A few years back, I queried whether David Cole, the legal director of the organization that uses the legacy name American Civil Liberties Union, could save the ACLU from becoming the apologist for the termination of civil liberties and the enforcer of the woke brand of political correctness. Experience since suggests that he won’t be its savior.

Cole has now pounded the final nail in his coffin in what may be one of the most shamefully unprincipled arguments ever proffered to eradicate constitutional rights and subjugate people to the will of the woke.

Can an artist be compelled to create a website for an event she does not condone? That’s the question the Supreme Court has said it will take up on Monday, when it hears oral arguments in 303 Creative v. Elenis. The answer would seem to be obviously “no.”

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Why did they go after Jack Phillips? Why didn’t Jack Phillips just bake a cake? Why must this war play out in Masterpiece Cake Shop? As it turned out, it didn’t get resolved by Justice Anthony Kennedy’s punt of a ruling which compelled Phillips to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court only to end up with a non-answer. This is why the Court will hear oral argument in Lori Smith’s case today.

Ms. Smith, in an interview in her modest but cheerful studio in an office building in a suburb of Denver, sat near a plaque that echoed a Bible verse: “I am God’s masterpiece.” She said she was happy to create graphics and websites for anyone, including L.G.B.T.Q. people. But her Christian faith, she said, did not allow her to create messages celebrating same-sex marriages. Continue reading →

It’s not the Onion. It’s not even surprising. It is, however, nuts.

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Orin Kerr noted that the writing was remarkably good for a college sophomore, but even more remarkable was that Brooks Anderson, ’25, had the guts to write it, and the Crimson the guts to publish it. The “it” is a stinging takedown of Harvard University’s bureaucracy bloat, living proof of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

Harvard is one of the world’s preeminent universities; surely it has used its billions of dollars of accumulated wealth to primarily invest in its educational program, building an unparalleled roster of top professors, expanding offerings to students, and reducing class sizes. Right? Continue reading →

Not that it applies here, as SJ does not exist for “profit-making purposes,”* but the New York lege enacted a new law that would require any website that allows users to post public comments to become the hate speech police by calling it “hateful conduct” rather than hate speech, which is fully protected by the First Amendment and for which liability is precluded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Not that New York cared. Continue reading →

The question is not (I repeat, not) whether people who are suffering from mental illness and homelessness need and deserve societal care and concern. They do. They do for their sake. They do for our sake. They do. But as passionately as some want to either help them out of compassion or be rid of them out of annoyance, there remains one thing that we learned all too well following the Willowbrook scandal (thanks, Geraldo) and the horrors of  forced institutionalization of the mentally ill. They, too, have rights. Continue reading →

San Francisco, of all places, approved a measure to use killer robots. No, not robots that will run around with their own deadly agenda, but robots that will be armed and sent into situations where they can be used to kill.

Police in San Francisco will be allowed to deploy potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots in emergency situations. The controversial policy was approved after weeks of scrutiny and a heated debate among the city’s board of supervisors during their meeting on Tuesday.

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I remember very well the discussion among a small group of fencing parents whose kids trained with my son. It was back when our children were applying to college. They were all top students with top grades and scores, and each was a top nationally ranked fencer. I complained about how colleges had no interest in my son, a white Jewish boy from Long Island.

The other parents laughed. What about their children, Asian kids with perfect SAT scores who played all-state cello and won national science prizes? They didn’t stand a chance.** Continue reading →

The the other day, a question was posed whether the fact that an interlocutor was a “mediocre cis white dude” was relevant to anything, in juxtaposition to the uniformity of opinion by, in this instance, “‘every’ trans writer” as related by @AngryBlackLady.

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Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy twitter. What a maroon. I own twitter, and I didn’t spend a dime. When twitter first appeared, I refused to play. I said then I had no thoughts that could be reduced to 140 characters, as it was when it forced people to be disciplined in their expression to fit within the confines of a twit.

Do you really want to know what book I’m reading, in real time?  What about my thoughts on the Giant’s chances of making it to the playoffs?  Or how many cups of coffee I drink every morning.  As I said to Kevin, we already have too much information.  This is just way too much. Continue reading →