Ted Noel

We left my last essay with a conundrum. “What was my Irish Setter supposed to do when he caught the UPS truck?” Or in political terms, “What do the Democrats want to do with the power they are so ardently seeking to seize?” Even so great a…

When I was about nine years old, my Irish Setter loved to chase the UPS delivery truck. We could never figure out why he wanted to chase it. And we joked about what he would do if he caught it. Then it happened. He caught the truck. Or…

I know. You’re tired of pundits opining on the unconstitutionality of various courts declaring that Trump can’t fire people or that he must send USAID money, keep sex deniers in the military, and so on. In those cases, the judges often get…

An old saw says that whatever is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander. Of course, in D.C., that has never been true. If you are in the seat of power, you are untouchable. This explains the revulsion that middle earth (flyover…

Western law is derived in large measure from Jewish legal principles. The rabbis expound on Rabbi Yishmael’s 13 Principles (Middot) of interpretation, even expanding to some by Rabbi Akiva. Perhaps the most important of all is kal vachomer,…

My regular readers know that I see a number of left-wing legal writings from day to day. One of the more sane (from time to time) pundits is Ilya Somin of George Mason University. In his latest piece, he bemoans the “Perils of the Unitary…

(h.t. to Mark W. Smith of the Four Boxes Diner here and here.)Welcome to your chance to nerd out on the difference between process and merits in legal actions. Our case of interest is AIDS Vaccine Advocacy v. Department of State. For…

On January 30, Pocahontas shouted into a microphone that “There is nothing in the Constitution that says ordinary citizens have a right to see what we spend our tax dollars on.” Aside from the frightening implications of such a statement,…

When people ask me, “How are you?” I answer, “Dazed, confused, and prone to wandering.” This flippant response is a way to avoid the common but meaningless “Fine” with a similarly unserious but likely humorous rejoinder. Unfortunately, as I…

Does Chucky Schumer really believe that $20 million for Sesame Street in Iraq will somehow benefit the U.S.? Or $7 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica and Uganda? Uganda enforces the death penalty for gays.The…