I believe that the two most confusing and misunderstood words in the English language are “conservative” and “liberal”. I’ve talked about this before, but given that I had to clarify this for my wife last week, I realize that maybe I should revisit it. Both phrases have multiple, often contradictory, definitions, so let’s [...]

“In Ricci, Judge Sotomayor’s empathy for one group of firefighters turned out to be prejudice against another.” — Senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL, Ranking GOP Senator on the Judicial Committee
Let’s look at that statement closely.

I haven’t been posting much lately because I’ve been spending most of my time packing all of my possessions into boxes. Ah, the joys of moving. But I have been paying attention to the news, especially the resignation of Justice David Souter and the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I can’t remember [...]

The Supreme Court just decided to take on an extremely interesting, and difficult, case. Back in 2004, Congress passed the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act that mandated a two year prison sentence for anyone who “knowingly transfers, possesses, or uses, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person” (called “aggravated identity theft”). [...]

How much is a human life worth?
I’m reminded of that question again, because of this case out of Pasadena, TX (a relatively poor suburb of Houston). Here’s what happened:

One of the great ironies of the Scooter Libby trial was that the same conservatives who have for years fought for high mandatory minimum sentences–and against allowing judicial discretion to reduce those sentences–ended up complaining that the sentence given to Mr. Libby based on those sentencing guidelines was too harsh.  Now we have the second [...]

Michael Vick was recently indicted for a dog-fighting ring operating in a house that he owned. In response PETA and the Humane Society are trying to get his endorsement deals cut. Now, an indictment merely means that a person has been charged with a crime.
One would think with the aftermath of the [...]

President Bush’s notion of executive privilege is completely bogus. This isn’t surprising. The problem, however, is that President Bush will likely be on his way out the door by the time the courts really have a chance to rule on any of these issues. The president only has eighteen months in office, [...]

Six Supreme Court decisions this week. All of them (but one) were decided 5-4. In my mind, the court got about half of them right… the problem is that the ones they got wrong were real doozies. Here are the cases, from best to worst (in my opinion):

I want to talk about genetic testing, but first, allow me to play at political philosophy for a second. First a proposition: it is possible for an action to be both immoral and legal. In fact, an action’s legality should have no bearing on its morality. (Note that the same is not [...]