For a while now, progressive activists have done everything they can to demonize the courts, primarily the Supreme Court given that Trump appointed three justices who, they explain, are partisan hacks determined to do their master’s bidding.

But they’ve cranked up the volume to 11 following the denial of injunctive relief in the Texas SB8 case, which proves to the hysterical that they were right all along. Their outrage had been falling a bit flat up to then because they sky kept not falling. Indeed, the courts had been doing a remarkably good job of being courts until then. Continue reading →

Vaccinations are good, so who could question the decision of New York City’s intrepid mayor in requiring restaurants to only seat people who have been vaccinated? At this point, the assertion that “vaccinations are good” might irk people who either still harbor doubts or drank dewormer because that makes more sense than a vaccine, which we’re reliably informed causes testicles to swell. But that’s the sort of concern that typically takes one’s eye off the sucker punch about to land on the left side of your head.

It began as a simple request that is becoming part of New York’s pandemic routine: A hostess at a popular Italian restaurant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side asked three would-be customers for proof that they had been vaccinated as required for those seeking to dine indoors.

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What the hell is DWTS?

Glad you asked! It’s an acronym for “Dancing With The Stars.”

And why the fuck are you talking about it today?

One, I write the jokes around here on Fridays. Continue reading →

It was a dicey case from the get-go, a baby Somalian cop shooting an Aussie blond woman who called 911 to bring him to the alley where she heard a woman scream. So the Reasonably Scared Cop Rule kicked in and, just like that, Justine Damond was shot, and died, by the hand of Mohommed Noor.

Noor was charged and convicted of Murder in the Third Degree, as well as Manslaughter 2. The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed the Murder 3 conviction.

Chief Justice Lorie Gildea found that third-degree murder was an inappropriate charge on the grounds that such a conviction requires that a defendant’s conduct not be directed specifically at the person killed.
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To the motivated believers at the bottom of the critical-thought challenged pyramid, there are two abiding beliefs. Tax the rich and get stuff free. The former, because no one deserves to be better off than they are, and the latter because everything they want and need has morphed into an entitlement. People have a right to health care, food, housing, education, child care and wifi.

And to some extent, they’re not entirely wrong, as the top of the wealth pyramid has gone from merely rich to obscenely rich, and the bottom has watched as the incentives to work hard  and succeed appear to have gone out of reach, with too many unable to afford basic services despite playing by the rules and working hard. There are a great many reasons that make these beliefs more true or false under various circumstances, but that doesn’t change the fact that many believe these two things, tax the rich and get stuff free, is the right thing for the Biden Administration to do. Continue reading →

Granted, there was always a good chance that defending a person charged in the January 6th insurrection was going to have its pitfalls. It’s the nature of the beast, the working of a mind of someone whose grasp of reality was so distorted that he was inclined to be there, to do whatever he did, to buy into the insanity of the conspiracies and lies, in the first place.

But crazy clients are nothing new in criminal law, and dealing with a defendant’s irrationality is part of the gig.

The first Jan. 6 rioter sentenced for a felony charge began mounting a desperate bid Wednesday to unravel his plea agreement, claiming through a newly retained attorney that his signature on the deal was forged. Continue reading →

For a fleeting moment, Theranos was huge and Elizabeth Holmes, the rare female Silicon Valley entrepreneur, was flying high. Too high, as it turned out.

Ms. Holmes’s case has been held up as a parable of Silicon Valley’s swashbuckling “fake it till you make it” culture, which has helped propel the region’s start-ups to unfathomable riches and economic power. That same spirit has also allowed grifters and unethical hustlers to flourish, often with little consequence, raising questions about Silicon Valley’s tightening grip on society.

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Did Syracuse University do the right thing when outraged demands for cancellation spread over the mind-numbingly idiotic twit by its “queer genderflux androgynous Black woman, an abolitionist, a lover of all Black people, and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University in the Department of Political Science,” Jenn Jackson? At Volokh Conspiracy, Princeton prof Keith Whittington tries to provide the positive incentive by arguing it did.

Her tweet generated some backlash. The university responded as universities should in such cases—by defending free speech and avoiding any temptation to praise or condemn the professorial speech in question.

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For all the drama, lawprof Howard Wasserman has been dissecting what he calls the “procedural puzzles” that confront the pre-emptive efforts to enjoin Texas’ abortion law, SB8. For the non- and unduly passionate lawyers, this all seems silly, as such details ignore the only real legal issue, that the law is unconstitutional and so something must be done. But what, by whom and against whom? This is where the United States steps into the fray.

The Justice Department argued in its emergency motion that the state adopted the law, known as Senate Bill 8, “to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights,” reiterating an argument the department made last week when it sued Texas to prohibit enforcement of the contentious new legislation.

“It is settled constitutional law that ‘a state may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy before viability,’” the department said in the lawsuit. “But Texas has done just that.”

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