Sarah's Selections

Interesting article about conspicuous consumption.

On why the Supreme Court should be part of your decision making when voting for President: "As you contemplate what you want the next Supreme Court to look like, ask yourself what happens when judges are sidelined—or when they're chosen for their inclination to sideline themselves. If we really want to restore the rule of law in America, then we'd better vote for a president who believes that we call it the Supreme Court for a reason."

Phenomenal article examining the media's coverage of first ladies: "The real, and more interesting, question here is how, specifically, the spouse is fair game: How should we cover the candidate’s wife—as a political figure unto herself, or as an appendage to the campaign? Do we cover her (or, to be fair, him—but Bill Clinton is a statistical outlier in every sense) only as she relates to her husband, or, instead, as she relates directly to us? And if the answer is “both,” then where does the one stop and the other begin?"

This is pretty lawyerly and a bit dorky but just the same Wermiel was my con law professor and it's a pretty big "OH SNAP!" to Scalia so I'm including it:
"I am reading the decision in Heller as fast as I can and will post my thoughts as soon as possible. The headline is that the court decided 5-4 (no mushy plurality here) that the D.C. handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement violate the individual right to bear arms as protected under the Second Amendment. But I must first pass along this rather brilliant observation from professor Stephen Wermiel from American University, who wonders why none of the dissenters cautioned the majority that today's decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." (Boumediene, Scalia, J. dissenting.)"

Really great editorial on how Ivy League educations aren't all they're cracked up to be: "The world that produced John Kerry and George Bush is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders. The kid who’s loading up on AP courses junior year or editing three campus publications while double-majoring, the kid whom everyone wants at their college or law school but no one wants in their classroom, the kid who doesn’t have a minute to breathe, let alone think, will soon be running a corporation or an institution or a government. She will have many achievements but little experience, great success but no vision. The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have."