Continuing a long-running theme at his blog, Matt Yglesias laments that Senators from small states wield so much power.  The latest fuel is a NYT feature on six moderates who are supposedly the linchpins to putting together a bipartisan health care deal and who routinely hash out the details of same over snacks. [V]ast power [...]

I was able to find the exact text of the plebiscite that Manuel “Mel” Zelaya wanted to proffer to the citizens of Honduras this past Sunday. The text and a photo of the ballot that was to be used can be found here. The odd thing, and a fact that hasn’t made it into a [...]

The events in Honduras today have been some of the more dramatic in recent Latin American (and especially Central American) politics. The events are certainly of relevance to the democratic evolution of Honduras. Dave Schuler asked that I post a few comments given my academic focus on Latin America. If anyone is interested in the [...]

The Supreme Court sided with a 13-year-old honor student suspended after she was strip searched for Advil. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a school’s strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal. In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said school officials violated the law with their search of [...]

Having stolen Pete Davis‘ post title, the least I can do is attempt to answer his question: the U.S. Postal Service was established by the Constitution.  I’d be interested if any constitutional lawyers think the Postal Service could be dismantled without amending the Constitution. Well, IANA(C)L but am almost certain that nothing in the Constitution [...]

Matt Yglesias has discovered the facts that 1) each state gets two Senators and 2) some states are bigger than others, a condition that has obtained since the inception of our current system in 1789.  There was, as some may recall having read, this thing called the Great Compromise whereby delegates representing sovereign states under [...]

Ross Douthat, examining the controversy over late-term abortions that was brought back into the public spotlight with the murder of Dr. George Tiller, observes: The argument for unregulated abortion rests on the idea that where there are exceptions, there cannot be a rule. Because rape and incest can lead to pregnancy, because abortion can save [...]

Kevin Drum notes that he’s already tired of the “kabuki” that has emerged in reaction to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. I both agree that the process is predictable and tedious and that Sotomayor would seem obviously qualified for confirmation.  I would quibble, however, with this: Conservatives, who seem constitutionally unable [...]

Josh Marshall has noted something peculiar in the recent media tour of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich: He seems to insist with members of the press that he still be referred to as “Speaker Gingrich.” And actually his website is speakergingrich.com. Not former Speaker Gingrich, Speaker Gingrich. And it goes beyond him. On [...]

UCSB political scientist Aaron Belkins‘ HuffPo piece “Obama To Fire His First Gay Arabic Linguist” has drawn quite a bit of blogospheric attention. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about [...]

Jeremy Lott’s attempted response to my response piece on “Ending the Vice Presidency” was, for some odd reason*, rejected altogether by my commenting system.  Rather than pasting them into the comments of a post buried in the archives, I’ve done it below, with my original in blockquotes, followed by his retort in boldface, followed by [...]

Sunday’s WaPo put together a collection of half-baked ideas by smart folks, designed to generate controversy and discussion more so than shed serious light on policy ideas.  Thomas Ricks’ suggestion to close the service academies and war colleges got the most attention, overshadowing the abject silliness of Jeremy Lott’s column advocating doing away with the [...]

Ben Smith quotes lawyer A.B. Culvahouse explaining legal obstacles to Joe Lieberman’s having been John McCain’s running mate. “Five states have sore loser statutes … [making] it very difficult for someone who’s not a member of the Republican Party to become the vice presidential nominee if they only switch parties to become a Republican shortly [...]

Yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel that “The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the Nov. 4, 2008, election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately” and that Al Franken “received the highest number of votes legally cast” and “is therefore entitled to receive the certificate of election” should, but likely won’t, put an end [...]

Timothy Sandefur argues that President Obama’s plan to expand Americorps into a “a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people” is “an abrogation of the 13th Amendment” and its prohibition against “involuntary servitude.” The good news, as an update the Examiner editorial linked above notes, is that the offending language [...]

Jack Balkin, the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School, examines the Constitutionality of the Houseand Senate versions of the bills taxing bonuses of AIG and other companies that received government bailouts and pronounces them Constitutional.  He quickly dismisses arguments under the Due Process, Takings, Ex Post Facto, and [...]

There’s a consensus emerging among the bloggers I read that taxing AIG bonuses, in addition to being Constitutionally questionable, is just a really bad idea.   Let’s leave aside the conservative die-hards and libertarian types, who might be expected to think that, and concentrate on those on the leeward side of center. Nate Silver offers some [...]

