Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Despite wishful thinking by some conservative pundits, the odds that Libby will be convicted, as reflected by the Intrade betting market, have been creeping up and are now around 70%. The bigger question at this point is whether President Bush will have the balls to pardon him.
(This blog is an Intrade affiliate.)
Strange Women Lying in Ponds eviscerates a tendentious Miami Herald article about Florida’s new self-defense law.
Miami Police Chief John Timoney is quoted in the article:
What you’re going to see is drug dealers using this [i.e., the new law] to settle scores, and the Legislature has basically given them permission
Timoney should know better. Perhaps he does. This quote reflects poorly on him in any case. The Herald plays along, because the reporters and their editors are either too lazy to do a little research or because they like what Timoney is saying or both. The fact is that no matter the changes in the law, anybody who shoots another person is going to receive full investigative scrutiny and be prosecuted if the shooting was not in self-defense. That’s as it should be. (To its credit the article provides a quote from the NRA’s Marion Hammer, who reasonably points out that criminals have claimed self-defense since long before the new law was enacted. However, Hammer’s one quote is offset by numerous quotes from opponents of the law, most of whom ignore the law’s substance.)
In particular, the article’s emphasis of State’s Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s comment that the new law complicates prosecutions misses the point, and the authors mislead by not providing more background on the law. The very reason the law exists is that prosecutors like Fernandez Rundle had gained a reputation for being too willing to prosecute otherwise-law-abiding individuals who defended themselves against violent attacks. The new law exists in part to clarify the legislature’s intent that good-faith attempts at self-defense not be punished. The law would not have been proposed, then easily passed and enacted, if there were no problem with prosecutors who abused their discretion.
UPDATE: A follow up by SWLIP.
(Related posts here and here.)
Bruce Chang posts a transcript of a recent talk by John Yoo. It should be of interest to anyone concerned about the legalities of the current war.
Here’s an excellent round-table discussion about, mainly, the trial of Saddam Hussein in the context of international power politics. Well worth reading in full.
Themes that I wish participants had had time to discuss in more depth were 1) implications for China’s leaders of our treatment of mideastern dictators (Glenn Reynolds touched on this point) and 2) the suitability of exile as an inducement to dictators to avoid war.
The forum participants who weighed in on the exile question were unanimous that it could be a good tactic. I am skeptical, however, as I think that the implicit availability of exile creates perverse incentives for dictators to cause as much trouble as possible short of war. Saddam Hussein could have safely continued his massacres and WMD development up until the last possible moment, knowing that the USA would not attack without warning and that if his bluff were called he could always accept a comfortable exile.
Much better, I think, would be a policy of targeted assassination to increase the personal risk faced by dictators and their henchmen who refuse to behave. Such a policy appears to have worked well for Israel in its dealings with the Palestinian terrorist leadership. The risk continuum should be such that perpetrators of increasingly bad acts face increasing personal risk — instead of our killing the small fry while offering an implicit “get out of jail free” card to the people at the top.
The European Court of Human Rights. The noble syllables just roll off the tongue, and visions of brave people standing against genocide and oppression spring to mind. The title alone infuses the body with gravitas and dignity.
Dignity will be in short supply for a little while, though. It seems that a Russian lawyer is suing to his country’s TV networks over The Simpsons, an animated comedy show from the United States. He claims that the show caused “moral harm” to his family. He hopes that the court will force the networks to only air the program during time slots where children are less likely to see it, and he wants some money for damages. (The damage may be done, but it looks like some cash will help heal his family’s morals.)
Every court occasionally has to hear idiotic cases, and my position is not that this is an illustration of the futility of ECHR. Instead I think that this news is a very heartening sign. Some people have claimed that it is only a matter of time before Communism is reinstated in the former USSR, but this is proof that at least one Russian lawyer gets the Capitalistic concept that it’s okay to be seen as a fool as long as there’s some money it for you.