Out of here for a bit. I won’t have much internet access, so I’ve sent David the keys to the joint while I’m away. Please don’t let him crash the Healey.

Have fun and be well.

What if you took a bunch of ideas that all your most passionate pals agreed were either cool, edgy, just or moral, and mixed them together in a big pot? You would end up with San Francisco.

The basic problem is the steady collapse of livability. Across my home state, traffic and transportation is a developing-world nightmare. Child care and education seem impossible for all but the wealthiest. The problems of affordable housing and homelessness have surpassed all superlatives — what was a crisis is now an emergency that feels like a dystopian showcase of American inequality.

The problem with reducing problems to the “basic problem” is why Farhad Manjoo, and those who view their world with the facile simplicity that created this American Experiment in progress can stare their failure in the face and still fail to understand how everything went awry. Continue reading →

Doug Glanville got video bombed while doing a Cubs game. He didn’t know it at the time, but found it soon enough.

Ambiguity has always been a friend to racism.

On May 7, during a television broadcast of a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field, I was on camera doing in-game commentary for NBC Sports Chicago when, unbeknown to me, a fan behind me wearing a Cubs sweatshirt made an upside-down “O.K.” sign with his hand.

He’s right that ambiguity has always been a friend to racism, but the problem is that ambiguity is a friend to everything, because it’s ambiguous, and thus susceptible to many interpretations, all of which are similarly valid and invalid because that’s the nature of ambiguity. Continue reading →

With the attention given the Ron Sullivan debacle at being punished by the unduly passionate children of Harvard, former OJ prosecutor Chris Darden’s dilemma has largely gone unnoticed. It’s surprising, since it carries all the usual sexy indicators: a murdered celebrity, a well-known lawyer and death threats. Yet, it has remained largely in the shadows. And it shouldn’t.

The threatening phone calls to Chris Darden’s law office began almost immediately. The messages on Instagram and Facebook trickled in soon after, some from anonymous accounts.

One caller left a voicemail, Darden recalled, saying he hoped someone would walk up behind the attorney and shoot him in the head.

“And I’m a shooter,” the voice said.

Continue reading →

Bernie pulled a Bernie.

If we are a nation that can pay baseball players hundreds of millions of dollars, don’t tell me we can’t afford to pay teachers the salaries they deserve.

Is this a false equivalency, or maybe just a non-sequitur? Or should we put aside the multitude of reasons why a comparison between star ballplayers and teachers fails on every level and focus instead on the latter part of Bernie’s being Bernie. What do teachers “deserve”? What does “deserve” have to do with what they get paid? Continue reading →

While there have been a number of somewhat disappointing “progressive prosecutors,” who remain prosecutors even though they mouth the sounds of criminal law reform, there have also been a few who are proving to be the “real deal.” Larry Krasner in Philly. In Dallas, John Creuzot is making waves with his free shoplifting position, and in Boston, Rachel Rollins seems to be doing what she said she would do.

Will they pull it off, put their reforms into practice and make it work, without bringing down a wave of crime or unintended consequences on the good people of their cities who elected them to office with the best of intentions? Time will tell, but so far it appears that more than a few basic assumptions upon which prosecutors and lawmakers, and their fans, have relied forever are being tested and failing. Maybe imprisoning people. more people and for ever-greater lengths of time, isn’t the only answer to protecting the public.

Having made some headway into the prosecutorial function, even if it’s only a few at the moment who are serious about reforming their practices, attention is turning toward the third leg of the criminal law stool. Judges. As much as Larry Krasner’s office is trying to correct errors of the past, the judges aren’t cooperating. Indeed, judges are fighting prosecutors the way prosecutors fought the defense. Continue reading →

Whether the reported story is true is of no moment, as it will never be clear whether passengers on Aeroflot Flight 1492 who stopped to retrieve their bag cost dozens of people their lives.

The online hate was instant, if based on sketchy information. The carry-on grabbers were accused of having hindered the escape of fellow passengers, dozens of whom died in the flames.

No one may ever know how true that is, but the passengers did violate one of the most basic rules of air safety. As a headline in the Travel section of The Times put it after the accident, In the Event of an Emergency, Leave Your Luggage on the Plane. Really.

Seems too obvious for discussion? Oh, sweet summer child. Nothing is too obvious for discussion in a world where narcissism reigns and no feeling is unworthy of respect. Continue reading →

The video isn’t new, but from October, 2018. It was reposted in light of the string of new laws placing extreme limits on abortion, essentially making abortion impossible, the purpose of which is to either get a law before the Supreme Court to provide a vehicle to revisit Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, or to energize pro-choice voters and make clear why they must resist candidates, local or national, who want to eliminate the right to an abortion.

Its reposting wasn’t done with great fanfare. It wasn’t done by a renowned celebrity with millions of followers. It was done by a woman who felt very strongly about the issue.

i still stand by this king pic.twitter.com/5tUbj7Dabb

— yacenia (@cheleblush) May 17, 2019

But note, as of this writing, that the twit has well over 300,000 “likes.” Continue reading →

The nice folks at the Broward County Courthouse do not seem to be fond of lawyer Bill Gelin, as he doesn’t always say nice things about them.

Since 2006, attorney and courthouse muckraker William “Bill” Gelin has been shaking up the judiciary on his popular site, JAA Blog. Whether sounding off about potential corruption and racism in the courthouse ruling class, or even its work habits, the 46-year-old Oakland Park attorney hasn’t held back his opinions. But now it looks like his criticisms are boomeranging right back.

In the last few months, the attorney has been fielding heat from the Florida Bar. The statewide group has opened a complaint investigation into the blogger. But the organization won’t tell Gelin why the complaint has been filed or at whose behest.

There’s a bit of a due process problem here, if Gelin is to be able to defend himself, although investigating a complaint is different from prosecuting a complaint. It’s unclear whether the Florida Bar is still investigating in order to determine whether to take action, or taking action. If the former, then its non-disclosure isn’t a problem. If the latter, then it’s a big problem. Continue reading →

On the one hand, the unduly passionate Jill Filipovic asks the most pressing question on the minds of Millennials, with the exception of where their next bag of Cheetos is coming from:

Does Anyone Actually Want Joe Biden to Be President?

Unsurprisingly, she conflates the argument that Biden is the most electable of the 600 candidates for the Democratic nomination with the question of why that might be, since there’s nothing about Biden that appeals to Filipovic, and therefore no one could possibly want him to be president because she knows stuff.

Bret Stephens, a never-Trump conservative, takes up the challenge. Continue reading →