There are better criminal defense lawyers and worse criminal defense lawyers. There are lawyers who care and lawyers who don’t. There are lawyers who have the time and lawyers who are too busy to be able to do what needs to be done. There are incompetent lawyers. Most don’t know, or won’t admit, they suck at law. Many will fight to their last breath to argue they don’t. If only they would put that level of energy into fighting for their clients.

You can’t discuss this problem without inviting outrage from whatever interest group gets poked. And to be fair, there are incompetent lawyers across the board, from retained counsel to indigent defense to public defenders. Sometimes it’s due to circumstances, lack of time or money, carrying too high a caseload or getting too little compensation to pay for the time and resources needed. Continue reading →

My wife came home yesterday and told me that the guy on the radio said the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. I calmly told her they didn’t reverse anything, but held oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. She was unconvinced, so we turned on the news. It was a bit fuzzier, but made the clear point that it wasn’t “if,” but “how” the Supreme Court would reverse Roe. She gave me that face, the one that says “so everybody else is wrong and you’re right?”

I get that face a lot. Continue reading →

As I’ve made clear in the past, I don’t use it. Not because I can’t. My mouth can form the word. Not even because my buddy Elie tells me I’m never allowed to. Elie’s got a lot of rules like that. It’s simply a matter of choice, and I choose not to. But that doesn’t mean others can’t, including University of Rochester Prof David Bleich or Harvard Law Prof Randall Kennedy, who made it really hard to avoid given the title of his book,

Bleich teaches, of all things, about race and gender, and in the course of his instruction, he read from Kennedy’s writings. Verbatim.

This semester, Professor Bleich is teaching a class on Gender and Anger. He read aloud from a short story that had been assigned to the class. The portion of the text he read included the n-word. Students objected, and there was a vigorous conversation about the use of the word. In a subsequent class, Professor Bleich read to the students a section of Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy‘s Chronicle of Higher Education article on the use of the n-word in classroom settings.

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Of all the houses on all the streets in Greenwood Village, Colorado, Robert Jonathan Seacat had to pick Leo Lech’s. To save a child they (wrongly) believed was held captive in the house, police pretty much destroyed the place.

Well, we did what we had to do.

Whether that was so is disputable, but what was not disputable is that the Tenth Circuit held that the Village was not liable for the damage the cops caused to Lech’s home because it was a proper use of the “police power,” an exception to the Fifth Amendment’s “takings clause,” which provides “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Continue reading →

It’s a funny joke, and not a joke at all.

What do you call someone who knows the difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia? A pedophile.

Assistant prof Allyn Walker doesn’t call them pedophiles, but MAPs, minor-attracted people. It’s not a new approach, just as ex-cons are now “previously-incarcerated persons,” where adding more words to the description is intended to break from derogatory words and humanize the individuals. But these are pedos, and why would anyone want to humanize pedos? Continue reading →

Two cops approached 23-year-old Charlie Vazquez in the Bronx.

The officers were responding to a 911 call for a person with a gun about 8 p.m. near E. 187th St. and Beaumont Ave. in Belmont.

When Officers Alejandra Jacobs and Robert Holmes arrived, they found Charlie Vasquez, 23, of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, sitting on the stoop of an apartment building, police said.

He matched the description from the 911 call “to a T,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said at a late-night news conference. “Within seconds, they are involved in a gun battle,” he said.

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At WaPo, Ruth Marcus calls it the “Rule of Six,” and argues that it’s the end of the world as we know it.

[Supreme Court associate Justice William] Brennan, master vote-counter and vote-cajoler, was right — but there is an important corollary to his famous Rule of Five, one powerfully at work in the current Supreme Court. That is the Rule of Six. A five-justice majority is inherently fragile. It necessitates compromise and discourages overreach. Five justices tend to proceed with baby steps. Continue reading →

The word “Latinx” is a litmus test. Hispanics want nothing to do with the word. They didn’t ask for it. They don’t want it. They won’t use it. And they don’t want college sophomores and their woke enablers bastardizing their language for the sake of saving them. Anyone choosing to use “Latinx” brands “themself” as “woke,” smarter and more virtuous than the ignorant peons they’re saving, and beyond the realm of normalcy.

It turns out France isn’t taking this any better. Continue reading →

President of the New York Police Benevolent Association, Pat Lynch, has never been shy in his defense of NYPD cops. If they administered a beating, a killing, lied, cheated, raped or stole, Lynch was always available to remind us that if we didn’t like they way cops handled things, the next time we were in trouble, call a criminal. It was, in essence, Pat Lynch’s way of reminding us that cops were all we’ve got, and if our option was take them as they came or tough nuggies.

Or, as was too often then case, take them if they came, since they didn’t owe us the time of day, no less a little courtesy or concern for the public. If they had a job to do, maybe they would do it. Maybe not. Maybe they would do it badly. Maybe violently. Maybe violently against the wrong person. Maybe any damn way they pleased, because they were the cops and we were…not. Continue reading →

News broke that the Staatsballett in Berlin had canceled this winter’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.

The Staatsballett Berlin has quietly removed Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker from its year-end programme.

Director Christiane Theobald says it contains a Chinese dance and an oriental dance that amount to ‘a clear case of racism’ – even more so since the Berlin production follows Tchaikovsky’s 1892 original.

Continue reading →