Legal Commentary

Lest you think there might possibly be precedents to support Boumediene, consider Justice Kennedy's admission: There aren't any!

Posted on June 15, 2008
Often it's very difficult for lay readers, or even insufficiently motivated lawyers, to figure out whether there really is or isn't strong precedent from prior cases to support a particular Supreme Court decision. The majority opinions almost always say, "Oh, yes, rest assured that this is just one more in a long, straight line of decisions; our result today was...

Boumediene isn't a rebuke to Bush, but a judicial grab of power over war from the Executive and Legislative Branches

Posted on June 15, 2008
Some people seem to think the current question about the detainees at Gitmo is whether Dubya can simply lock them up and throw away the key without ever giving any of them any sort of trial. For example, in comments to my post from Thursday deploring the Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v...

SCOTUS disgrace: Foreign terrorists captured abroad held to have same rights under U.S. Constitution as U.S. citizens

Posted on June 12, 2008
It's a sad, sad day for our country. A majority of the members of the United States Supreme Court have shown themselves unable to distinguish between an existential military struggle ? quite literally, a war over the very existence of western civilization ? and ordinary street crime committed by U...

Coffin nails, lies, and the junior senator from Illinois

Posted on June 10, 2008
So what else has Obama been lying to the American public about in addition to his lies about quitting smoking last year? Why's he still being so evasive about the most recent time he "fell off the wagon"? Every successful ex-smoker I know can tell you to the day when he last had a cigarette; almost every liar about quitting...

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Texas CPS workers interviewed on FLDS intervention

Posted on June 08, 2008
In a comment to my last post on the FLDS polygamy/child abuse controversy, regular reader and commenter DRJ left this link to a San Angelo newspaper's interview with some of the Children's Protective Services workers who were involved in the initial intervention at the Yearning for Zion ranch and who continue to be involved in the on-going investigation...

Would Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin be a home-run hit as McCain's Veep?

Posted on June 08, 2008
I fear that it may be counterproductive for conservative bloggers to make any recommendations to the McCain campaign regarding his vice presidential selection. And the conventional wisdom is that, the GOP convention coming after the Dems' convention, he ought to at least wait to see who Obama picks (although Obama may not wait until his convention either)...

WaPo says Obama would be "pragmatic" to adopt Bush's Iraq policy and says Obama is "unreasonably wedded" to bug-out plans

Posted on June 07, 2008
In an incredible editorial sub-titled "After all, he doesn't see the region much differently than President Bush does," Saturday's WaPo notes, as I did yesterday, that over the course of the past week, Obama has flip-flopped into general alignment with the Bush Administration's position on Jerusalem and, more broadly, most of the Bush Administration's position on how to approach Iran...

Next year in Jerusalem?

Posted on June 06, 2008
The precise status of Jerusalem has been the focus of blow-torch hot debate continuously since it was captured (or liberated or re-captured, there's argument even about that) by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel, pointing to historic Jewish ties to the ancient city going back to the 10th Century BC, considers Jerusalem to be its modern capital...

Beldar's big-picture observations re Obama's nomination

Posted on June 04, 2008
In April 2007, I predicted that Barack Obama would win the Democratic nomination, but I did not predict the sliver-of-a-whisker closeness of the race. Now the five months of the primaries are done, with five months remaining to the election. Besides the identities of the two major parties' nominees, what else, if anything, is the big news from the last...

Not credible

Posted on June 04, 2008
Bill Clinton and Gina Gershon?!? Not believable, not even before her lawyers' threat-letter to Vanity Fair with its denials that they were ever even alone together. There's frankly no telling which Hollywood types might be willing to do a Monica-reprise even today...

Obama friend, client, contributor, and home-purchase benefactor Tony Rezko convicted on 16 of 24 corruption counts

Posted on June 04, 2008
Like this was a big surprise to anyone who's been paying attention: A federal jury today convicted developer Antoin "Tony" Rezko of corruption charges for trading on his clout as a top adviser and fundraiser to Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Rezko's guilty verdict on 16 of 24 corruption counts could have broad repercussions for Blagojevich, who made Rezko a central player...

NYT: Obama stands "calm in the swirl of history"; also time-travels, but makes no time for clerkship and little time for practicing law

Posted on June 04, 2008
In a fawning news article by Michael Powell, the New York Times today describes Barack Obama as "a protean political figure, inspiring devotion in supporters who see him as a transformative leader even as he remains inscrutable to critics." The basic facts of his biography, however, such as they are, are apparently also inscrutable even to adoring reporters from the...

Congrats, America

Posted on June 04, 2008
I'm in full agreement with Chief Justice John Roberts: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." Despite the racism bound up in its history, I firmly believe that America is ready to follow that prescription...

Obama must rely on minions to rewrite history to dilute the effect of his worst gaffes

Posted on June 01, 2008
Here's the concluding paragraph of a New York Times report announcing that Sen. & Mrs. Obama have resigned their membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ: Now that Mr. Obama has addressed his ties to the church and pastor in a long speech and fully broken with both, it is not clear what else he can say or do...

Texas Supreme Court points to less disruptive protections available for FLDS children

Posted on May 29, 2008
This afternoon, the Texas Supreme Court denied a request made by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to overturn last week's ruling by the Austin Court of Appeals in the polygamy/child custody dispute involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints...

