September 2004 -- As John Enright notes , there is a wealth of poetry about political and personal freedom. I thought Navigator's readers
I've gathered for you some poems that celebrate political and personal freedom. I like them, and I hope you will like them, too. This is onl
June 2004 -- London Bridge—the London Bridge of nursery-rhyme fame—was completed in 1209 and began falling down a mere 60 years later. That was because Eleanor of Provence, who was queen consort to Henry III and was also the "fair lady" of the nursery rhyme, had been given the bridge tolls as a gift from her husband and was spending the revenue on herself rather than on bridge repairs. Fast-forward 600 years, and London Bridge was again falling down. The city of London, which now had control of the structure, decided it had to undertake major repairs. To find out what needed to be done, the city hired John Rennie. Rennie was one of the Industrial Revolution's leading engineers, along with John Smeaton and Thomas Telford. Today, sadly, these men who created so much of Great Britain's infrastructure during the Industrial Revolution are far less well known than the era's inventors, such as Richard Arkwright and James Watt.
Conrad Black. Jeffrey Skilling. Government and defense lawyers submitted their briefs in the Conrad Black case today . Said the prosecutors: “The erroneous honest services instruction was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Lawyers for Black said the prosecution’s use of the honest-services theory required the court to throw out the verdict.
Earlier this week, as part of the unfolding Galleon insider-trading case, government prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts to sentence ex-IBMer Robert Moffat to six months in prison for passing confidential corporate information to his mistress, Danielle Chiese, when she was an executive with the hedge fund New Castle Partners. Unquestionably, what Moffat did wronged IBM, and the company would be well within its rights to sue him. But I fail to see that Moffat’s corporate disloyalty is any business of the U.S. government. Moffat is seeking probation . He will be sentenced on September 13.
Those who love Ayn Rand 's novels have searched, with little result, for works that are similar to Rand's in both ideas and essential
Soft America lives off the productivity, creativity, and competence of Hard America, and we have the luxury of keeping part of our society S
When one thinks of Enlightenment literature (other than the newly emerging novel), what comes to mind are once-vibrant forms sunk to dry
I’ve just run across a splendid column in Forbes by Harvey Silverglate (author of ref="http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556">Three Felonies a Day ) on the methods federal prosecutors are usiing to wring guilty pleas out of defendants. “That almost all federal convictions come by way of guilty plea--95%, according to the most recent data available--likely reflects a shifting cost-benefit calculus, rather than an overwhelming recognition by defendants of their own culpability. With the prospect of decades-long prison terms and witnesses willing to throw former colleagues under the bus in exchange for a reward doled out by prosecutors, there's little wonder that federal criminal trials have become rarities; a guilty plea may appear to be even an innocent defendant's best option.”
Larry Ribstein has a penetrating blog post on the forthcoming civil and criminal prosecution of Countrywide Financial and its former CEO Angelo Mozilo. Mozilo is a key figure both for those who blame the financial collapse on “greedy bankers” and for those who blame it on government action. Thus, as Ribstein puts it, this prosecution is really an attempt to use the criminal justice system to define the ideological narrative of the financial crisis.
libel laws pro and conFrom Libertarianism.org: "In this video from a 1986 Free Press Association event, Nat Hentoff and David Kelley engage
The Atlas Society’s Ayn Rand “Draw My Life” video has now attracted nearly 400,000 views. And the comments from viewers of the video-
March 2004 -- BOOK REVIEW: Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade. (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003). 361 pp., $24.95. Columbia University's Joseph E. Stiglitz, who shared the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001 and who was President Clinton's chief economist, is often pro-government intervention. I, on the other hand, am pro-freedom. Yet despite our differing ideologies, I found the chapters on taxation in his 1988 textbook on public finance to be excellent. I was hoping, therefore, to find excellent sections in his latest book, The Roaring Nineties. But I was disappointed. Overall, the book is an uncritical case for more government intervention that, along the way, makes some basic economic errors.
According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: “ Galleon Group LLC founder Raj Rajaratnam will get a court hearing on his claim that the government filed a misleading application to wiretap him and that the evidence produced by the taps should be excluded.. "Rajaratnam has made a substantial preliminary showing that the government recklessly or knowingly misleadingly omitted several key facts" from an affidavit filed in support of the wiretap application, U.S. District Judge Rich Holwell wrote in an opinion released today.” I wish we could have a hearing on why anything Rajaratnam is said to have done is considered illegal.
I Sold You and You Sold Me. Law.com has the full story of David Zilkha , the man whose former wife reported him to the SEC for the so-called crime of insider trading and received $1 million dollars bounty for it. Under the Obama administration’s new bounty hunter scheme she would have been eligible for $3 million. Spouses take note!
I fear that this statement about Fabrice Tourre’s fate, from James Peterson’s blog “Re:Balance,” is as true as it is disheartening to anyone concerned about justice and business rights: “Tourre faces a long haul of pre-trial depositions and document production, costly in both funds and emotion. Even with Goldman footing the financial bill, the grind on an individual opposing the forces of government is eventually crushing to the spirit.
When I first encountered Don Giovanni 30 years ago, I was struck by the political, social, and philosophical messages in the work...
January, 2004 -- Conservatives are up in arms. They are outraged (once again) by what the Supreme Court has been doing. In a case involving the death penalty, Justice Stephen Breyer referred to a decision by the supreme court of Zimbabwe that said it was inhumane to keep a prisoner on death row, year after year, awaiting execution. John Leo of U.S. News & World Report asked with dripping irony: "We're getting our legal cues from Zimbabwe?" It was a cute retort. But it loses force if one reads Breyer as saying that even Zimbabwe does not keep prisoners lingering on death row for decades, as the United States does.
