Legal Commentary

Beldar on Welch on "Obama's Doctrine of Preemptive War"

Posted on March 30, 2011
I like Matt Welch, the editor in chief of Reason.com. He's funny and perceptive, and right more often than wrong. He's not someone who I typically find to be guilty of fuzzy, confused writing or speaking. But his essay on Obama's Doctrine of Preemptive War (h/t Instapundit) is, in important respects, an exception...

Beldar admits error on whether there's a constituency that favors Kadafi's survival

Posted on March 30, 2011
In my reactions to Pres. Obama's speech on Libya on Monday night, I disputed ? but didn't discuss at much length ? the president's assertion that that "[i]f we tried to overthrow Gaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter." My reaction was: Not if you did your job properly...

Regarding our POTUS, and the portion of the American public which absolutely insists that we "go it alone" and "bear all the burden ourselves"

Posted on March 29, 2011
My eye keeps being drawn back to one particularly gutless, dishonest sentence in Obama's speech from last night: Because contrary to the claims of some, American leadership is not simply a matter of going it alone and bearing all of the burden ourselves...

Due credit to Obama for negotiating an advantage at the U.N.S.C., but brickbats for not using it

Posted on March 28, 2011
I have been supportive of the Obama Administration's original announced goal of forcing Kadafi out of Libya, but I have been highly critical of most aspects of its implementation of that goal. Nevertheless, I will give a gold star to whoever was responsible for the wording of the key paragraph in U...

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Beldar backtalks Obama on Libya

Posted on March 28, 2011
From the full "as prepared for delivery" version of President Obama's speech tonight, with my snarky backtalk interlineated in brackets and green text: Now, just as there are those who have argued against intervention in Libya, there are others who have suggested that we broaden our military mission beyond the task of protecting the Libyan people [I'm one such], and...

Kudos to Frey and Stranahan on their collaboration at Patterico.com

Posted on March 28, 2011
Kudos to my blogospheric good friend and fellow Texas Law School alum Patrick Frey, the proprietor of Patterico's Pontifications, who has been far more industrious and creative a blogger than I've ever managed to be. He's experimented, with generally good results, with inviting others to post on his bandwidth and under his masthead ? and now, in particular, he's invited...

In six weeks, Obama fails miserably at what Bush père did so very well in one

Posted on March 26, 2011
We're entering the sixth week of the Libyan crisis, and someone attempting to defend President Obama's feckless handling of it might point out, correctly, that there was very much an element of unexpected emergency created by Kadafi's decision to start shooting his own citizens when they started protesting on February 15th...

A tale of two Teddys

Posted on March 26, 2011
I agree and associate myself with Dr. Krauthammer's remarks from yesterday, among them this one: This confusion is purely the result of Obama's decision to get America into the war and then immediately relinquish American command. Never modest about himself, Obama is supremely modest about his country...

Beldar on Simon on Kelly

Posted on March 25, 2011
Why would my friend Roger L. Simon ? who's one of the most savvy "new media" practitioners around ? wish such misfortune on Megyn Kelly? Alternately phrased: Why would he wish such undeserved good fortune upon CBS?

Good parent, terrible wife/husband?

Posted on March 25, 2011
InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds links this not terribly insightful piece from something called "Shine from Yahoo!®" called "Mom Confession: I'm a Terrible Wife." Its author writes, "I'm a very good mother. But I'm a terrible wife." By way of commentary, Prof...

Most interesting questions I've considered today

Posted on March 22, 2011
Paraphrased from an observation by Maetenloch in the "overnight" thread at Ace's: Am I using text messaging as a way to modulate the intimacy of my relationships? Are the people who are texting me?

Brits agree with Beldar: Don't rule out regime decapitation

Posted on March 22, 2011
According to quotations in the Daily Mail, the British government agrees with me, and therefore disagrees with the Obama Administration, that western governments should refuse "to rule out targeting Gaddafi." No. 10 has rebuked a British general who said precisely the same thing U...

Watching the melt-down ? no, not in Japan, in the Oval Office

Posted on March 22, 2011
It is absolutely alarming to watch President Obama flail about in increasingly desperate efforts to hand off or hand over the Libyan intervention. It is like watching someone else having that dream ? the one about going to high school and suddenly realizing that you forgot to put on any clothes that day, and you're in the middle of geometry,...

A "reactive presidency," not a "strategic" one

Posted on March 20, 2011
This report (h/t Weekly Standard) from "Foreign Policy," titled "How Obama turned on a dime toward war," is very scary. It advances the proposition that this intervention in Libya marks the end of the quiet coalition between SecState Clinton and SecDef Gates ? who, together, have been running the guts of what passes for the Obama Administration's foreign policy...

WaPo falsely accuses Dubya of "disdain," then proceeds to belittle our allies itself

Posted on March 20, 2011
Today's Washington Post contains a news story (i.e., not an op-ed) headlined "U.S. actions may speak louder than words," but as I write this, the same story is linked from the WaPo's home page under the headline "U.S. plays down its role in assault." In it, WaPo correspondents Mary Beth Sheridan and Scott Wilson solemnly assert: As much as Obama...

