Legal Commentary

A question for EDMO supporters

Posted on August 18, 2010
A comment from frequent (and therefore patient) reader Gregory Koster prompts me to ask a question for all of my friends who promoted, or just supported, "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day": Should we now put up giant sheets of butcher paper on the walls of whatever buildings are adjacent to the site of the proposed new Islamic center and mosque near...

In same-sex marriage appeal, Ninth Circuit surprises Beldar with both composition of panel and results

Posted on August 17, 2010
Along with many other legal pundits, I had predicted ? not here, but on August 8 and again on August 13 in comments over on Patterico's blog ? that the Ninth Circuit would refuse to stay U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker's decision striking down California's "Proposition 8" state constitutional amendment that re-established the exclusivity of opposite-sex marriage there...

NYT posits that Dems will benefit, compared to 1994, by "lack of surprise" over voter discontent

Posted on August 15, 2010
Today's NYT also contains as nice a piece of self-delusion ? entitled "This Time, Voter Anger is No Surprise" ? as has ever been recorded in the annals of psychotherapy. It begins with an anecdote and proceeds to what the NYT clearly hopes will be accepted as shrewd political analysis applicable to Democratic incumbents nationally: A year ago, dozens of...

Obama: L'État c'est Moi! And my job is to tell you, my subjects, what your values should be

Posted on August 15, 2010
One would expect even a junior state senator from Illinois to have a better grasp of politics than Barack Obama has shown in his comments about the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. One would certainly expect even a junior lecturer, much less a senior one, from Chicago Law School to have an instant grasp of the difference between whether...

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The text of Beldar's email today to Michael Gerson

Posted on August 14, 2010
You wrote, "No child born in America can be judged unworthy by John Boehner, because each is his equal." But no child born anywhere in the world has any better or worse basis to be "judged unworthy," either. Shall we just have done with it, then, and extend American citizenship to everyone born anywhere? Because that is where your logic...

Beldar responds to Captain Ed on EDMD

Posted on May 20, 2010
In a series of comments at Patterico's Pontifications, I've failed to dampen my friend Patterico's enthusiasm for "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day." Today, however, I came across a tightly-argued paragraph from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air that also attempts to justify EDMD ? but I'm still unpersuaded to participate...

Blumenthal lies about lying

Posted on May 18, 2010
If I'm looking at my son Adam and I call him by his older brother Kevin's name, I've "misspoken." If I say to him, "Adam, I served in the Vietnam War," then I'm a liar. Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, is running to replace Chris Dodd in the U...

Obama, Sunstein, and "libertarian paternalism"

Posted on May 16, 2010
From a very scary hagiography in the New York Times Magazine: Libertarian paternalists would have school cafeterias put the fruit before the fried chicken, because students are more likely to grab the first food they see. They support a change in Illinois law that asks drivers renewing their licenses to choose whether they want to be organ donors...

Michael Douglas takes courageous stand: self-confessed convicted rapist Polanski really is ? gasp! ? a criminal!

Posted on May 15, 2010
Per an AP story of yesterday's date published in the Houston Chronicle (among other places): Michael Douglas says he will not sign a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, who is under house arrest in Switzerland in connection with a 33-year-old sex scandal...

To influence SCOTUS, why would you turn to a law school dean?

Posted on May 11, 2010
I commend to your attention, and associate myself with the views expressed in, this post by Wisconsin Law Prof. Ann Althouse. Key bit (emphasis hers): It seems that Kagan has been very good at influencing professors and that Obama read that (and his own direct contact with her) to mean that she'll be good at influencing Supreme Court Justices...

Beldar's take on the current SCOTUS buzz

Posted on May 09, 2010
Another [senior administration official] said that there have been several meetings but that the White House has not much shared its point of view. Still, one outside source said the president's preference is less apparent than at the same point a year ago, just before he nominated Sotomayor...

Beldar's preferences among those getting SCOTUS buzz

Posted on May 08, 2010
Another [senior administration official] said that there have been several meetings but that the White House has not much shared its point of view. Still, one outside source said the president's preference is less apparent than at the same point a year ago, just before he nominated Sotomayor...

Headlines that seem to explain a lot

Posted on April 26, 2010
From today's Houston Chronicle, from page B5 on the continuation of an article from page B1: It turns out that "Bustamante" is actually the client. I suppose I should have known that no lawyer would have been that honest about himself/herself. No word yet, though, on the mental acuity of the Chronicle editor who wrote this headline.

Is it legal to stamp "TAX CHEAT!" over Tim Geithner's signature on $1 bills?

Posted on April 22, 2010
Instapundit links a website named taxcheatstamps.com that includes a YouTube video of a Fox News segment about a fellow who was protesting TreasSec Tim Geithner's confirmation by stamping, in red ink, the words "TAX CHEAT!" over Geithner's signature on $1 bills...

Share your ideas for breaking the LA Times' stonewall on the Obama/Khalidi Tape

Posted on April 22, 2010
My blogospheric friend Roger L. Simon at Pajamas Media is soliciting reader ideas on how to get the Los Angeles Times to release a 2003 videotape of Rashid Khalidi and Barack Obama that may ? there are sound reasons to believe ? be very illuminating on Obama's basic attitudes and prejudices when it comes to Israel and its position in...

