Cruising the Web

Mark Steyn is exactly right: we're in a sorry state indeed when "the liberties of more than 300 million people hinge on the somewhat whimsical leanings of just one man." We're all living in Anthony Kennedy's America. Which is better than living in Ruth Bader Ginsburg's America, but still so much power shouldn't rest in the hands of any justice. And the Congress could, as Steyn recommends, start by refusing to pass 2700 page monstrosities of bills that no legislator has read or understood before they voted on it.

A 2,700-page law is not a "law" by any civilized understanding of the term. Law rests on the principle of equality before it. When a bill is 2,700 pages, there's no equality: Instead, there's a hierarchy of privilege microregulated by an unelected, unaccountable, unconstrained, unknown and unnumbered bureaucracy. It's not just that the legislators who legislate it don't know what's in it, nor that the citizens on the receiving end can ever hope to understand it, but that even the nation's most eminent judges acknowledge that it is beyond individual human comprehension. A 2,700-page law is, by definition, an affront to self-government.

Violence is stalking the Jews of France. Will the French media rouse itself to notice?

The Democrats had a bad week. Now if we can only string together a whole long line of back weeks.

Jonathan Adler ponders the fact that so many legal observers underestimated the case against Obamacare. They're too insular ideologically and so they're not providing a worthy education for their students. Perhaps we need more, ah, diversity on law school faculties.

Obama has already spent more than all his Republican rivals combined in setting up his campaign apparatus for the coming general election campaign.

Clarence Page wonders if college has gotten too easy.

Martin Peretz wonders where is an open mic when we need one.

What fun schadenfreude to read about the problems Keith Olbermann had with Al Gore's Current TV. He comes across as irritatingly unprofessional and Current comes across as amazingly incompetent. But the information on Olbermann is particularly delightful as the self-proclaimed advocate of the people resents car chauffeurs who "smelled" and "talked to him."

Rich Lowry has a very pertinent column pointing out all the innocent victims of black-on-black violence who never get national attention. The point is not that we are opposed to justice for George Zimmerman if he is found guilty, but that we should equally want justice for nine-month old victims of gun violence who were in their cribs or other innocent bystanders killed during gunfights among gang fights.

Nick Gillespie urges us to calm down about bullying.

Read about how unfinanced benefits for public employees has bankrupted the town of Stockton, California.