Soon after 9/11, soldiers appeared in Penn Station to search for, and theoretically protect us from, the terrorist. They were dressed in camouflage uniforms, carrying military rifles. I was never comfortable with people standing around a place jammed with people “carrying” military rifles. There was just too much that could go wrong.

But what struck me as goofy was that they were dressed in camo. Camouflage was not the way to blend in at Penn Station. A nice grey suit would have worked, but given the lack of trees and forest, camo was just plan silly. One day I asked one of the soldiers, and she told me that it wasn’t so much that camo was chosen because it was a great look, but because the options were limited. It wasn’t like they had a closet full of color choices for their military work clothes, so they wore what they had, which was designed for use in the desert or woods. Continue reading →

I’m one of those fancy guys who bought real maple syrup to put on my pancakes. It wasn’t because I didn’t care for the marketing of the fake stuff, but I liked the real stuff better. It was usually named something like “Real Maple Syrup” so I would know what I was buying. What it was not named was “Aunt Jemima,” and if Aunt Jemima syrup disappeared from supermarket shelves, it wouldn’t bother me a bit.

But did the brand name hurt you? Did it make you cry? Did you feel traumatized, attacked, even belittled? Maybe, and if so, you didn’t have to buy it and you were free to let Quaker Oats know that the 131-year-old brand offended you. If enough people refused to buy Aunt Jemima syrup, then the magic of the marketplace would have its way. Continue reading →

There are a litany of things people “believe” when it comes to criminal law that, though completely false, never seem to go away. No Miranda Warning? “That means the arrest isn’t valid,” say the twitter lawyers. Of course, it’s nonsense, but they believe it, spread it and perpetuate it among people who want it to be true. An arrest in Kips Bay went viral, with the unduly passionate losing their minds over the “kidnapping.”

That this is how the warrant squad operates, has always operated, doesn’t offer much comfort. If they’ve been doing it wrong all along, that’s no justification to continue to do it wrong. Continue reading →

June 24 wasn’t a good night in Madison. The protesters tore down a statue of abolitionist  Hans Christian Heg as well as the “Forward” figure, “an allegorical work meant to embody the state’s motto.” No confederate generals. No slave owners. Maybe they all look alike to the unduly passionate. Maybe they just didn’t care, as they were on a roll tearing down statues and, well, these were statues so why not?

It also wasn’t a good night for a gay Democratic senator who took a picture with his cellphone, which seems to be remarkably ordinary thing to do given that people are taking pictures and video of pretty much everything to do with protests, riots and, is there a long German word for statue tipping? Tim Carpenter was no statue, but got tipped anyway, and worse. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: Greg Prickett is former police officer and supervisor who went to law school, hung out a shingle, and now practices criminal defense and family law in Fort Worth, Texas. While he was a police officer, he was a police firearms instructor, and routinely taught armed tactics to other officers. He is a member of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer’s Association (TCDLA).

Dear Mr. Scheiner:

On July 27, 2020, you forwarded to all members of the TCDLA that the Executive Committee had decided to participate in the public lynching of the State Bar of Texas President, Larry McDougal.

First, I’m going to point out some things that should have been considered before you took action on behalf of the entire TCDLA, especially without consulting the membership. Continue reading →

College students drink alcohol, sometimes to excess. Who knew? Well, everybody, including the nice folks who run Northeastern University, which is why the Supreme Court of Massachusetts held that colleges have a responsibility to protect their students from the consequences of their actions.

Dangerous drinking-related activities are a foreseeable hazard on college and university campuses.

Well, that clears things up, right? Except the scenario presented in the case is replete with the interconnecting tropes and craziness that is similarly a foreseeable hazard on college campuses. Continue reading →

The phenomenon is not new. Back in the ’60s, when feminists were fighting for women to be accepted in education and the workplace, the argument was that women deserved the choice to be a doctor, lawyer or president if their interest, talent and good fortune would take them there. Or as a t-shirt later explained, “A woman’s place is in the house. And the Senate.”

But over time, the momentum shifted so that a woman who chose not to get her Ph.D., to stay home and raise the children, cook the meals, care for the house, was no longer considered the norm. Then it became a badge of dishonor, a traitor to women and, well, a failure. To be a “homemaker,” as they were called, was no longer an acceptable choice, but a capitulation to the patriarchy, a sycophant of the Orange Juice Queen, Anita Bryant, and surely a Nixon voter. After all, who else wouldn’t get a degree, a career, a future? Continue reading →

The repeal of New York’s dreaded Executive Law § 50-a, which protected cops, among others, from disclosure of their personnel records, was an emblematic reaction in these curious times. The law was bad, awful even, in that dirty and violent cops were able to conceal their conduct from the public and criminal defense lawyers who got to cross them about their actions.

Yet, the repeal was simplistic, a bludgeon rather than a scalpel, The NYCLU sought information from the Civilian Complaint Review Board about all police officers who were the subject of complaints, with the intention of making it publicly available. The police union took issue with this and sought a temporary restraining order. Continue reading →

There was an op-ed by a Legal Aid Society lawyer, a public defender, in the New York Post. These are words I never expected to write, but there you are. Strange days, indeed. The public defender, Maud Maron, is a mother, president of Community Education Council District 2 and a candidate for the City Council. And she has no intention of sacrificing her child or yours to the new fad, white self-loathing and flagellation for failure to be a good enough anti-racist.

No one is ever a good enough anti-racist.

I am a mom, a public defender, an elected public-school council member and a City Council candidate. But at a city Department of Education anti-bias training, I was instructed to refer to myself as a “white woman” — as if my whole life reduces to my race. Continue reading →

At Vox, Zack Beauchamp offered the woke rebuttal to the Harper’s Letter, or as Cathy Young delightfully called it, he “voxsplained” why the voices for free speech and open debate should “shut up.”

The latest rebuke to critics of progressive illiberalism comes from Vox’s Zack Beauchamp. While he ostensibly examines the arguments on both sides and grants some valid concerns to “free speech” defenders, Beauchamp concludes that there is no assault on free expression. Rather, he asserts, we’re having “the kinds of difficult conversations that every liberal society (maybe even every society) grapples with all the time” — about the boundaries of socially acceptable speech amidst changing cultural norms.

It is not, as noted conservatives like Noam Chomsky allege, a matter of silencing speech that fails to comport with the latest permissions from the Secretary of Social Justice, but merely a trifling matter over where the lines of socially acceptable speech should be drawn. Folks like Zack are trying to “change cultural norms” to suit their tastes, and anyone not adhering to those norms is wrong and deserves whatever they get. Continue reading →