Two questions this week:

Are state tax incentives to corporations, designed to bring out-of-state business into the state, violative of the dormant commerce clause? I'm not sure why they would not be, save the everyone does it theory.

Is what Mohammed Taheri-azar did, in driving an SUV through a crowded area of Chapel Hill's campus, with the apparent (but thankfully failed) attempt to kill, "terrrorism"?

That first question we can get away with reserving for a bit later. The latter, I agree with my former professor on this one. "Terrorism" has a literal and a cultural meaning...as anything does, I reckon. The word's usage requires caution, then, lest we slip into unintentional broadification (my word) of the term. Certainly, we do not want every random act of violence being the subject of our current, still ongoing last I heard, war. (remember, war and typical crime merit different legal procedures)

In discussions thus far, I have noticed the hinge concept of differentiation between terrorism and random violence is political purpose. I'm not sure I can go confidently with this. What about the dingbat, and I am overwhelmingly confident of this, that performs some act of random violence for which a political purpose is ascribed; but for which, in reality, the only spur was the person's retardation, or some such mental problem. Say, for instance, a mentally inform person joins a cult, and then blows something else in furtherance of the cult's instruction? Political act or insanity? What if a person blows themself up, and then a group to which he had no affiliation claims the act? Terrorism or a random act?

Especially though, remembering we're in a WAR against this amorphous thing, we have a particular duty to not be fast and loose with ascribing terrorism without a great amount of caution. What if the SUV driver in Chapel Hill is a terrorist? Does he appreciate normal criminal law procedure...or do we send to Cuba and the dogs of interrogation?