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stcynic | July 27, 2005Just noticed that a couple weeks ago, Randy Barnett linked to a post I wrote about judicial activism with some mild praise of it. Probably doesn't mean much to any of you, but since Barnett is my single favorite legal scholar it makes me feel good that he even noticed my amateur attempts at scholarship.
Update: And yet another link from Barnett. Very cool.
stcynic | July 26, 2005I'm quite disappointed that I didn't get to meet John Wilkins while he was here visiting from Australia, but the closest he got to me was Toronto and things have been much too crazy here for me to get out there and join the howlerfest. PZ Myers made it out there and I sure wish I had. It would have been great to get to meet people like Jeff Shallit, Deb McKay and Larry Moran, folks I consider allies and colleagues without ever having met in person. Even more than that, I wish I'd been able to make it out to the Bay area for his visit to the NCSE gang. Wes Elsberry, Genie Scott, Nick Matzke,…
stcynic | July 24, 2005Yes folks, this is the announcement you've all been waiting for. After weeks of pre-wedded bliss, we have finally managed to drag Timothy Sandefur back, kicking and screaming, into the blogosphere. I am happy to announce that I am joining forces with my three favorite bloggers - Sandefur, Jon Rowe and Jason Kuznicki - to form a group project. We are doing this at Jason's Positive Liberty site, which has been converted to Wordpress and set up for multiple contributors. I've made no secret of the fact that I think these three are exceptionally talented writers and I'm happy for the chance to do…
stcynic | July 24, 2005Rogier van Bakel has a thorough takedown of Judith Reisman, a nutty old anti-everything-sexual crusader who is astonishinly popular among social conservatives. This is the woman who came up with the mythical "erototoxins", highly addictive chemicals allegedly released by the brain when one views pornography. Though, one could reasonably point out, Reisman herself has likely viewed far more pornography in the course of her "research" and she doesn't appear to have been turned into a zombie yet. Consistency, thou art a fickle muse. Bakel shreds Reisman for making incredibly loopy claims like…
stcynic | July 22, 2005I want to offer my belated congratulations to frequent commenter, infrequent contributor and real life pal Dan Ray on his new job. After taking quite a risk by leaving his position as the director of an undergraduate paralegal studies program, he has secured a job doing what he really wanted to do, which is teach constitutional law. One of the best things that has come out of starting this blog has been meeting so many great people and Dan, in particular, is a good friend I would never have met if this blog didn't exist. I'm thrilled that he now gets to follow through on his passion of…
stcynic | July 16, 2005I'm out of town on business until sometime tomorrow afternoon, so nothing new until then.
stcynic | July 14, 2005Today is Bastille Day, the French equivalent to our 4th of July, and the crew at In the Agora decided to dedicate the entire day to bashing France. I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing, since there are many things I love about France. But like all nations, France has its absurdities and inconsistencies, not the least of which is the fact that they actually find Jerry Lewis funny. I only find him funny when he's trying to be serious; when he's trying to make me laugh, it is rather like having a root canal. So I reluctantly contributed an essay bashing France for their ridiculous…
stcynic | July 13, 2005Wendy McElroy has an interesting post on the History News Network blog about famed civil libertarian attorney Alan Dershowitz and his attempt to prevent the publication of a book that is critical of him. The book, written by Norman Finkelstein, accuses Dershowitz, among other things, of plagiarism in lifting quotes second hand from other scholars, complete with mistakes made in the original. According to McElroy, Dershowitz even went so far as to send a letter to the governor of California asking him to intervene and prevent the University of California Press from publishing the book, in…
stcynic | July 9, 2005I have uploaded the mp3s of my appearance on the Harry Browne Show from July 2nd. It's a two hour show and I was on part of each hour, so there are two mp3s, one for each hour. I came in around the 15 minute mark of the first hour and leave after the first segment of the second hour. Herb Titus is also on the show with me, but it's not much of a debate. We generally agree on the issue. To download, rick click on the links and save the files - part 1 and part 2.
