Ken Starr was no exception. Over the last 30 years, abetted by the Supreme Court, prosecutors have acquired fearsome power in the form of largely untrammeled authority and a bag of sneaky tricks.
Law and Justice
Posted inLaw and Justice
The Judicial Vigilantes
Tom Delay and other social conservatives are on the warpath against liberal judges, and would like nothing better than to impeach the lot of them. While impeachments are improbable, conservatives’ strategy is having a dangerous impact.
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Prisoner Proliferation
When most of us think of convicts at work, we picture them banging out license plates or digging ditches. Those images, however, are now far too limited to encompass the great range of jobs that America’s prison workforce is performing. If you book a flight on TWA, you’ll likely be talking to a prisoner at […]
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Smoking Guns
Even after Littleton, gun control advocates have been stymied in Congress, where the lobbying presence of the NRA is just too strong. But litigation against gun manufacturers, borrowed from the playbook of the anti-tobacco crusaders, may prove the real route to gun control.
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Is Violent Speech a Right?
Advocacy of illegal violence to kill people is not necessarily constitutionally protected speech.
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Will Free Speech Get Tangled in the Net?
When the Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act, cyberlibertarians breathed a sigh of relief. But keeping government out of the censorship business may not be enough to assure freedom online — censorship may now be privatized.
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Grassroots Medicine
The federal government has agreed to study the medicinal use of marijuana. But there’s already lots of evidence that the administration seems to be doing its best to ignore.
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Wild Pitch: ‘Three Strikes, You’re Out’ and Other Bad Calls on Crime
Gut-level intuition is driving the country toward depserate and ineffective measures.
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Passions of Crime
Getting tough on crime has always been popular. Now there’s also big money in it. Crime policy today is a study in irrational passions and rational interests.
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Policing the Police
Where is the line between effective crime control and violation of civil liberties?