Liberal feminists finally defending Sarah Palin? Pigs must be flying!

(Eugene Volokh) From In re Wean (Tex. Ct. App. Aug. 31), which reversed a trial court finding that a father engaged in family violence against his children, and a protective order based on that finding. The opinion discussed many matters, and I can’t do full justice to it here. But I thought I’d quote a [...]

Hours after the Mariner Energy Vermilion oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico there's already controversy over whether the oil rig was in production, whether there's oil leaking after the oil rig explosion. We took a look at the controversy which occurred after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in April, whether it's a case of BP Deepwater Horizon controversy deja vu.

The Reason Foundation’s just-released study on state highway performance has been getting lots of national press (see here and here ), but an important subtext may be missed as Democrats and skittish Republicans gear up for a second stimulus. Conventional wisdom will suggest that this new money go into a national infrastructure program, but the data suggest we should probably go in the opposite direction. The Reason report notes that highway performance, based on outcome and cost, has improved over the last several years when measured by nationwide averages. However, this national average masks substantial variation among states (and the base itself often sets a pretty low bar). Nationally, for example, nearly half of all the urban interstate road miles are congested. The share of roads congested...

As Jim argues , preventative wars don't fit neatly into the traditional understanding of just wars. The complication, though, that right-wing preventative war supporters would bring up is that the traditional understanding of wars  doesn't necessarily apply to today's conflicts.  Specifically, in the times when just war theory was developed, wars were generally fought by nations that declared war on each other and sent conventional armies into the field against declared combatants. Today the combatants are 'terrorists' and 'insurgents' who aren't necessarily associated with a nation and don't have a unified command. Also, they don't have a centralized location and could launch a devastating stealth attack anywhere -- so we 'fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here.'  Clearly the concept...