The call to the police was from Larry Faulkenberry’s teen-aged son. When did kids decide that the best response to a parent being a parent was the cops?  Likely after they figured out that there will always be adults who don’t share other parents’ choices. And children, realizing that they have a card to play, play it. That’s what Faulkenberry’s son did.

He conceded that the whole ordeal could have been avoided had his teen-aged son not called the police.

“He got in trouble at school. I explained to him he was grounded. He got upset. He told me he was going to call the police and tell them I was waving a gun at him and drunk. I sat down to cool off and 20 minutes later, I see flashlights coming up the driveway,” he said.

Of course, calling the police doesn’t mean that a child’s poor decision should be compounded by the cops.  Unfortunately,  Sgt. Dustin Yost, Deputy Michael Taylor and another officer identified only as Deputy Houseston, of the Caldwell County, Texas, Sheriff’s Department, decided to make Faulkenberry’s son’s childish foolishness look absolutely brilliant in comparison to their choices. Continue reading →

Heidi Czerwiec has shit for brains.  Sure, she’s an associate professor of English at the University of North Dakota, which pretty much means that she chose her undergraduate major poorly and, failing to find a societally useful job, became an academic.  Maybe that’s unfair, as it’s not like she does nothing beyond teaching.

My new collection, Self-Portrait as Bettie Page (Barefoot Muse, 2013), is a sonnet sequence that negotiates the relationship between formal poetics, bondage/discipline, and female identity through the figure of elusive 1950s pinup Bettie Page, whose own identity was a series of costumes.

But she’s a bit skittish, so when she saw people with guns outside her office window, she did what any blithering idiot concerned woman does: she called 911.

A professor at the University of North Dakota is pledging to repeatedly call the police on campus military cadets in protest against the school’s decision to let them hold drills on campus while carrying guns.

Continue reading →

It was, sadly, a remarkably unremarkable description of the perp.

At 3:21 a.m. on August 28, 2015, campus police were called to Porter Hall where a young woman had been groped in her sleep. The attacker fled and dropped cigarettes and a lighter.

“She was sleeping, and it was very difficult for her to make an identification,” attorney Paul Michalek said.

She said it was a short, black man in black shorts.

You can’t blame the young woman for being unable to provide a more detailed description. Awake, most people can’t describe another person well. Asleep, it was likely impossible. And assuming, as we should, that she was, indeed, groped (though it would be helpful if a less conclusory word was used), she certainly had good reason to call campus police.  This was a crime, and the perpetrator of the crime should be caught. Continue reading →

“It’s time,” she said.

“But, are you sure? Are you sure you want a new one?”

“It’s time.” SWMBO turned and walked away.  I dutifully headed down to the local appliance store, as I prefer to buy from small local businesses.  After being informed by the six people standing around the counter that I had to wait for Sam, who was on the phone, because he was the guy who knew stuff, I stood there for about ten minutes, until I realized that I wasn’t the first person in line for Sam. There was another guy also waiting for him, so I would be after the guy.

Much as I like buying locally, I’m not big on waiting. I’m especially not big on waiting when there are six people standing there not helping me. So I walked out, crossed the street and went down the block to the local hardware store.  One local merchant was as good as another. Continue reading →

The jealousy between various government entities is the stuff of legend, like excuses as to why nobody figured out that terrorists were here learning to fly planes into very tall buildings. But usually, that plays out between law enforcement agencies. At least they all have guns. The mailman, on the other hand, is easy game.

Late in the afternoon on St. Patrick’s Day, Glen Grays, a 27-year-old African-American mail carrier, was making his rounds in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, about to leave a package at 999 President Street.

Just in case you are unaware, Crown Heights is not one of those neighborhoods in Brooklyn where hipsters live.

On this afternoon, Mr. Grays was descending the steps of his mail truck backward, as postal workers often do to minimize wear and tear on the knees, when out of the corner of his eye he noticed a car making a sharp right turn onto President from Franklin Avenue. Mr. Grays shouted at the driver, climbing back up the steps to avoid getting sideswiped. The black car, in Mr. Grays’s telling, came tearing back his way in reverse. The driver said to him, Mr. Grays recounted, “I have the right of way because I’m law enforcement.” The unmarked car held four plainclothes police officers, according to the Brooklyn borough president’s office, which has taken an interest in the case.

Continue reading →

The applause from the cheap seats couldn’t be missed.  There is a report, from no less an august body than the American Association of University Professors.  And for the first time in recent memory, the report didn’t gush about the need to do everything possible to end the plague of campus rape and hate speech.

