There is a lot of intellectual fuss about ‘authoritarianism’ nowadays, because of the rise of Donald Trump and what appears to be the overthrow of traditional ‘fusion’ conservatism. A long essay by Amanda Taub in “Vox” is the most thorough […]
Howard Ahmanson
The Adams Map: A Different Spectrum, A Challenge – Part 2
It occurs to me that Adams anticipates Trump. However, when I wrote this I thought the people on the lower left corner weren’t going to turn out to vote. Therefore the culture wars between the upper left and lower right […]
Richard Nixon: A Precedent for Donald Trump?
It occurred to me that a possible precedent for Donald Trump might be none other than Richard Nixon. Now I think that Nixon was a far more intelligent man than Trump, and, for all his sins, a person of superior […]
Andrew Sullivan on Trump and Tyranny: A Response
Andrew Sullivan, having retired from blogging and writing after first giving us the idea of same sex marriage and then being lambasted by his followers for wanting to be tolerant to their enemies who lost over that particular issue, has […]
Asset Forfeiture – Again
As a result of a conversation I recently had with an Assemblyman, I’ve decided to clarify my view on Asset Forfeiture. When a person is arrested on drug charges, or whatever other charges trigger these things, I don’t mind if […]
And a Third Legal System: the Laws of War
Andrew Rosenthal, in the New York Times here and here writes about the pressure to treat Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, [who I can’t resist calling ‘The Joker’] not as a criminal but as an ‘enemy combatant’, largely because that pesky Bill of Rights would […]
Mental Health and ‘Punishment’ versus ‘Treatment’
If you think about it, we also have two parallel prison systems, one under criminal law, the other under civil law. We worry a lot about ‘incarceration’ and the ‘mental health’ of prisoners. Yes we have too many people in […]
Asset Forfeiture
Many organizations, from Institute for Justice to Reason and Cato, have crusaded for the elimination or limiting of the practice of asset forfeiture. Property can be confiscated for crimes where one has not been found guilty. The reason is, as […]
The Parallel Structures of Criminal and Civil Law, and the Hole in the Bill of Rights
American criminal law, first on the federal level, and later, when the Supreme Court started to apply the Bill of Rights to the states in the 20th century [and at local level as well], has some restrictions on the government in […]
Dictator’s Ex-Wife Finds a New, Younger Love
Dictators ain’t what they used to be, if they can’t put a stop to this!