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Scalia was interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN in 2008 and 2012. Both times he was discussing books he had written (coauthored by Bryan Garner) but many other topics are covered and both interviews are quite fascinating. Apparently Scalia and Lamb knew each other since 1971. 2008 Interview on Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges 2012 Interview on Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts Whoever appoints Scalia's replacement will have trouble finding someone with as much class.

Like any responsible pregnant woman, Chen Lei (not her real name) wants the best for her unborn child. She and her husband live in Shanghai; both work for a foreign IT company, and they have more choices than their parents' generation could even dream of. So Chen, 30, is one of an increasing number of mainland Chinese women who are taking advantage of a loophole in American law to travel to the United States to give birth. "Most Chinese women who go to the U.S. to give birth do so for their child's future, for the education, and for the...

H1-B lobbyist / apologist on C-SPAN (Washington Journal) right now. Has not been asked any really difficult questions.

Anyone who recently moved to another cell-phone carrier from Verizon Wireless might want to check their closing bill from Verizon. To make a long story short, it appears to be Verizon policy to fail to pro-rate the last month when a phone number is ported to another carrier and to charge to the normal end of the billing cycle. Many people probably don't notice this and just pay their last bill without questioning this over-charge. Since Verizon bills for the coming month, in some cases the closing bill should indicate a refund. Without getting into my personal tale of woe...

The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention. But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion. The sweeping change to two decades of tax policy escaped the notice of lawmakers for several days, as they remained consumed with the controversial bailout bill. When they...

A chronology of the events that led to the discovery that Josef Fritzl, 73, had locked up his daughter in an cellar dungeon for 24 years and fathered her seven children, based on police statements: _ April 19: Fritzl brings a 19-year-old woman to the intensive ward of the Provincial Clinic, in the lower Austrian town of Amstetten. He tells staff that the woman, Kerstin, is his granddaughter and that he found her in front of his door, left there by his daughter who disappeared decades ago to join a sect. _ April 22: Lower Austrian police ask for DNA...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin's four-hour performance at the Kremlin on Thursday mixed flirtatious banter with metaphors about snot and showed a gift for sarcastic brush-offs worthy of a stand-up comedian. Putin twice referred to a runny nose during the annual presidential news conference -- to dismiss rumors about his personal wealth and to discuss the pressures of public office. Newspaper reports about his alleged fortune were just rubbish, said Putin, "excavated from someone's nose and then spread on those bits of paper". Explaining how he worked his guts out "like a galley slave" for eight years in the Kremlin,...

Brian Lamb was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush on November 5th. The last time Lamb appeared on a live C-SPAN show was November 30th. This was the last of 13 weekly shows on presidential libraries so his appearance was expected. His voice sounded very bad as if something was wrong with his throat and a caller commented on his "cold", but if it was a cold it was very bad one indeed. He normally hosts Washington Journal on Friday mornings. He has now missed 8 of these shows. Last Friday he was on a recorded Q&A...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Minnesota flight instructor who notified his bosses of student Zacarias Moussaoui's suspicious behavior received a $5 million reward Thursday from the State Department, two government officials told CNN. Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in 2006 of conspiring to kill Americans on September 11, 2001. Clarence "Clancy" Prevost was an instructor at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, when Moussaoui was a student there. Moussaoui, sometimes called the "20th hijacker," is the only person charged and convicted in connection with the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. ... Prevost, a retired Northwest...

"If you are against taking action on greenhouse gases and carbon emissions, your political base will melt away as surely as the polar icecaps. ... You will become a political penguin on a smaller and smaller ice floe that is driftng out to sea."

Scott L. Hanson, 46, a member of the Ridgefield city council, was arrested for drunk driving and hit and run on Dec. 7 at the Ridgefield junction at I-5. A bulletin from the State Patrol said that Hanson was seen by a state commercial vehicle officer at about 4:47 p.m. going past him at a “high rate of speed” on northbound I-205 in the area of NE 134th St. After that, three other citizen reports of Hanson driving erratically on I-5 northbound were called in to dispatch just before Hanson allegedly collided with two other vehicles... Hanson reportedly veered to...

