No La Pasadita taco would be worth its $2 without a liberal application of the roasted jalapeño salsa negra. Powerful stuff. God help you if you wander by “La Nueva” (1132 N. Ashland) when they’re roasting a batch–the airborne capsaicin particulate will drop you like a masher with a face full of pepper spray. But one look into its smoky, Stygian depths puddled in the crevasse of a salty, gnarled tortilla chip conjures up so many misty memories of late-night salvation-by-taco experiences. If I could pick my own superpower I’d shoot it from my fingertips.

North Korean counterfeiters, Filipino scamsters, religious cultists, and Ben Bernanke: the cast of characters rumored to be involved in the mystery of the $134 billion worth of Treasury bonds that two “Japanese citizens” attempted to smuggle from Italy into Switzerland a little over a week ago is growing at the speed of conspiracy theory light.

Anyone interested in seeing how a very smart judge can write the equivalent of a treatise in nine pages should read Frank Easterbrook’s opinion in National Rifle Association of America v. City of Chicago. It is a truly remarkable performance.

The ostensible (and actual) issue before the Court (a pane of Easterbrook, Posner, and Bauer) is whether Heller should be read as incorporating the Second Amendment against states (or, in this case, the City of Chicago).

Mortimer Newlin Stead Sellers (University of Baltimore – School of Law) has posted The Influence on Marcus Tullius Cicero on Modern Legal and Political Ideas (Ciceroniana, the Atti of Colloquium Tullianum Anni, MMVIII) on SSRN.

Those of us foolish enough to call ourselves “conservative” are forced to admit that culturally and politically at least we live amidst less and less worth conserving.  We can and should continue to mind our own business, and tackle daily life as cheerfully as possible, but some days one wants to take up the fight for the reformation of this bloated and addled culture of ours.  Where to find a cudgel?  With a…

And to get on with all other aspects of the restoration of America as the land of big municipal government. As the land of strong unions whose every red cent in political donations buys something specific. As the land of very high levels of co-operative membership, not least including housing co-operatives for the upper middle classes. As the land of small farmers who own their own land. As the land that pioneered Keynesianism in practice.…

Michael Sandel’s giving of the prestigious Reith Lectures for the BBC (hat tip: the ever-watchful Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber) has prompted me to return to an old post of mine on communitarianism, and perhaps do some updating of what I wrote then, so as to incorporate the populist and localist ideas that I have since become more familiar with and committed to, and which I see as closely entwined with any…

I mentioned in my initial post about Caperton that it was a classic example of Scalia’s showy rhetoric concealing substantive points of highly dubious quality. To unpack this a bit, let’s consider the argument:

A Talmudic maxim instructs with respect to the Scripture: “Turn it over, and turn it over, for all is therein.” The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Aboth, Ch. V, Mishnah 22 (I. Epstein ed. 1935). Divinely inspired text may contain the answers to all earthly…

jennpb posted a photo:

Curry lamb sausage with spinach raita and Kasseri cheese (foreground); Onion-bacon sausage with blue cheese/cheddar (background); fries!