Or perhaps it is the Recollections that is relevant. Should they fear 1789 (utopians and mob viciously overthrow degenerate aristocracy and church and incompetent executive) or 1848 (first a popular revolution against a boring executive, then a coup by a would-be Great Man openly imitating a dictator of 50 years previously).

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37892/37892-h/37892-h.htm

 Are the fines refundable if they win in court later?  That's  important. 

The legal issues involved are highly technical, involving considerations of the general rules for issuing injunctions as much as the merits of the case itself. See

http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HL10CD.pdf

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/files/12a644_k53l.pdf

http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Order-for-HL-PI.pdf

Here's a possibility: Asians are conformist, and relatively nonpolitical. Thus, they vote like their peers, or, more accurately, vote as their peers are *supposed to* vote. That means political correctness, in public at least. Privately, they  can be Christian, married, and respectable, but in public, to blend in they should parrot whatever the dominant political voice in the room is.  Since the 50% of their peers who vote Republican are too scared to admit it, that means being a Democrat. 

As it turned out, the old Oxford jail was made into a hotel, so everyone can go try for himself what being in jail is like.

      How many self-proclaimed libertarians are willing to say that they support the right of a real estate developer to build a subdivision that excludes blacks, Jews, homosexuals, and people with green eyes? Would they all, or would this be a good test for whether someone really values property rights and individual freedom?

 I would think nobody has standing here.  Is any particular individual suffering a harm that can be pinpointed? Higher school taxes doesn't count. I think the Mexican boy next door being noisy probably doesn't count either. 

     Thus, the response lies with Congress. Congress wouldn't want to defund immigration enforcement. But Congress could defund the White House cooking budget or something. Impeachment would be appropriate too.

      Prosecutorial discretion is a worrisome subject. If Obama had simply stopped enforcing immigration enforcement, he would be in a stronger legal position, using the argument that in every single case he didn't think it was  good use of resources. Prosecutors do that all the time with categories of crimes, e.g. prostitution, pornography, homosexuality (while it was still illegal).

  Self-interest trumps ideology, at least for liberals. Marx put it well:

"The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Now-a-days atheism is culpa levis, as compared with criticism of existing property relations."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm

given the arrogance of the Obama Administration I also wonder if there wasn't at least a little "I'm an elite government official, I don't have to stop" going on in his head during the second and third incidents.

 That's the key fact, and one that I don't see anybody else mentioning. A seizure is a good excuse for one accident per night, but he had three.  That shows complete lack of judgement or arrogance.  It sounds exactly like whisky's effect on many people, in fact, so I think we're reasonable in believing that and disbelieving the claims that  drugs and alcohol played no role in this incident involving a  powerful and rich politician. We can use a version of Hume's miracle argument: Which is more probable, that a seizure caused three separate accidents, or that police lied about someone drinking to protect the political party of their boss?

It's good to name names in cases like this.  And I don't believe in nil nisi bonum.  I see Peter Rodman was the boss who wrote the memo. Any idea who the unanimous staff were?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Rodman

The rational basis test has always bothered me because of the name. Courts don't strike down laws for lacking a basis that is rational; they strike down laws for lacking a basis that is legitimate.  It seems to me that the typical traditional use was when legislators passed a law for the rational reason of helping special interest group X, but didn't want to admit that in public or in court.  The court would listen the silly pretend reason and strike it down.

       Maybe that could have been used to strike down the Indianapolis policy, the true policy reason being the city wanted to keep all the money it could, but  a good rebuttal is that if that were the city's motivation it could just double-tax some neighborhood. What seems to me a stronger basis for attack is the idea that states must honor contracts.  Weren't these assessments effectively a contract--- homeowner pays X, homeowner gets sewers? The state reneged on its lump-sum payment arrangement for payment for services.

I wish you'd linked to the opinion. I'm curious what the reasoning could be. If a state can tax the capital gains on  its citizen selling an artwork out of state, why can't it tax it and also direct that the proceeds from the tax go to the artist?

Not really "day of reckoning". Why should Holder care about a contempt citing? His offense is already public information. The press won't change its attitude (neither conservative blogs nor liberal TV). In fact, liberal TV will just call the House racist and partisan. The only reason, as with CLinton's impeachment, is that it is the House's duty.

the United States Supreme Court proved that, when it comes to administrative law, it does not have a heart, and it does not care about the personal issues involved in the case. That is, oddly enough, the correct attitude to take on legal matters.But the same cannot be said for the Social Security Commission, which should have looked elsewhere to close down its own yawning deficit.

     I didn't read the opinion, but unless you're saying that it was the agency's call under Chevron and they blew it,  shouldn't an agency also be heartless with respect to interpreting the law?  The agency should have a heart where it has discretion, but if the law says   X, the agency should  do X

Such an ad would also be appropriately addressed to members of the liberal  mainline Congregational, Presbyterian, Episcopalian,   and Lutheran denominations, who persist,despite their own mainstream opinions, in supporting leftwing church leaders of dubious piety.

  You're so right about that rhythm. At the start of the semester, I was eagerly learning students' names, posting extra newspaper articles on the topic,  and revising my notes before class. By the end, it's just keeping up while worrying about all the unanswered emails and neglected family tasks. Like Prof. Rahe, I used the tactic of combining teaching with writing, which *does* help force writing.

As my first teacher of Plato, Paul, you'll be happy to hear that I start in Chapter 1 by quoting Cephalus, whose  definition of justice is about as far as we economists get.

http://www.rasmusen.org/g406/chapters/01-markets.pdf

I hope the sequel adds the correspondence of all of the above with Luther (who I think did correspond with Erasmus, and had opinions on More). Luther's style is so extreme it should be easy to imitate, and it would contrast nicely with the restraint of the others, and provide a chance to poke some wise-peasant-humor-fun at them.