If President Trump does what he announced he would do, name his nominee to sit in the seat once occupied by Antonin Scalia, the past 24 hours of hysteria will be replaced by the next 24 hours of hysteria. The biggest question is whether there are any more adjectives available to proclaim that Trump is “literally Hitler”?

It’s not exactly a new phenomenon on the internets. That’s why Mike Godwin came up with the meme:

Godwin’s law (or Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage which asserts that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1″ — that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler.

Promulgated by American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin’s law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions. It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric where reductio ad Hitlerum occurs.

But this time it’s different. This time it’s REAL!!! The Holocaust is happening right in front of us!!! And if you don’t see it, if you don’t become hysterical about it too, then you are either blind or one of them. How can you not SEE IT?!? Continue reading →

For the most part, I decline offers of free books for review these days, having little extra time for leisurely reading and, frankly, because most of the books are pretty awful. But when I saw that KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor’s new book came out, I reached out to KC for a copy. This was one book I wanted to read, The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities.

I chose wisely.

Before going forward, I note that I haven’t finished the book yet, but write this review because KC has taken to Volokh Conspiracy this week to write about his book, and I think it’s more important that anyone reading here be aware of the VC posts so that you can keep abreast of KC’s and Stuart’s work.

The subject of the book is quite familiar to me, having written a great many posts about it. And yet, I learned, and continue learning, from the rich details and timeframe provided by the meticulous research and crafting of how we ended up where we are today from a law, originally enacted in 1964, then extended to education by the enactment of Title IX in 1972, with the laudable purpose of eliminating sex discrimination in education. Continue reading →

Fifty-two rapes? That’s shocking. If true, it’s outrageous. And according to the suit filed by “Elizabeth Doe,” they happened at Baylor University.

A former Baylor University student who says she was raped by two football players filed a federal lawsuit Friday against the school that alleges there were dozens more assaults of women involving other players.

The lawsuit by the student, who is listed in the documents only as “Elizabeth Doe,” alleges at least 52 rapes by more than 30 football players over a four-year period.

It also alleges a “culture of sexual violence” and describes her 2013 attack by two players. It doesn’t detail the other alleged attacks, but says some were recorded by the players, who shared them with friends.

Continue reading →

The official position of the president is that everything went great this weekend in the Immigration Executive Order.

“It’s working out very nicely,” Trump told reporters early Saturday evening. In fact, Trump pointed to the airports themselves as proof: “You see it at the airports, you see it all over, its working out very nicely, and we’re going to have a very strict ban, and we’re going to have extreme vetting, which we should have had in this country for many years.”

For most administrations, “very nicely” doesn’t include emergency stays granted by judges around the country. But while protesters chilled screaming into the void, and the ACLU counted its money and did its victory dance. adherence to the orders was haphazard.

According to widespread but largely unverified reports, after being detained at great length, handcuffed, having their social media accounts inspected, being questioned about how feel about Trump, many legal permanent residents were admitted. Not good, but it could have been worse. Continue reading →

There’s a hot new French restaurant in Manhattan, so naturally we wanted to go. We love classic French food, far more so than the nouvelle cuisine that so many chefs try to invent so they can become famous for their being on the cutting edge. The name is Le Coucou. The problem is getting a reservation.

Dr. SJ gave them a call to make a reservation, but no one answered the phone. Then again, they use Open Table for reservations, so no reason to speak with a human being. It seems they only do reservations a month in advance. Fair enough. So, she gave it a go on a Saturday morning to make a reservation four Saturdays hence. Nothing. Not a chance. Booked solid.

Le Couou, being the hot new restaurant, likely attracts a great many people who, like us, want to try it, and perhaps like us, appreciate classic French cuisine more than the new cool kind. Have you ever tried Tobacco Ice Cream? It’s disgusting. You can’t make this stuff up. What we figured was that they opened reservations at midnight. Maybe the deal was to punch in that Open Table reservation around midnight to get a reservation. That must be it. Continue reading →

There are questions upon questions, such as whether the Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, vetted the Trump Executive Order before its issuance. It’s not that OLC’s opinion makes it legal, but at the very least it would show that Trump understood the ramifications of the order and intended them.

