Buckley’s Mix

Manichean Nation

In idle moments I am reading Henry Cecil, roughly Jane Austen for English barristers. Cecil is not very well known here, but I enjoy him. Nothing deep, simply a deeply honest and not unwitty fellow. No villains either, but rather the run-of-the mill larceny of one’s clients and the laziness of opposing counsel. The most [...]

Speculators

I am delighted that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is taking aim at speculation.  We have criminalized many forms of economic misbehavior, but there is still a lacuna for speculation, which needs to be closed.
A helpful start is provided by Article 154 of the Criminal Code of the U.S.S.R. which defined speculation as the buying [...]

Nanobots

A friend writes about his interest in nanotechnology, and as he is an expert in the law of war wonders whether nanotech weapons might contravene treaties concerning poison gas and the like. An interesting question.
From a scientific perspective, there is little difference in kind between bacteriological warfare and the microscopic nanobots of science fiction that swarm about [...]

The WaPo’s investigative journalists hit a home run

The Washington Post nailed Gerald Walpin this morning, a bumbling bureacrat who was fired by the President for his incompetence at a 2009 meeting, and who sought to cover up his tracks by investigating an Obama supporter in 2008.
This sort of thing ought to be criminal. Probably won’t happen, but we may take some comfort [...]