That’s why there was applause. Woo hoo!

As a result of committed student and faculty activism, the topic of sexual harassment and assault within universities1 has entered the national spotlight. Renewed attention to these problems has been met by a federal push to establish universities’ compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.  Yet Title IX’s track record has proven to be uneven. Success stories about compelling universities to address problems of sexual assault, such as those recounted by student campus groups,3 are matched by reported cases in which university administrators fail to punish gross and repeated sexual harassment, or where Title IX administrators from the Department of Education and within the university overreach and seek to punish protected academic speech. These cases have compromised the realization of meaningful educational goals that enable the creation of sexually safe campuses; they also have upended due process rights and shared governance in unprecedented ways. [Emphasis added.]

Ignore all those other words, and just focus on the ultimate clause.  And in fairness, the fact that the AAUP even raises questions about due process and shared governance is remarkable.  Continue reading →

Reasoning happens two ways, deductively or inductively.  The difference between the two can vary, but if you don’t think too hard about it, the latter can make almost as much sense as the former to the unwary.  And when used to pitch a concept, it almost makes it seem legit. NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and his trusty sidekick, Mayor Bill de Blasio, depend on it.

On Tuesday, NYC Police Commissioner Bill Bratton responded to knife fear. As part of a new operation helpfully dubbed “Cutting Edge,” officers will be deployed to hotspot locations and will track the incidents separately from other felony assaults.

There have been a few spectacularly horrible random knife attacks in New York City, and it’s given rise to what people do best: fear.  And there were 900 knife attacks already this year!  Oh my god, it’s an epidemic. We’re all gonna die. Except we’re not.

The same can’t be said for several of the instances of blade-related violence that have darkened what has otherwise been a relatively safe year in New York City. Although a healthy chunk of the over 900 knife-related attacks so far in 2016 have been connected with domestic violence, it’s the ones that occur seemingly without rhyme or reason that have people on edge. In January, at least six people were slashed on the subway, and the first few months of this year have seen local media outlets freak out about attacks inside restaurants, outside hospitals, and in the middle of the street.

Continue reading →

Few stories of special SJW snowflake pain drew more ridicule than the cries from students at Emory University at the chalk graffiti, “Trump 2016.”

Protests signs like this were shockingly less persuasive at conveying the seriousness of the matter than some might expect.  At first, the administration promised to go to the videotapes to find out who perpetrated this hate crime. After the grown-ups suggested that Emory President James Wagner was a blithering idiot for legitimizing the feelings of pain, he backed off. Continue reading →

One of the most vexing prosecutions to the north was that of Jian Ghomeshi, a Canadian musician and radio star charged with sexual assault.  He was cool. He was a voice of social justice. And when he was the target of allegations by more than 23 accusations of sexual abuse, he was unemployed and a pariah. As is the fashion, he was assumed guilty by all, because “survivors” must be believed, and, as has been urged in the Bill Cosby allegations of rape, multiple accusers can’t possibly be wrong.

Ghomeshi was tried and acquitted of four counts of sexual abuse and one count of “overcoming resistance by choking” in a bench trial by Justice William B. Horkins.

While there is a problem when a defendant is convicted, that they can never sufficiently pay their debt to society, no matter what the crime, so that they can move on with a productive, law-abiding life, there is a collateral problem when a defendant is acquitted. Once accused, at least when it comes to a crime of gender, there is no way out. There is no debt to pay, no retribution to cleanse the hatred, no finality, because acquittal does not prove innocence. There is never innocence.

Which leaves a question that demands an answer: what went wrong? How did this obviously guilty person get away with it?  Unsurprisingly, the answer can be found in how “survivors” were failed by the system. Jezebel explains: Continue reading →

Larry Lyttle has his finger on the pulse of the homebound and unemployed.  He’s the guy who made ex-judge Jerry Sheindlin unbelievably rich, just by getting into the other side of the bed from his wife, Judy. That’s Judge Judy to you.

How do you not love Judge Judy?  She’s got magic powers that enable her to know who’s right and wrong, truthful and lying, before anybody even says a word.  She gives us pearls of legal wisdom that are never too long to fit comfortably inside a fortune cookie.  And she earned $47 million, working only 52 days a year, making her the poster judge for work/life balance.

Don’t blame Larry. His job is to come up with great television, and great is defined by what people want to watch so that networks can sell advertising that will save us from restless legs syndrome and leaky pipes. He’s not required to make sure we get good law. And should he give me a call (operators are standing by, Larry), you can bet your ass I’ll answer the phone. Continue reading →