christopher_hallam

Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam fell asleep in 1986 and woke up a few days ago offended by academia’s sudden interest in Hip-hop: The first rap-ademic was Henry Louis Gates Jr., then at Duke, now at Harvard, who provided expert testimony at the 1990 obscenity trial of rappers 2 Live Crew. Florida had tried to […]

I think Julian Sanchez is on the same page as I am, while being less sympathetic to the individual mandate: It does seem like a surprising result, given the last century of Commerce Clause precedent, that anything plausibly describable as economic activity might be found beyond the power of Congress to micromanage. “Preposterous on its […]

Lee Fang catches Rep. Allen West demanding the news media be censored over Wikileaks: There are different means by which you can be attacked. I mean it doesnt have to be a bomb or an airplane flying into a building. It doesn’t have to be a shooting. It can be through cyber attacks, it could […]

I find Mitt Romney‘s argument on why his mandate is okay, and the ACA’s mandate is unconstitutional really incoherent (via Dave Weigel): The ruling supports Mitt Romney’s view that Obamacare is an unconstitutional power grab by Washington. We should repeal the law and return to the states the power to determine their own health care […]

Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress had exceeded its powers. That libertarian outlook apparently fades when it comes to pornography, since as Josh Gerstein points out, as chairman of Ronald Reagan‘s porn commission Hudson went farther than his colleagues in urging tougher enforcement of […]

Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at the annual dinner of Muslim Advocates, a Muslim advocacy group in California and defended the FBI’s sting operations: Mr. Holder was given a standing ovation as he took the stage, and many applauded during his speech. But the room fell silent for several minutes while Mr. Holder defended the […]

I’ve been struggling to find the right Lando Calrissian quote to describe the deal the White House made to extend the Bush era tax cuts for the top 2% of earners, but this one works. Yesterday, responding to Paul Krugman‘s grim assessment, Ezra Klein wondered how the deal might affect Barack Obama‘s election chances: The […]

The transcripts aren’t out yet, but Lyle Denniston reports on the Justices’ reactions to the arguments in the federal lawsuit over Arizona’s SB 1070: Justice Antonin Scalia on Wednesday was the fervent champion of states’ authority, in the wake of what he perceived as a failure of the federal government to keep illegal aliens out […]

My latest post over at Greg‘s place is on salvaging what’s left of the lame-duck session by getting a deal on the Bush-era tax cuts out of the way so Congress can get on to voting on DADT repeal, START, and the longshot DREAM Act: The good news is that a deal on tax cuts […]

When I first saw the reports about this incident involving a group of black Ivy League alumni who club owners thought would “attract the attention of local gangbangers” simply because they’re black, I barely reacted to it in part because it’s a really common part of the black experience at elite northeastern private schools. I […]