stcynic | July 7, 2005Jonathan Bunch has an excellent post at In the Agora about the whole silly Live8 concert last weekend. As a series of concerts, I'm sure it was interesting. I'd love to have seen U2 and Sting and, especially, the reunion of Pink Floyd, but I was busy and didn't get to see it. But I'm not sure it would have been worth it to have to sit through the inevitable and interminable talk of "raising consciousness" about the plight of Africans, about whom the audience couldn't possibly care any less. The lead singer of one soon to be forgotten band declared the event "the greatest thing that's ever…
stcynic | July 5, 2005I have uploaded the full mp3 of my appearance on the Jim Babka Show from June 26th, 2005 for anyone interested to download. On that show, we discussed the Kelo eminent domain case. I hope to have the full mp3 of my appearance on the Harry Browne show from this past weekend up soon as well.
stcynic | July 1, 2005I'm going to be on the Harry Browne show tomorrow night between 10 and 11 discussing the Kelo case with guest host Jim Babka. This time, Herb Titus really will be on along with me and I'm told he has an interesting take on this issue so it should be a fascinating discussion. I'm actually going to be in a hotel room out of town tomorrow night when I'm on the show, but I didn't want to pass up the opportunity. Harry Browne, for those who don't know, was the Libertarian Party Presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000. So even though he won't be hosting tomorrow night, it means a lot to be on his…
stcynic | June 28, 2005Randy Meyer sent me this and I haven't stopped laughing since:
Weare, New Hampshire (PRWEB) Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land.
Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits…
stcynic | June 28, 2005This is hilarious. I posted my essay on whether the Ten Commandments decisions are overblown on In The Agora and Adam Packer, one of the other contributors there, diagnosed people like us perfectly:
We're just dorks. We can't resist getting all hot and bothered about every con law case that comes down the pike. Now where's new info on the latest white girl to get kidnapped or latest Brad Pitt development???
That truly did make me laugh out loud at the screen. It reminds of the story in The Onion about the high school kid who was obsessed with the Supreme Court and his parents staged an…
stcynic | June 27, 2005Jon Rowe has another excellent essay on the founding fathers and religion, this one focusing on Adams and Jefferson and their shared antipathy for the biblical conception of God. As he points out, and their words make clear, both men rejected the notion of hell and thought the idea of the trinity was nothing short of insane. And both believed that the biblical writers had distorted the conception of God beyond recognition. Jefferson, in fact, argued that Jesus had never claimed to be divine at all and that his own apostles distorted his words to make it appear so.
stcynic | June 26, 2005It appears that I will be a guest on the Jim Babka show again tonight. He has asked me to come on along with Herb Titus again, this time to discuss the Supreme Court's Kelo decision the other day. I'll be curious to hear what position Titus takes. On the one hand, I know that he is a staunch defender of property rights. On the other hand, he did say the last time we appeared together that the 14th amendment only incorporated the first 3 amendments against the states, and Kelo involved state and local laws, not a Federal law. We will only be on for part of the show this time, not the whole…
stcynic | June 24, 2005Jon Rowe has an excellent post up about deism, Christianity and the founders. He and I have talked a bit about this lately and it's something he's been writing about a lot. In particular, about the different types of deism, the different types of Christianity, and the ways in which the views of the founders are often oversimplified by those seeking to enlist the founders on their team in the religious battles. His post is well balanced in that regard, and so is the article he references from, of all places, First Things. That article was written by Avery Cardinal Dulles of Fordham University…
stcynic | June 21, 2005While I'm reminiscing about my father, I just have to tell this story. This may be the single funniest thing my father has ever said or done, and it's even funnier if you know him. My father has a very dry sense of humor, but he's not a guy who tells a lot of jokes or generally tries to make people laugh. I was a little boy when this happened, but didn't know about it at the time. I heard the story from Greg Bird, one of my dad's closest friends since my childhood. They met when Greg bought a home in our neighborhood, which had recently been destroyed by a flood (this was in 1975). This home…
stcynic | June 15, 2005I am happy to announce that Jason Kuznicki has returned to blogging, for a time at least. His big translation project is on hold so he's back to showering us with his thoughts. Jason is easily one of the 5 or 10 most engaging and interesting writers on the web. Check out Positive Liberty.
stcynic | June 14, 2005Radley Balko is one of the finest bloggers around, and a great lover of liberty. But this depresses me:
The theocrats chip away at freedom from the right. The Nannycrats chip away from the left. They join hands at the Drug War, where their goals of government control over morality and government control over risk intersect.
Some have suggested that modern politics is no longer about liberal versus conservative, but about statism versus indivdualism. I wish that were true, but it isn't. There is no debate. Statism has triumphed. It wasn't even close.
The debate seems to be reduced to whether…