When I decided to put a Becker Europa AM/FM cassette radio in the Healey, I realized I was compromising. It was a 1980s radio going into a 1960s car. Most people wouldn’t realize that it was inauthentic, but I did. For someone who went to great pains to restore the car to its original condition, it was a very hard choice.

But I wanted to be able to listen to music, to play the great many cassette tapes I recorded back in college when music was still good, and the radios from the 60s, AM only, were not going to cut it. So I closed my eyes, held my breath, and compromised by getting a Becker Europa 599.

The problem with buying an old radio is that it might not function as it did when new, so I sent mine off to Becker AutoSound in New Jersey for a clean and lube when it arrived in 2003. And, having no particular memory of anything concerning, it came back and worked fine. Into the Healey it went, and old songs came out of it. Continue reading →

To its credit, the New York Times published an op-ed by Indiana University law prof Steve Sanders. The subtitle should have sufficed, as the content was so uncontroversial as to require nothing more to be said.

Those College Students Who Used the N-Word Shouldn’t Have Been Arrested

They were guilty of vulgarity and ignorance, but “ridicule” is not a crime.

Nevertheless, more had to be written or it wouldn’t have made the cut as an op-ed, so Sanders explained. Continue reading →

Appeals to morality have become all the rage, as they not only serve to make us feel better about our choices but can’t be challenged. After all, everybody wants to be moral, and have everyone recognize them as such (or at least not call them immoral). And since morality has no rational basis, there is no battle to be waged against it.

It’s not that there aren’t universally accepted moral beliefs, like don’t kill*, but tipping 30%?

So when you’re thinking about compensating servers, it’s best to start from the assumption that tipping will be around for a while. The smart thing to ask is, how can we make the best of a bad situation? Continue reading →

In the aftermath of the UConn outrage, the ACLU of Connecticut issued its statement.

Policing is an inherently white supremacist institution, and we remain skeptical of its ability to address racism and bigotry. Under existing free speech case law the students who were arrested will almost certainly not be convicted, making it imperative for the university to immediately address racism on campus, including but not limited to these recent incidents.

This could be read in different ways, and people inclined to lie to themselves might read it sufficiently weaselly to not read it as the ACLU-CT saying that it was a shame that there will be no conviction, so it’s left to UConn to punish the evildoers, who, obviously, must be punished.

But to those who haven’t been paying attention, they find some comfort in the quote from David Cole, believing that maybe this is just some rogue local chapter that hates the Constitution too much. Continue reading →

Bed Bath and Beyond apologized for its “lack of sensitivity” in selling “blackface.” Not actual blackface, but jack-o’-lanterns that were black. Black, as in scary for Halloween, but which, if you consider that they are carved faces in a pumpkin that was black, could be construed as blackface if you squinted hard and desperately wanted to find blackface when it was a scary Halloween pumpkin.

Wilbur Aldridge, the regional director at the NAACP, said in a statement that the pumpkin design “shows an extreme lack of sensitivity.”

“By now I would believe everyone [would] know that anything in Black face is offensive… Equally as offensive is that a retail store would have such an item in [their] inventory for general purchase.”

A survey into the offensiveness of statements on social media by a Michigan State professor brought a backlash of outrage for its inclusion of statements that were offensive. It included a warning that offensive statements might be offensive, but that wasn’t sufficient for some students. Continue reading →

It would be very different if it happened today, but on the day before graduation for the Harvard Class of 2013, as Damilare Sonoiki spoke as the Male Orator chosen by his classmates, he had no idea what to expect would be coming his way.

90. On May 29, 2013, Damilare spoke before his graduating class as the male Harvard Orator, and on May 30, 2013, Damilare walked in Harvard’s graduation ceremony.

91. When Damilare participated in Harvard’s graduation ceremony, he had completed all of the requirements to graduate.
92. As of his graduation day on May 30, 2013, no charges had been issued against Damilare by the Ad Board, and he was a student in good standing.
93. Harvard impermissibly withheld Damilare’s degree.

On the one hand, Damilare was the recipient of the Annual Senior Award from The Association of Black Harvard Women, as part of its 15th Annual Tribute to Black Men, celebrating the leadership and contributions of black men at Harvard. Continue reading →

There was never any serious question that the prosecution would be prohibited under RAV v. St. Paul, the 1992 Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment prohibited criminalizing expressions of racism. And the actions of the UConn students didn’t even violate the elements of the offense charged, as Adam Steinbaugh at FIRE noted:

The statute under which the students are charged reads, in full:

Sec. 53-37. Ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race. Any person who, by his advertisement, ridicules or holds up to contempt any person or class of persons, on account of the creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race of such person or class of persons, shall be guilty of a class D misdemeanor.

The Connecticut statute is a rarely-enforced relic dating to 1917 and intended to address advertisements for businesses, not every use of derogatory language.

Continue reading →

At first blush, the sentence imposed by Justice Mark Dwyer seemed very harsh. Four years each for two “Proud Boys” who, after being goaded by Antifa protesting a Gavin McInnes speech at the Metropolitan Republican Club, went on the attack.

By no stretch of law or reality could the beating that followed be called “self defense.” It wasn’t that the preceding conduct was good, although it wasn’t criminal, but that there was a clear break and the group of Proud Boys went after the few Antifa, chasing them down, catching them, beating them.

They were arrested, tried and convicted. Continue reading →

The harder an industry tries to make you believe it cares deeply about you, the less it does. Health insurers don’t love you. They love your premiums. They want you to pay them, but they don’t want to return the favor. That they suck, however, doesn’t mean the alternative of Medicare for All is necessarily better.

There are three things you need to know about Medicare for all, which in the current debate has come to mean a pure single-payer health insurance system, in which the government provides all coverage, with no role for private insurers.

There are millions of things we need to know, because each of us has different needs and expectations of health insurance, but that would make for an unwieldy discussion. So Paul Krugman simplifies it for us groundlings. Continue reading →

Up to now, only one state supreme court, Vermont, held a revenge porn law constitutional, and it was largely due to the inadequacy of the arguments. Even so, the court recognized two fundamental aspects of First Amendment law, that speech that did not fit within an established categorical exception was protected, and that protected speech was subject to strict scrutiny. Rather, Vermont claimed to apply strict scrutiny, but didn’t.

Recognizing the failing of Vermont’s effort, the Illinois Supreme Court took a different tack in State v. Austin, reversing the lower court’s holding that the law was, clearly, unconstitutional. The court didn’t dispute that this was a content-based statute and it didn’t fit into any categorical exception. Therefore, it was protected speech. But it then played a trick.

First,the Illinois Court explicitly claims, at *10-*12, not to identify a new category of speech that falls outside of First Amendment protection. Continue reading →