DailyWrit

Barack Obama has chosen a running mate that shares his views on fiscal policy, healthcare, education, the war on terror, and…Clarence Thomas? It seems that the presumptive Democratic nominee, fresh off his remarks at Saddleback, has selected Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) as his VP. Biden is widely-respected as the Chair of the Senate Committee on […]

The Supreme Court today released a press release announcing that they will be providing the audio recording of oral arguments in Boumediene and Al-Odah as early as possible.
Its nice to see that the Court is embracing the internet and recognizing the advantage that speedily released arguments provide. The transcript will appear online at its normal […]

Yesterday the University of Texas sent out an email to all of its students outlining its policy towards hazing and detailing some crimes that are considered hazing. You can find the entire email in memorandum form here but these are the relevant excerpts:
According to the law, a person can commit a hazing offense not only […]

The Democratic National Committee voted to take away Florida’s electoral power at the national convention if Florida kept its January 29th primary date. Synopsis: Florida, in an attempt to make the candidates actually care about the state (”put me in, coach!”), moved up their primary date from February to January, hoping to steal the thunder […]

[ October 1, 2007; 10:00 am to 11:00 am. ] On October 1, 2007, the Court will hear the first case of the October 2007 term. Washington State Grange v. Washington Republican Party and its sister case, Washington v. Washington Republican Party, centers around the Washington state law that allows candidates to state their ‘party preference’ as opposed to an all-out party affiliation and its […]

Hey, I’m back from a blogging hiatus to witness President Bush’s renewed push for public support for the War in Iraq. Essentially, we’re witnessing samurai level rhetorical Jujutsu. To me, rhetorical Jujutsu is the art of quickly and subtly shifting your rhetoric in response to recent events in a […]

A lot of pundits have been calling for the democrats to make the Court a major campaign issue in light of the massive setback that is known as the 2006 Term. Some argue that democrats need to ‘control the issue’ and take judicial activism to the people. The problem with this notion is that these […]

Earlier this week, Deborah Jeane Palfrey – commonly referred to as the “DC Madam” – released (for public download) an unfathomably long list of phone numbers corresponding to former clients. Those of you unfamiliar with this case will be thrilled to learn that the USDOJ has alleged in the US District Court for the District […]

The drums for withdraw grow louder each day as more and more bad news comes out of Iraq. With 3609 dead and counting, politicians and pundits are calling for withdrawal. Whether named a “redeployment” or the great escape, it’s doubtful that the current level of […]

Bill Posner (not Richard Posner) writes a rather interesting article about the now infamous banner at the center of Morse v. Fredrick over at his blog, Language Log. Posner contends that the Justices, especially the conservative ones, may have overanalyzed the banner in question by ignoring “the possibility that the utterance is meaningless.” By assuming […]

Just last week in ACLU v. NSA, the sixth circuit Court of Appeals struck down the ACLU’s suit against the NSA’s warrantless-wiretapping authority. In a 2-1 decision, two concurring opinions were published meaning that not one of the judges agreed with another’s methodology. Lets take a look at this case and its potential implications.
The authority […]

By now, you should all know that I’m not a fan of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District. In my humble opinion, the majority made a policy decision by contending that desegregation is good, but the way this community chose to go about it wasn’t effective. The […]

I’m trying my very hardest to leave the political blogging to the plebs but its getting harder and harder as we get farther away from the term. Regardless, there are still a few important topics of the 2006 term that haven’t been discussed. I wrote a bit about the politics inside the court that have […]

Kedar and I have been working semi-religiously on perfecting the 2008 Election Tracker (so much so that we both conspicuously missed Saturday’s debate (OOPS!)). Anyway, our spiffy new graphs are really, really neat and can be found below.
Democratic Primary Race (click the thumbnail to enlarge via lightbox):

^^^(NOTE: I re-keyed Gore as greeen in an (unsuccessful) […]

I made one final update to the 2006 Term Case Index. I’ll be sad to see it go but I have big plans for it’s 2007 incarnation. I very recently (this morning) calculated the number of days between oral arguments and a decision being handed down in each of this year’s cases. I think a […]