Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

They Deserve Each Other

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

We deserve better.

Cruz/Fiorina

Cruz Pre-Taps Fiorina. Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

Posted in 2016 Election | Comments Off on They Deserve Each Other

This Will Get Someone In Trouble

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

http://www.shadyurl.com/

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on This Will Get Someone In Trouble

‘This Week in Law’ Podcast

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

I was one of the guests on Denise Howell’s and Mike Keyes’s This Week in Law — a two hour podcast on this week’s developments in technolaw and IP law. The other guest was David Levine, who fortunately knows a lot more about trade secrets than I do, as it was a busy week for those.

Anyway if you have a very long exercise session, the podcast awaits. And in some states you can get CLE for listening!

Posted in The Media | Comments Off on ‘This Week in Law’ Podcast

Iggy Pop Tonight

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

Iggy PopGoing to see the Iggy Pop concert tonight.

I’m old enough to remember when “Iggy” for music meant Pop and not Azalea. In fact I’m old enough to remember when it seemed like New York Times style, which required that everyone be Mr. or Mrs. or Miss, might require a review of Iggy Pop to speak of “Mr. Pop”. (The story is that the ban on removing honorifics broke when it came time to review an album or concert by Meat Loaf.  Meanwhile the rule that honorifics must be removed for convicted felons got changed just in time to save the paper from lèse-majesté with Spiro Agnew.)

Anyway, now that Bowie is gone, Iggy Pop may be the last of his kind. So if he’s going to come here as part of his “Post Punk Depression” tour, I’m going to go there, even if it is the last week of a very busy semester. See you in row “U”.

Posted in Kultcha | 2 Comments

You Don’t Say

Posted on April 16, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

My brother is being resasonable about what he calls “The Brooklyn Dodgers,” namely Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’s non-answers at the most recent debate.

WHEN A CANDIDATE for high office can’t respond to a simple question with an honest answer, attention should be paid. More often than not these days, that kind of behavior is just greeted with a shrug by the members of the elite media, but specific acts of evasion are worth studying. Because if something’s important enough for a candidate that they concoct a ludicrous non-response, there’s probably a sore point under there somewhere.

And when a candidate won’t directly answer the question, it’s also legitimate to speculate why that might be.

I’m not talking here about the positions on the issues that the candidates are taking, and whether they are logically consistent or wise. I’m not fact-checking. I’m just looking at evasive responses, and what they mean.

There follows multiple examples. I think this a model of what news analysis during campaigns should be.

PS. That said, reasonable surmise #2 appears to have been disproved by events? Could the reason Bernie hadn’t released his returns have been as simple as the returns being back home, the family is on the campaign trail, no one else had the key?

Posted in 2016 Election, Dan Froomkin | 4 Comments

Court Rules that Pastafarianism is not a Religion

Posted on April 16, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

Tangled issue in First Amendment law: when is a professed ‘faith’ protected, and when is it not? Faith is unknowable after all. Religions cannot be tested for truth by outsiders. Now comes Judge John Gerrard of the District of Nebraska, holding that an inmate’s claim he’s being denied equal treatment for his religion based on the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is half-baked:

This is not a question of theology: it is a matter of basic reading comprehension. The FSM Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement. To read it as religious doctrine would be little different from grounding a “religious exercise” on any other work of fiction. A prisoner could just as easily read the works of Vonnegut or Heinlein and claim it as his holy book, and demand accommodation of Bokononism or the Church of All Worlds. 6 See, Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (Dell Publishing 1988) (1963); Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (Putnam Publ’g Grp. 1961). Of course, there are those who contend—and Cavanaugh is probably among them—that the Bible or the Koran are just as fictional as those books. It is not always an easy line to draw. But there must be a line beyond which a practice is not “religious” simply because a plaintiff labels it as such. The Court concludes that FSMism is on the far side of that line.

Spotted via ars Technica

Posted in Law: Constitutional Law | 1 Comment