Anthony Kammer Several weeks ago, Bob Kuttner published an excellent 1-page piece called “Debtor’s Prison” (pdf) in the American Prospect. The distinction he offers now seems quite clearly to be one of the fundamental battle grounds in American politics—between rentier creditors and debtors. This is a line that’s deeply obscured in our political discourse but one that underlies virtually every economic debate. Reading this article and Paul Krugman’s follow-up offered one of those rare, …
The tide turns toward a civil Gideon?
Yevgeny Shrago A few months ago, the New York State judiciary recognized that the rising costs and complexity of litigation made denying counsel to civil defendants increasingly tantamount to entering a default judgment against them. Recently, the US Supreme Court began to inch its way back from the post-Lassiter ledge, picking out a civil situation where right to counsel (or some other substantial due process rights) is required by due process. Those frustrated by the the massively important …
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California Introduces Bill to Abolish Capital Punishment
Jessica Jackson Last Monday I opened the paper and discovered that I might soon be out of a job. Unlike the hundreds of teachers who received pink slips this year, I was filled with delight. As an employee of a California state entity that represents death row inmates in their appeals, I am excited to see abolishing the death penalty being introduced onto the ballot. Setting aside the typical tenets of a death penalty argument: the moral aspects of state killing, the risk of innocent people …
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Strategic Petroleum Release
Yevgeny Shrago Ensuring a good holiday weekend for the millions taking a ride out to a (soon to be closed?) National Park or the beach, President Obama opened up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, releasing 30 million barrels of oil last week. This move comes even as gas prices continued their month-long decline, reversing the usual summer trend. Energy Secretary Steven Chu attributed the release to energy instability stemming from continued fighting in Libya, Syria and other parts of the Middle …
Wikileaks is mainstream compared to Lulzsec
Ever since Wikileaks started publishing secret documents, representatives of government and traditional mass media have criticized it as irresponsible and even dangerous. Here is just one of many examples. Those critiques, however, seem almost quaint when one considers the recent work of Anonymous, a loosely organized group of hackers. Wikileaks requires people on the inside who voluntarily give up information to the public. Anonymous, in contrast, actively hacks the information it wants and …
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