The State of the Union address was Biden’s to blow. It was his chance to show that he’s not too old and still up to the job. It was his chance to show that he still has something to offer a nation, both to the Republicans as well as the Progressive Caucus of the Democrats, with Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush adorned in keffiyehs.

Biden spoke too fast. He stumbled over a few words, blurring sentences. But he spoke with a vigor that’s been missing for a while. Biden used the word “illegal” when referring to the killer of  Georgian nursing student Laken Riley, but wasn’t afraid to say her name as taunted by behatted class clown Marjorie Taylor Greene. Continue reading →

At Bari Weiss’ Free Press, Francesca Block reveals that the Long Beach School District pays students $1,400 to learn how to become social justice warriors.

Contracts between Long Beach Unified School District and Californians for Justice from 2019 to 2023, exclusively obtained by The Free Press, show the school district used taxpayer funds to pay the group nearly $2 million to facilitate equity and leadership development training for students and teachers. In addition to the student stipends, the contracts also allocated a total of $20,200 to 13 parents for participating in the group’s programs.

Starting from December 2019 until now, the Long Beach Unified School District south of Los Angeles has paid at least 78 students a total of nearly $100,000 for participating in a club run by the organization, also known as CFJ. The most recent contract runs until June 2024.

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As the cultural landscape in America shifted from “no means no” to affirmative consent, wreaking havoc as it was untethered from any viable definition and was saddled with a litany of excuses making it nearly impossible to defend, whether true or false, the mantra embraced by the woke was “believe women.” As Brett Stephens shows, those good ol’ days are over, at least when the victims of rape are Israeli.

On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded Israel and filmed itself committing scores of human-rights atrocities. Some of the footage was later captured by the Israeli military and screened to hundreds of journalists, including me. The “pure, predatory sadism,” as Atlantic writer Graeme Wood described it, is bottomless. Continue reading →

Colorado lost as a unanimous Supreme Court held that a state cannot disqualify a candidate for president on its own. How did a unanimous, per curiam, opinion, as concurrer Justice Amy Coney Barrett, turn up the heat? The majority didn’t stop at deciding what Colorado could not do, but went a few steps beyond by deciding that pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was left to Congress to enact enabling legislation to effectuate Section 3, the  disqualification clause that applies to oath breaking insurrectionists, of which no one on the Court questioned. Continue reading →

The heady days of George Floyd protests and progressive prosecutors brought a number of “reforms,” most of which have proven, as expected, to be simplistic, misguided and unsustainable. It wasn’t enough to be filled with passion, but to also think long and hard about what would work and what was based on shallow fantasies. Granted, some changes have been important, like holding cops criminally culpable for the commission of crimes, something that almost never happened before. Others have wrought more crime and suffering, despite the good intentions. Continue reading →

To be fair, few motions are won at oral argument, though more are lost by a poor argument or an inadvertent admission. The serious argument is set forth in the motions themselves, the accompanying memorandum and affirmations. Face time before the court is fun, and may well turn out to be significant if the judge has a question in need of an answer, but it’s more show than substance.

So why, then, turn it into a battleground?

According to the complaint, the judges all entered orders in 2020, which give greater opportunities for career-advancing oral arguments in court to attorneys who are “newer, female and minority.” Continue reading →

In a series of posts, Radley Balko sought to debunk what he calls the “retconning” of George Floyd stemming from a documentary that questioned whether he was murdered by Derek Chauvin with the support or involvement of people like  John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Bari Weiss and Coleman Hughes, among others. By “retconning,” Radley refers to the introduction of new information in order to change the narrative. He argues that after the initial consensus comes the “flattening.”

There’s a flattening that takes place after a high-profile incident of police abuse sparks civil unrest.

There’s the initial media coverage and viral spread on social media. This is followed by outrage, then protests. In some cases, the protests may be accompanied by rioting or looting. Much of that violence is often — but not always — in response to an overly aggressive police response. Continue reading →

When it comes to Biglaw firms, Skadden Arps is one of the biggest. It hires the best because it pays ridiculous amounts of money to baby lawyers who couldn’t find the courthouse without Google Maps, and their clients are willing to foot the bill for reasons that elude me. Where does a firm like Skadden seek out its new class of lawyers? Elite law schools, like Harvard. And so they held a career day, caught on video.

Skadden Arps does career event at Harvard Law School … students ask questions about how Skadden furthers Palestinian genocide on behalf of an apartheid state. pic.twitter.com/m8WQ3KY4Um

— Andy Grewal (@ProfGrewal) March 1, 2024

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The issue is significant, though it is neither more nor less significant than when Special Prosecutor Jack Smith brought it to the Supreme Court for decision before the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. The pendency of an election is not, as a matter of legal doctrine, a cognizable reason to expedite hearing and decision by the Court. Nor does Merrick Garland’s neglect of the matter for two years before appointing a special prosecutor turn this into the Court’s emergency.

And that’s pretty much the most generous reading I can muster about the Supreme Court’s decision to hear Trump’s appeal on a time frame that almost certainly precludes a trial on the January 6th indictment before D.C. judge Tanya Chutkan. The timeline is fairly clear at this point, with oral argument scheduled for April 22d, a balance of 88 days remaining for defendant to prepare for trial and an estimated three month trial. Continue reading →

As a general rule, it seems wise for courts to keep their noses out of the fraught issue of whether a school assignment has pedagogical value. After all, judges aren’t teachers, so why would it be left to courts? And yet, as schools, and teachers, become more aggressive in the nature of what they’re requiring students to do, the potential for crossing the line leaves parents of public school students with few options other than the law when the assignment goes too far.

In Evans v. Hawes, District of Nevada Judge Jennifer Dorsey denied a motion to dismiss when the high school daughter of Terrance and Candra Evans’ assignment in an acting class was to read a monologue written by another student. Continue reading →