With a tip from Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire who described herself as “Jewish. queer/agender/woman/she” with an overactive twitter account seeking out and attacking people for their failure to live up to her woke demands, an article in Science accused James Webb of being unworthy of having a telescope named after him.

But as the telescope neared completion, criticism flared. In 2015, Matthew Francis, a science journalist, wrote an article for Forbes titled “The Problem With Naming Observatories for Bigots.” He wrote that Mr. Webb led the anti-gay purge at the State Department and that he had testified of his contempt for gay people. He credited Dr. Prescod-Weinstein with tipping him off, and she in turn tweeted his article and attacked Mr. Webb as a “homophobe.”

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What’s Christmas without traditions? Merry Christmas all and thank you for stopping by here.

Esau McCaulley writes of hearing the “Christmas spiritual ‘Sweet Little Jesus Boy‘” when he was a young boy in his grandmother’s kitchen. Great. And it would be totally fine if he just really liked it, or even kinda liked it, or even just remembered it. But that’s not lofty enough to set us up for where he’s taking us.

“Sweet Little Jesus Boy” was, in my childhood imagination, a connection to the faith of my ancestors, a song composed in the hush harbors where enslaved people gathered clandestinely to celebrate the birth of our savior. The song fought for supremacy in Black church Christmas services alongside hymns like “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Mary Had a Baby.”

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There is a general assumption that if a venue is open to the public, then you can buy your ticket and enter. The basis of this assumption is that it’s pretty much the way the world has always functioned, not to mention that it would be pretty bonkers otherwise. After all, if you’re in business to sell tickets to your venue, why would you not want people to buy them, watch whatever display you’re putting on and enjoy it, just as you enjoy the sweet, sweet money they’re paying for entry? Continue reading →

When fire broke out in the police evidence warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, my initial reaction was that a lot of defendants were going to walk when the prosecution was unable to introduce evidence at trial. But the Legal Aid Society has raised a very different question about lost evidence.

A week after a three-alarm fire destroyed a Red Hook New York City Police Department warehouse that contained decades’ worth of evidence, the Legal Aid Society said the blaze will have “far-reaching consequences” for ongoing court cases and called for the city to conduct a thorough investigation of what was lost in the fire and contact defendants whose cases have been impacted. Continue reading →

It’s painful to read the hyperbolic rhetoric of Ian Milhiser at Vox, if only because it’s like watching an aneurysm happen in real time, but beneath the hysteria, an actual legitimate point be found on occasion. This was such an occasion, under the obviously persuasive headline, America’s Trumpiest court doesn’t care if your right to a fair trial was violated.

Last Thursday, however, a far-right panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit effectively eliminated state prisoners’ right to seek what is known as a “writ of habeas corpus” when they are imprisoned in violation of the Constitution or federal law, except in cases of “factual innocence.” Continue reading →

Piling onto the California rape conviction of Harvey Weinstein, losing Manhattan DA candidate Tali Farhadian Weinstein and Jane Manning, former prosecutor and Women’s Equal Justice Project argue in the New York Times that propensity evidence should be admissible in court, but only for sex crimes.

Disagreements over how much a jury should know about a defendant aren’t new. The American legal system has long checked prosecutors’ wish to share negative history about the accused. Prosecutors pursue crimes, not people, and we are supposed to hold people accountable for their bad acts, not their bad reputation. Continue reading →

It’s hard to blame El Paso Democratic mayor Oscar Leeser, who has done his best to be compassionate to those crossing the border without prior authorization. But he knows he’s got a problem.

El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser issued an emergency declaration Saturday night to address the increase in migrants crossing the southern border, citing the dangerous winter conditions and shelters lacking the capacity to meet the demand next week. Continue reading →

Is it wrong for a city government to make the deliberate choice of trying to be more sensitive to and accommodating of street crime? While there may be good reason to be more understanding and less harsh than governments have historically been when they viewed crime as a social and moral failing rather than the last recourse of victims and the end result of oppression, it presents something of a problem for local businesses, particularly in the Tenderloin of Frisco.

Another merchant revolt is in the works four months after small business owners in the Castro penned a letter to various city officials demanding, among other things, that 35 beds in the city’s shelter system be designated for unhoused people in the LGBTQ neighborhood. This time, business owners in the beleaguered Tenderloin are demanding a refund of last year’s taxes and fees to help them cover the costs of trying to sustain businesses amid the crime and drug dealing on the neighborhood’s streets. Continue reading →

When the Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed in 1986, it was in the throes of the crack epidemic. Crack was some super-evil drug, invariably addictive, giving its users superhuman strength and such an extreme need for more crack that they would engage in all manner of violent and horrific acts to get the money for their next fix. At the same time, powdered coke was the darling of the hip set, snorted openly at cool places like Studio 54 by hip folks with names everyone knew. Continue reading →