It’s a question I’ve been asking for a while* here: Why is it people prefer misery? They catastrophize everything. They absurdly exaggerate everything bad. They inductively reason that one outlier instance of something tragic means it’s endemic. They whip up a word salad about some banal thing that’s been happening forever and, while perhaps unpleasant, never caused any actual damage that’s going to destroy humanity before the end of the week. Why? It’s not merely a matter of neglect but an active choice. You want everything to be the worst thing ever and the end of humanity.
Author Archives: SHG
Hate Is Never Wrong
In a series of “I was wrong about” op-eds, New York Times’ columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote about her being wrong to condemn Al Franken in an essay all about why she wasn’t really wrong. Another columnist, never-Trump conservative Bret Stephens had his own mea culpa essay.
The worst line I ever wrote as a pundit — yes, I know, it’s a crowded field — was the first line I ever wrote about the man who would become the 45th president: “If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.”
When The Rules Work Against You
Is the Senate anti-democratic? Is the electoral college some absurd arcane contraption, the existence of which not only defies the notion of majority rules but invites gamesmanship, if not a coup should we have a president so unworthy as to consider such a thing? Well, yes. There are reasons why these things exist, why the system was crafted the way it was in order to create any union, no less a more perfect one, because without the Senate, without the electoral college, would there be a United States of America at all?
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of 16 senators, led by Susan Collins of Maine and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, released the text of a new bill intended to make it harder to overturn the results of a presidential election. A direct response to Donald Trump’s multipronged attempt to stay in power, the bill is meant to keep a future candidate for president, including a losing incumbent, from following the same playbook.
Short Take: Does The Bar Exam Discriminate?
Should the bar exam be eliminated? There is a lot packed into that question about the efficacy of the bar exam, whether it serves to assure a minimum level of competence for admitted lawyers or whether it’s a waste of time, a barrier to keep the number of lawyers down and/or a rite of passage. But is it discriminatory?
The recommendation to eliminate the admissions testing requirement comes amidst cascading charges that reliance on the Law School Admission Test hurts minority applicants. The proposition is sharply contested by many friends of diversity…. Some find it stigmatizing to be told they can’t do as well on the test as White applicants. But given that the case against the test appears to have persuaded the wordily named Council of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the LSAT does indeed represent an unfair barrier to entry to the legal profession. Continue reading
Goldberg Discovers Due Process Too Late
I vaguely recall thinking that maybe, just maybe, the New York Times uber-millennial progressive columnist was growing up, only to have my hope dashed on the rocks of simplicity the next week. And yet, ever the optimist, here it comes again and maybe, just maybe, this time it will be real.
I called on Franken to resign from the Senate, not because I thought his alleged actions were irredeemable, but because I thought Democrats should free themselves of the burden of defending him.
The Too Weak “Yes”
It’s understandable that someone who graduated from college last year would believe that “legal sex” required affirmative consent. After all, it’s become the rule on college campuses, and they’ve been thoroughly indoctrinated into it by programs, plays, seminars, discussion groups, marches and powerpoint presentations.
So when Emma Camp “explains” what constitutes “legal sex,” she can hardly be blamed for believing it, even if she’s not a lawyer and knows absolutely nothing about law.* After all, this is what’s been beaten into her head over the last ten minutes when she’s been adulting. Continue reading
Tuesday Talk*: Money Ain’t For Nothing
Money talks, but what does it say?
In Arizona, Democrats have intervened on behalf of Kari Lake, a candidate for governor who has fanned lies about the 2020 election and demanded the imprisonment of the Democratic front-runner. In Pennsylvania, Democrats ran ads boosting Doug Mastriano, a Christian theocrat who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection before running for governor.
Those Who Can’t, Teach
A few days ago, Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern put out a call on twitter to academics to find out how they would teach law going forward in light of the current Supreme Court state of Affairs. He posed his inquiry in a relatively fair and neutral way.
To Pull Or Not To Pull, There Is No Good Answer
Aaron Sibarium took a huge risk by raising an important point in the context of a scenario so deeply emotional that the expectation of calm, reasoned consideration of his point was nearly impossible. And indeed, many were outraged and mustered their best snark challenges to the particulars for lack of grasping the concept. As the example raised was the police failure at Uvalde, this outcome was not only understandable, but wholly unsurprising. Nonetheless, the point raised was still important.
But when cops in Texas have pulled the trigger under similar circumstances, they’ve ended up in court. In at least three cases since 2014, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided against police officers who made split-second decisions to shoot armed suspects—one of whom appeared to be headed for a Texas high school. The court, which has jurisdiction over the Lone Star State, denied several officers’ requests for qualified immunity, a legal defense that protects police from civil lawsuits. Continue reading
When “Special Needs” Are Invoked Instead of Probable Cause
The backstory, in itself, is one of those peculiar tales of the times, where certain words and phrases take on magical meaning untethered from whatever is really going on. It may be bad or it may not, but it’s hard to tell from the Second Circuit’s recitation of the facts in Torcivia v. Suffolk County.
Father, who had imbibed a few, and 17-year-old daughter were having a fight over her guinea pig at one in the morning. So she called the cops. There was no claim the the father hit her, but that he was being angry and saying mean things to her. So the cops came ready to take dad down. Was the daughter afraid of being harmed? Was the father a danger? Or was something else happening here, which the police called a “domestic dispute” because it was his daughter and in the home. Continue reading