Whether or not Obama should withdraw the nomination (and Sanders only said that he would ask him to, not that he would have the right to demand it) for Bernie to mention the possibility of withdrawal is just good politics, practically speaking. Right now, the Republicans may think they can have it both ways; they can…

On the other hand, Garland as a Supreme Court Justice may be very different from Garland as a D.C. Court of Appeals judge. His current job is to apply Supreme Court precedent, not to make it; “siding with” Citizens United is, from that perspective, a requirement. The thing is, every indication is that the man is given…

Yeah, Crawford happens to be one of the few Scalia cases I wholeheartedly support, and it wouldn’t do much to change the result here. Faretta, I get as a nod to the dignity and free will of the accused, but unlike a lot of other procedural rights it does basically nothing to enhance the fairness of trials (rather, it…

True. And in this case, Cosby clearly fulfilled his part of the bargain (by testifying in the civil case, which constitutes a legal detriment and thus consideration) so if this were just a matter of contract law, he would have a good claim. Part performance might also apply even in a hypothetical scenario where the…

I think this could go either way. Even in states with less permissive use-of-force justifications than Texas, the threat of deadly force (e.g. pointing a gun rather than shooting it) is generally considered the equivalent of non-deadly force, so its use is justified in a variety of circumstances not involving the…

My lower lip is a curmudgeonly old man, but my upper lip is a quiet but sporadically sassy slam poet. I don’t know what’s wrong with your dead, soulless lips.

“You should have contacted the Chicago Pagan Society before you started this”

The entanglement prong of the Lemon test, though, has to do with an ongoing state entanglement with religion as a result of the law, and not the entanglement that occurred when legislators considered passing the law (which has more to do with the secular purpose prong of the Lemon test).

Roe v. Wade created a complicated system wherein states could not prevent first trimester abortions at all, could only ban abortions prior to fetal viability to protect the health of the mother, and could ban abortions after viability as long as an exception was made for abortions to preserve the health of the mother.…

The test for whether legislation is permissible under the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment (articulated by the Supreme Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman) is that it must (a) have a secular purpose; (b) its primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; and (c) it must not create an excessive…

Call me old fashioned, but I think these so-called conservatives are really weakening our nation when they set the bar for viability so low. In my opinion, a fetus isn’t viable unless it can pull a trigger, handle the recoil on a shotgun, and read the Fountainhead while screaming into a phone because the operator…

But, to be fair, it is true that “rabid” is not always used negatively, sometimes it is just used scientifically. For example, another sample Oxford Dictionary sentence notes that “the Fish and Wildlife Officer could tell the fox was rabid because it was frothing at the mouth and kept yipping at him like his bitchy…

This case does illustrate the problem with the whole Roe v. Wade framework. The only defining point that should matter is birth, where a woman’s bodily integrity is no longer at issue, and not viability (which, as many have pointed out, is subject to change based on evolving medical technology). The dilemma is that…

Not to disagree with you on the issues relevant to this article (since I agree that, if these events occurred as alleged, Josh Duggar’s actions were criminal) but the common law of battery required objectively offensive or harmful contact, not just any nonconsensual contact. While consent was relevant to whether…

This is just good common sense rulemaking. How am I, as an experienced member of the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, supposed to focus on serious manly things like undermining ethical restrictions in election regulation when there are filthy, sinful things like thighs and (I shudder to even say it) hints of the…

Right, but Bernie has only been affiliated with the Democratic party for less than a year. Prior to that, he was the longest serving independent in U.S. Congressional history. So, that gives him some credibility as being outside the two-party establishment.

To be fair, Jackie did not specifically “frame” anyone, because the people described in the story did not correspond to real people. They were, quite simply, completely fictional. The only way anyone could have decided that particular individuals committed the rape would have been to assume that membership in the frat…

“Every injustice is economic. From making women pay out the nose for birth control to minority ghettos where police justify their racist stats.”

Just to clarify, there appears to be no evidence that any of the supposed rapists described in the Rolling Stone article ever even existed. As in, not only were the names all fake, but the descriptions did not match real people. The only way for a future employer to discriminate based on the accusations would be if…

To be fair, Jackie’s story did not accuse any actual real people of rape (because the men involved in the assault narrative were completely fictional) so a comparison to assault or harassment is not necessarily apt, in terms of the direct injury. The damage done to other victims of sexual assault, by (unjustifiably)…