Constitutional Comments On The Vice Presidency: At Bench Memos, Matthew J. Franck posts his thoughts on Instapundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds' short op-ed in today's New York Times. The op-ed discusses questions about the constitutional status of the vice presidency that emerged during the Palin/Biden debate. Reynolds discusses whether any executive action taken by the vice president is constitutional. For Franck, the Reynolds piece "displays one of the signal failings of politico-legal argumentation today: the promiscuous pronouncement that things that bother us are 'unconstitutional.' " The problem for Franck is that Reynolds overstates the importance of the constitutional question while misunderstanding the law that he claims supports his argument. Franck writes: "The best that Reynolds does here is this: 'The Supreme Court has held on more than one occasion that legislative officials cannot exercise executive power.' That won't really do. Every such 'occasion' that I can think of concerned 'legislative officials' who answer to the Congress because they are its agents and creatures. Not so the vice president." Jonathan Adler also briefly posted on the piece over at Volokh Conspiracy.

NY Times Editorializes On California Prisons: On Saturday, Doug Berman posted on this New York Times editorial discussing California's prison system. While Berman uses the editorial to criticize leadership's failure to embrace "to new ideas and distinct reform paradigms" for prisons and sentencing, the editorial staff at the New York Times focuses more on problems with California's parole system. The Editorial Staff does not like that parole officers send more people back to prisons than the courts. Especially when less than half of the parolees return for "for technical violations like missed appointments or failed drug tests."