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Words you can’t say at the Pentagon

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Volokh Conspiracy - By Stewart Baker - Feb. 20 (Opinion) - Anyone who paid attention to news coverage after the rampage knows that the Army had plenty of warning about Hasan’s Islamist views. Classmates say that he questioned whether he could fight against other Muslims and made presentations justifying the murder of non-Muslims, suggesting that Muslim-Americans in the armed forces might kill other servicemembers, defending Osama bin Laden, and justifying suicide bombers. The servicemembers in the audience were so appalled that the instructor finally stopped one of Hasan’s presentations. Off the record, it seems, everyone thought Hasan was dangerous, a nutjob, or an Islamist, and perhaps all three. On the record, though, no one would criticize him. You don’t rise in the armed forces if you can’t read your superiors. And the rising officers who met Hasan knew what their superiors wanted without having to be told. Islam was a religion of peace, and Muslims in the Army were a welcome sign of diversity. Treating Hasan as a dangerous Islamist would put those messages at risk.

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No-Fly Fail Fault?

Wed, 05 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Volokh Conspiracy - By Stewart Baker - May. 05 (Opinion) - The government put Shahzad on its terror watchlists, including the no-fly list, and DHS recognized his name when Emirates airline gave its passenger manifest to DHS. This of course was just before takeoff, so the plane had already pulled back the jetway when Customs and Border Protection stopped the flight: “By the time [DHS/CBP] officials spotted Shahzad’s name on the passenger list and recognized him as the bombing suspect they were looking for,” AP says, ” he was in his seat and the plane was preparing to leave the gate.”

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More on Ted Olson's federal lawsuit for gay marriage:

Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Volokh Conspiracy - By Dale Carpenter - May. 29 (Comment) - To be honest, when I first heard that former Bush Solicitor General Ted Olson, a rock-solid member of the conservative legal movement, had filed a federal lawsuit to invalidate Prop 8 I thought it was an Internet hoax. So I held off posting about it for awhile last night. It was a surprise because I had no idea Olson supported equality for gays and lesbians, much less full marriage rights. It was doubly a surprise because, even if he supported gay marriage, Olson struck me as the kind of conservative who would reject what many conservatives would regard as judicial activism.

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Losing California

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Volokh Conspiracy - By Dale Carpenter - Nov. 05 (Opinion) - Mostly, my heart breaks for the gay couples and their children who had a five-month window in which their families could celebrate the ultimate expression of commitment and love our culture knows. There was nothing academic about any of this for them....They want their families and communities to understand how much their relationships mean and how fiercely they will fight to protect the children they love....Today, they have no idea whether they have just been divorced by their fellow citizens.

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Ronald Reagan on Immigration

Fri, 25 May 2007 15:17:02 -0700

The Volokh Conspiracy - By Ilya Somin - May. 25 (Opinion) - Conservative Republican have been outdoing each other in claiming the mantle of Ronald Reagan. Ironically, however, many conservatives are simultaneously outdoing each other in advocating immigration restriction - a stance Reagan would probably have abhorred. As Reagan biographer Lou Cannon points out in this book (pg. 119), Reagan proposed a treaty allowing for full freedom of movement for all workers throughout North America in his November 1979 speech announcing his candidacy for the presidency. As early as 1952 - at a time when US immigration policy was still governed by the highly restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 - Reagan gave a speech embracing nearly unlimited immigration:

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France will not abandon the women who are condemned to the burqa

Wed, 09 May 2007 12:29:09 -0700

The Volokh Conspiracy - By David Kopel - May. 09 (Opinion) - In English: "I want to launch a call to all those in the world who believe in the values of tolerance, of liberty, of democacy and of humanism, to all those who are persecuted by the tyrannies and by the dictators, to all the children and to all the martyrized women in the world to say to them that the pride, the duty of France will at their sides, that they can count on her."

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Why Haven't We Written About the US Attorneys' Story?:

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 08:37:38 -0700

The Volokh Conspiracy - By Orin Kerr - Mar. 14 (Opinion) - On a more serious note, I haven't written about the U.S. Attorney's story because I'm having a hard time figuring out just how big a deal it is. Parts of it are obviously very troubling: I was very disturbed to learn of the Domenici calls, for example. More broadly, I have longrunning objections to the extent to which DOJ is under White House control, objections that this story helps bring to the fore (although my objections are based on my views of sound policy, not on law). At the same time, several parts of the story seem overblown. U.S. Attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the President, and the press seems to overlook that in a lot of its reporting. Also, I know one or two of the Administration figures named in some of the stories, and based on my knowledge of them and their character (although no secret details of the story -- I have not spoken with anyone about it) I have a feeling that they're getting a bad rap.

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Presidential candidates on the Second Amendment

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:03:12 -0800

The Volokh Conspiracy - By David Kopel - Jan. 23 (Opinion) - If you take Second Amendment issues into account when deciding whom to support, or if you simply are interested how the candidates will likely fare with an important bloc of voters, here's a preliminary assessment of some of the people who have been listed as likely or definite candidates. As much as possible, the ratings are based on actions while in government, rather than on current rhetoric. Of course the list can also be read in reverse order, to assess the probable allegience of voters who are very strong gun control advocates. These rankings are subject to revision, as additional information is acquired.

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Half the Story

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 23:06:53 -0800

The Volokh Conspiracy - By Eugene Volokh - Jan. 06 (Opinion) - Don Surber notes, quoting a correspondent: Today's approval numbers via Rasmussen are: 45% approval for Bush 43% approval for Pelosi Well, that's half the numbers. Filling in the other half (which, to Surber's credit, is linked from his post), we see that Bush is at 45% job approval and 54% disapproval, while Pelosi is at 43% favorable and 39% unfavorable. So Pelosi seems ahead of Bush (+4 vs. -9) rather than behind. And the talk in the Surber post about the media's "false ... impressions," media "conventional wisdom [being] flushed down the toilet," and media "lies," seems like something of an overstatement.

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