Obama only pretends to re-write every state's domestic laws to benefit gays & lesbians

Posted on April 16, 2010
As I write this, the online version of today's Washington Post has the following breathtaking headline and subhead: Same-sex partners given hospital visitation rights: President Obama mandates hospitals extend rights to partners of gay men, lesbians and allow same-sex couples to share medical power of attorney...

Thank you, Doug from AT&T

Posted on April 02, 2010
My hero for the day is "Doug," a repairman from AT&T who appears to have solved a long-standing and extremely vexing problem with my DSL internet and telephone service. There was an intermittent short, apparently, inside the junction box on the back of my house...

I wouldn't trust David Axelrod as far as I could throw him, but especially not on anything involving dinner

Posted on March 29, 2010
A Reuters report from yesterday printed in the WaPo quotes White House senior advisor David Axelrod as insisting that the Obama Administration was not snubbing Israel or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when Obama ducked out of their White House meeting to eat dinner ? without offering Netanyahu so much as a package of saltine crackers: "This was a working...

History repeating itself as tragic farce

Posted on March 28, 2010
Bill Kristol's op-ed in today's WaPo is premised on the same historical comparison that I made in my February post entitled Iran, Obama, and the 1936 reoccupation of the Rhineland. His bottom line is that despite the rhetoric from SecState Clinton, the Obama Administration has already effectively resigned itself to an Iranian nuke...

Be more worried about the amount of federal debt than who holds the debt instruments

Posted on March 13, 2010
Bruce Bartlett has a pretty well-balanced but simple article in Forbes online in which he attempts to answer this question: "Is America's foreign-owned national debt a threat to the U.S. economy?" I agree with both parts of what I understand to be his overall conclusion: The skyrocketing amount of the national debt is an enormous threat to the American economy...

Beldar on Fund on Perry's success in "nationalizing" a state race

Posted on March 04, 2010
With a sub-head reading "Texas governor Rick Perry's victory last night shows that nationalizing local races can work," John Fund of the Wall Street Journal - yet another analyst whose work and opinions I respect greatly - wrote this yesterday afternoon about Tuesday's Texas primary results: The late House Speaker Tip O'Neill once said "all politics is local...

Beldar on Barone on how Perry's Harris County showing bodes for White

Posted on March 03, 2010
Michael Barone is one of my favorite and most trusted political analysts, and he has a facility with polling data and places that I utterly lack. That makes me reluctant to second-guess this preliminary conclusion of his regarding yesterday's Texas primaries: Perry won this not in rural and small town Texas but in metro Houston...

DGA's Daschle draws wrong lessons from Texas primaries: White has a chance in November, but it's despite (not due to) Obama and the national Dems

Posted on March 03, 2010
?Tonight?s results are a stark reminder that Republicans? giddiness about 2010 is premature,? Daschle said. ?Rick Perry is our nation?s longest serving Republican governor and yet he barely won 50 percent of the vote in his own primary. We need no more evidence to know that this is not a pro-Republican electorate; it?s an electorate that wants results over rhetoric,...

Al Gore, from the standpoint of idiocy

Posted on February 28, 2010
Jonah Goldberg aptly mocks this sentence from Nobel Prize winner Man-Bear-Pig Al Gore in a global warming op-ed in today's NYT: From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption...

Iran, Obama, and the 1936 reoccupation of the Rhineland

Posted on February 21, 2010
(Fair warning: There is no humor in this post, not even of the snarky sort. I'm not in the mood to sugar-coat my conclusions, or to balance them with hopeful observations.) Mark Steyn's latest at NRO is characteristically witty, except for its very unfunny thesis paragraph, which is characteristically astute...

Press and most public still misunderstand issues in Keller judicial complaint

Posted on February 18, 2010
Regarding the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct's handling of the complaint made against Presiding Judge Sharon Keller in connection with the Michael Richard execution in 2007, Peggy Fikac of the Houston Chronicle's Austin bureau reported today on both sides' filing of formal objections to the findings of the special master who heard the evidence on the complaint, State District...

Bayh's decision to forgo re-election run can't help but highlight the spectacular incompetence of Obama-Reid-Pelosi

Posted on February 15, 2010
Handicapping the 2008 presidential race from way back on April 23, 2007, I predicted: "Thompson/Romney defeats Obama/Bayh." And I still respect three of those four - all except The One who won. My respect for Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) - one of the most intelligent, articulate, and reasonable Democrats in public office - goes back to his days as a...

Debra Medina and Farouk Shami have done Texans a favor by proving themselves unqualified

Posted on February 13, 2010
From an AP report printed in today's Houston Chronicle: Republican gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina, reeling from her remarks that questioned whether the U.S. government was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, on Friday blamed the ensuing firestorm on a "coordinated attack" that she speculated came from the campaigns of her better-known GOP rivals...

Katrina vanden Heuvel engages in unconscious self-parody

Posted on February 12, 2010
At the ridiculously named "Post-Partisan" blog on the WaPo, we find the following passage attributed to Katrina vanden Heuvel, who's the editor, part-owner, and publisher of the left-wing magazine The Nation as well as being the most predictably and unintentionally hilarious talking head on ABC News' "This Week" (emphasis mine): At the current federal minimum wage of $7...

Obama's greatest achievement so far

Posted on February 12, 2010
I might have a hard time believing that Barack Obama saved America from defeat in Iraq (h/t InstaPundit), except that I have such vivid personal memories of him winning the first Gulf War, winning the Cold War and tearing down the Berlin Wall with his own strong hands, winning the first and second World Wars, winning the Spanish-American War, winning...

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