No regular reader at SJ is unfamiliar with the sex offender registry, the simplistic solution birthed by a public panic that became a convenient tool of politicians to keep the public in fear so they could fix it by adding more people, more crimes, more punishment to the list. Guy Hamilton-Smith has laid bare his story here. They now exist as a permanent underclass, condemned to live under bridges until imprisoned for not being able to register their new address.

At Persuasion, Carol Nesteikis tells of yet another wrinkle to this Fool’s Paradise based on what happened to her son, Adam. Continue reading →

It was one of the goofier conceits of the Republican Party to wrap itself up as the Party of Lincoln. That was long ago and far away, and lines can’t stretch that far without breaking. That doesn’t make it necessarily bad, as times change. platforms change. people change and, well, a legacy name doesn’t make it the same party. But not being the same doesn’t make it better or worse, just different.

Not that it mattered in Portland on the eve of Indigenous People’s Day, formerly known as Columbus Day until Columbus was canceled.

Protesters in Portland, Ore., swept through the city on Sunday night, toppling statues of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and damaging the entrance to the Oregon Historical Society in a demonstration against colonization and the treatment of Native Americans.

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About an hour after the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senate minority leader and one of the largest consumers of microphones in New York, Chuck Schumer, threatened to “pack the court.” No, the Republicans aren’t, and haven’t packed the court, no matter how despicable you might believe their mad rush to fill judicial slots (including Justice Ginsburg’s). Packing the court has a specific meaning, to add new seats to the Supreme Court for the purpose of installing one’s own people under the belief they will serve a political cause.

If Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, as appears likely, will Joe Biden pack the court? It’s a fair question. Continue reading →

As Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett begin, which may well prove more important and desirable to Republicans and conservatives than re-electing the repugnant yet bloated Darth Cheeto, it brings a series of opportunities. The first is that Barrett will be confirmed, putting a fifth or sixth, according to how one counts them, conservative justice on the Supreme Court.

The risk here is grossly exaggerated, because most people have no clue how SCOTUS works and conflate the Court with a political branch of government. Most cases before the Court are mundane legal matters. Most decisions are uncontroversial, bordering on boring. And the Court deals with shockingly few cases anyway. But it’s the handful of controversial issues, past, present and future, that capture the political imagination and can have a monumental impact on how society functions. Continue reading →

The killing happened last June. The decision not to prosecute the deputy who shot her was made mid-September. Given how much outrage toward wrongful police shootings and killings is pulsing across the nation, one would have expected this killing to have made national news, sparked nationwide protests, something. There was nothing. Outside of the Kansas City area, no one knew. No one cared about the killing of Hannah Fizer.

Fizer stopped her car about 10 p.m. that day between two restaurants near the 3500 block of West Broadway Boulevard. Family and friends say she was driving to her job at an Eagle Stop convenience store when she was pulled over.

The deputy, who has not been identified publicly, said Fizer refused to identify herself when she was stopped. She told the deputy she was armed with a gun and was going to shoot him, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Continue reading →

It was maybe 15 years ago. I was helping with an auction for our local bird sanctuary, and cajoled a kayak manufacturer into donating a pair of “his and her” kayaks. They were to be delivered a few days before the auction through a third-party courier and everybody was thrilled about it.

The day came for delivery and the courier showed up in a van with the two kayaks in the circle in front of Casa de SJ. I asked the driver, who was a black man in his twenties, if he could pull the van around the back to the garages. He told me “no,” he was late and in a rush. We argued a bit about the fact it would take him all of about three seconds, but he grew more adamant, and finally pulled one of the kayaks out of the van and threw it to the ground. He then drove off. Continue reading →

Some argue that the answer is more black cops on the force, but that didn’t help 17-year-old Alvin Cole.

Wauwatosa Police Officer Joseph Mensah will not face criminal charges in the fatal shooting of Alvin Cole, District Attorney John Chisholm announced Wednesday evening.

Mensah shot and killed Cole on Feb. 2 outside of Mayfair Mall. Police said the 17-year-old had fired at officers first before being shot. A report from an independent investigator found, however, that “Cole did not fire at Officer Mensah or any other officer. Cole shot himself in the arm while running away from the officers.”

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Whether the Supreme Court’s decisions are grounded in falsehoods or falsehoods are picked up to justify a decision isn’t necessarily clear. It’s likely to happen both ways, as empiricism has become both tool and weapon in lawfare. But the fact that it happens really isn’t in dispute.

The Supreme Court has indeed said the risk that sex offenders will commit new crimes is “frightening and high.” That phrase, in a 2003 decision upholding Alaska’s sex offender registration law, has been exceptionally influential. It has appeared in more than 100 lower-court opinions, and it has helped justify laws that effectively banish registered sex offenders from many aspects of everyday life.

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As if anyone needed another example of the disconnect between reality and the fantasy of Critical Race Theory, the People’s Republic of California has made reopening contingent on a basic logical fallacy: correlation does not imply causation.

It has been clearly documented that certain communities – low-income, Black, Latino, Pacific Islander, and essential workers – have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in terms of higher rates of infection, hospitalizations, and deaths.  These disparities create a public health imperative to address exposure in all communities, including especially those disproportionately impacted, as a measure to protect all communities. Continue reading →

Vice presidential debates tend to be a bit more fun than presidential debates because two (and maybe Admiral Stockdale) people get to pitch their qualifications for the best do-nothing job in Washington. After all, the essential job of being vice prez is to be there in case the president dies, and what are the chances of that happening? But this time, the chances aren’t bad. In fact, they are fairly good, which means that the VP might well become the president. Suddenly, it all matters.

The New York Times endorsed Joe Biden for president, which certainly shocked no one. It wrote a lengthy editorial in support of its nomination, which could just have easily been one sentence: He’s not Donald Trump. That’s really all there is to say about Biden, who sought the nomination before, when he was younger, stronger and more vital, but America wanted nothing to do with him. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy. He wasn’t. He just wasn’t up to snuff. Continue reading →