Executive Branch

Judge: Feds Don’t Have to Pay for Wrecked Ferrari

According to this report, the federal government will not have to pay for the Ferrari F50 that one of its agents wrecked in 2009. See "Insurer Sues FBI for Crashing Ferrari," Lowering the Bar (Mar. 3, 2011). The joke then, which…




George Orwell Is Coming to Get You Both

Well, this is quite remarkable. In this commentary (via Salon), the lawyer who argued that waterboarding does not constitute "torture" now harshly criticizes another lawyer for arguing that bombing does not constitute "hostilities." The making of "utterly farcical" arguments of this kind undermines…


TSA Settles With Woman Whose Top Was Pulled Down

I'm glad to see these people finally having to pay someone, but $2,350 is not enough for this. The 24-year-old plaintiff alleged that at the Corpus Christi airport in May 2008, she was selected for an enhanced pat-down, sufficiently enhanced…


Tricky Dick: The Musical [Updated]

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog reports that students at Duke Law School have written and produced a musical about a young Richard Nixon, who graduated (third in his class!) from Duke in 1937 and quickly became its least favorite…


President Receives Transparency Award in Closed Meeting

Not an April Fools’ prank. Seriously. According to Politico and the Washington Post, a couple of weeks ago President Obama was scheduled to receive an award from the organizers of the Freedom of Information Day Conference, to be presented at the White…


No Repeat for Obama on Nobel Prize

I’m not really sure how many Nobel Prizes they give out, but so far at least the committee has snubbed President Obama despite the fact that it voted to award him one during his very first year in office. See…


Washington’s Handlers Sneak Stolen Book Back Into Library

Insisting it is not the same book, but only another copy of the same edition, George Washington's henchmen in Mount Vernon have quietly returned "The Law of Nations," which Washington borrowed in 1789 and never brought back. As you may…