Lee on Oct 19 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008
You’ve probably heard that John McCain has denounced Barack Obama’s ’spread the wealth’ formulation for tax policy as socialism. It’s an inflammatory but not unjustified charge, as a good definition for socialism is the equitable distribution of wealth to the community, coercively enforced by law.
But here’s a troubling aspect: suppose the electorate doesn’t mind if [...]
ChrisB on Aug 21 2008 | Filed under: Chris' Page, Health Care, Libertarianism
Michael F. Cannon at Cato blogs about a NYTimes article on the rife fraud found and covered up at Medicare. A confidential draft of a federal inspector general’s report claimed that the behavior they found at the Medicare Administration was rife with irregularities.
Medicare reported to Congress that, for the fiscal year of 2006, AdvanceMed’s investigations [...]
Joshua Foust on Jun 21 2008 | Filed under: Law, regulation
Unbelievable:
The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.
“Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances,” MPAA [...]
MichaelW on Jun 13 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Law, MichaelW's Page, Military Matters, Notes on the war
UPDATE: Welcome QandO readers. Please look around after you’ve finished with this post, but McQ says you have to go back over to QandO when you’re done … but I won’t tell if you won’t.
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The recent Supreme Court case involving Guantanomo Bay (GITMO) detainees and writs of habeas corpus promises to be one [...]
Lee on Feb 29 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
Video of Robert Amsterdam speaking at the University of Illinois about the political-symbolic nature of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s prosecution for fraud in 2005. The transformation of the Khodorkovsky trial into a grotesque perversion of justice is enormously revealing about the nature of the Russia Putin has made. That’s because the government had good evidence against him, [...]
Lee on Feb 19 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
Meet Alan Finch (video report). Alan became Helen Finch at 21, through sexual reassignment surgery…and then became Alan again when he was thirty. As you can see above, the results of his original surgery were extraordinarily effective. But Alan has decided he was misdiagnosed as suffering from gender identity disorder, and is now suing the [...]
Peg on Feb 19 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Law, Peg's Page
Attempting to achieve absolute equity and fairness in our justice system is impossible. I could list a dozens reasons why this is so - and I doubt that many would seriously argue with me that it is so.
Still, that we can never achieve perfection is not a reason not to reach for that goal. [...]
Lee on Feb 13 2008 | Filed under: Around the Web
Ali Eteraz takes a lengthy, sober and sympathetic look at the various arguments for granting jurisdiction to Sharia courts over Muslims in UK law. He rejects them all to good effect.
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Sphere: Related Content
Lance on Feb 10 2008 | Filed under: Lance's Page, Law, Religion and theology
Ali Eteraz gives his fellow Muslims the rationale for opposing Sharia courts being imported into the west:
14 - Liberal democracy, as is, is perfectly compatible with Islam
You aren’t making your country more Islamic or even earning more reward by going to Sharia arbitration courts. The Mufti of Egypt thinks liberal democracy is compatible with Islam. [...]
Lee on Feb 08 2008 | Filed under: Culture, Firearms, Lee's Page, Society
There’s a moment in Mark Steyn’s book America Alone, where he relates the truism that we’ve all experienced conversations with a mild-mannered, educated and seemingly rational person from the Arab world, where quite unexpectedly they say something nutty in the most casual way. “Of course the Jews planned 9-11″ for instance. As Steyn notes, when [...]
ChrisB on Feb 08 2008 | Filed under: Chris' Page, Law, Religion and theology
Well, kinda. After the whole row over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s declaration that Sharia Law in Britain is “unavoidable“, Eugene Volokh notes that it has been allowed in some US court, in a way. It seems some parties entered into a contract that provided for arbitration based off of rules of sharia law, and the [...]
Lee on Jan 14 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Health Care, Lee's Page
(photo: Jonathan Boeke)
The latest 419 scams aren’t the only nuisances for American businesses emerging out of Nigeria this year. Using the vast archive of documents made public during the 1990s epidemic of class action lawsuits against tobacco companies, Nigeria has decided to get in on the gravy train. The BBC is reporting today that [...]
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