Inspired by an OTB comment thread, Steven Taylor has written two essays questioning the use of the phrase “A Republic, Not a Democracy.”   In Part I: Looking at Terms, he cites the political science literature to show that the terms are interchangable.  Part II: Madison, Republican Government and Federalism, he argues that even the founders [...]

Usually, when Chuck Norris speaks, the world listens.  But this apparently does not hold true for when he writes columns for WorldNetDaily and goes on the Glenn Beck show — in which it takes a couple days for anyone to notice. Ron Moore, for the DC Examiner: The call by some right wing leaders for [...]

Eugene Volokh‘s readers wonder whether Senator Teddy Kennedy needs permission from Congress to accept a knighthood from England pursuant to article I, § 9 of the Constitution’s pronouncement that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, [...]

David Samo has the best explanation I’ve seen thus for of the bizarre “tea party” phenomenon: In the latest example of how user-produced media can capture so-called “massively-shared” events in a way mainstream media can’t, a wave of images, blog posts and videos from a nationwide protest has been washing across the Web. The protests, [...]

Old Man Byrd is at it again: West Virginia Sen. Robert C. Byrd, the longest-serving Democratic senator, on Wednesday criticized President Barack Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch. Byrd complained in a letter to the president that his [...]

The bizarre idea that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen and therefore not eligible to hold the office of president continues to thrive, with an active duty Army officer now joining the fray.  The soldier in question, 40-year-old contractor-turned 2LT Scott Easterling asserts that his oath to defend the Constitution require that, “Until [...]

The Supreme Court has ruled that kids should be able to access pornographic images on the Internet. Or, rather, the fact that a lot of parents don’t supervise their kids does not supersede the rights of adults to access said content. A long legal drive to shield children from sexually explicit material on the Web [...]

Via Norman Geras, I see that Steven Pinker has a plausible yet amusing explanation for Chief Justice John Roberts’ bungling of the presidential oath of office. How could a famous stickler for grammar have bungled that 35-word passage, among the best-known words in the Constitution? Conspiracy theorists and connoisseurs of Freudian slips have surmised that [...]

President Obama hauled Chief Justice Roberts in to readminister the presidential oath to compensate for having screwed it up the first time. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama on Wednesday night at the White House — a rare do-over. The surprise moment came in response to Tuesday’s much-noticed stumble, when Roberts got [...]

The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to hear the case of Savana Redding, who, as “a 13-year-old honor student who was subjected to a strip search by school officials in Arizona looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen.” The gist of the dispute, as described by Adam Liptak for NYT: The strip-search case was brought by the mother of [...]

While it may be galling for Rod Blagojevich to get to appoint someone to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat while he’s under federal indictment for trying to sell said seat, Jane Hamsher argues that he’s perfectly entitled to do so. Then fifty members of the Democratic Caucus signed a letter saying they would oppose any [...]

In the comments thread to James’s post about the recent Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza, a commenter wondered if that were the crisis that VP-Elect Joe Biden warned about. No, it isn’t. Foreign policy has a way of overwhelming most American presidencies. Our constitution is written that way and Barack Obama’s presidency is very [...]

Thomas Schweich fears a military coup in the United States.  Or something like that. In a breathless WaPo op-ed, “The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It’s time to stop the mission creep” (with the clever subhead, “The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It’s time to stop the mission creep”) he fears that the proliferation of [...]

Dick Cheney thinks Barack Obama will come to “appreciate” the increased power the Bush Administration has claimed for the White House and will not be at all eager to return it. “Once they get here and they’re faced with the same problems we deal with every day, then they will appreciate some of the things [...]

The much-touted CEO pay limits are a joke, Amit Paley reports in a page 1 story for WaPo. Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping pay of Wall Street executives, so lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules. But at [...]

President Bush may ignore Congress and give the Big 3 the money they want, anyway. Worried about the weakening economy, the Bush administration said it was ready to step in and prevent the U.S. auto industry from collapsing after the Senate refused to pass a rescue bill endorsed by President George W. Bush and congressional [...]

As widely anticipated, the Supreme Court today declined to hear a frivolous case about Barack Obama’s citizenship status. The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.  The court did not comment [...]

The DC Council’s petition asking  President-Elect Obama to put “Taxation Without Representation” plates on his limo to “send a clear message to the entire nation and the world” that he supports giving the city a vote in Congress has prompted Matt Yglesias to argue for DC statehood. You would, of course, need to carve out [...]

