Law & Society Blog

The ABA blue ribbon commission gets it exactly right this time.Presidential signing statements that assert President Bush’s authority to disregard or decline to enforce laws adopted by Congress undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers., according to a report released today by a blue-ribbon American Bar Association task force.

For a bit of fun and a blast from the past, here is an educational video, Don’t Copy That Floppy, from the Software Publisher’s Association (which merged with the Information Industry Association in 1999 to form the SIIA). I believe it is dated 1992, around the time of the first FBI raids on pirate bulleting […]

Check out David Robertson’s post Rethinking DRM Dystopia over at the ever excellent Freedom to Tinker blog. David’s conclusions are relatively similar to my initial observations.

Brian Berkey has two main objections to my sketch of a left-libertarian ideal society.

If we assume that our ideal society will have an ethos that strongly encourages the pursuit of rational (i.e. economic) self-interest, why in the world would we think that the wealthy, including those in charge of large corporations, would refrain from involving themselves in the political process, when doing so would surely be an easy way of ensuring greater profits for their companies (politicians would surely be just as strongly influenced by the ethos as their corporate friends, and therefore susceptible to being bought off)…. None of these measures can in isolation stem the corporate influence on government, but the hope is that in conjunction, they will prevent special interests, including powerful corporate interests, from completely dominating the political process.Brian makes another point of great interest.What is perhaps most striking about the articles written by the free marketeers is that, despite containing a great deal of commentary on the role of government, there is no mention of democracy.

Jonathan Wolff asks a really good question.

Mark Frauenfelder links to this study of the amount of caffeine contained in popular drinks:Hershey’s milk chocolate almond bar, 6 oz 25 mgEspresso, 1-oz shot 40 mgBrewed tea, 8-oz cup 50 mgCoca-Cola, 20-oz bottle 57 mgRed Bull energy drink, 8.3-oz can 80 mgExcedrin pain reliever, 2 tablets 130 mgBrewed coffee, 12-oz cup 200 mgMountain Dew, 64-oz Double Big Gulp 294 mgHere’s the list, sorted by caffeine/ounce:coffee.jpgEspresso wins hands downBased on that dataset, espresso clearly wins in terms of most caffeine per ounce.

Mark Garber’s biting commentary is worth quoting in full:Seems to me that the perfect compromise that might resolve the stem cell controversy is for the scientific community to agree to do research only on embryos that could possibly mature into terrorists. After all, our president who so emphasizes morality believes there is nothing immoral about torturing persons who are suspected of being terrorists, even in the absence of any legal procedure that even confirms the suspicions are reasonable (much less a legal procedure which convicts them of any crime).

In American Vertigo, Bernard-Henri Levy discusses his travels with the Kerry campaign.

Suppose you spent the last eight weeks leveling up in a massive multiplayer online game to obtain a particular armor.