ILYA SOMIN ON GEORGE WILL AND CRIMINAL LAW REFORM: “An even better way to rein in federal criminal law by abolishing much of it completely. For many of the federal crimes currently on the books, we need a mandatory maximum of zero.”

ILYA SOMIN: Oral Testimony on Drones and Targeted Killing Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights.

ILYA SOMIN: The War on Drugs, Overcriminalization, and the Rise of Militarized Police Raids.

ILYA SOMIN: The Drone Targeting Dilemma.

ILYA SOMIN: What to Do When Illiberal, Anti-Democratic Forces Take Power Through the Democratic Process.

Remember: Democracy is a means, not an end. It’s valuable as a means of protecting those unalienable rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But those rights are unalienable — incapable of being alienated, that is, bought, sold, or given away — which means that even if you live in a democracy, you haven’t surrendered them to the majority. A majority that wants to take away your unalienable rights isn’t a legitimate government. I’m gratified by how many Egyptians seem to grasp that; it’s more than I expected, though perhaps not as many as it needs to be. It’s clearly more than the Muslim Brotherhood expected, too.

ILYA SOMIN: Yet Another Debate That Ignores Nominations. Given the media’s sympathies, you can pretty much assume that if a topic hasn’t come up in the debates, it’s because they think talking about it is bad for Obama.

ILYA SOMIN ON Eric Hobsbawm And The Neglect of Communist Crimes. “I will add only that Hobsbawm’s career is yet another example of our neglect of communist crimes, demonstrated in this case by our willingness to excuse their apologists. Had Hobsbawm been a comparably dedicated and unrepentant apologist for the Nazis or even for a run of the mill right-wing authoritarian regime, he would not have been a respected member of the intellectual establishment on both sides of the Atlantic, and his books would not have been required reading for undergraduates all over the English-speaking world.”

I think the bottom line is that communists get better press because the press, and academia, contains a lot more communist sympathizers than it does Nazi sympathizers. That’s all.

ILYA SOMIN: Just Say No To Terrorism. “Giving in to the terrorists incentivizes further terrorism, while refusing to do so reduces the risk of future violence. This principle applies to terrorism more broadly: An excellent way to reduce the risk of attacks is to refuse to give in to the terrorists’ demands. Over time, a government that develops a reputation for saying no to terrorists is likely to suffer fewer attacks in the first place. . . . Saying no has many advantages over alternative antiterrorism policies. Unlike defensive security measures, it doesn’t require much in the way of extra government spending or violations of civil liberties. It is also less costly than offensive military action against the terrorists and creates fewer collateral risks.”

This does not seem to be our current approach.

ILYA SOMIN: Would the North be better off without the South? “Whether Thompson’s argument is correct depends in part on your political ideology. If your overriding objective is to have a more left-wing federal government, it’s hard to deny that southern secession would accomplish that goal for the remainder of the United States. The nonsouthern electorate is significantly to the left of the present total US voting population (which of course includes the South). Otherwise, Thompson’s position is dubious at best. In recent decades, the southern states have had higher economic growth and income growth than the North, and many northerners – including even many African-Americans – have voted with their feet for the South because of its greater economic opportunities, lower taxes and regulations, and much cheaper home prices (caused in large part by looser zoning restrictions in southern cities). Without the South, the US would lose a great deal of its economic dynamism.”

ILYA SOMIN: Munich And The Politics of the International Olympic Committee. I don’t care about the Olympics. They’re a sham and a scam, a mixture of corruptocrats and worse.

Related: “No, my husband’s hands were tied, not yours.”

ILYA SOMIN: Do Government Subsidies for Health Care Justify Paternalistic Soda Pop Regulations?

I think paternalistic soda pop regulations justify banning government subsidies for health care.

ILYA SOMIN: The Broccoli Argument Isn’t About Broccoli.

ILYA SOMIN DEMOLISHES Nonlegal Arguments for Upholding the Individual Mandate.

ILYA SOMIN: The Potential Impact of the People’s Rights Amendment Goes Far Beyond Restricting Freedom of Speech. It’s a horrible idea. And the name sounds like something from the 1968 SDS. Which is pretty fitting, actually . . .

ILYA SOMIN ON the politics of The Hunger Games. “The series is subject to such widely disparate interpretations in part because Collins’ world-building is relatively weak. We don’t learn very much about the political and economic system of Panem, and some of what we do learn is internally inconsistent.”

