Free Republic

At times like this, I really, really, really love my job. You see, this is the semester that I get to teach Constitutional Law. I have 20 eager and vocal undergraduates (a large class, by my institution’s standards) currently enrolled. They’ve been primed by two rounds of Supreme Court nomination hearings, not to mention a very public and spirited debate over the scope and extent of the President’s inherent Constitutional power to wage war. They have facts. They have opinions. And they are ready, willing, and able to duke it out with their colleagues. Whee!  When we came to Hamdi...

[The Enumclaw case, for those of you who don't know, refers to a man who died from having sex with a horse; an investigation by the sheriff's office found a farm which was a haven for bestiality perverts] The Enumclaw case highlights two increasingly important ideological debates. The first, and seemingly the more minor of the two (for the time being) is within the animal rights movement, and centers around whether animals should be treated as identical to humans. On the one side, stands PETA and Peter Singer, a founder of the animal rights movement. On the other stands the...

I've seen just about every werewolf, Dracula and mermaid movie ever made, I have a Medusa magnet on my refrigerator, and the Sphinx of Greek mythology is a role model for her lethal brand of mystery. President George W. Bush's experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq created his own chimeras, by injecting feudal and tribal societies with the cells of democracy, and blending warring factions and sects. Some of the forces unleashed are promising; others are frightening. In a chilling classified report to Congress last week, General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, conceded that Iraq and Afghanistan operations have...

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" Judge Moore is about to be held in contempt of a court order demanding that he remove the statue of the Ten Commandments from in front of the courthouse where he has honorably served for years. This fact raises an interesting question, and exemplifies a blatant contradiction as well as our modern-day courts' insitence on trying to legislate from the bench. Our Congress is strictly and explicitly probitied by our Constitution from passing any laws prohibiting the free excercise of one's religion. If Judge...