Free Republic

Steven Calabresi, Professor of Law at Northwestern University (http://www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/fulltime/Calabresi/Calabresi.html) and co-founder of the premiere conservative legal organization, The Federalist Society, who previously backed Rudy has now endorsed John McCain. In an e-mail to me he explained: I have endorsed Senator McCain and think he would be an excellent president because he is tough on foreign policy, committed to spending restraint which is the key to small government, and because he has consistently voted for good judicial nominees in tough fights like Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. I am not troubled by his role as a member of the gang of...

George Washington Law School Moot CourtStudents present oral arguments in a fictitious case before a panel of judges. Judges include: John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States; Guido Calabresi, Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; Sonia Sotomayor, Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. 2/9/2006: WASHINGTON, DC: 1 hr. 20 min.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT PLOT THICKENS [John Podhoretz] Time Magazine has a new story about the revelation of Valerie Plame's name -- a story that, despite Time's own bizarre spin, reinforces the claim that Karl Rove and others learned that Joseph Wilson was married to a CIA operative from the media. "As the investigation tightens into the leak of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, sources tell TIME some White House officials may have learned she was married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson weeks before his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed piece criticizing the Administration," writes Massimo Calabresi. Later, he...

...President Bush has repeatedly drawn from the Federalist Society for cabinet members, senior aides and judges. And perhaps to deflect what many conservatives call unfair attacks by liberals, the nominees have repeatedly claimed to know little about the group's beliefs.... Then an old directory surfaced last week, listing Judge Roberts as part of one of the group's steering committees. The White House spokesmen clung to their line; since Judge Roberts had not, apparently, written a $25 membership check, he was not a formal member. Who cares? Lots of people, it seems, because a fight over the influence of the Federalist...

A federal judge in Washington yesterday lifted a contempt order and the threat of jail against a Time magazine reporter after he submitted to questioning by a special prosecutor who is investigating the disclosure of a covert C.I.A. officer's identity to the columnist Robert Novak and other journalists. The reporter, Matthew Cooper, was questioned in a two-hour deposition about his contacts with I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, but only after Mr. Libby's lawyer assured Mr. Cooper's lawyer that Mr. Libby had waived a confidentiality agreement with the reporter. The deposition was given on Monday...

LAST WEEK a federal appeals court judge compared the inauguration of George W. Bush to the ascensions of both Hitler and Mussolini, his point being that all three took power legally but were / are illegitimate office holders. "That is what the Supreme Court did in Bush v. Gore; it put somebody in power," Judge Guido Calabresi told an audience at the American Constitution Society in Washington. "The reason I emphasize that is because that is exactly what happened when Mussolini was put in by the king of Italy. That is what happened when Hindenburg put Hitler in." Soon after...

Federal appeals court Judge Guido Calabresi got in hot water the other day, or perhaps we should say, he will be in hot water if the mainstream press ever gets around to mentioning his outburst of June 19. Calabresi, former dean of the Yale Law School and a moderate liberal, became the 3,267th Democrat to compare George Bush to Adolf Hitler. As Bush-is-Hitler rhetoric goes, the judge's effort was comparatively mild. He said Bush's rise to power was strikingly similar to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, with the Supreme Court (in Gore v. Bush) illegitimately propelling him into a...

Fair point from a reader (I was merely trying to engage Calabresi's argument on its own terms): C'mon Jonah! Extra-judicial means? The Supreme Court of the United States "intervened" when a lower court clearly contravened law, convention and the Constitution of Florida. The Supreme Court did nothing, except enforce status quo. Fie on even allowing that much of the judge's argument. (I agree with everything else you said, though.)