Years ago, I spoke with a fellow who worked in the White House on the defense against computer hacking. At the time, hackers were basically kicking the butt of the government, and the government was having a really bad time trying to counter their incursions. Why, I asked. His answer was that almost all people with great computer skills either are or were pot smokers. The United States did not hire pot smokers. Consequently, the United States refused the very people it needed desperately. It would rather get its butt kicked by hackers.

Finally, a bill has been introduced in the House to end the government’s refusal to hire or give security clearances to people who have smoked pot. Continue reading →

It’s long been clear that the police have no general duty to do their job. Forget the public relations schtick, useful primarily to get budget increases and cool new equipment, about “defend and protect,” the cops can turn their back and walk away without violating your constitutional rights. But can the government simply abandon a portion of a city to crime and criminals? According to Northern District of California Judge Jon Tigar, yes. Yes it can.

Plaintiffs are residents and businesses in the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco. Plaintiffs allege that the City treats the Tenderloin as a “containment zone” for narcotics activities. Specifically, Plaintiffs contend that “for years the City has allowed individuals to openly buy and use narcotics in the Tenderloin, and to remain, under the obvious influence of drugs, on the sidewalks and public spaces of the neighborhood.” “Addicts living on the Tenderloin’s streets foreseeably support their habit by stealing (e.g., shoplifting, car break-ins, burglaries, robberies) and hawking the stolen merchandise on the sidewalks.” Continue reading →

Americans, divided as ever in the wake of a failed assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump, refused to heed calls from political leaders to tone down incendiary political rhetoric because “they started it.”

No one questioned about who “they” are offered any sort of coherent or meaningful answer. In fact, the responses largely depended on who answered the question.

President Joe Biden, when asked to clarify his position following his remarks from last Sunday, said “When I said ‘we’ need to tone down the rhetoric in America, I meant everyone else, not me. I’ve made it my mission to point out how Trump is an existential threat to democracy and I’ll continue to do that right up until November.” Continue reading →

Who, you might ask, is primarily responsible for their child? This question, once so simple, is at the nexus of progressive activism when it comes to the division of responsibility between a public school and parents. That question has now been answered, not as a matter of philosophy, but as a matter of law, in California.

The “SAFETY Act,” AB 1955, signed by California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, legally forbids schools from adopting any policy that would force them to disclose “any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent.” Schools may not, as a matter of policy, inform parents of a child’s new gender identity unless the child volunteers her approval. The law also prohibits schools from punishing any school employee found to have “supported a pupil” hurtling down a path toward risky and irreversible hormones and surgeries.

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There is no splashy ad campaign to announce its demise, but corporations that cater to the young and cutting edge are quietly putting an end to the woke version of DEI.

Microsoft has reportedly laid off a team devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion after pouring millions of dollars into the initiative — becoming the latest major company to ditch the “woke” policy.

The Big Tech giant disbanded the DEI team at the beginning of the month due to “changing business needs,” according to a July 1 email obtained by Business Insider. Continue reading →

The right immediately leapt to the obvious explanation that the shooter was a radical leftist hopped up on existential hatred. The left responded with “you started it,” until it turned out that the kid was a registered Republican, whereupon there was dancing in the streets of hipsterville. The FBI announced it was still investigating the motive, even though there wasn’t much left to investigate.

In the face of this complete lack of information to explain why Thomas Matthew Crooks (because all presidential assassins, attempted of otherwise, are required to be known by three names) shot at Donald John Trump, MIchelle Goldberg seized the opportunity to blame the sad plight of young men. Continue reading →

My initial reaction after reading the salient portion of the opinion was to call it “goofy,” which was about as inoffensive a characterization as I could muster. There was a question raised at the inception of the Trump classified documents case whether Special Counsel Jack Smith knew what he was doing when he made the call to prosecute the case in the Southern District of Florida, West Palm Beach Division, where the only judge sitting in the courthouse was Aileen Cannon, the same Trump appointee who had already disgraced herself by collaterally staying the review of evidence seized by the search warrant, which was not a “thing.”

I tried. Oh lord, I tried to give Judge Cannon the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was just inexperienced. Maybe she just wasn’t all that bright. Maybe she was trying to be as meticulous as possible after the Eleventh Circuit ripped her a new one for her monumentally bizarre ruling in the search warrant proceeding. Or maybe her bench was the quid to Trump’s quo. Continue reading →

The left says it will be the death of democracy. The right says fight like hell or the nation will be lost. The center bemoans both, but hasn’t done much to quell the doom being used to motivate the extremes to action. There is, I hope, a substantial gap between the rhetoric and taking a gun in hand to act upon it, but given the millions of people on either edge, there will almost certainly be some who believe that an act of extreme violence is the moral thing to do when, they are repeatedly told, the threat is existential and must be stopped “by any means necessary.”

It’s come as a surprise that no one tried to assassinate Trump before. Granted, it wouldn’t have been easy to do, and would likely have ended in the shooter’s death, but as a criminal defense lawyer, the reality is that there are people whose minds are so twisted that they would do something so horrible and crazy. There are crazy people out there. There are violent people out there. They sometimes do crazy and violent things. Continue reading →

Nobody wants to hear about a young person, a 13-year-old, dying. This is especially true when his death was caused by a cop. But heartbreaking though it may be, it fails to answer the question of whether it was a good shoot, no matter how angry an immigrant community may be about the death of one of its children.

The police stopped him and a friend who was straddling a bike on a quiet, working-class street around 10 p.m., officials said. The officers were investigating robberies and suspects described as Asian males with a black firearm. One suspect had been on a bike and the other had been walking, the police said. Continue reading →

It’s not the least bit surprising that New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman hates, and I mean really hates, the presidential immunity decision of Trump v. US. Consequently, it’s not the least bit surprising that Jesse takes Chief Justice John Roberts to task for the line in the opinion dismissing the fears of the dissenters.

In his majority opinion in the case about presidential immunity, Chief Justice John Roberts mocked the three liberal dissenters for striking “a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the court actually does today.” (Reality check: The immunity ruling — which gave presidents carte blanche to break most criminal laws when carrying out their official duties — is not grounded in any clause of the Constitution. It went far beyond what even the most pessimistic court observers expected; the dissenters, if anything, responded with restraint.)

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