RICHLAND -- Those who knew Naveed Haq said Saturday that to them he was an enigma, a puzzle that they wish they could have solved before his deadly rampage in a Seattle Jewish center. (snip) He held a degree in electrical engineering and was the son of a successful engineer, yet he couldn't keep a regular job. He was smart, creative and skilled as a writer. He recently won an essay contest for a U.S. Institute of Peace scholarship. Yet Haq was frustrated at his lack of friends and female companionship.He told friends he felt alienated from his own family,...

Investigators unraveling how concrete ceiling panels cascaded onto a car in one of the Big Dig tunnels should focus on some basic, troubling questions about the way the tunnel ceiling was built, civil engineers and highway construction specialists said yesterday. Officials from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority suspect that the accident that killed Milena Del Valle began with the failure of a single steel hanger that helped hold up the concrete ceiling, setting off a chain reaction that caused other hangers to fail and send 12 tons of concrete to the highway surface as Del Valle's husband drove underneath. ...

A doctor and his assistant have each been jailed for two years in India for using ultrasound scans for sex-selective abortions. Dr Anil Sabsani, a radiologist, and his assistant, who was not named, were trapped in the northern state of Haryana after the authorities were told that his clinic was offering illegal sex-determination tests. Dr Sabsani told a pregnant woman sent in undercover that he would reveal the sex of her child for an additional fee of 1,500 rupees (£20). After the woman paid the money, Dr Sabsani was caught on a hidden video camera confirming that the unborn child...

A number of Israelis staying on Wednesday at the Radisson hotel were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert. They were escorted back to Israel by security personnel. The Foreign Ministry stated Wednesday that no Israeli tourists are known to have been injured in the blasts. Representatives of Israel's embassy in Amman were in contact with local authorities to examine any report of injured Israelis, but none were received. There are often a number of Israeli businessman and tourists in Amman, including in the hotels hit Wednesday. Israel's counter-terror headquarters on Wednesday...

For anybody who's lost a bidding war for a house in Seattle, here's a small consolation: Some of the biggest real-estate magnates in the world are enduring the same experience as they try to buy into the region's hot housing market. In what brokers are calling "a perfect storm" of economic circumstances, investors from Australia to Bellevue are pouring money into Seattle-area apartment complexes, breaking sales records and driving up prices because they see rents about to take off. Some $2.1 billion worth of apartments have changed hands in the Seattle metro area this year, triple the level of two...

TWENTY-ONE Irish Catholic priests sexually assaulted young boys and girls in parishes across Co Wexford over a period of 40 years, a damning report into clerical abuse revealed yesterday. The Irish Government said that it would take immediate action to implement the recommendations of the report into the Diocese of Ferns, which is now regarded as the world’s leading centre for clerical sexual abuse. The 271-page report catalogues 100 complaints of abuse, with one priest responsible for 26 assaults. The Ferns Report, which investigated allegations dating back to 1966, concluded that Church authorities, the medical profession and society in general...

Unrepentant, and convinced that Muslims across the world are the victims of American oppression, the mind of Richard Reid, the attempted shoe bomber from South London, was shown today in a letter published in a Scottish legal magazine. The letter, written by Reid from his prison cell in America on October 24, 2002, and published by The Firm magazine today, was sent to the magazine's US correspondent instead of an interview. In the letter, Reid, now 31, gave a rambling but cogent reply to a note sent to him by Noel Young, The Firm's journalist, who offered Reid the chance...

Sergeant Steve Betts of the British Transport police was one of the first rescuers to reach the Piccadilly line train between King's Cross and Russell Square on Thursday. This is his harrowing account: It was pitch black and we had torches. The tunnel where the train was was about 150 metres down the track round a corner and there were still a few wounded coming towards us as we approached. As I walked down the track, I heard someone cry out for help but I could not see them. I called out back and looked around but it was very...