Spectacular displays of naïveté in international affairs

Posted on March 20, 2011
Gentlemen do not read each other's mail. ? U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stemson, explaining (in later memoirs) his 1929 decision to close down the "Cypher Bureau," which had been the U.S.' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization, just as fascist governments were seizing or consolidating power in the countries which would plunge us into the Second World War...

Bingaman, defending Obama through partisan blinders, is oblivious to his own prescription on energy

Posted on March 20, 2011
From the "'Green' blog" (I question both premises) in today's NYT (h/t InstaPundit) (bold-face mine): But even while the president was under attack in the House, allies in the Senate rose to the his defense. Most notably, Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, used a lengthy floor speech to rebut the claims...

BBC: What's the harm, when all of NPR's listeners already believe all Tea Partiers are hard-core racists anyway?

Posted on March 09, 2011
I was much amused this afternoon while listening to a reporter from the BBC News World Service ? during its daily news broadcast for National Public Radio via NPR's local affiliate, KUHT-FM ? interviewing an NPR exec (whose name I didn't catch) over the ouster of NPR CEO and president Vivian Schiller...

The latest from Tripoli? From Cairo? Tehran? ... Philadelphia?

Posted on March 02, 2011
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression...

Liz Cheney parallels (but doesn't quite match) Beldar's prescription for what Obama should say about U.S. aid to Egypt

Posted on February 20, 2011
On this morning's "Fox News Sunday," Liz Cheney made a point very similar to the one I made in my post from last Friday (my transcription from DVR; boldface mine): [Chris Wallace:] Would you like to see him [i.e., President Obama] openly support the freedom fighters, the protesters, in Iran? [Liz Cheney:] Absolutely! He should have done it last June...

Is Barack Obama one of America's 50 most influential lawyers?

Posted on February 20, 2011
InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds has a polite and useful practice of acknowledging some of the "review copies" of books that have been sent to him, even if he hasn't yet read them, with his short "In the Mail" posts. These usually consist of no more than the author's name and the book's name, typically with an Amazon link (which, altogether appropriately,...

[Beldar] On Wisconsin!

Posted on February 19, 2011
What follows is an edited version of a spirited conversation I had on Facebook yesterday with a smart and principled liberal friend, a fellow lawyer with whom I enjoy arguing politics in absolute good humor. I'll call him "Liberal Friend #2" (to distinguish him from another liberal lawyer friend whom I've referred to as "Friend #1" in our past debates...

Still more mush from the wimp ? this time re the Muslim Brotherhood

Posted on February 16, 2011
I really, really hope that in his campaign for re-election, President Obama will make heavy use of that elder statesman of the Democratic Party, Jimmy Carter. After all, what he has to say in general, and what he has to say in particular about the Middle East, Carter is exactly as credible as Mrs...

What Obama ought say to Egypt

Posted on February 11, 2011
Obama should say ? right away, and bluntly ? ?Lest there be a miscalculation from uncertainty about America?s position, Egypt should know that the day the Muslim Brotherhood becomes part of Egypt?s government is the day American foreign aid ends.? But he won?t...

Regarding my recent silence

Posted on November 24, 2010
A reader emails: "Come on, Beldar, there has been a mid-term election Surely you must have something to say about this. What has happened to all those pointed, witty Beldar remarks?" I wasn't much surprised by the election results. I'd said what I had to say about the Texas governor's race back during the primaries, and I didn't think I...

Thirty years of honestly demeaning myself at the bar

Posted on November 24, 2010
Section 82.037(a) of the Texas Government Code requires that "[e]ach person admitted to practice law shall, before receiving a license, take an oath that the person will: (1) support the constitutions of the United States and this state; (2) honestly demean himself in the practice of law; and (3) discharge the attorney's duty to his client to the best of...

Pap and twaddle from Broder: McCain should save GOP from "extremism"

Posted on August 25, 2010
I can't remember the last time I read anything in a David Broder column that I agreed with, and his op-ed in today's WaPo ? which calls upon John McCain to provide "adult leadership ... for both his party and his country" ? is no exception. Broder argues that "[o]ne of the conspicuous failings in the past few years has...

Odd traffic from Pandagon.net

Posted on August 20, 2010
I have only the cheap and free version of Sitemeter, and although TypePad also offers some metrics, I don't spend much time - even when I've been blogging recently - checking stats to see which other websites are referring traffic here. I notice sometimes when folks have linked me; I'm sure I miss noticing others...

U.S. 4th Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division leaves Iraq

Posted on August 19, 2010
The last American combat brigade has left Iraq. Its soldiers did so, like all of the other American and coalition forces who've served and returned, as heroes. My pride in them and gratitude for them is boundless; it's a worthy national goal to simply strive to be worthy of the men and women who've volunteered to serve in her military...

Last word (for now) about reading Ninth Circuit tea leaves associated with the stay ruling in Perry

Posted on August 18, 2010
I emailed Prof. Hasen after my last update to my long post from Monday and Tuesday in which I was trying to read tea leaves from the composition of the Ninth Circuit panel that stayed Judge Vaughn Walker's invalidation of California's Proposition 8. Prof...

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