Putting aside whether Joe Biden, former drug warrior and attack dog of the Dems, now entering his fourth run for the party nomination for president, and inveterate hair sniffer, is the last liberal standing in a field of progressives, Lucy Flores ain’t buying.

I know a few things about mistakes and second chances. As a formerly incarcerated youth and high school dropout, when I decided to run for a state legislative seat, I needed my community to know that not only was I sorry for the many transgressions of my young adult life, but also that I had taken those experiences and learned from them. I learned to treat my mistakes not as points of shame, but as opportunities for growth. It’s those experiences with tough moments that inform my approach to accountability today, and why I believe it matters that people acknowledge when they do wrong.

There is, of course, a certain virtue from recognizing one’s mistakes, although a wayward youth doesn’t necessarily commend one for public office. Nor does dropping out of high school suggest she’s got the intellectual chops to do more than parrot the self-serving jargon of her tribe. But it also doesn’t make her wrong. Continue reading →

It’s a great time for a prosecutor, particular one who checks a couple intersectional boxes and has a burning desire to be popular to a certain political cohort, to do an about face, cry the sad tears of racist execution of law and seek relief for those maligned. Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby saw her chance to be loved and seized it, but two darn judges refused to let her be the hero.

When you send the cops into a particular neighborhood, to target the people who live in that neighborhood, it’s a little disingenuous to complain that the cops did as directed. Continue reading →

About a decade ago, it became clear that the Fourth Amendment framework for the physical world was going to present some problems when applied to the digital world. Some of the academics who ponder such things, like Dan Solove and Orin Kerr, tried to come up with competing theories and approaches that would produce an alternative to the two prevailing conflicts, the Katz Reasonable Expectation of Privacy Test and the Third-Party Doctrine.

In the intervening years, the Supreme Court has issued some good opinions, such as United States v. Jones and Carpenter v. United States, but hasn’t done much to address the doctrinal problem of privacy from government access in the digital age.

Some Supreme Court justices have been roundly (and often deservedly) mocked for their ignorance about basic everyday technologies, such as text messages and email. But one advantage to having an older, less tech-savvy judiciary is that their ideas about privacy were formed during an earlier era when it might well have been reasonable to expect that the police would not be able to obtain a week’s worth of detailed location information about you.

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Do the wealthy “deserve” to be wealthy? Do the children of the wealthy deserve to inherit their family’s wealth? The New York Times presents Resource Generation, an organization for people under 35 who feel the shame and guilt of other people’s wealth that will inure to their benefit, and which they believe to be immoral.

This country is rigged in favor of making the very wealthy even wealthier. That’s what Democrats keep saying on the 2020 campaign trail. And it’s what some of the people who have reaped the rewards of this rigged system think too. Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Roy Disney, is one recent high-profile example. On Tuesday, she called out the “naked indecency” of the $65 million in compensation that goes to Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger. That figure, she noted, is “1,424 times the median pay of a Disney worker.”

Does Bob Iger “deserve” $65 million, or maybe just half that? Would that be enough of a pay cut to make Abigail Disney, whose name connects her to greatness that nothing she has ever done, or will ever do, can achieve? Continue reading →

It’s hard not to smile when unduly passionate ThinkProgress lawyer Ian Millhiser has something nice to say about the First Amendment, because it happens so rarely. Unfortunately, his myopia and disingenuousness got the best of him. Again.

An opinion handed down Wednesday by three Republican judges could chill the First Amendment rights of protesters — and potentially allow police to shut down political movements by filing lawsuits harassing movement leaders.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Doe v. McKesson effectively strips First Amendment protections from protest leaders who commit minor offenses, ignoring longstanding Supreme Court precedents in the process.

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When John Gaskin III was named president of the St. Louis chapter last November, and a member of the national board, he brought youth and vitality to the 75-year-old chapter. He was elected to acclimation. He was the person everyone in the St. Louis Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wanted to lead. And lead he did.

“The denial of due process at Missouri’s colleges disproportionately impacts African-American men,” St. Louis County NAACP President John Gaskin III stated in support of proposed House bills aimed at making Title IX procedures “fairer for the accused.”

The numbers are appalling, with black males even more disproportionately prosecuted and expelled from college than convicted and imprisoned in the legal system. Except this time it can’t be blamed on racist cops or systemic injustice. It’s the women doing the accusing. It’s the “diverse and inclusive” colleges denying due process. Continue reading →

The upshot of Facebook’s grievous exposure of “product information” to the Russian’s Cambridge Analytica is that Zuck pulled out the loose change in the couch and they set aside some cash to pay whatever fine the Federal Trade Commission decides to impose.

On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that the social network was in negotiations with the Federal Trade Commission over fines relating to the company’s misuse of user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Around the same time, Facebook made it public that it was setting aside between $3 billion and $5 billion for the fine.

Let’s assume the fine is at the top of the range, $5 billion. It’s chump change to Facebook, which brings in around $15 billion in revenue per quarter. And that’s bugging the crap out of some people because they want Facebook to feel the sting, to hurt, to suffer, and while even $3 billion would probably be hard on most of us, not Zuck. Continue reading →

While it’s clear that the federal government cannot conscript state officers to serve their cause, can they hold a state judge culpable for allegedly thwarting it? The government has decided to take a stand against Massachusetts District Court Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph.

“This case is about the rule of law,” said United States Attorney Andrew E. Lelling. “The allegations in today’s indictment involve obstruction by a sitting judge, that is intentional interference with the enforcement of federal law, and that is a crime. We cannot pick and choose the federal laws we follow, or use our personal views to justify violating the law. Everyone in the justice system – not just judges, but law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and defense counsel – should be held to a higher standard. The people of Massachusetts expect that, just like they expect judges to be fair, impartial and to follow the law themselves.”

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Speaker of the New York City Council, Corey Johnson, got to have his say:

“You have a right to free speech,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview. “But you don’t have a right to a committee on the City Council.”

Nobody has a right to a committee on one of the most woke legislative clubs around, one that will let no right stand in the way of subjugating a constitutional right to the benefit of the oppressed. But that’s not the question raised by Johnson’s actions. He didn’t stand accused of refusing to give a committee to anyone, but of stripping two elected City Council members of the committees they were already given.

After a New York City councilman said that the Council was “controlled by the homosexual community,” his influential committee — created at his request — was dissolved. Continue reading →

Lobbyists lobby, because otherwise their job title would seem silly. Sometimes they lobby for good reasons and sometimes just for cash. Hey, it’s a job, even if it’s an unseemly job. Or is it?

After his son was accused and subsequently expelled from Washington University in St. Louis last year through the school’s Title IX process, a leading Jefferson City lobbyist launched a campaign to change the law for every campus in the state.

Richard McIntosh has argued to legislators that Title IX, the federal law barring sexual discrimination in education and mandating that schools set up internal systems to police sexual violence, is tilted unfairly against the accused. His proposals — made first as a failed amendment to an unrelated bill near the end of the 2018 session and then this year as a full-fledged bill — create more protections for those accused of Title IX violations.

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