Over at Lean Left, Kevin Raybould worries about the supply of schools after the Voucher decision by the Supremes: The problem, as I see it, is that the program was alleged to have a structure that makes it very next to impossible to attend anything other than a Catholic school. Some say that was the [...]
[ via Caveat Lector ] Okay, you’ve heard from the peanut gallery (that would be me), and a ConLaw scholar on the 9th Circuit bete noir, so let’s (as the Shrub says) hit the trifecta and hear from a theologian. Woah, I bet you might not have been expecting that conclusion…
More analysis from Professor Volokh on the Pledge case. Good reading because he’s getting past the screaming and down to nuts and bolts issues. He’s also talking about the Supremes’ ruling on the the School Voucher case today.
Eugene Volokh teaches ConLaw at UCLA, and clerked for Justice O’Connor, so, unlike myself and the other armchair ConLaw wanabes, knows his stuff. So go read his comments on the Pledge case.
This is a rewrite of this entry, after getting a chance to hear some news. A reasonable person would have to presume that Bush, while he wouldn’t admit to it, must love this whole Pledge and G-D business. It’s red meat for evangelicals and conservatives. They get to beat up on their favorite targets, the [...]
From the “We’re Not A Rogue State” Department: The treaty establishing the International Criminal Court goes into effect at the same time that the UN Security Council has to renew or abandon the mandate for peacekeeping troops in Bosnia. The US contingent is demanding a blanket exemption from ICC prosecution of US soldiers, or bad [...]
[ via Janet Lafler ] “Minority Report” is more than a little topical.
Bruce Sterling gave the closing keynote at Computers, Freedom and Privacy in San Francisco last Friday. It’s another great Sterling piece. This time he talks about going computerless at a technical conference (he wrote this talk out in longhand); Steven, the annoying Dell kid; corruption in Bollywood; desperation in Hollywood; why John Ashcroft doesn’t care [...]
[ via RRE ] Doesn’t anyone remember the Alien and Sedition Acts? McCullough and Kennedy fail to realize that there was a reason for earlier generations of leaders not turning the Adamses into monuments of democracy: earlier generations of leaders actually understood the Adamses. To be fair, the Congress voted that stinker into law. However, [...]
[ via Scripting News ] Michael Fraase on big media’s contempt for anyone, well, who isn’t them: Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. That’s all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. [...]
To the members of the committee: The bill introduced by Senator Hollings of the Commerce committee will have several negative effects: You will further alienate the American people by codifying the notion that we are all guileless thieves who cannot be trusted in our homes. How do you plan to gain the respect and trust [...]
I’m still too angry to speak on it myself. So I’ll just point you at Cory Doctorow of the EFF’s comments: If Senator Fritz has his way, no new technologies will be brought to market without a one-year review. Open Source will be dead, since there will be no way to ensure that your users [...]
[ via Boing Boing ] How to link to documents in THOMAS, the Library of Congress’ site for tracking bills and other Congressional business.
The recently leaked report on the United States’ willingness to use nuclear weapons is a small datapoint supporting my cyncical view of why I think my country has been so eager to develop a balistic missile defense. The US understands that if we use a nuke, we are going to get smacked, hard. NMD is [...]
A great Bruce Sterling rant on how the non-commerical Internet won. Well until the Entertainment-Industrial Complex mandates filtchware… Thanks to Prentiss Riddle for emailing me the updated URL.