Reading the thoughts of an academic can be taxing enough, but when the academic is a philosophy prof, it can be brutal. This became clear when I tried reading some of the public writings of NYU philosophy prof Avital Ronell. It wasn’t just that they weren’t good or easy to read; they were pure gibberish. I concede that I might simply not have been up to the task of appreciating philosophical genius, but I tried and failed nonetheless.

So I approach anything relating to philosophers with trepidation, including Agnes Collard’s op-ed in the New York Times. I was aware of the existential war within the academic community about signing petitions and open letters as a means of silencing heretics within their community, to shame and blame, using bulk in lieu of reason. Continue reading →

In all fairness, I expected the opening to lead to an old joke.

My husband had just been wheeled away for a routine hip replacement operation when I found a note under my windshield wiper in the surgery center’s parking lot.

You remember the old joke, right, where someone returned to find their car damaged with a note on the windshield that read, “I hit your car and people think I’m leaving you a note with my name and address, but I’m not.” I got it very wrong. Continue reading →

While we fight over the things that really matter, which pronouns to use and whether there are 37 or 38 genders, the people of Hong Kong have taken to the streets in defense of autonomy from China.

The demonstrations, which began as a fight against a bill that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to the mainland, have more broadly morphed into a call for free elections, which largely do not exist in China. To Beijing, it would be a direct challenge to the leadership, tantamount to losing control of Hong Kong.

When China reclaimed Hong Kong from the Brits in 1997, this clash seemed inevitable. How could a bastion of freedom, even if limited and even if subject to a self-imposed culture of order, exist within an authoritarian regime? Continue reading →

You’re all for sex workers, but “johns” are criminals?

You call for legalizing the use of marijuana, maybe even narcotics, but the dealers who sell it are criminals?

You demand the undocumented immigrants be allowed to work, to support their families, to thrive, but the employers who hire them are criminals?

It takes two to tango, but your heart only goes out to one of the dancers, while the other remains evil. This isn’t going to work out the way you wish it would. Continue reading →

If there’s any single person whose conduct could single-handedly make me disavow the First Amendment, it would be Andrew Anglin. a neo-Nazi whose website, the Daily Stormer, may have been the worst cesspool possible. I say “may” only because there can always be worse, though it’s hard to imagine. It wasn’t just the content, which was pretty much what you would expect of a neo-Nazi website, but Anglin’s use of it to direct his ilk to attack others in real life.

So he was sued. Three times. And all three plaintiffs who sued him won and obtained huge judgments.

The first African-American female student body president of American University won a $725,000 judgment on Friday in a lawsuit against Andrew Anglin, the publisher of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer who incited a racist “troll storm” targeting her, a judge ruled. Continue reading →

Lara Bazelon twitted that the ABA Criminal Justice Section unanimously voted to withdraw its support for Resolution 114 and ask the House of Delegates to table it. Great news, certainly, but this misbegotten mutt, even if it’s just the ABA and not an organization of any significance, isn’t dead yet. The NACDL opposed it. More than 100 members of the American Law Institute opposed it. I opposed it, as did pretty much anyone with even a passing familiarity with criminal law.

But not the ABA Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence. As its chairman, Mark Schickman, made clear in an email, his quest to re-engineer sexuality in society would not be so easily stopped. Continue reading →

The news broke early, that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. Within minutes, all hell broke loose. At first, it was the cheers at his death. Then it was the realization that his death precluded his coughing up the names of his rich and powerful co-conspirators. Then the conspiracy theories broke, from left and right, each absolutely certain it was the other side that silenced Epstein. And all shared absolute certainty of his guilt.

As someone said on twitter, the conspiracy theorists and the normies had achieved singularity. They all agreed that whatever happened, it was a nefarious scheme. Paranoia, assumption and the absolute certainty only a child could believe had taken control.

Get it out. Let it out. It needs to come out or it will explode and make a mess all over the screen. Continue reading →

When the Sixth Circuit decided Doe v. Baum, holding that the accused in a Title IX campus sex hearing was entitled to examination by counsel, it was a breakthrough ruling. There was much to complain about its consequences, and complaints there were. It turned college sex tribunals into adversarial mini-trials, run by people lacking any of the competencies to manage it and creating the potential for an accuser to be subject to serious challenge.

While limited to the jurisdiction of the Sixth Circuit, it was the first time a court seriously challenged the reach of the squishy Matthews v. Eldridge due process test for quasi-judicial administrative proceedings. If you want to run a criminal-ish court, and impose extreme sanctions that have life-altering impacts, then suck it up and give the accused the chance to defend himself. It’s not an inquisition, no matter how strongly you believe Torquemada was right. Continue reading →

It was only days after the slaughter in an El Paso Walmart. In the scheme of constitutional rights, it can be argued all day and all night that this undeniable fact is irrelevant, and it is. Yet, getting along in society includes some recognition of not being the worst person you can be even though you have a right to do so.

Dmitriy Andreychenko is an asshole. To call him a jerk is inadequate. What he did went far beyond being a jerk, reflecting such a deep lack of judgment that you have to wonder how he survived long enough to walk into a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri.

Prosecutors on Friday filed a terrorist threat charge against a 20-year-old man who said he walked into a Missouri store wearing body armor and carrying a loaded rifle and handgun to test whether Walmart would honor his constitutional right to bear arms.

Continue reading →

Have you fallen and you can’t get up? There’s an app for that, and maybe it will alert police to come to your home to help even if it turns out that you haven’t fallen, you’re up and don’t need their help. Too bad.

The alarm from the residence ended up being a medical-assist alarm that originated from someone’s cellphone inside the home, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The home belonged to 62-year-old Dick Tench, described as “fiercely patriotic.” When Trench saw a flashlight through his window, he did what any fiercely patriotic owner of his own castle would do. He got his gun, because he was on the good guy curve and assumed, for lack of reason to think anything else, that someone was about to burglarize his home. Continue reading →