Academic

Geoff Manne on how EchoStar is messing with TiVo

Posted on November 24, 2010
Geoff Manne has an interesting post at Truth on the Market about the Tivo/EchoStar litigation, in which he argues that EchoStar is essentially abusing the court process by dragging out patent infringement litigation against it, including "designing around" TiVo's patent...

How necessary are TSA's new procedures?

Posted on November 22, 2010
The new TSA procedures are being justified because metal detectors can't detect the PETN explosives that the underwear bomber and shoe bomber have tried to detonate mid-flight. As TSA chief John Pistole said: "We all wish we lived in a...

Why the Ghailani trial doesn't look like a convincing win for the government

Posted on November 19, 2010
There's been a lot of back-and-forth on whether the result of the trial of Ahmed Ghailani (one conviction for conspiracy; acquittal on the other nearly 300 counts) was a victory for the U.S. One dimension of the debate has been...

Should I be ashamed to admit that I'd vote for the Donald?

Posted on November 18, 2010
Donald Trump is thinking of getting into the Presidential race in 2012. Or something. I have to admit that I would definitely vote for him over Sarah Palin if it comes to that. Well, first, I'd have to change my...

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Censure as punishment

Posted on November 18, 2010
The House ethics committee, having convicted Rep. Charles Rangel of 11 ethics charges, has now recommended censure as his punishment. Maybe I'm meaner than I think I am, but censure actually sounds like a pretty effective and satisfying sanction: Under...

OPB's "Think Out Loud" and official misconduct

Posted on November 18, 2010
Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Think Out Loud" show this morning was focused on official misconduct, and I was on one of the segments (about 20 minutes into the show).

That NY Times budget calculator

Posted on November 16, 2010
I've been playing around with the NY Times's budget calculator, which lets you choose different spending cuts and tax increases to see how you would balance the budget. There aren't as many options as I'd prefer, but my proposal generates...

Confessions of a semi-disloyal Cal grad

Posted on November 15, 2010
I have a confession to make. Although I love the California Golden Bears, I was kind of okay with their 15-13 loss to the Oregon Ducks this past weekend. Cal's season was pretty much wrecked already, and while upsetting the...

The estate tax and same-sex couples

Posted on November 09, 2010
The WSJ reports on a lawsuit challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which has been brought by a woman who was legally married to her spouse in Canada, with such marriage recognized by the state of New York, but...

Recycled governors and my family

Posted on November 08, 2010
Very strange: last Tuesday, three states decided to recycle old governors back into office. Not as incumbents, mind you, but governors who had served before and left office. Those were California (Jerry Brown), Iowa (Terry Branstad), and Oregon (John Kitzhabher)...

On Gen X

Posted on November 08, 2010
My journalism school classmate, who works for Yahoo!, has a neat pop culture blog titled Fast Talking Dame. A recent entry is something of an ode to us Generation Xers, with a killer comparison to Komodo dragons: Seething and adaptive,...

MSNBC's overlords sending a message through Keith Olbermann?

Posted on November 06, 2010
Like many others, I have a hard time understanding the application of NBC's "no political contributions without prior approval" rule to opinionated commentators like Keith Olbermann. I can see how the rule might make sense for straight news reporters, since...

Retention elections for judges

Posted on November 03, 2010
One of the more remarkable results from last night's election was the non-retention of three Iowa Supreme Court justices. It had been 48 years since an Iowa justice had not been retained, and the impetus here seemed to be the...

Quick election thoughts

Posted on November 03, 2010
Just some quick thoughts about last night's election returns. . . . 1. I felt kind of bad for Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who I've admired from a distance for a while now. I didn't always agree with his positions,...

My op-ed on Social Security and the budget deficit

Posted on November 01, 2010
Today's Oregonian has my guest editorial on the Social Security "trust fund" and its impact on the budget deficit.

How do you measure the "smartness" of really smart people?

Posted on October 30, 2010
Lots has been written about the letter that Harvard law prof Laurence Tribe sent to President Obama last year, urging the President to pick Elena Kagan and not Sonia Sotomayor or Diane Wood to replace David Souter on the Supreme...