Richard Cohen and Ezra Klein are very disturbed by Attorney General-designate Eric Holder’s role in Bill Clinton’s 11th hour pardoning of Marc Rich.  Kevin Drum finds Holder’s role “disturbing” but not disqualifying and hopes he’s learned his lesson. I’m by no means a Clinton fan but the idea that Holder should be held accountable for [...]

Aside from the issue of the wisdom of appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State, which I’ve discussed previously, there’s also the issue of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which states, “No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the [...]

While Barack Obama has already resigned his Senate seat to concentrate on the transition, Joe Biden has not followed suit.  NBC’s Doug Adams speculates that he’s holding off on doing so in order to set the stage for his son, Beau, to replace him. Biden told a local TV station right before Election Day he [...]

Glenn Greenwald, reacting to reports that Barack Obama has told Harry Reid that Joe Lieberman should not be stripped of his committee chairmanship and thus making it very difficult for him to do so, has written a long and passionate plea for a return to vigorous separation of powers with strong institutional jealousies. [W]hatever the [...]

Stacy McCain has a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to my post on the Republican Party’s future in which he notes that Sarah Palin graduated college, some non-Southern states voted for McCain, and than some non-rednecks agree with Palin on some issues. James doesn’t want the Republican Party identified with redneck opponents of illegal immigration (like that illiterate [...]

My Palin Derangement Syndrome post got a number of thoughtful responses, especially for a weekend post. My fellow Jacksonville State alumnus Stacy McCain, a Palin fan, thinks the internal debate on her role in last week’s defeat and her future as a Republican Party standard bearer is one we should have.  He objects strenuously, though, [...]

Thomas Lifson believes the “game changer” desperate Republicans are looking for could have arrived with this video from — and, sadly, I’m not making this up — someone calling themselves “Molotov Mitchell” at something called ” Illuminati Productions.” The video is just shy of 11 minutes but, as Lifson describes it, It makes accessible to [...]

I try, as a matter of principle, to disagree with Alan Dershowitz whenever possible. He makes it very difficult with this: The laws regulating financial manipulation are anything but clear. The government’s weapon of choice in such cases is mail fraud—an accordion-like and elastic law if there ever was one. To constitute mail fraud, the [...]

Eugene Volokh points to a First Amendment Center survey (PDF) showing that 42 percent of Americans disagree with the proposition People should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to RELIGIOUS groups and 54% disagree that People should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to RACIAL [...]

Nate Silver has outlined the scenarios by which “the country’s worst nightmare” — but political pundits’ dream — of an Electoral College tie could take place.  He notes that, as we get closer to the election without either candidate pulling away, the odds get greater. The far most likely 269-269 scenario: “Barack Obama wins the [...]

A Florida judge has proclaimed a constitutional right to show your under drawers in public. A Florida judge has deemed unconstitutional a law banning baggy pants that show off the wearer’s underwear, local media reported Tuesday. A 17-year-old spent a night in jail last week after police arrested him for wearing low pants in Riviera [...]

McCain-Palin currently have a very slim lead over Obama-Biden in virtually every national poll (see RealClearPolitics and Pollster.com).  The Electoral College is too close to call. RCP has it 273-265 for Obama (without toss-ups) while Electoral-Vote.com has it 257-247 for McCain with Virginia and Pennsylvania too close to call. Obviously, there’s still a lot of [...]

In the political equivalent of a “Man Bites Dog” story, Barack Obama, presidential candidate, actually contrasted himself with his opponent on the grounds that he would better protect liberty than McCain. “I have said repeatedly that there should be no contradiction between keeping America safe and secure and respecting our Constitution,” Obama said. “During the [...]

Via the BBC: Turkey’s ruling party escapes ban Turkey’s Constitutional Court has decided not to ban the ruling AK Party, accused of undermining the country’s secular system. But the judges did cut half the AKP’s treasury funding for this year. That’ll show ‘em! (I honestly have no idea which funds or what they are used [...]

Despite the conventional wisdom that emerging demographic trends would lead to the emergence of a Democratic majority, it appears that there’s some good trends for the Republicans. Reyling on Clark Bensen’s PoliData apportionment estimates, Michael Barone finds, in a piece entitled “Demographic Trends Could Make It Harder for Obama and Democrats,”  that several states are [...]