When explaining her position, lawprof and former ACLU president Nadine Strossen was straightforward about her belief that free speech would be the more effective means of persuading people to embrace “social justice.” That one of the fundamental tenets of “social justice” was silencing hate speech gave rise to no cognitive dissonance.

But it’s this inexplicable and inconsistent combination of beliefs that makes someone like Strossen, and Laura Kipnis, desired as speakers, panelists, spokespersons for free speech. After all, they are feminists, social justice warriors to the core, and their position, that calls for silencing “hate speech” are a necessary means to their agreed-upon ends, carries greater weight.

And so Nadine Strossen gave testimony on October 26, 2017, to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on “Exploring Free Speech on College Campuses.” At Concurring Opinions, Ronald K.L. Collins provides Strossen’s statement.

In my capacity as a human rights activist, I am convinced, based upon the historic and current record, that these cardinal First Amendment principles are essential for furthering any political or social cause, including human rights. This conclusion is reaffirmed by examining how “hate speech” laws recently have been enforced in other comparable countries; they have disproportionately suppressed dissenting views and disempowered speakers.

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The First Circuit Court of Appeals decision in United States v. Barry Spencer didn’t accomplish what appellant sought, the holding that an intentional failure to reveal Brady evidence was “material,” an oddity of hubris that provides an incentive to conceal Brady material in the hope that, in the off chance the concealment is discovered, it will still have to overcome a three-prong test before resulting in a reversal. And even if it does, the worst that can happen is a Mulligan, compelling the prosecution to do what the law “required” it to do in the first place.

Unless your name was John Wortmann, in which case there was one thing that turns Barry Spencer’s loss into yours as well.

In response to that assertion by Spencer, the Assistant United States Attorney (“AUSA”) in charge of Spencer’s prosecution, John Wortmann, revealed that, in fact, he had telephoned Rimkus on April 3, 2014, to inform her about the error in the first certificate with respect to the date of incident. Wortmann explained that Rimkus had no knowledge of the actual date of incident and that Rimkus had simply relied on the BPD to supply that information. Specifically, Wortmann stated that “[t]he lab doesn’t know where the drugs — what date the drugs [were] purchased. They can’t possibly know that. And the clerical error was committed when the drugs were submitted [by the BPD] to the lab.” As a result, Wortmann stated that he had simply contacted Rimkus to correct a “clerical error” on the drug certificate “because the drug lab would have no basis for knowing one way or the other.” Wortmann suggested that he had also sent a follow-up e-mail to the BPD after the phone call with Rimkus.

Wortmann, Wortmann, Wortmann. And plenty more Wortmann where that came from. Continue reading →

Why aren’t there more women arguing at the Supreme Court? Yes, genitalia counting has reached SCOTUS, with an analysis by Adam Feldman.

On a per-attorney basis, women were more successful than men in the following categories: all attorneys on the merits, non-governmental attorneys on the merits, and amicus win rates.

If it were that simple, and if correlation proved causation, it would certainly seem that a female attorney at oral argument would improve a party’s chances of winning.* And yet, women lawyers comprise a disproportionately low 17.79%.

These data reflect the disparity in female attorneys’ opportunities before the Supreme Court. They also show that most rational explanation for this disparity, that men outperform women, does not hold. Another explanation may have to do with lack of interest, although statistics on women joining the bar discredit this claim as well. Additional fine-grained analyses could help inform our understanding of the male to female oral argument disparity. The message, however, is clear: namely that no reasonable statistical explanation can account for the difference in participation between male and female attorneys before the United States Supreme Court.

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There was a time, not too long ago, that most people who were involved in blogging knew the name Robert Scoble. The Scobleizer was an early tech guru, blogging ninja, and his name popped up the other day when LexBlog’s Kevin O’Keefe looked to a name brand about how to make the donuts.

The inspiration for donuts comes from blogging – as it was and still is – a conversation. Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) and Shel Israel (@shelisrael) authored the book, Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, eleven years ago.

And before you could say “turnkey blog,” Scoble was another sexual harasser on the internet. This, apparently, was already known, though not by me at the time as neither Scoble nor the allegations against Silicon Valley folks are on my front burner.

Perhaps true to his blogging philosophy, Scoble chose to write about it. Continue reading →

When I first saw the request sent to Twitter for disclosure of information, it made no sense. It made no sense from the perspective of why they wanted the information at all. It made no sense that they were going after Twitter for it. Mike Masnick at Techdirt tried to make sense of it.

 Back in May, the Justice Department — apparently lacking anything better to do with its time — sent a subpoena to Twitter, demanding a whole bunch of information on a five Twitter users, including a few names that regular Techdirt readers may be familiar with:

If you can’t see that, it’s a subpoena asking for information on the following five Twitter users: @dawg8u (“Mike Honcho”), @abtnatural (“Virgil”), @Popehat (Ken White), @associatesmind (Keith Lee) and @PogoWasRight (Dissent Doe). I’m pretty sure we’ve talked about three of those five in previous Techdirt posts. Either way, they’re folks who are quite active in legal/privacy issues on Twitter.

