionable Refugee Question.
GEEKS’ CUP RUNNETH OVER: Netflix and DreamWorks Animation Are Resurrecting ‘Voltron’.
JOY IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF ADVERSITY: How Globetrotter Meadowlark Lemon Made a Career out of Joy.
IS SHARING THIS VIRTUE SIGNALING? Are You Guilty of “Virtue-Signaling?”
HE’S BEEN LIGHTING MATCHES, IN SEARCH OF A GAS LEAK: Iran-Saudi crisis is the bitter fruit of Obama’s inept diplomacy.
HOW CHINA BUILT PROCRUSTES’ BED: Sterilization, abortion, fines: How China brutally enforced its 1-child policy.
BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, SUPER GENIUS: Iran crosses another line — and Obama blinks again.
I’M MORE AFRAID OF NATURAL STUPIDITY: Fear, Loathing, and Artificial Intelligence.
I’LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT: Former U.S. attorney: Clinton could face criminal indictment.
POSSIBLY BECAUSE IF THEY EXIST THEY ARE VANISHINGLY SMALL? Clinton can’t explain the difference between Democrats, socialists. To be fair to her, I couldn’t either.
IF THIS GOES ON, I’M GOING TO NEED A NEW SHOCKED FACE: US Expert: Hamas, not Israel, Killed Boys on Beach in Gaza War.
WHEN YOU CAN’T TRUST ANY ECONOMIC REPORTS: Inside Wall Street’s disastrous start to 2016.