I still remember the surprise when I read a post by David French promoting Red Flag Laws as the solution to gun violence.

A so-called “red flag” law fills the gaps in criminal law and the laws governing mental-health adjudications by granting standing to a defined, limited universe of people to seek temporary seizure orders — called gun-violence-restraining orders — for a gun if they can present admissible evidence that the gun’s owner is exhibiting threatening behavior.

Properly drafted, these laws can save lives while also protecting individual liberty. Improperly drafted, they grant the state an overly broad tool that can be systematically abused to deprive disfavored citizens of a fundamental constitutional right.

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Did the January 6 Committee’s public hearings do the trick? According to an ABC/Ipsos poll, it would appear to be the case, as almost 60% of those polled believe Trump committed crimes.

In the poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, 58% of Americans think Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the riot. That’s up slightly from late April, before the hearings began, when an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 52% of Americans thought the former president should be charged.

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When Martin Luther King Day was made a federal holiday in 1983, it was quite the controversy. When Juneteenth was made a federal holiday, there was almost no discussion. Whether that’s a sign of the change in American attitude toward recognition of slavery and the historic discrimination against black people or something else is unclear, but the lack of discussion raises a question. How do we celebrate Juneteenth?

It marks the day in 1865 — June 19 — when some of the last enslaved people in the United States, in Texas, learned that they had been freed, roughly two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Continue reading →

When the mob descended upon someone for making what someone deemed an incorrect utterance, the target had choices. One was to shrug and let the chips fall where they may. One was to defend against the vicissitudes of the mob attempt to dictate correctness to others by fiat. And one was to apologize and repent, often performing an act of contrition to demonstrate the sincerity of obsequiousness to the aggrieved and offended.

If you will recall, Dave Weigel, of the joking Weigels, attempted the third option, immediately deleting his retwit of the putatively offensive joke and apologizing for the error of his ways. Rather than end the torment, it emboldened Felicia Sonmez and others who tasted blood to pound harder.

Lizzo, on the other hand, pulled it off. Continue reading →

If you’ve had better things to do over the last week or two than follow what reporters are doing on Twitter, congratulate yourself for minimizing your exposure to the shitstorm we’re going to discuss today.

David Weigel is a reporter for the Washington Post. I’m not really familiar with Dave’s work, but I do know in the last couple of weeks he retweeted a bad joke.

The joke, in case you were wondering, was something told by a YouTuber named Cam Harless, who apparently twitted “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.” Continue reading →

The demise of the jury trial has been a frequent subject of inquiry from within the profession to academics and think tanks. The most common solution is to ban plea bargaining, thus forcing defendants to go to trial and, hopefully, constraining prosecutors from charging as many defendants as they do now because of the physical and logistical limitations of trying cases, a highly speculative and dubious outcome.

This solution is, as I’ve argued here* and at Cato Institute, simplistic and foolish, ignoring the complex reasons why pleas have overwhelmed trials and putting every defendant to go to trial, despite having no defense, and being at risk of being sentenced to life plus cancer with no safety valve or alternative. Continue reading →

It’s happening in some backwater county in a state that doesn’t even have oceanfront property, so how important could it be?

The commission’s members include Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin, who ascribes to unsubstantiated claims that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Griffin was convicted of illegally entering restricted U.S. Capitol grounds — though not the building — amid the riots on Jan. 6, 2021, and is scheduled for sentencing later this month. He acknowledged that the standoff over this primary could delay the outcome of local election races.

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As it happened, I caught Neal Katyal on MSNBC the other night where he tried out his “three audiences” theme to the most obedient audience possible. It didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work in his effort to manufacture an excuse for Attorney General Merrick Garland’s failure to do what he, channeling Larry Tribe, contends is unquestionable. Why has the Department of Justice not prosecuted Donald Trump?

Critics of the hearings who say they are too detailed and dry miss the multiple intended audiences. When I argue before the United States Supreme Court, there are several audiences. One is the nine justices. Another audience is the public — both in the courtroom and listeners online. And there’s a third audience: history.

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When I asked who Lizzo was, I was informed that she was “body positive” black woman singer whose hallmarks were “twerking” and calling people “bitches.” But even LIzzo has limits,apparently.

As a fat Black woman in America, I’ve had many hurtful words used against me so I overstand the power words can have (whether intentionally or in my case, unintentionally,)” she continued. “I’m proud to say there’s a new version of GRRRLS with a lyric change. This is the result of me listening and taking action. As an influential artist I’m dedicated to being part of the change I’ve been waiting to see in the world.

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The recall of Frisco district attorney Chesa Boudin has given rise to two opposing lessons. The first is that criminal law reform is dead, blamed as the cause of increasing crime and a growing public sense that society has become unsafe. The second is that the problem is messaging, as tough-on-crime advocates are proving successful in lying to the public to foster fears and a backlash against progressive prosecutors.

The reality is that neither of these is either accurate or useful in explaining complex problems. Crime is trending up again, after a lengthy unexplained drop from the really bad old days of the 1990s. It’s nowhere near what it was back then, but it’s also not remaining at its low levels or still falling. People not only know this from the media reports, but from their own observations and life. Denying it is not merely bizarre, but foolishly ineffective. Continue reading →