There was once a time when a shake of the hands was good enough for a contract to be formed that people felt obligated to honor. In some instances, it was a valid contract. In others, it wasn’t. But either way, one’s word was one’s bond, and honoring one’s word was what one did. The point isn’t that people never found themselves unable to keep their word, but that when they didn’t, they felt shame for their failure to do so.

Is this still the case? Will this be how people feel going forward? Or is shame for failure to honor one’s obligation the latest “stigma” to fall out of favor? Continue reading →

There was no question that the old constitution from Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who seized power from socialist Salvador Allende, had to go, and who better than former student activist, 36-year-old leftist president Gabriel Boric, to create a glorious new Constitution that would change everything.

Chilean voters rejected a 170-page, 388-article proposal that would have legalized abortion, mandated universal health care, required gender parity in government, given Indigenous groups greater autonomy, empowered labor unions, strengthened regulations on mining and granted rights to nature and animals. Continue reading →

It was hard to miss with its prominent placement on the top right corner of the New York Times’ home page, and what it said was pretty shocking. American theater is a hotbed of racism?

In a way, it shouldn’t be surprising. The more sensitive a group is toward an issue, the greater the issue looms and the more damnable the group is. But it’s the irony of it all, the theater, those people most theoretically progressive, sensitive, empathetic, and open to rhetorical gibberish that appeals to the uneducated and shallow mind, would seem to be the least racist place one could find outside of the grievance studies department in academia. Yet, here we were, racism as the star. Who knew? Continue reading →

There’s a kid in Iowa or Kansas, somewhere that doesn’t appear on New York maps, named Derek who is constantly replying to my twits by going ballistic about my friendship with Mike Cernovich. Yes, that Mike Cernovich. I’ve known Mike for a long time now, as he was doing a blawg called Crime and Federalism with Norm Pattis back when SJ was born. Mike,  you see, is a lawyer, and a very smart one. That’s when we became friends.

And there’s another kid who used to be ridiculed for being a bit overweight, not being the best speller and being a little loose with details when he wrote at Above the Law, after winning David Lat’s “ATL Idol” contest by being very funny. And he was very funny, and very smart, and provocative but in a way that would have you rolling on the floor. Elie Mystal was a friend, he would jokingly call my “angry black man friend.” At least I thought he was joking, but he never came to dinner, so who knows? Continue reading →

The concluding sentence of Mary Pilon’s homage to economic ignorance points at us.

Now it’s on fans to pay attention.

To be fair, more you (if you follow basketball) than me, since I’m not really a fan. But either way, Pilon’s dot connections are clear: the reason Brittney Griner in in prison in Russia is because you suck at being fans. Continue reading →

It’s the first day of school,* so the Times has a series of op-eds about education in America. It’s an interesting mix of the usual assortment of fantasy and condemnation that largely goes nowhere as the educational establishment engages in its annual determination of what new fashion trend to promote this time around.

But one op-ed faces a hard choice, one that is so disfavored as to require parents to go to court to stop their local school board from trampling hard working, dedicated students under the sharp hooves of their unicorns. It’s an homage to merit. Continue reading →

At the New York Times, Charles Blow announced that “Defund the Police” is dead. It’s not that it needed announcing, but that it died with such a whimper that few noticed, but with President Biden talking about putting more cops on the street, Blow made a political assessment.

Some said it was dumb.

Some thought it was politically disastrous. Continue reading →

Talking to a long-time SJ reader, I spoke of the social shift between the time SJ started in 2007 and now. Back then, people were still of the general view that police were the good guys and that the bad things people claimed cops did were, well, untrue. Why would they do that? A great question to which there was no good answer, because there was often no good reason for the violence, the meanness and the cruelty, yet it happened. Continue reading →

Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick has been doing a series of posts about a stunningly dystopian scheme to protect children from “inappropriate” content, whatever that means in California, and which could very well end up affecting SJ (and hence you, dear reader) as it would the readers of Techdirt and pretty much every other site in existence.

Eric Goldman parsed the bill when it was little more than a twinkle in an unduly passionate eye.

First, the bill pretextually claims to protect children, but it will change the Internet for EVERYONE. In order to determine who is a child, websites and apps will have to authenticate the age of ALL consumers before they can use the service. NO ONE WANTS THIS. Continue reading →

Sure, the Supreme Court held that corporal punishment in schools was not cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment in Ingraham v. Wright, but we’re better than that now. We don’t let teachers strike kids anymore. We know that’s harmful, that’s cruel and that’s wrong. Or do we?

The road to corporal punishment in Cassville, [Missouri] a city located nearly 60 miles southeast of Springfield, started earlier this year with an anonymous survey of parents, students and school employees. Continue reading →