I’ll preface this by saying that I’m a member of the 1%: the one percent of Americans under the age of 40 who remains without a tattoo. So while I have no personal stake in the issue, the Arkansas bill banning “untraditional” tattoos or body modifications, whatever that means, is completely ridiculous. It’s unenforceable, unconstitutional, […]
Tag: civil liberties
Connor Friedersdorf writes the kind of political essay I can’t see anyone but a privileged white person writing. Going as far as to nearly (but not quite he says!) compare President Obama to an
In addition to the appalling substantive merits, what is particularly striking about yesterday’s a-strip-search-for-jaywalking-is-reasonable case is that the quality of argumentation was shoddy
Our liberty-loving Supreme Court has once again decided to use the Federalist Society Constitution, the one with the word “suckers” in it that omits the Fourth Amendment. You can now be subjected to a not merely warrantless but suspicionless strip-search for being guilty of a minor traffic offense. The opinions bring to mind Scalia, back […]
Good. The point that “This case is about the limits of the government’s ability to delegate to a religious institution the right to use taxpayer money to impose its beliefs on others (who
Fortunately, it seems now that there will at a minimum be a serious investigation into the killing of Trayvon Martin. Should Zimmerman not be prosecuted (assuming no additional facts exonerating him e
The technology exists to exonerate innocent people. But that doesn’t mean that states are using it effectively.
I recommend both Kevin and Adam. The standards laid out for when a targeted killing can be justified are not, in themselves, unreasonable: First, the U.S. government has determined, after a thorough a
This report by Susan Greene is a first-rate piece of work, and should be read in full. A key paragraph: Among the misperceptions about solitary confinement is that it’s used only on the most violent
The landmark criminal procedure decisions of the Warren Court have generally not been overruled, but this is somewhat misleading; in many cases, the precedents formally remain standing, but have been interpreted in ways that give them much less bite. With Miranda v. Arizona, the dilution process continued yesterday. It’s rarely a good sign when you […]
A couple people in comments endorsed Jason Mazzone’s critique of the Ninth Circuit panel’s narrow opinion ruling Prop 8 unconstitutional and asked for my reaction. To paraphrase Byron Whit
Like Glenn, I’m dismayed by polling showing widespread support — including among Democrats and liberals — for arbitrary executive power in the “war on terror.” But I take