As frauds go, Theranos was a doozy, for which Elizabeth Holmes was properly convicted.and sentenced to 135 months (11 years, three months for base 12 impaired). Few people shed tears over the length of her sentence. Many condemned the sentence as far too lenient, given the magnitude of her fraud and the nature of harm Theranos’ false claims could have caused. As for Holmes, she went from high tech waif to the embodiment of “fake it till you make it,” a sadly admired state for many in the tech industry.

There was a time, however, when the public wasn’t addicted to astronomical sentences, when a sentence over ten years was reserved for the most heinous of crimes, murders and rapes. There was also a time when a distinction of moral culpability was made between the person who would commit a violent crime from financial crime, so-called “white collar” crime. Should there be? Continue reading →

Relegated to retired Florida man by the New York Post, others seem to be in desperate need of making Trump matter again. It began with another bit of Elon Musk silliness on the twitters, a poll asking whether Trump should be let back in.

The people have spoken.

Trump will be reinstated.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei. https://t.co/jmkhFuyfkv

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2022

Continue reading →

For much of this nation’s history, people convicted (and often merely charged) with crimes were denied rights afforded “people” under the Constitution. To a surprisingly large extent in retrospect, this was uncontroversial and mostly taken for granted. Obviously, commit a felony, go to prison, lose your rights. Lose your right to vote. Lose your right to live near a school. Lose your right to engage in licensed occupations. Lose your right to move freely without notifying the police. Lose your right to possess a gun.

With regard to the right to keep and bear arms, the question of what was meant by Scalia’s unprincipled and unjustified errant paragraph in Heller has been a source of consternation. To add insult to injury, the Court’s latest effort to reduce the Second Amendment to untenable incoherence, Bruen, where the scope of the right to keep and bear arms would not be premised on a discernable principle, but on “history and tradition,” a standard which makes the “reasonable person” standard seem informative. Continue reading →

Today’s story isn’t one I would necessarily consider “funny” by any stretch of the word, dear riders. It is true, it’s wild, and one I’d be remiss if I didn’t try to do some justice. Today we’re going to look at the life of “Dr.” Jerry Graham.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Graham started wrestling at the tender age of fourteen. Lauded for his skills on the microphone, he would get teamed up early in his career with a kid from Chattanooga named Eddie Gossett who would become Graham’s storyline brother, Eddie Graham. Continue reading →

How odd that both Yale Law School and Harvard decided on the same day that they would no longer be enablers to U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of law schools. And then the next day Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Berkeley hopped on their coattails as backbenchers are wont to do. Such a weird coincidence.

Having come from an age before law school rankings at USNWR, I’ve neither been a fan nor frankly cared at all about the list. More importantly, I’ve known many lawyers who went to Harvard and Yale law schools,* teaching me that it’s not the school but the individual that makes a great lawyer. So the fact that any law school decides to pull out is not, in itself, of any consequence. If the rankings collapsed tomorrow, I would lose no sleep. Continue reading →

Two lawyers in their early 30s threw a Molotov cocktail into a police car. There were no cops inside, which may have mattered or not, but at least they killed no one when they chose, in their self-indulgent passion, to throw a bomb. They have now pleaded guilty to the crime, so they no longer enjoy the presumption of innocence. And they are no longer lawyers.

Suspended Pryor Cashman associate Colinford Mattis and public interest attorney Urooj Rahman are pictured in photos taken by U.S. authorities following their arrests in New York on May 30, 2020. U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York/Handout via Reuters

Continue reading →

At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern loses his mind over the absurdity of it all.

There are many other statutes that bar sex discrimination, and the Biden administration has declared that many of these measures protect LGBTQ people under Bostock. Yet Trump Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk keeps halting Biden’s implementation of the Supreme Court’s decision. The judge’s latest salvo came on Friday, when he ruled that neither the Affordable Care Act nor Title IX protect LGBTQ people. This conclusion is a head-scratcher because the ACA (which bars health care discrimination) and Title IX (which bars discrimination in education) forbid sex discrimination, just as the Civil Rights Act does. So what’s the difference? Continue reading →

After my wife and daughter finished their delicious breakfast, they went to pay the tab only to learn that the restaurant didn’t accept plastic. Of course, that’s their right as there is no rule that they need to finance Visa and Mastercard, but it put them in an awkward position as they don’t carry much cash these days.

Fortunately, they were able to find enough to pay by scrounging for pennies at the bottom of a purse, but what would have happened had they not had the cash? No doubt regulars knew the rules, but there was no warning on the door or menu that only cash was accepted, so how would they know? Continue reading →

Last Saturday, I was the keynote speaker at a conference of FACE, Families Advocating for Campus Equality. It was a sobering experience in a great many ways, meeting many parents and students who have been through the wringer of being wrongfully found responsible for sexual misconduct of some form or another and having to deal with the consequences.

While the deal is that nobody talks about fight club, one of the themes that emerges was how to inform new students and their parents of the Kafkaesque nightmare of campus sex inquisitions. Concern for this issue has been greatly exacerbated by the impending shift in rules under Catherine Lhamon, Biden’s head of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, who is determined to undo the minimal due process provided under the DeVos rules, perhaps the only thing the Trump administration got right. Having spent a decade fighting to give the accused a chance to defend themselves, the whiplash felt by Lhamon’s malicious undoing of the reform is painful. Continue reading →

Before they had any clue what he would say, the writers at Saturday Night Live were ready to storm the castle, because Dave Chappelle, black comedian though he may be, was in the evil category because he continued to make jokes after the new taboos went into effect.

He last hosted the sketch comedy show in 2020, well before Netflix released his 2021 special “The Closer.” It angered some viewers because many of Chappelle’s jokes were aimed at the trans community. For example, he intentionally misgendered a trans friend and fellow comedian for laughs.

Continue reading →