Enjoy your freedom:
- Freedom from warrantless surveillance
- Freedom of speech (link fixed!)
- Freedom to travel (and late-breaking bonus!)
- Freedom to sleep under bridges … at least for a couple more years.
Recent Bluessky Posts- Jotwell Jurisprudence: Carlos Bernal, The Object of Legal Interpretation, JOTWELL (May 1, 2026) (reviewing Francisco J. Urbina, The Object of Interpretation, 114 Geo. L.J. __ (forthcoming 2026), available at SSRN (Feb. 11, 2025)), juris.jotwell.com/the-object-o.... May 1, 2026 Jotwell
- Jotwell IP: Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Clinical Trial Transparency and Patent Prior Art, JOTWELL (Apr 30, 2026) (reviewing Dennis Byrski & Lucy Xiaolu Wang, Marketing Authorization and Strategic Patenting: Evidence from Pharmaceuticals, 247 J. Pub. Econ. 105415 (2025)), ip.jotwell.com/clinical-tri... April 30, 2026 Jotwell
- Had one been elected promising national health that would have been strong evidence of a winning coalition for it. That sort of thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy sometimes. Electoral campaigns are not the moment to discuss the nuts and bolts of horse-trading. They're the time to inspire. April 29, 2026 Michael Froomkin
- Emma Cave, Keeping Pace with Technological Advances, JOTWELL (April 29, 2026) (reviewing Neera Bhatia, Technology, Health, and Law in Life and Death Before the Cradle to Beyond the Grave (2025)), health.jotwell.com/keeping-pace.... April 29, 2026 Jotwell
- Seems to me there ought to be a problem if large numbers of women whose married names didn't match their birth names will need to get a passport in order to vote, and that passport will come with a partisan portrait. www.thebulwark.com/p/exclusive-... April 29, 2026 Michael Froomkin
Thx for this & happy new year anyway. BTW I think yr Freedom of Speech link needs an “http” prefix to work right.
Thanks. What concerns me is the slow erosion of freedoms over time. It happens on a regular pace but just slow enough that people get side tracked by so many other shiny objects. We still have the best country in the world IMHO. Once talked to a guide from Thailand who told me he wasn’t even allowed to visit the United States without a VISA. Not only did it cost money but he needed a valid reason to travel. Just going for fun and vacation wasn’t enough to be approved to leave his country. That to me .. is scary!
I was not aware that Thailand had exit visas (and a very quick Google search didn’t find anything about them). Could it be perhaps that this was an ENTRY visa requirement imposed by the US? In which case the approval wasn’t to leave his country, but rather to enter this one.
I wasn’t aware either but the guide we had that day who also worked for the Thai Navy … he did specifically tell me he needed a Visa to exit the country. I flat out asked him “so you need a Visa to exit, you have to pay for it and saying you just want to see the United States for vacation isn’t a good enough reason?”
He confirmed that was true. He had to pay for a Visa and he would need a better reason than a vacation request.