You want your libertarian kids’ fiction, you gotta go with Harry Potter.

ILYA SOMIN ON libertarianism and the Civil War.

Even if you agree — as non-libertarian lefty Sandy Levinson does — that the southern states may have been right about the legality of secession, there’s nothing libertarian about a society built on slavery. That seems obvious to me, but it’s not obvious to everyone. Related thoughts here.

MORE ON RON PAUL AND HIS NEWSLETTERS, from Ilya Somin.

ILYA SOMIN: Takings Issues in the AIG Bailout Litigation.

ILYA SOMIN ON COMMUNISM AND THE JEWS. “Jews’ status as an oppressed minority in early 20th century Eastern Europe also played a major role. The government of the Russian Empire (which ruled over most of Eastern Europe’s Jews until World War I) was highly anti-Semitic and oppressed Jews in innumerable ways. It also encouraged anti-Jewish violence, such as pogroms. Krajewski briefly mentions employment discrimination against early 20th century Jews; but that was only one small part of the prevailing anti-Semitism. Because of this persecution, Jews were more likely to be attracted to radical anti-regime movements than most other groups. A movement that seeks to overthrow the government that oppresses you and promises ethnic and racial equality has obvious appeal to persecuted minorities.”

That’s easily understandable, given circumstances a century ago. But why do so many Jews still embrace left-wing politics today, when it has an unrelenting track record of failure and oppression? For the same reason so many non-Jews do, I guess: There’s one born every minute. But not everyone’s a slow learner: “Although Jews were disproportionately represented among early communists, they were also (as Krajewski points out) disproportionately represented among the victims of communist regimes once the latter seized power. Unfortunately, Krajewski neglected to mention that in the 1970s and 80s, Jews were also disproportionately represented among the anti-communist dissidents in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Several of them played key roles in the eventual overthrow of communist rule (e.g. — Adam Michnik, one of the leaders of the Solidarity movement in Poland). Ironically, Jews were disproportionately represented among anti-communist dissidents for much the same reasons as an earlier generation had been disproportionately represented among communists: the dissident movement appealed to intellectuals, and it opposed highly anti-Semitic regimes.”

ILYA SOMIN ON Federalism And Property Rights.

ILYA SOMIN: Obama, The OLC, And The Libya Intervention. “I am more skeptical than Balkin that illegal presidential action can be constrained through better consultation with legal experts within the executive branch. . . . This isn’t just because administration lawyers want to tell their political masters what they want to hear. It also arises from the understandable fact that administrations tend to appoint people who share the president’s ideological agenda and approach to constitutional interpretation.”

UPDATE: From the comments: “Obama should appoint John Yoo to head OLC. Problem solved.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related item here.

ILYA SOMIN: The Growing Conflict Over the Legality of the Libya Intervention. “The Libya intervention has long since passed the point where it is large enough to be considered a war. . . . Legal questions aside, the growing willingness of Congress to challenge Obama over Libya illustrates the political dangers of waging war without congressional approval. If anything goes wrong, the president ends up taking all the political blame. That’s why most presidents have in fact sought congressional authorization for major military actions, whether or not they believed it to be legally necessary.”

Here’s more on the White House’s legal position.

UPDATE: It’s a war, but it isn’t a war-war.

So people who like to say that “if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” argue that blockading the enemy at sea, suppressing enemy air defenses, identifying targets to be bombed, refueling aircraft that drop the bombs, engaging in electronic warfare to aid the planes that drop the bombs, and supplying many of the actual bombs themselves don’t count as waging war because we are not actually dropping the bombs (well, other than from our unmanned drones) and because the enemy is unable to effectively shoot back?

Well, the last part at least that fits with the old anti-war slogan that “it takes two sides to make war.” Although I suspect what they had in mind was that if we–and only we–stop fighting an enemy there would be no war–not that our shooting alone does not count as war.

I find this fascinating.

I do believe that under this logic, we could nuke somebody and not fall under the administration’s definition of war.

Heh.

ILYA SOMIN: How The Precautionary Principle Refutes Itself.

ILYA SOMIN: Gary Johnson vs. Ron Paul.

UPDATE: Obama Campaign Digging For Dirt On Chris Christie.