Proposition 47, which was adopted by Californians in 2014, has been described as a ballot initiative with ‘unintended results galore‘. It was based on a laudable desire to reduce the number of people in California’s overcrowded prisons who don’t necessarily, […]
Law
A Response to Philip Hamburger on the “Administrative Threat”
As a paddleboarder, I have supported an organization called FREESUP socal; it is, frankly, an advocacy organization. We advocate for an open, data-driven process at the local, state, and federal level on regulation of life jacket wear for stand up paddleboarding […]
What Christian Reconstruction Gave Me
As everyone who investigates me online knows, in my 30s I was a Christian Reconstructionist. Part of the appeal of that to younger people in that era was the specific blueprints for society and personal action that seemed to fill […]
I Became a “Decline to State”
Nine years ago I became a nominal Democrat, a DINO [Democrat in name only] as I called it. I did so because it seemed to me at the time that the Republican party was being taken over by a group […]
Reno vs. Sirico: A Debate on Economic Justice
I rarely link to videos, much less watch them myself. But this one I actually did. It contains a debate between two scholars on economic justice, both of them, interestingly enough, identified as ‘conservative’. They are Rusty Reno, editor of First […]
If It’s Within the Law, Why Should There Be Hearings?
David Zahnizer, at the Los Angeles Times, has given us an article on the problems with the City of Los Angeles’ community plans, one of the major ones being that they are not finished yet. This is helping to create […]
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 […]