Beldar on Volokh on the Texas polygamy/child custody case

Posted on May 24, 2008
A few folks have asked me for my take on the Austin Court of Appeals' overturning this week of the state trial judge's interim child custody decision in the big Texas polygamy/child custody case. UCLA Law Prof. Eugene Volokh is one of the smartest law professors blogging today, and I agree with him probably 98% of the time...

Odds I would have given, and odds I won't take, on future terrorist attacks on American soil

Posted on May 20, 2008
There could be another one tomorrow. Or in three months and a few days, to commemorate the anniversary of the first one. But there has not been a major terrorist attack, by al Qaeda or otherwise, on American soil during the roughly six and a three-quarter years since 9/11/01...

New unpaid political endorsement on BeldarBlog

Posted on April 22, 2008
Those using aggregators as their sole means to review new posts here may miss the new unpaid political endorsement now running in my sidebar. I suspect it will be the first in a series between now and November 2008. Comments pro and con, so long as in reasonably good taste, are earnestly solicited.

True statement, despite having come from Hillary: "MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan"

Posted on April 20, 2008
I know that with the degree of concentration they've maintained on their overriding goal of replacing George W. Bush, it's hard for the Hard Left, and indeed for the entire Democratic Party, to actually remember what was going on within the United States in the first few days and weeks after 9/11/01...

Beldar on Baze

Posted on April 16, 2008
Today, in Baze v. Rees, the SCOTUS rejected two capital defendants' challenge to Kentucky's intended use of the "three-drug cocktail" for administering its death penalty. The vote was seven to two ? only Justices Ginsberg and Souter voted to reverse ? but no more than two justices agreed on any single rationale for affirming the Kentucky Supreme Court's decision to...

Recordings and Sen. Obama's "politics of purpose"

Posted on April 15, 2008
Some folks are faulting the blogger who recorded, then reported, Sen. Barack Obama's comments at a San Francisco fund-raiser about "bitter" small-town voters who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren?t like them." They argue that intimate fund-raisers like this one "are always off the record," such that Sen...

NYT chooses picture that reveals much about Dubya

Posted on April 05, 2008
From Fox News (emphasis mine): White House officials are criticizing The New York Times for publishing a photo they see as editorially unfair. Accompanying an article on Friday about this week's NATO summit in Romania, The Times included a very large photo ? almost half a page in size ? that showed President Bush standing somewhat alone...

Is Obama still smoking while hiding and denying it?

Posted on April 04, 2008
I've written very recently of my sympathy for Sen. Obama's difficulty in trying to quit his cigarette habit. It literally took a heart attack three years ago to get me to stop, and even so, the last time I had a craving for a cigarette was ... oh, about six seconds ago...

Dear Dr. Dean: Amputate, but don't deny or further delay the surgery on FL & MI delegations

Posted on April 03, 2008
Memorandum To: Howard B. Dean III, M.D. Chairman, Democratic National Committee From: William J. Dyer a/k/a "Beldar" Conservative Republican lawyer-blogger Re: Florida & Michigan delegations, 2008 Denver Democratic National Convention ---------------------------------- Doctors like getting advice from lawyers on non-legal matters about as much as doctors like being sued by lawyers on medico-legal matters...

A soccer game on a steamy spring afternoon in Houston

Posted on April 02, 2008
The drizzle earlier in the afternoon hadn't been enough to wash the high-count grass and tree pollen out of the air. With brilliant shafts of late afternoon spring sunshine now wandering across the soccer field, this was definitely a "two coats of sunscreen" day, and you you could almost, but not quite, see the clouds of humidity just above the...

Webb as Obama's Veep choice?

Posted on April 02, 2008
James Joyner speculates about the possibility that Barack Obama might choose a fellow first-termer, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), as his running mate. (H/t InstaPundit.) That prospect tickles my funny bone, so I'll republish here (with modifications and additions) a comment I originally left on an Althouse post some time ago: George Soros' head would instantly explode if Obama picked Jim...

Obama's never been a "professor of law" nor any full-time or tenure-track legal educator

Posted on March 30, 2008
How big a deal is it that in speeches and in campaign literature, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has identified himself from time to time as a "law professor" or even a "professor of law"? It's not as big a deal as the Clinton campaign has made it. But it's a bigger deal than some poorly informed or outright dishonest Obama...

Bainbridge nails it on Obama's "financial markets" speech today

Posted on March 27, 2008
Having been alerted by the MSM that Barack Obama planned a major speech from New York City today on the financial markets and his would-be Administration's plans to deal with them, I hunkered down to watch the speech with a vague thought of writing a blog post about it...

WaPo: Well, sure, Obama's a capital-L Liberal, but Dubya made him be that

Posted on March 26, 2008
This entire WaPo news article is unintentionally funny, mostly because of its discussion of the convergence of interests between Hillary Clinton and John McCain in portraying Barack Obama as a "Liberal." But the funniest part is in the middle, in which ? per "fair and balanced Journalism 101" principles ? the WaPo writers step back to examine the underlying fairness...

Puzzling through Prof. Kmiec's endorsement of Obama

Posted on March 24, 2008
This (by Pepperdine University Law Prof. Douglas W. Kmiec, a genuine legal star in the Reagan and Bush-41 Administrations) is the least persuasive and most hang-dog endorsement (of Barack Obama) that I've ever seen. If it were written in a newspaper, I'd have suspected that it had been butchered by the editors, and that they'd mistaken the substance for the...

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