Author: Eric Scheie

I just love the following headline in today’s Detroit Free Press: Angry voters send gov a message And I hope that instead of taking it down, they keep it up.  Wisconsin voters sent Republican Gov. Scott Walker a message about their unhappiness with his muscling an anti-union rights bill through the state Legislature by sending…

Not only do I share the disdain for Lindsey Graham expressed by Ann Barnhardt (whose Koran-burning bravery is eloquently praised in a post by Roger Kimball that Glenn linked earlier), but I agree she has balls. I think more Americans need to exercise our free speech birthright that cowards like Lindsey Graham and his ilk…

While the above may sound like a misstatement of supposedly settled Fourth Amendment law in the United States, after reading a law review article by Thomas Y. Davies that Glenn Reynolds linked I am absolutely convinced that it was the orginal intent of the founders. The article has a very appropriate (and appropriately provocative IMO)…

From what I remember about the Good Samaritan doctrine from law school, while there is no duty to render aid to someone, if you do render aid you are then under a duty to do it properly. A guy in New Mexico seems to have messed up as a Good Samaritan, for while he took…

While I’m all for free campaign speech, I don’t know what to make of this news development. Facebook and the White House jointly announced Tuesday that Obama will visit the Palo Alto headquarters of the social network on April 20, where the president will hold a special “Facebook town hall” event that will stream live…

Glenn Greenwald has written yet another post (as if we needed more) castigating Glenn Reynolds as a stupid bigot. Surprise. But lest anyone get the idea that Greenwald is obsessed with Reynolds (heaven forefend!), Greenwald asssures us that Reynolds is mainly being “highlighted” because he is so “common.” Reynolds is highlighted here not because he’s…

I often wish I could write freely and without any restraint what is in my mind, but because this is a public blog, I can’t. Generalizations are the problem. In general, whenever you generalize about anything, the people who are in any way sensitive about what you’re generalizing about will immediately object. At least many…

The Prometheus Award is a big deal in science fiction. The Prometheus Award is an award for libertarian science fiction novels given annually by the Libertarian Futurist Society, which also publishes a quarterly journal Prometheus. L. Neil Smith established the award in 1979, but it was not awarded regularly until the newly founded Libertarian Futurist…

Despite a fairly long discussion of purity yesterday, I don’t think I was able to determine with any degree of accuracy how purity is to be defined, much less who gets to define it. I couldn’t even determine whether purity comes from within a person or by reference to outside ideology. Is a person’s purity…

Not that I needed a reminder of how impure I am, but Glenn Reynolds has linked a couple of great posts on libertarian purity by Tom Knighton which reminded me that I hardly alone in grappling with this problem. Knighton’s latest post discusses a touchy subject for some libertarian purists — moderate libertarians.  These can…

Looking at the murderous rampage committed in response to the latest Koran-burning incident, Ed Morrissey made an observation with which I completely agree: The only people responsible for murders are those who commit them, and those who specifically incite them to kill.  Any other position eventually wipes out free speech, free religious practice, and freedom…

Dr. Helen raised the issue of doctors asking their patients about gun ownership, and she linked a post by GruntDoc condemning a proposal which would prohibit doctors from questioning their patients about guns. GruntDoc sees it as an attempt to limit medical practice and as a free speech issue, and I see his point. If…

What is going on with this damned blog????? Look at the top! Holy shit! Has the unimaginable and unthinkable actually happened? I am going to look into this, and heads will roll! (I guess I can’t say I wasn’t warned….) MORE: I have emailed both M. Simon and Sarah seeking an explanation. This is an…

Here’s a tidbit I find myself unable to ignore, yet because of my lack of access to reliable information, any opinions I have are conditioned on the reliability of other people’s opinions. (How I hate that! Usually I remain silent about such things….) Anyway, Brian P. Fairchild (who has a CIA background and who seems…

I’m back from seeing Gary Johnson speak at the University of Michigan, and even though it’s past my normal blogtime, I thought I would share a few thoughts. Unless you’ve been in a longterm coma, you know we are in a real crisis now. Not just the usual crisis (or the usual “emergency“) they like…

People keep saying that the Tea Party is doing nothing. The last time I tried to do something it involved marching around in the freezing cold to stop a local (Saline, MI) school millage initiative which would have cost taxpayers $29 million. The conventional wisdom was that because the schools (meaning “The Children”) need the…

Education Week reprints an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer titled “Violence targets Teachers, Staff.” It is appalling, and I remember when I lived in Philadelphia I used to blog about the mind-numbing array of articles about school violence. Not only has nothing changed, but the situation seems to have only gotten worse: Veteran Philadelphia school…

In a vaguely half-interested manner, I clicked on a link to a WSJ writeup titled “Dispatches From the War on Drugs” by Mary Anastasia O’Grady. I had expected to see the usual accounts of SWAT team raids on drug dealers holed up in public housing, but instead the article read like an account from a…

I have been trying to figure out whether Donald Trump is a genius or a moron. Something about the amount of money the man has made coupled with his ability to manipulate the media, though, incline me to think he’s more of the former than the latter.  And speaking purely as a rhetorician, I have…

At Dr. Helen’s blog  I found yet another reminder (as if I needed one) of what I especially loathe about the left. The other night they declared lights out night in California, and Amy Alkon defied it. It’s turn out the lights night in the daffy state of California — from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m.…