Below is my column in USA Today on some of the possible nominees to fill the vacancy left with the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. There is a long list of potential nominees and only some are discussed in this column. One of the more interesting prospects is Jane Kelly from the Eighth Circuit who would bring badly needed trial experience to the Court and particularly a rare criminal defense background. As a threshold matter, it is worth noting that the current chaos that we are witnessing over Scalia’s replacement is the result of a long-standing flaw on the Court. As I have argued for many years, our Supreme Court is demonstrably too small and should be expanded by Congress to 19 members – roughly the size of other large nations – to avoid so much power being concentrated in so few hands. If the Court was larger, there would likely be no question that President Obama could get a nominee confirmed because there would be greater turnover on the Court and less at stake with each justice. However, as it stands, even a moderate nominee would move the center of gravity of the Court significantly to the left and would likely produce a host of sweeping changes on gun rights, abortion, affirmative action, and other areas. That is something that the Republicans have pledged to bar, at least until we know who the next president will be.
So our dysfunctionally small Court has left us in another dysfunctional standoff. However, we have some added issues due to the timing of this vacancy as discussed in the column below.
Category: Society
Mallam Luthfi Jamal-Baba, an Imam and exorcist from Ghana, has warned that beautiful women are more likely to be possessed by evil “jinns” or spirits or genies. It appears that beauty is a jinn magnet.
In a direct violation of international rules governing these sporting events, the Iranian government barred women from entry to the Beach Volleyball World Tour event on Kish Island. The FIVB had expressly required Iran to guarantee that women would be allowed to enter and watch the matches. However, the Iranians barred them anyway at the five-day competition.
Continue reading “Iranian Women Barred From International Volleyball Competition”
We have been following reports on climate change that appear to support the view that major changes are occurring around the world. This week, NASA released figures showing that, after setting records in 2015, January was was the warmest on record. In another story, Australian wine producers are faced with changing grapes due to the sharp change in climate in that country. As someone who loves Australian reds, the news hits particularly hard and captures the range of subtle and substantial changes that will have to be made in light of the worsening situation.
Apple has decided to fight an unprecedented and highly controversial order by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym that the company has to assist the government in breaking into one of its encrypted phones. Apple says that it does not have the technology and does not want to be part of such an effort to create a privacy stripping tool for the FBI. Pym seems to believe that she can order companies to become unwilling participants in surveillance research and development. I fail to see her legal basis for such an extraordinary order against a private company.
One of the most basic functions of government should be to require accurate descriptions of products in the market. I am a big believer in the free market and tend to resist government regulation whenever possible. However, the free market functions best when the government enforces the rules to prevent misleading and fraudulent practices. This week is an example of how labeling continues to mislead consumers. While parmesan cheese is often advertised as “100%” pure, it can include wood pulp and cheaper cheeses such as cheddar, Swiss, and mozzarella. One manufacturer, Castle Cheese, supplying Target actually had no parmesan in its “100 percent” parmesan cheese product.
We recently discussed the highly disturbing cases of 12 protesters who called for the boycotting of Israeli products. France’s Supreme Court (the Court of Cassation) upheld the shocking prosecution of the twelve anti-Israel activists in a blow to free speech. Now, England is moving to bar local councils, public bodies and even university student unions from boycotting “unethical” companies.
Continue reading “England Moves To Bar Support For Israeli Boycott Movement”
The Washington Post posted my column on Sunday discussing the passing of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, a towering figure on the United States Supreme Court and an icon for conservative jurists. It is regrettable that people today often demonize those with whom they disagree. Scalia was personally a warm and engaging person. Indeed, liberal justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan appeared quite close to Scalia as not just a colleague but a friend. I expect that Scalia has left a lasting legacy that will withstand the test of time, as I discuss below. He was a man of principle. One could certainly disagree with those principles, as I sometimes did. However, he left 30 years of opinions that challenged and often changed doctrines in a wide array of areas. These opinions show a depth and scope that sets them apart in the annals of the Court. Liberals and conservatives alike should be able to recognize the impactful and brilliant life of Nino Scalia. Here is the column: Continue reading “SCALIA AND HIS LEGACY”
There is a new disturbing video that seems to reaffirm the growing intolerance for free speech on (or in this case near) our campuses. In the confrontation between a preacher named Joshua and University of Texas at Austin police, the preacher was told that, even though he was not on campus, he was still guilty of “offending someone” with this speech and would be given a citation.
Pakistan is the latest Muslim country to ban a holiday as a threat to Islam. In this case, it is not Christmas but Valentine’s Day. The Interior Ministry has proclaimed that the harmless holiday is now deemed an “insult” to Islam and banned by order of Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan (right). Khan is one of the leading and most senior members of Pakistan Muslim League.
Continue reading “Pakistani Government Bans Valentine’s Day As “Insult” To Islam”
There is a free speech controversy brewing out of Detroit where an unnamed police sergeant is under investigation for expressing his opinion about the controversial Beyonce performance in the halftime show of the Superbowl. Beyonce dressed herself and her dancers like Black Panthers and formed a X in an apparent reference to Malcolm X. Police around the country objected to the glorification of an organization that has advocated violence against police. The sergeant compared the performance to one featuring the KKK on Facebook and is now facing possible discipline.
I read about a fascinating new scientific study where Emmanuel Virot and colleagues at the Ecole Polytechnique and ESPCI ParisTech have concluded that there is a critical wind speed, of around 42 m/s (90 mph), at which almost all tree trunks break – regardless their size or species. Thus, under a simple scaling law, the critical wind speed is largely independent of the tree’s diameter, height or elastic properties.
Continue reading “Study: Trees Break At Same Wind Speed Regardless Of Size or Species”
There is a highly disturbing story out of Mount St. Mary’s University where the adviser to the school newspaper was fired after the newspaper ran a story of how university’s president, Simon Newman (left), had said that the school had to tighten its standards and get rid of less competitive students. He mocked colleagues who were resisting by reportedly saying “This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies.”
Bernie Sanders has repeatedly warned his supporters that they are up against the biggest political machine in the country with the Clintons and expressly criticized Hillary Clinton for her PAC and association with “attack dog” David Brock. However, one of the biggest liabilities facing Clinton is her continuing refusal to release the transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street and other groups. One solution appears to be snare anyone searching Hillary Clinton’s speeches. An unknown group of Clinton supporters has created a clearly misleading site called “HillaryClintonspeeches” that comes up whenever someone tries to search the controversies. What they find is not a site on the speech controversy but a pro-Clinton site that directs them to glowing reviews of Clinton and campaign websites. The unknown hosts of this site may have a perfectly legitimate reason for its title but I fail to see how it is not knowingly misleading given the growing controversy over the speeches. If you put in “Hillary Clinton speeches” to search the current status on the release of the speeches, this site now pops up.
Densibel Calzada, 23, and Eddy Albert, 21, have secured two distinctions in Tennessee. They have not only secured the harshest penalty ever issued by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency but they are generally viewed as this week’s worst human beings in the state or possibly nationwide. The two men have been banned from hunting in Tennessee and 43 other states after they illegally killed as many as 40 deer. They added to that carnage with sickening videos mocking suffering or dead animals.