September 2004 -- As John Enright notes , there is a wealth of poetry about political and personal freedom. I thought Navigator's readers
I've gathered for you some poems that celebrate political and personal freedom. I like them, and I hope you will like them, too. This is onl
June 2004 -- London Bridge—the London Bridge of nursery-rhyme fame—was completed in 1209 and began falling down a mere 60 years later. That was because Eleanor of Provence, who was queen consort to Henry III and was also the "fair lady" of the nursery rhyme, had been given the bridge tolls as a gift from her husband and was spending the revenue on herself rather than on bridge repairs. Fast-forward 600 years, and London Bridge was again falling down. The city of London, which now had control of the structure, decided it had to undertake major repairs. To find out what needed to be done, the city hired John Rennie. Rennie was one of the Industrial Revolution's leading engineers, along with John Smeaton and Thomas Telford. Today, sadly, these men who created so much of Great Britain's infrastructure during the Industrial Revolution are far less well known than the era's inventors, such as Richard Arkwright and James Watt.
Conrad Black. Jeffrey Skilling. Government and defense lawyers submitted their briefs in the Conrad Black case today . Said the prosecutors: “The erroneous honest services instruction was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Lawyers for Black said the prosecution’s use of the honest-services theory required the court to throw out the verdict.
Earlier this week, as part of the unfolding Galleon insider-trading case, government prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts to sentence ex-IBMer Robert Moffat to six months in prison for passing confidential corporate information to his mistress, Danielle Chiese, when she was an executive with the hedge fund New Castle Partners. Unquestionably, what Moffat did wronged IBM, and the company would be well within its rights to sue him. But I fail to see that Moffat’s corporate disloyalty is any business of the U.S. government. Moffat is seeking probation . He will be sentenced on September 13.
Those who love Ayn Rand 's novels have searched, with little result, for works that are similar to Rand's in both ideas and essential
Soft America lives off the productivity, creativity, and competence of Hard America, and we have the luxury of keeping part of our society S
When one thinks of Enlightenment literature (other than the newly emerging novel), what comes to mind are once-vibrant forms sunk to dry
I’ve just run across a splendid column in Forbes by Harvey Silverglate (author of ref="http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556">Three Felonies a Day ) on the methods federal prosecutors are usiing to wring guilty pleas out of defendants. “That almost all federal convictions come by way of guilty plea--95%, according to the most recent data available--likely reflects a shifting cost-benefit calculus, rather than an overwhelming recognition by defendants of their own culpability. With the prospect of decades-long prison terms and witnesses willing to throw former colleagues under the bus in exchange for a reward doled out by prosecutors, there's little wonder that federal criminal trials have become rarities; a guilty plea may appear to be even an innocent defendant's best option.”
Larry Ribstein has a penetrating blog post on the forthcoming civil and criminal prosecution of Countrywide Financial and its former CEO Angelo Mozilo. Mozilo is a key figure both for those who blame the financial collapse on “greedy bankers” and for those who blame it on government action. Thus, as Ribstein puts it, this prosecution is really an attempt to use the criminal justice system to define the ideological narrative of the financial crisis.
libel laws pro and conFrom Libertarianism.org: "In this video from a 1986 Free Press Association event, Nat Hentoff and David Kelley engage
The Atlas Society’s Ayn Rand “Draw My Life” video has now attracted nearly 400,000 views. And the comments from viewers of the video-
March 2004 -- BOOK REVIEW: Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade. (W.W. Norton & Company, 2003). 361 pp., $24.95. Columbia University's Joseph E. Stiglitz, who shared the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001 and who was President Clinton's chief economist, is often pro-government intervention. I, on the other hand, am pro-freedom. Yet despite our differing ideologies, I found the chapters on taxation in his 1988 textbook on public finance to be excellent. I was hoping, therefore, to find excellent sections in his latest book, The Roaring Nineties. But I was disappointed. Overall, the book is an uncritical case for more government intervention that, along the way, makes some basic economic errors.
According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: “ Galleon Group LLC founder Raj Rajaratnam will get a court hearing on his claim that the government filed a misleading application to wiretap him and that the evidence produced by the taps should be excluded.. "Rajaratnam has made a substantial preliminary showing that the government recklessly or knowingly misleadingly omitted several key facts" from an affidavit filed in support of the wiretap application, U.S. District Judge Rich Holwell wrote in an opinion released today.” I wish we could have a hearing on why anything Rajaratnam is said to have done is considered illegal.
I Sold You and You Sold Me. Law.com has the full story of David Zilkha , the man whose former wife reported him to the SEC for the so-called crime of insider trading and received $1 million dollars bounty for it. Under the Obama administration’s new bounty hunter scheme she would have been eligible for $3 million. Spouses take note!
I fear that this statement about Fabrice Tourre’s fate, from James Peterson’s blog “Re:Balance,” is as true as it is disheartening to anyone concerned about justice and business rights: “Tourre faces a long haul of pre-trial depositions and document production, costly in both funds and emotion. Even with Goldman footing the financial bill, the grind on an individual opposing the forces of government is eventually crushing to the spirit.
When I first encountered Don Giovanni 30 years ago, I was struck by the political, social, and philosophical messages in the work...
January, 2004 -- Conservatives are up in arms. They are outraged (once again) by what the Supreme Court has been doing. In a case involving the death penalty, Justice Stephen Breyer referred to a decision by the supreme court of Zimbabwe that said it was inhumane to keep a prisoner on death row, year after year, awaiting execution. John Leo of U.S. News & World Report asked with dripping irony: "We're getting our legal cues from Zimbabwe?" It was a cute retort. But it loses force if one reads Breyer as saying that even Zimbabwe does not keep prisoners lingering on death row for decades, as the United States does.