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Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 27, 2009 0 Comments
James G. Lindsay, the former General Counsel of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), has issued a detailed 84-page report harshly critical of UNRWA’s policies with regard to Palestinian refugees. The report is titled “Fixing UNRWA...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 27, 2009 0 Comments
Hamas set off a massive roadside bomb at the Gaza border, killing an Israeli soldier and wounding several on the Israeli side of the border. In return fire, one Palestinian was killed. So how do British papers report the story? Here are the headlines: The...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 25, 2009 3 Comments
On Monday, January 26, 2009, the impeachment trial of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich begins. Nominally, the trial will be held by the Illinois Senate with the Chief Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court presiding. In reality, this case is, and always has been, under the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 25, 2009 2 Comments
Estimating the size of crowds traditionally has been an art, not a science. The art part of crowd-estimating leaves much to the artist’s interpretation. Police departments often go with their “gut” feeling based upon experience with prior events, or a helicopter flyover. In the case...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 24, 2009 2 Comments
You know the old saying, “those who can’t do, teach.” When I was in private law practice, I took that saying as gospel. Now that I teach, I’m not so sure I like it, or that it’s true. I think a better phrase might be,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 24, 2009 2 Comments
An air strike from a Predator drone killed 15-20 people in the tribal areas of Pakistan yesterday. According to most reports, the targets were al-Qaida operatives. Presumably, the CIA, NSA, and other government intelligence agencies had intelligence information as to the location of the operatives...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 22, 2009 5 Comments
Dramatic increases in domestic drilling were offered as the answer to many of our economic problems last summer when gas was approaching $4 per gallon. Even Democrats were forced to recognize the need to open up some offshore drilling, and pressure was building to drill...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 19, 2009 4 Comments
The media is all aflutter today with reports — as headlined in the NY Times — that “all active-duty and reserve forces meeting or exceeding their recruitment goals for the first time since 2004, the year that violence in Iraq intensified drastically….” This is the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 17, 2009 2 Comments
I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of Illinois politics. I’ve been following the Rod Blagojevich saga as an outsider looking in, from a legal perspective. One things seems clear to me, as we approach the impeachment trial: Rod Blagojevich is very good...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 17, 2009 1 Comment
The image on the home page of The New York Times website is startling. A bombed out building in Gaza with a single brightly colored child’s shoe in the middle of the photo. The imagery is powerful, particularly the contrast between the blackened floor and...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 16, 2009 2 Comments
It is always a little dangerous when law professors opine on areas of law with which they have little familiarity. That is why I have stayed away from the issue of whether Israel must use “proportionate” force against Hamas. Although I suspected that the term...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 15, 2009 0 Comments
Professor Stephen Baindridge, of “Professor Baindridge” fame, is simplifying and scaling back his blog as a result of “suffering for a while now from a severe case of blogging burnout.” When one of the “giants” of blogging needs a break, one has to wonder if...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2009 12 Comments
Remember Barack Obama’s famous attack on John McCain, that McCain wasn’t willing to go to the cave where Osama bin Laden was hiding: “John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell – but he won’t even go to...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 14, 2009 4 Comments
As we get closer to Barack Obama taking office, the cry for “war crimes” trials of Bush administration lawyers who expressed legal opinions regarding coerced interrogation grows louder. I have yet to hear anyone call for a war crimes trial for the attorneys during the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 13, 2009 0 Comments
Has anybody actually seen the paperwork Roland Burris submitted to the Secretary of the Senate which caused Harry Reid and Dick Durbin to approve seating Burris? In her January 12, 2009 Press Release, the Secretary of the Senate stated that “Mr. Burris’s certificate, and accompanying...
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