A Portland resident writes in today's

Posted on October 28, 2010
A Portland resident writes in today's Oregonian: Either Chris Dudley is or is not pro-choice. To be pro-choice a candidate for governor must support laws that assure full access to reproductive health services. Dudley says he is open to restrictions....

Thoughts on some of the 2010 Oregon ballot measures

Posted on October 21, 2010
One of the not-so-pleasant things about moving back to the West Coast is the fact that my voting ballot is once again clogged with all kinds of ridiculous voter-sponsored initiatives. At least here in Oregon there aren't competing ballot measures...

Ann Althouse takes Obama to the woodshed on DADT

Posted on October 15, 2010
Ouch: But, as the linked blog post (by Jane Hamsher) indicates, he doesn't have the votes in the Senate and he hasn't put the weight of the presidency behind getting Senators to vote for repeal. He seems like he's using...

We're #2!

Posted on October 15, 2010
Forbes ranks Portland as the second safest city in the U.S. based on violent crime and traffic fatality stats. To be fair, Chicago wasn't included in the study because it did not provide complete crime data to the FBI, whose...

Does Dahlia Lithwick find President Obama's view of the courts and Congress to be weird?

Posted on October 14, 2010
Last month, Slate editor Dahlia Lithwick criticized Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's notion that legislators should determine for themselves if they believe pending legislation to be constitutional before voting for it: I have been fascinated by Christine O'Donnell's constitutional worldview since...

Bob Woodward on extraordinary rendition and assurances of non-torture

Posted on October 11, 2010
Rendition is the use of any non-extradition process to obtain custody over a person in a foreign jurisdiction. Kidnapping a person from, say, Mexico to bring them to stand trial in the United States is a form of rendition. Extraordinary...

Torture, reliability, and the Ghailani case

Posted on October 06, 2010
The Obama Administration's first prosecution of an al Qaeda suspect in a federal court ran into a serious obstacle yesterday when US District Judge Kaplan barred a key government witness from testifying, because the government learned of the witness only...

Rating the 2010 TV remakes (Nikita and Hawaii 5-0)

Posted on October 01, 2010
Does Hollywood have any imagination? It seems like many movies are sequels or remakes, and television is hardly immune to that syndrome either. This fall, CW's "Nikita" is a re-imagining (the new term for remake that hopes to be different...

Sharktopus?

Posted on September 26, 2010
"Sharktopus" was on the SyFy channel last night. As you might guess from the title, it's about some kind of horrible half-shark, half-octopus creature. Here's an appropriately cheesy trailer, which just about captures everything about the movie. I mean, it's...

A tale of two football conferences

Posted on September 25, 2010
Hmm . . . three Pac-10 teams are playing non-conference games today: Stanford (#16) at Notre Dame UCLA at Texas (#7) Oregon State (#24) at Boise State (#3) Two top-10 opponents and a historically dominant team (though one that's been...

Why lies by politicians matter, Portland edition

Posted on September 16, 2010
Although it's been more than a dozen years since the infamous "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" lie (and countless other related lies) by President Clinton, the underlying significance of lies by a politician about personal matters...

Is Iowa a swing state? Not according to Meghan McCain. . . .

Posted on September 15, 2010
Leon Wolf's eviscerating review of "Dirty, Sexy Politics" by Meghan McCain is one of the most entertaining book reviews I've ever read. He absolutely shreds her book with ample examples (show, don't tell!) of poor writing, nonexistent research, and shoddy...

I got called out by Alberto Gonzales!

Posted on September 07, 2010
It's not every day that you get singled out for criticism in a law review article by a former U.S. Attorney General, but it's happened to me! I noticed that Alberto Gonzales has published "Waging War Within the Constitution" in...

Martha Stewart as a bad precedent for Roger Clemens

Posted on August 21, 2010
Former baseball superstar Roger Clemens has been indicted for obstruction of a congressional inquiry, false statements, and perjury, based on his denial of use of steroids and human growth hormone during a congressional investigation. Vermont law prof Michael McCann notes...

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