Did Trump mean to block legal permanent residents, green card holders, from the United States? These are people with homes, car loans, kids in school, who have been here for some length of time, often decades. They have no other home, no other country. They pay taxes, serve in the military, bake cupcakes and perform brain surgery on your child.

There were assertions that Customs and Border Patrol had no clue what they were supposed to do about the EO, and left to their own devices, did their worst as they are wont to do. They detained and blocked with abandon. Were DHS and its subsidiary agencies kept in the dark or fully informed, as Trump supposedly claimed? The former appears most likely, but who knows?

What is known is that the ACLU went to various courts with Habeas Corpus petitions. In the Eastern District of New York, where JFK airport is situated, they obtained a Writ from Judge Ann M. Donnelly. Continue reading →

If Charles Manson somehow managed to get himself released from prison, would he be your choice of an inspirational speaker? A freak show, perhaps, but getting past the fact that he’s the poster boy for the absolute worst of schizophrenia and paranoid delusions. He’s not the guy you would invite to dinner, even if you could.

But Manson has the experience to tell you about prison, about being sentenced to death, about many of the issues that confront society. It’s not that he lacks the knowledge and experience to offer insight. It’s that he’s a psycho killer.

So what makes Donna Hylton a wise choice for a person to speak to hundreds of thousands of women at their march?  At Fault Lines, Matt Brown tries to thread the needle of what someone like Hylton has to offer despite what she did. The “what she did” part needs to be said. Continue reading →

In his signing message on October 3, 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson explained that the immigration law of the United States, mired in our preference for “good” immigrants from Western Europe, would no longer be based upon what kind of people we “liked.” Those days were done.

This bill says simply that from this day forth those wishing to immigrate to America shall be admitted on the basis of their skills and their close relationship to those already here.

This is a simple test, and it is a fair test. Those who can contribute most to this country–to its growth, to its strength, to its spirit–will be the first that are admitted to this land.

The fairness of this standard is so self-evident that we may well wonder that it has not always been applied. Yet the fact is that for over four decades the immigration policy of the United States has been twisted and has been distorted by the harsh injustice of the national origins quota system.

Are they back? So it would seem. While many argue policy and fallacy, because it’s so much easier to spew feelings, whether supported or passionate, Cato’s David Bier does the unthinkable. He argues law. Continue reading →

How cool is it to buy something “as seen on TV”! After all, if it’s on the telly, it must be real. Not necessarily? Fair enough. But if a Shark on TV buys into it, then it really, really must be real. After all, these are rich guys and they know stuff, right? And if all five sharks go for it, then it doesn’t get more real.

Except when it’s not.

Remember the Breathometer?

You have to admit, it’s a very cool idea. Test your sobriety on your iPhone. Tech plus tech means you’ll never get busted for drunk driving. Plus, you won’t kill babies. Always a plus. And it was available at an Amazon near you! Continue reading →

Swept into the kettle of felony riot charges during the inauguration of Donald Trump (the one with more people in attendance than all inaugurations ever, if only they can find the really good pictures that truthfully show what Trump believes) were six journalists covering events. The Guardian went nuts.

“These charges are clearly inappropriate, and we are concerned that they could send a chilling message to journalists covering future protests,” said Carlos Lauría, the CPJ’s senior Americas program coordinator. “We call on authorities in Washington to drop these charges immediately.”

“The way we were treated was an absolute travesty,” said Keller, whose cellphone has been kept by the authorities. Keller’s editor, Annabel Park, said: “It is a maddening and frustrating situation. These are people who were there observing and documenting.”

The handling of the arrests was, indeed, a travesty. Some people were engaged in criminal conduct, burning limos and smashing windows. And so the police rounded them up, en masse, by surrounding the group and herding them into what has been called the “kettle.” So what? They deserved it? Continue reading →