January 2006
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US takes hostages in Iraq war (Hellie)
[Cross-posted at For the Record] This war crime outrages Sully: You may have heard of the tactic. As a way to leverage information or capture an enemy, terrorists sometimes kidnap innocent women and children in order to put pressure on their husbands or relatives. It’s called kidnapping and blackmail. Except that in Rumsfeld’s military, the…
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Call senators and encourage support for Kerry’s Alito filibuster (Hellie)
Those inclined toward activism — and now is as good a time as any — should call as many of the following as time permits and urge support for the Scalito filibuster. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you are a constituent. Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D- AR), 202-224-4843 Joseph I. Lieberman (D- CT), 202-224-4041 Thomas…
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Carving out the Republicans: coverage of NSA vs. Lewinsky and Whitewater stories (Wilson)
[Cross-posted at For the Record] Jamison Foster of Media Matters has done a great job of compiling the stats on the differential treatment in the NYT and WaPo of stories (and related opinion-page calls for independent investigations) pertaining to Bush’s authorizing NSA eavesdropping without a warrant (in clear violation of the law) vs. stories pertaining…
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Frank Jackson Honored by Australian Government
Brian Weatherson has the details. The last philosopher so honored appears to have been David Armstrong about a dozen years ago.
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N.Y. Times Knocks “Imperial Arrogance” (Edmundson)
With unusual vigor, The New York Times (Jan. 29)–"Spies, Lies, and Wiretaps"– editorializes against the Bush Administration’s smarmy defense of its illegal secret eavesdopping campaign. Exerpts: A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that…
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Friday Poem: “Lessons of History”
Lessons of History It was thirty or forty years agoBut I still remember the day he spokeThis president of a giant companyAnd arrogant because of itWhat’s good for General Motors he boasted is good for America In a legislative inquiryHe had been caught red-handedTrying to destroy the reputationOf a young man who challenged…
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Bad News for British Readers: Your Fellow Citizens Are Almost as Ignorant as Americans! (Leiter)
Story here; an excerpt: Just under half of Britons accept the theory of evolution as the best description for the development of life, according to an opinion poll. Furthermore, more than 40% of those questioned believe that creationism or intelligent design (ID) should be taught in school science lessons. The survey was conducted by Ipsos…
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Osgoode: the #1 Law School in Canada?
So says Canadian Lawyer magazine, which takes a more "customer satisfaction" approach to rankings than U.S. News.
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In the credit where credit is due department (Wilson)
Though I’m generally grumpy about the state of the world, it’s good to remember that things have definitely improved along certain dimensions in the last few decades, especially so far as women’s access to various opportunities are concerned (with the usual caveats and defeaters, of course, especially concerning race, class, and other factors). My mother…
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Philosopher Forbes from Tulane to Colorado
Graeme Forbes (philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophical logic) at Tulane University has accepted a senior offer from the University of Colorado at Boulder, to start in the fall. That’s a huge loss for Tulane and a significant hire for Colorado which, together with other recent (mostly junior) hires, gives the Colorado program a realistic chance…
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So just what would be sufficiently radical? (Wilson)
The reasons why Alito should not be confirmed are about as clear and distinct as it gets. There’s his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton (in 1972, when it was still the 60’s, people… a college student that was a member of such a sexist, conservative, good-ol-rich-boys club would have to have been a certifiable…
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Why Not Comply with FISA and Get a Post-Facto Warrant? (Edmundson)
The Wall Street Journal released a transcript today (Jan. 26) of a rare interview with Pres. Bush. Along the way, the WSJ asked a question that many have been eager to hear the President answer: WSJ: OK. Why not just — why didn’t you go back to the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court and…
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Ideological Diversity in Law Schools (Leiter)
Peter Schuck (Yale Law School) and I are "debating" whether law schools need more ideological diversity over at the Legal Affairs "debate club" site. Some of the discussion may interest non-law readers. We "pre-recorded" the debate a couple of weeks ago, but officially there is just one more day (tomorrow) of back-and-forth.
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Georgetown Law Students Protest A.G. Gonzales’s Speech Defending Domestic Spying
There is an account, with pictures, here. (Thanks to Arpan Sura for the pointer.)
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Trusts & Estates Scholar Sitkoff from Northwestern to NYU
Robert Sitkoff, a highly regarded young trusts and estates scholar at Northwestern University School of Law, has accepted a tenured offer from New York University.
This is a load of cobblers. Philosophers need to read more Searle & watch less 2001. Computers, however fancy, are…