Civil Liberties

Winging a “Prayer”

By Marc Comtois | July 21, 2010 |

The banner has been on display at Cranston West High School since 1958. On it is a simple, innocuous prayer. Our Heavenly Father, Grant us each day the desire to do our best, To grow mentally and morally as well as physically, To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers, To be honest…

Always That Last Leap

By Justin Katz | June 28, 2010 |

I would very much like to be won over by Ramesh Ponnuru’s argument against libertarian reservations about the Civil Rights Act (recently in the public consciousness thanks to Republican U.S. Senate Candidate from Kentucky Rand Paul. But I cannot escape the conclusion that Ponnuru’s dual structures of legalism and appeals to legislative judgment never quite…

Legal, but Gone

By Justin Katz | May 17, 2010 |

So, the Mojave Desert cross honoring American servicemen and -women has been stolen: A cross erected on a remote Mojave Desert outcropping to honor American war dead has been stolen less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to remain standing while a legal battle continued over its presence on federal land.…

“Free” Speech and “Positive Spaces” in Canada

By Monique Chartier | March 25, 2010 |

A rowdy crowd (notice that, in the interest of avoiding “hate” speech, I didn’t say “mob”) succeeded in preventing Ann Coulter from speaking at the University of Ottawa Tuesday evening. Is it too obvious, by the way, to point out the irony that “hatred”, the offense that Ann Coulter is purportedly guilty of, was not…

Patrick Lynch Not Interested in Challenging the Federal Government’s Power to Impose a Purchase Mandate on Individuals

By Carroll Andrew Morse | March 22, 2010 |

According to Steve Peoples of the Projo’s 7-to-7 newsblog, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch (to no one’s surprise, really) is not interested in joining a potential lawsuit by the states challenging the Federal government’s power to require that individuals purchase something…“I don’t like a lot of the decisions that the legislature makes every day.…

Will Patrick Lynch be Getting a Phone Call Tonight…

By Carroll Andrew Morse | March 21, 2010 |

…and do we have a new issue in both the Rhode Island Attorney General’s and the Governor’s races, based on this facebook post from the Attorney General of Texas (h/t NRO)…Texas attorney general Greg Abbott Facebooks: “I am organizing a conference call tonight for AGs across the country. We will discuss our litigation strategy about…

The Religion of the Irreligious

By Justin Katz | March 7, 2010 |

This essay by Alex Rose has loitered about my desk for better than a month, because I’ve been unable to decide whether it’s worthy of response. One gets the strong impression that Mr. Rose’s primary intention is to execute a faux-daring poke in the eye of an acceptably accosted group — traditionally religious people —…

When Caesar Claims What Is Not His

By Justin Katz | February 11, 2010 |

Joseph Bottum notes a piece of legislation in the United Kingdom that looms as a logical subsequent step for liberal legal and cultural trends in the United States: … the bill’s most controversial provision would enjoin churches and other religious bodies from discriminating on the basis of gender or sexual orientation in the selection of…

It’s Not About Trusting Special Interests; It’s About Not Trusting the Government

By Justin Katz | February 2, 2010 |

Ed Achorn puts the recent campaign-finance ruling from the Supreme Court in precisely the right light: The problem (as the Founders well understood) is that there is no safe way for Congress to parcel out a “fair” amount of speech to the people who “deserve” it most. When they overleap constitutional bounds and seize such…

The International Noose Tightens

By Justin Katz | February 1, 2010 |

How long, do you suppose, until history encounters its first global totalitarian regime? U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said a bank tax and other tough new measures would be introduced by the individual countries but in a coordinated way to prevent bankers from moving from one place to another to escape regulation. “Lenin might have been…