The other day, The Wife read a headline to me: “Richard Dawkins: I Will Arrest the Pope.” Well, that’s certainly an attention-getter and for a lover of criminal procedure the idea that a private citizen could arrest a visiting head… Continue Reading
There is no such thing as ESP. There is no way for a human being to see into the future. The dead do not talk to the living (other than through books and writings they leave behind them). Psychics are… Continue Reading
Watch this. Especially if you are an innocent, law-abiding person. The introductory remarks are about five minutes long. And as noted before, you don’t have to offer information to the police, and when you do offer information, you’re taking a… Continue Reading
The rhetoric has become too shrill. Even bloggers I normally like, respect, and find intellectually resonant have reverted to fear and hysteria. And, if one reverses the ideological polarity, there is a remarkable resemblance to the ideological panic of 2002.… Continue Reading
Via Bleakonomy, I see the deeply saddening and deeply disturbing case of Dr. Earl Bradley, a small-town pediatrician from suburban Delaware. Dr. Bradley was arrested and has been formally accused of thirty-three counts of molestation of children, some of them… Continue Reading
There is a fourteen-day limit on the Miranda rule. You didn’t know that? Neither did I, and neither did anyone else, not until this new interpretation of the case interpreting the Fifth Amendment got handed down with this fine piece… Continue Reading
It appears that a 53-year-old Texas man named Joseph A. Stack had some serious and perennial tax troubles and had come to greatly resent the government for pursuing him to pay back taxes (and interest and penalties). If that were the… Continue Reading
So the word on the street is that the White House is looking for somewhere to have the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed other than lower Manhattan. I think that’s fine. The Constitution requires that the trial take place in… Continue Reading
In an opinion that demonstrates just how astonishingly deferential the “rational basis” standard for governmental actions can be, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has permitted a Wisconsin prison to ban inmates from playing Dungeons and Dragons or possessing any… Continue Reading
I’ve little more to add to the Unreligious Right than is already there — giving a sixteen-year-old rape victim 101 lashes with a whip for the crime of becoming pregnant as a result of the rape, and acquitting the rapist… Continue Reading