Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Moving blogs again…
I’ve set up shop at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. I hope you’ll follow me over there. Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds accordingly to http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/timkowal/.
I also recently created a Facebook site for my blogging.
See you around!
Links from the past week
Via Greg Mankiw, Tax Foundation reports a controversial study indicating the U.S. is already has one of the most progressive tax policies around. See also here.
Veronique de Rugy explains why hedge funds aren’t that bad, and might have even helped the economy.
Christopher Wolfe argues marriage has been injured not primarily by the campaign for same-sex marriage, but by no-fault divorce and the sexual revolution in general.
Tim Sandefur corrects a misunderstood point about states’ authority to maintain their own armies.
Adam Serwer on the Big Love series finale.
Eighty-Four Underpaid Fullerton Teachers Who Make Over $90k.
Interesting theory why the stimulus didn’t work: liberal federal policy offset by conservative state policy.
Yglesias on why household budgets are not like government budgets. FLG responds.
Justice for Janitors is a real thing?
David Bernstein on Ryan Williams’—a living, breathing, practicing attorney, like me!—”path breaking” new article, The One and Only Substantive Due Process Clause.
Joe Biden on impeaching the President for unauthorized use of executive power.
The Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog poses another interesting thought experiment. My comment here.
Fantasia vs. The Nothing
Another from the Religion Clause blog:
In Britain, a High Court hearing is scheduled to begin on Monday in a challenge to action taken by the Derby City Council to disqualify as potential foster parents a Christian couple who believe that homosexuality is unacceptable.
America lags a bit behind Britain’s rate of desiccation of its society’s traditional values. But we’ll get there.
Radio Interview
I’ll be on the KSFO morning show (560AM in San Francisco) with Brian Sussman tomorrow morning around 6:15 a.m., talking about my recent op-ed on Jerry Brown. More info here.
Justice Breyer on Constitutional Interpretation
From today’s Washington Post on Justice Stephen Breyer’s new book, Making Our Democracy Work:
“The court should reject approaches to interpreting the Constitution that consider the document’s scope and application as fixed at the moment of framing,” Breyer writes. “Rather, the court should regard the Constitution as containing unwavering values that must be applied flexibly to ever-changing circumstances.”
Judges should go about this, Breyer says, using “traditional legal tools, such as text, history, tradition, precedent, and purposes and related consequences, to help find proper legal answers. But courts should emphasize certain of these tools, particularly purposes and consequences. Doing so will make the law work better for those whom it affects.”
The bolded sentence struck me as odd, so I fired up my trusty desktop thesaurus to check something out. Synonyms for “unwavering” include, among others, “stiff” and “unbendable.” Synonyms for “flexible” include, among others, “elastic” and “pliable.”
Perhaps Breyer is shrewder than I gave him credit for. This will surely pique the interest of many potential book-buyers as to how something “stiff” and “unbendable” can be “flexibly” and “elastically” applied. (Perhaps soaking it in water 24 hours before application?) If I didn’t already know this was standard, non-interpretivist liberal hokum, I might have been among them.
h/t Volokh.
radio interview
Correction—it’s a pre-recorded piece that will air between 3:00 and 5:00 PST, hopefully today or perhaps next week.
UPDATE: I’m now told it will air at 4:30pm PST today, Friday, September 17. 740AM, http://www.kbrt740.com to listen online.
Radio interview today
I’ll be on 740AM in LA at 1:30pm today talking about Prop 8, Perry, and Justice Kennedy.
Still waiting to hear from Kuznicki…
It’s been over a week since I repeated my request to Jason Kuznicki to explain how our Constitution can possibly provide any limits to the power of a judiciary who regards its duty as “uncovering the full implications of justice,” as “realizing” the “eternal” principles of the words “there on the page” of the Constitution.
Notes From Babel 