Cord Jefferson thinks I haven't adequately explained why the Justice Department didn't "throw the book" at the New Black Panthers involved in the 2008 Philadelphia voter-intimidation case: Why didn’t Justice throw the book at these clowns? It’s certainly wasn’t a case that required the time, energy and finances of the entire Civil Rights Division, but was it really a case that should have resulted in little more than a warning to not be a bad boy again? Jefferson accuses me of "slight of hand" for not linking to any explanation of why they didn't pursue the case, and instead just linking to accounts of how politicized the Bush era was. In fact, the first link in the list contains an explanation of Section 11(b) and what it's traditionally been used for. You can't accuse me of being dishonest for not explaining something if you're not even going to read the first link in the list. The question was whether to use a rarely used provision of the Voting Rights Act that was originally meant...

Over the weekend Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer taunted Attorney General Eric Holder over the fact that the Justice Department lawsuit against SB 1070 didn't involve racial profiling: "Why would they have to hesitate, after all the comments they made, and all the outrage that they made against the bill in regards to racial profiling, that it didn't show up?" Brewer told The Associated Press during a break in the National Governors Association meeting in Boston. So either Brewer doesn't understand how the law works with regards to racial discrimination, or she was being disingenuous. As I reported last week, the standards for proving intentional discrimination are very high, and such a case would have been even more difficult to prove absent real-world examples of racial profiling resulting from the law. It's hard to have those when the law hasn't even taken effect yet. Holder explained as much when he hinted there might be a racial profiling case in the future, should the law be upheld: “It...

An attack on soccer fans in Uganda is being blamed on the Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab, which has ties to al-Qaeda: NAIROBI -- Two explosions, minutes apart, tore through two venues in the Ugandan capital where crowds were watching television broadcasts of the World Cup final late Sunday, killing at least 64 and wounding scores, Ugandan police said. At least one American was killed and several wounded, according to the U.S. Embassy in Kampala. The bombings unfolded at a rugby club and at an Ethiopian restaurant in Kampala where hundreds of boisterous and cheering soccer fans, including clusters of foreigners, had gathered to watch Spain beat Netherlands in the final in South Africa. Ugandan Police Chief Kale Kaihura immediately pointed blame at Somalia's al-Shabab, a hard-line militia with growing ties to al-Qaeda that has perpetrated several bombings in recent months in Somalia. But as of early Monday, no group had claimed responsibility for the attacks in a city widely...

Tim Fernholz on the morality of strategic defaulting. Recess appointments for my spouse, but not for thee. NOM thinks Obama flubbed the DOMA lawsuit on purpose. Johannes Mehserle writes about his remorse in killing Oscar Grant . The Miami Herald 's epic chronicler of Gitmo, Carol Rosenberg , is returning now that the DoD ban has been lifted. My commenters say I'm wrong about the legal standard for involuntary manslaughter. Spain is gonna win the World Cup because The Octopus said so.

They don't pay their mortgages: Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population. More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic. I suspect that Eric Martin is correct in noting that Zombie Lee Atwater will not be deterred in his quest for brains, but we'll see. Instead of the baroque explanation that blamed ACORN and laws outlawing redlining for the financial crisis conservatives may just point out that the rich aren't " losers " and leave it at that. Annie Lowrey raises some important questions about what constitutes a "strategic default": [T]his article epitomizes my broader frustrations with the debate over strategic default. It fails to define strategic default — setting out what characterizes a canny...

Yesterday in Massachusetts, a federal judge ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act, a Clinton-era federal law that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, violated the 10th Amendment because it infringes on the states' right to define marriage. In a separate case, Judge Joseph Tauro also ruled that the DOMA ban violates the "equal protection principles embodied in the Fifth Amendment" by denying federal benefits to same-sex unions. If you've been paying attention to the health-care debate, you know that a number of conservatives, derisively referred to by some liberals as "Tenthers," believe the 10th Amendment makes the health-care law's individual mandate, which comes in the form of a fine on people who don't buy health insurance, unconstitutional. It's both kind of an old and a new thing. Liberal legal scholar Jack Balkin writes that Tauro's two opinions are "at war with each other": To be sure, there is something delightfully playful and perverse about the two opinions...