Some people like Taylor Swift’s music. Others may ask, “Taylor who?” For the latter group, I’m here for you. She’s the party in an action in the District of Colorado federal court trying to get a gender studies professor admitted as an expert witness to “profile” the kind of person who would grab her behind.

David Mueller has been accused of lifting up Swift’s skirt and groping her at a Colorado meet-and-greet in June 2013, an allegation that saw him lose his job as a DJ at the Denver country music radio station 98.5 KYGO. Mueller initially sued Swift for what he described as her “false” allegations, a move that was soon met by a counter-suit from Swift for sexual assault and battery in October 2015. In her deposition, Swift described feeling “frantic, distressed and violated” by the alleged incident.

While these feelings pretty much explain every song Swift has written, it nonetheless does not excuse Mueller if he, in fact, reached under her dress and touched her. But Swift’s lawyer, apparently, is unwilling to try his case based upon her testimony, and seeks instead to bolster her claim by calling an expert witness. Continue reading →

The first thing that hits you when you read something by or about Laurence Tribe is Carl Loeb, which is a bit ironic given that Loeb made his fortune as a Wall Street financier. But it’s right there, front and center, of his Washington Post op-ed.

By Laurence H. Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School.

The time has come for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice.

It’s an impressive thing, to hold an endowed seat at Harvard Law School. He has attributed credibility. And, indeed, Larry Tribe has done much in his career to earn that credibility, even though he’s done a few things to raise questions as well. Continue reading →

For those who believe that training is the answer, two Las Vegas cops came upon a guy who was apparently suffering some sort of psychotic episode. It’s hardly unusual for police to be called upon to deal with people suffering from some sort of mental illness, and it’s not as though this is such a wild, new problem that they are utterly clueless as to what to do. So, they handled it.

The incident unfolded about 1 a.m. when the man approached two uniformed officers inside The Venetian, 3355 S. Las Vegas Blvd. South, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a release.

The Metro officers described the man as “acting erratic” and paranoid. The man told the officers that “people were chasing him.” He ran off, and both officers followed, police said in a release.

As the man came to the cops, it would be fair to assume he sought their assistance for whatever delusion he was suffering.  Certainly, acting erratic inside the Venetian can’t be all that unusual. Continue reading →

Jeff Sessions issued a memo to the United States Attorneys directing them to charge the highest provable offense possible. What this means is that the charging decision dictates the outcome under the regime of mandatory minimums. If this seems like deja vu all over again, that’s because it is. This was the protocol under Attorney General John Ashcroft.

In the interim, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a memo providing for greater exercise of prosecutorial discretion. As should be obvious, the problem with addressing the outcomes of “prison nation” and the draconian “War on Drugs” by memo is that the next guy gets to write a memo of his own.

In this case, Sessions, contrary to some suggestions, hasn’t quite done something new and horrible, but returned to the old and horrible days of Ashcroft.

“We are returning to the enforcement of the laws as passed by Congress, plain and simple,” Sessions said. “If you are a drug trafficker, we will not look the other way, we will not be willfully blind to your misconduct.”

Continue reading →

At Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown describes the execution of the “Human Trafficking” warrant:

“Everybody’s like, ‘Don’t move, don’t move or we’ll shoot you,'” Noel Navarete told local 4 News. His brother Isaias, 18, said he was in the bathroom when police kicked down the door.

According to family matriarch Maria Navarete, police told her to “shut up, you have no rights” when she asked what was happening. She claims police never showed her or anyone in the household a warrant.

Nothing surprising there, as being polite and gracious in the exercise of brute force isn’t part of the deal. And when the crime underlying the warrant is “human trafficking,” one of those phrases that catches in a person’s throat because it sounds so horrifying, who can blame the cops for not being genteel in their actions. Even if the people who are on the business end of their force are the children they’re there to save.

One of the teens was the family’s 13-year-old daughter, who lived there. She wound up face-down and handcuffed on the floor, along with the rest of her family, after cops cut through a locked gate outside the southwest Detroit home and entered with their guns drawn.

