No matter what, Bernie Madoff, of the Ponzi scheme Madoffs, will not complete his 150 year sentence. To the extent there was any question of how long his sentence would actually be, the answer seems to be around the corner.

Bernie Madoff said he is in the end stages of kidney disease, must use a wheelchair and is in need of round-the-clock help. At 81, he is too old for a transplant, and he has been moved to palliative care within the Federal Medical Center prison in Butner, N.C. He is asking for compassionate release so he can die at home.

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If fees are outlawed, only outlaws will earn fees? New York City went through some quirky supply and demand for rental apartments decades ago. It brought out the well-intended micro-management of the market with rent control and stabilization laws, which begat a series of unintended consequences and very deliberate efforts to circumvent the law.

One such quirk was the creation of a real estate industry geared toward finding people rental apartments. Building owners didn’t need them, as a “reasonably priced” apartment put on the market for rental was snapped up within hours. The market was that tight. The people who needed someone to both do the legwork and have their finger on the pulse of rental availability were the wannabe renters. Continue reading →

New York, New York, is a helluva town, and the New York City Commission on Human Rights finally figured out how to use this to its advantage. Among the many industries that call NY home, or at least their American home, is the fashion industry. It’s not that it has to be that way, but it just turned out that way. Somehow, Des Moines didn’t make the cut instead.

So a little known, and even less cared about, city agency, the NYCCHR became captive of the woke, where they spun new rules and regs to reinvent their little patch of earth to suit their sensibilities. From African hairstyles to forbidden words like “illegal alien,” they dictated what was (sniff) politically acceptable and what would cost a bundle if you didn’t behave their way.

When their focus was turned by a complaint of offense at a fashion window display, the fashion house of Prada, inexplicably, decided not to resist. Continue reading →

Not that anyone necessarily agrees with me, but I’m a supporter of affirmative action, of diversity. From a group of otherwise fully qualified candidates, bringing together people of diverse backgrounds and experiences, and that includes people’s race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and, yes, social class, a deeper pool is created from which better ideas rise. Don’t hate me, and no, this is not the subject for discussion here, but merely a preface.

It’s because of my belief in the value of diversity that I say this to the University of California at Berkeley: you fucked it all up.

The University of California has been requiring prospective faculty members to affirm that they support diversity. This was Orwellian in its own right—reminiscent of the university system’s 1950s loyalty oaths, which required faculty to attest that they were not members of the Communist Party.

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It’s a trick question, of course, because it assumes the Iowa caucuses are dead, but then, Dr. David Leonhardt pronounced the death, so they must be.

It should never go first again because it is an overwhelmingly white, disproportionately older state that distorts the presidential nominating process. In the 2020 campaign, Iowa’s outsize role has already helped doom two black candidates (Cory Booker and Kamala Harris) and given a boost to candidates whose main appeal has been among white voters (like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar). Iowa’s Democrats look nothing like the nation’s Democrats, as Michael Tomasky explained in a Times Op-Ed.

Booker and Harris are out, which was either going to be Russia’s fault or Iowa’s, because it couldn’t possibly be their fault. After all they were “two black candidates,” which is a stand-alone policy position in the New Democratic Party. And not to be a pedant, but Tomasky didn’t explain much of anything, but argued in the finest progressive tradition that if you assume racial demographics are all that matter, then Iowa doesn’t matter. Continue reading →

Before the Iowa caucuses, the New York Times published an op-ed calling for the Democrats to ignore the state as being racially unrepresentative.

This must end for Democrats. Everyone knows it. Everyone argues it. But then, everyone throws up their hands. Iowa has been first for nearly 50 years now, a position to which the Democratic Party has given its tacit assent.

Does everyone know it? Does everyone argue it? Does everyone throw up their hands? Continue reading →

Emeritus Harvard criminal law prof Alan Dershowitz has become a marginalized academic over the past few years, but upped his game when he undertook to play a neutral constitutional scholar on behalf of Team Trump in the impeachment “trial” in the Senate.

Part of that defense, in Dershowitz’s words, is that “if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

Those comments were immediately criticized — including by a number of law professors at Harvard University, where Dershowitz is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus — as meaning that a president can do virtually anything, as long as he or she believes it’s in the public interest. Continue reading →

The constitutionally dubious compromise solution to taking guns out of the hands of people whom family members or police deem dangerous, red flag laws, has claimed a backfire victim.

The law allows immediate family members, household members or law enforcement officers to file a petition requesting for someone’s guns to be seized on that basis that they’re a danger to themselves or others. If a judge agrees, that person’s guns may be taken away for a year.

Colorado has a red flag law, so Susan Holmes tried to use it against Colorado State University Cpl. Phillip Morris, who killed her son, Jeremy. Morris was cleared of wrongdoing in the killing. Continue reading →

Johnny Depp was an abused husband. So why did so many women rush to Amber Heard’s side when she claimed to be the abused spouse? Heard called Depp a “monster” who beat and choked her. How could that not be true?

The US actress alleged Depp, 55, left her fearing for her life after he choked her and ripped chunks out of her hair in more than a dozen violent altercations.

The details emerged yesterday as Heard, 32, asked a judge to dismiss a $50 million defamation lawsuit filed by Depp over an article she wrote in The Washington Post in December claiming to be a victim of domestic violence.

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People are always fascinated by high profile defendants, and assume that criminal defense lawyers who represent these defendants must be making bank. They want us to tell them the inside story, the titillating tale of how the famous have fallen. They always promise to keep it between “us,” as if we have some burning desire to reveal secrets for their amusement.

But the one assumption that never seems to go away is that the lawyers must be making a fortune representing a high profile defendant, especially when that person was fabulously wealthy. Elizabeth Holmes’ lawyers can explain why it just doesn’t work that way.

It’s been a minute since Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford to found her so-called revolutionary blood-testing company, Theranos. Remember how she was supposed to be able to diagnose thousands of diseases and conditions with one drop of blood? It turned out it was all a fraud, her method didn’t work, and she was sending blood out to traditional labs for testing and not telling patients. That all imploded and her downfall was as swift as her ascension to the billion-dollar company valuation. Once the toast of Silicon Valley, these days she’s mired in lawsuits in multiple states and if reports are to be believed, cannot afford her attorneys.

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