I just might love law school (2003-08-16)
I haven't started classes yet, but I'm chugging through my homework and just read some juicy stuff, in, of all places, my property law case book. In an 1823 U.S. Supreme Court case over the power of Native Americans to convey title to land, Justice Marshall wrote that "discovery" of land gave title to the (European) government whose subjects found it. He states that the Indians' rights to complete sovereignty "were necessarily diminished, and their power to dispose of the soil at their own will, to whomsoever they pleased, was denied by the original fundamental principle, that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it."

Seems absurd, that the people who have lived somewhere for hundreds, maybe thousands of years haven't "discovered" it, and so don't own it. I've always wondered how early Americans glossed over the genocide of the Native American tribes and while at the same time reveling in freedom from tyranny and affirming human dignity.

Here's what Marshall said, "The potentates of the old world found no difficulty in convincing themselves that they made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the new, by bestowing on them civilization and Christianity in exchange for unlimited independence."

Doesn't seem like a fair trade to me.

Republicans launch sneak attacks on nonprofit advocacy (2003-08-09)
A new report from OMB Watch, a watchdog group that monitors the workings of the White House Office of Management and Budget, details recent Republican-orchestrated legislative and administrative attacks on non-profits' rights to criticize the government.