The Volokh Conspiracy

Here is the opening of Judge Kozinski’s opinion, reversing a lower court ruling and issuing a preliminary injunction in an Alien Tort Statute suit against the Sea Shepherd’s attempts to interfere with Japanese whaling vessels on the high seas:

You don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch. When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be.

Is this right? Paging our very own Eugene Kontorovich, a leading authority on piracy law!  Over at Opinio Juris, Julian Ku and Kevin Jon Heller discuss the opinion.  Myself, I plan to re-watch South Park.

Every year the political roundtable show Colorado Inside Out does a time machine episode. Last year’s 1951 episode has just been nominated for a regional Emmy Award, in the news/interview program category. Our topics for the episode were the firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Korean War, duck and cover training, and the new federal government center in Denver. Characters were the famous singer and actress Ethel Merman, who had recently moved to Denver (played by Westword publisher Patty Calhoun), newspaperman Al Nakula (played by former Rocky Mountain News journalist Kevin Flynn), sociology professor Lois Waddell (played by Dani Newsum), and southern Colorado newspaper editor Cecil Koplowitz (played by me, evoking my father’s first journalism job, in Walsenberg).

We  are getting ready to tape a new episode, which will be set in 1912. Patty Calhoun will portray Denver socialite and social climber Molly Brown. I’m busy reading about the Balkan War which began in 1912. The episode will premiere on Friday, July 6.