Boumediene Backlash: Over at Bench Memos, Ed Whalen offers a critique of Washington Post writer, George F. Will's attack of McCain's comment that Boumediene was "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” Whalen's post discusses the shortcomings of Will's article, while wondering whether Will himself has read, and understood, the Boumediene decision.

New Way to Look at "Going Postal": Over at Volokh Conspiracy guest blogger Anuj Desai has a post submitting that the origins of certain constitutional doctrines can be traced to eighteenth-century postal policy. In particular, Desai argues the doctrines of 1) First Amendment restrictions on government subsidies for speech ); (2) the First Amendment “right to receive” ideas; and (3) the Fourth Amendment principle of communications privacy, may all be traced to early congressional policy decisions, that embedded as attributes of the postal institution, and then were applied to other areas of constitutional law. In today's post Desai connects the early policy decision to subsidize postal delivery of newspapers with the "unconstitutional conditions" doctrine.

Two Executions Today: Hattip to Sentencing Law and Policy for its report on the executions scheduled in Oklahoma and Texas today. In his post, Berman reports that although this will be the first execution in Oklahoma in nearly a year, the Texas execution is getting more press because of an alleged affair between the prosecutor an the judge.

Misconduct Probe of Alex Kozinski: The L.A. Times reported today that the U.S. Third Circuit had appointed a panel of federal judges to oversee a misconduct probe of Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski. U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. transferred the matter to the 3rd Circuit Court in Philadelphia, and the chief judge there appointed a special committee to investigate. The probe comes a week after the L.A. Times reported Kozinski was posting sexually explicit material on a personal, but publicly accessible website. As a result of the story, Judge Kozinski declared a mistrial in the obscenity case over which he was presiding. Ironically, the obscenity trial involved the prosecution of Hollywood filmmaker Ira Isaacs, who had been accused, under federal obscenity laws, of distributing hard-core pornographic films.