Continue reading →

Some cops will hate this. They will rail about how this teaches young people to think cops aren’t there to protect them, to serve them. They’ll mumble about the War on Cops and how young people should respect them because, well, people should just respect cops because reasons. Such fragile teacups, guns and shields notwithstanding.

The Talk. Black parents have been giving it to their black children for ages because they love their kids and want to keep them alive. Is it a shame they need to do this? Of course, but the shame isn’t that they give The Talk, but that they need to give The Talk. But they do.

[Virginia Assembly Delegate Jeion] Ward crafted a bill requiring driver’s education classes to teach students how to handle themselves during a traffic stop.

On Monday, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) signed Ward’s bill into law, making Virginia one of only a handful of states grappling with an issue made urgent by the high-profile wave of police-related shootings of African Americans in the past few years. Continue reading →

Hal Niedzviecki called bullshit on cultural appropriation. It didn’t go well for him.

Hal Niedzviecki, editor of Write — a publication for the union’s members — published an opinion piece in the spring 2017 issue titled “Writer’s Prompt.” In the article, in an issue dedicated to indigenous writing, Niedzviecki wrote: “In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities.

“I’d go so far as to say there should even be an award for doing so — the Appropriation Prize for best book by an author who writes about people who aren’t even remotely like her or him.”

He didn’t wear a sombrero while writing it, or get soused on margaritas. He just challenged cultural appropriation. After all, if you seize someone else’s culture, then there won’t be enough for them. Continue reading →

Jamie Koehler offers, without commentary, a bit of trial transcript.

PROSECUTOR ON RE-DIRECT

Q: Okay. Ms. Smith, you do have a Yahoo e-mail account, right?

DEFENSE COUNSEL: Objection. Leading.

The prosecutor, of course, can’t lead his own witness. Not on direct. Not on re-direct, where a prosecutor will try to rehabilitate his witness after a withering cross. But in this case, the cross didn’t turn out to be particularly withering. Continue reading →

A few years ago, “good faith” was declared dead. Obama was still president and the Department of Justice was run by the people lionized today for their not being sycophants of the Trump administration. To some howls of disapproval, I disputed the contention as unworkable, the end of the American experiment. A nation cannot function without the presumption of regularity.

The beauty of such presumptions is that they are rebuttable.  The law may presume a public official to act in good faith, but that merely informs the parties of who has the burden to dispute the presumption and the burden of proof.

Yet, the Comey termination letter tests the presumption beyond the breaking point. As Julian Sanchez writes, the claim that he fired Comey for mishandling the Clinton email investigation is too ludicrous to be taken seriously. It’s as if Trump wasn’t even trying to come up with a credible story. It’s insulting. Lawprof Dawn Johnsen, at the WeHateTrump blog, argues that he’s not entitled to the deference otherwise shown presidents: Continue reading →

The New York State Senate, remiss in not using street gang hysteria to prove how tough on crime it can be in an age of incredibly low crime, is on the cusp of enacting Article 495 to the Penal Law, a new series of “Criminal Street Gang” crimes. Its opening salvo of definitions is a textbook example of how hard it is to write law.

S 495.05 DEFINITIONS. AS USED IN THIS ARTICLE, THE FOLLOWING TERMS SHALL MEAN AND INCLUDE:

1. “CRIMINAL STREET GANG” MEANS A STREET GANG THAT ENGAGES IN A PATTERN OF CRIMINAL STREET GANG ACTIVITY FOR ITS BENEFIT OR FOR THE BENEFIT OF ONE OR MORE MEMBERS. AS USED IN THIS ARTICLE, THE TERM “STREET GANG” MEANS AND INCLUDES ANY FORMAL OR INFORMAL ASSOCIATION IN FACT OF TWO OR MORE INDIVIDUALS IDENTIFIED BY A COMMON NAME, SIGN, DRESS, SYMBOLS, TATTOOS, OR OTHER MARK OR MARKINGS.

The definition is really two definitions lumped together. The first part defines “criminal street gang” as “a street gang that engages in a pattern of criminal street gang activity.” When a definition uses the word or phrase being defined to define it, it’s utterly worthless. For those who say, well, it says “criminal street gang,” and everybody knows what that means, you’re required to listen to Dylan all day today.  Continue reading →