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It was disappointing to find out that Northeastern prof Laura Kipnis, who has become a spokesperson for free speech after being taken to the woodshed repeatedly for violating the orthodoxy of her tribe, has learned only a tiny slice of a lesson. She proclaimed that she would still “spread the gospel of social justice.” Not equality. Not feminism. Not love or tolerance. Social justice.

Meet Michael Schill, president of the University of Oregon, who gave in to the cries of warriors when one of his professors put on blackface for a Halloween costume to honor Dr. Damon Tweedy.

It doesn’t matter what your intentions were. It doesn’t matter if it was protected by the First Amendment.

Blackface is patently offensive. It is overtly racist. It is wildly inappropriate. It reflects a profound lack of judgment. There is no excuse.

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At least SCOTX Justice Don Willett twitted, even if it was more about being cute and witty than substantive. He was out there, seeing, if not quite addressing, the insanity that spews through social media. But what of the Notorious RBG, who almost fell from the pantheon of social justice icons when she didn’t know who Colin Kaepernick was?

Glenn Reynolds distinguishes the view of ‘Merica of a co-equal branch of government consisting of nine people, one of whom wears a doily around her neck, from the others who have to occasionally tolerate the groundlings.

One of the best formulations of this division comes from photographer Chris Arnade, who has spent years documenting the lives of America’s forgotten classes. In his characterization, America is split between the “Front Row Kids” — who did well in school; moved to managerial, financial or political jobs; and see themselves as the natural rulers of their fellow citizens — and the “Back Row Kids,” who placed less emphasis on school; and who resent the pretensions and bossiness of the Front Row Kids.

Supreme Court justices, by definition, possess the characteristics of the elites, and it started with their being front row kids. You don’t end up at Harvard Law School by staring out the window praying the teacher won’t call on you. You’re the kid with the hand raised every time, who wants to sit in the front row to be closer to god than thee. Continue reading →

O’Reilly paid $32 million to settle a harassment claim? That’s an astounding amount of money. The New York Times based its assertion on sources, because sources are the best sources.

Details of the settlement and how the company handled the O’Reilly situation emerged from interviews with two people briefed on the agreement and several others familiar with the dispute; all of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive private negotiations.

O’Reilly’s spokesman, Mark Fabiani, “denounced” the Times’ article.

“Once again, The New York Times has maliciously smeared Bill O’Reilly, this time even failing to print a sworn affidavit from his former lawyer, Lis Wiehl, repudiating all allegations against Bill O’Reilly,” wrote Fabiani. “The Times ignored that evidence, sworn under oath, and chose to rely on unsubstantiated allegations, anonymous sources and incomplete leaked or stolen documents.”

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There are some people who, for reasons that completely elude me, choose to involve handcuffs in their sexual encounters. Anna Chambers did not.

The young woman, who goes by the name “Anna Chambers” on social media but is withholding her legal name, says that on September 15, she and two male friends were driving near Brighton Beach. They were pulled over by the undercover detectives for being in a park after closing time, and their car was searched. The police found drugs in a bag next to Chambers; one friend was also found with pills on his person. The cops handcuffed only Chambers and drove her away in an unmarked van.

The teen alleges that the police drove to a nearby Chipotle parking lot and then, while she remained handcuffed, forced her to perform oral sex on them. One officer, she said, then raped her before leaving her on a street corner near the 60th Precinct. According to her attorney, she went to a hospital that night and was given a rape kit. Law enforcement sources told the New York Post that DNA found on Chambers matched the two officers, a fact confirmed by the teen’s attorney.

The two cops, Brooklyn South narcotics detectives Richard Hall and Edward Martins, don’t deny the sex with the 18-year-old. Their defense is that it was consensual. In the usual way a cuffed arrestee in the back of a Brooklyn South narco van consents to sex with two cops. Continue reading →

It began with the great feminist legal philosopher, Alyssa Milano, former child actress on “Who’s The Boss?” Following disclosures of the repulsive Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault, even rapes, by a few brave women, and subsequent confirmation by an array of female actresses who had been silent for years, even decades, while enjoying the benefits of stardom, it morphed by Chaos Theory into some version of all men are Harveys.

But how to prove it? Milano came up with the hashtag campaign, #metoo.

Heeding a call from actress Alyssa Milano, people have been tweeting ‘#MeToo’ in order to raise awareness about how many women have allegedly experienced sexual harassment. ‘It’s not just one monster’, Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore wrote. ‘“Me too” reveals the ubiquity of sexual assault.’

As with all social-media trends, it’s hard to know what is true and what is exaggeration. #MeToo is particularly tricky to judge. Some have tweeted about actual experiences, ranging from being whistled at to being sexually assaulted. Others have simply said ‘me too’, leaving the rest to the imagination. Some have argued that they don’t need to say what happened to them, and insist that asking women to prove they were harassed is a kind of victim-blaming. One journalist tweeted: ‘Reminder that if a woman didn’t post #MeToo, it doesn’t mean she wasn’t sexually assaulted or harassed. Survivors don’t owe you their story.’

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