Mid-week Links

Dahlia Lithwick
outdoes herself in this recap of the oral argument in US
v. Stevens (pdf file) (see Calvin’s post on this here).  The ending scene?

Katyal ends his rebuttal by agreeing with Millett that since
there is currently no robust consumer market for human sacrifice videos,
Congress could probably not constitutionally ban Channel 115—the
human-sacrifice channel. So at least everyone on both sides is agreed that the
human-sacrifice channel is constitutional. And that's a relief.

How do
news organizations land interviews with militants and terrorist groups?  Slate

Dave Hoffman in the first of a series of posts on the
content of veil piercing complaints.

Jack Chin on chalking
on campus.

GW Law School reduces size of evening student class in an
attempt to combat an eight-place drop in the U.S. News and World Report
Rankings, a school dean told alumni. (The
GW Hatchet, via WSJ
Blog, Paul
Caron)

Via Michael
Heise, Wired on Placebos
Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.  And discussion at Social
Science Statistics Blog.

Andrew Ross Sorkin
in Vanity Fair on Wall
Street’s Near-Death Experience. Excerpted from Too Big to Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, to be published this month
by Viking:

With the implosion of Lehman Brothers, in September 2008, the
realization dawned: Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs could be next. In an
excerpt from his new book, the author reveals the incredible scramble that took
place—desperate phone calls, seat-of-the-pants merger proposals, flaring
tempers—as Washington got tough and Wall Street titans Lloyd Blankfein and John
Mack fought for survival.

Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker, INSIDE
THE CRISIS: Larry Summers and the White House economic team.