You can take issue with some particular examples used by David Books, as readers did in the comments because Brooks made the grievous error of mentioning health care and Trump, thus invoking the activists for single payer health care and anti-deplorables, but his point was about the cost of bureaucracy on people’s now-crushed souls.

The growth of bureaucracy costs America over $3 trillion in lost economic output every year, Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini estimated in 2016 in The Harvard Business Review. That was about 17 percent of G.D.P. According to their analysis, there is now one administrator or manager for every 4.7 employees, doing things like designing anti-harassment trainings, writing corporate mission statements, collecting data and managing “systems.” Continue reading →

The concept made sense back in 1984, when the Supreme Court held in Chevron v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, that courts should defer to the expertise of administrative agencies in their reasonable interpretations of ambiguous laws. After all, Congress was enacting broad laws affecting highly technical aspects of industries and required a good deal of latitude on the part of agencies to use a level of knowledge and experience that judges didn’t possess and addressed the constant if routine application of law to changing circumstances. Continue reading →

I’ll be going south to Wilmington, North Carolina, for Dr. SJ’s mother’s funeral, the last of either of our parents to survive. Be back on Thursday. No need for condolences. Thanks.

It’s hard to keep all these terrorist groups separate, especially now when they’ve become the darlings of the American, even international, left. But what’s a president to do when they fire on commercial vessels in international waters?

The Houthis’ leadership has made its strategic objective clear from the start; its goal was to draw the United States into a fight, ostensibly to show solidarity with Hamas. Having taken over Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and endured a civil war and a bloody Saudi Arabia-led bombing campaign, the Houthis survive — and thrive — on never-ending conflict. Actual governance is not their forte, as their official slogan indicates: “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.”

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At the time the education amendment creating Title IX was enacted in 1972, there was no doubt, none whatsoever, what the word “sex” meant. The Biden Department of Education pretends otherwise, that it was redefined by Bostock, but it wasn’t. Rather, the chief of the Office of Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon, wants it to be true so she abuses her bureaucratic authority to make it so.

But Western District of Oklahoma Judge Jodi Dishman isn’t buying. Continue reading →

Prefatory note: The following is a series of completely fictional stories I made up out of whole cloth. Just in case you don’t believe that names and places have been changed to protect the innocent from my dumb jokes.

ONE

I wake around ten am. A streak of sunlight momentarily blinds me when I open my eyes. I curse as I roll out of bed.

Today’s my first day on my new gig. GIGS, technically. See what I did there? One doesn’t need to be constrained to the chains of a regular job. This is 2024, baby! Now all you need to earn money is a phone and a car. Welcome to the world of delivery services, you go-getting entrepreneur, you! Continue reading →

Lest there be any doubt, I’ve long supported the concept of second chances, that even those people convicted of the most heinous and serious offenses be given a second look after a lengthy period of imprisonment to determine whether continued confinement is warranted. This isn’t to say they should get parole. Sometimes, the answer will be no, they do not deserve a second chance. But there is no harm in taking a look, particularly as sentences have been ratcheted up over the past few decades into absurdly lengthy sentences.

The sentence of life without parole has already been held too extreme to satisfy the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual sentences for juveniles, people who committed the crime when they were under the age of 18 years, because they were children, intellectually and emotionally, and should not be held to the standard imposed on adults. The Massachusetts Supreme Court has now held that the same should apply to a new category, “emerging adults.” Continue reading →

In dismissing the action after a bench trial, Northern District of Florida Judge Robert Hinkle was harshly critical of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ motive for ousting the two-time elected reform state’s attorney, Andrew Warren.

Last January, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Florida Robert Hinkle sharply criticized the DeSantis administration’s partisan motivations for suspending Warren, formerly the Hillsborough County State Attorney and one of the most prominent progressive prosecutors in the state. Continue reading →

To say that oral argument didn’t go well for Trump before the three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit is an understatement.

In one tough moment for Mr. Trump during the hearing on Tuesday, Judge Henderson rebutted Mr. Sauer’s argument that for more than 200 years, American courts had never sat in judgment over actions that a president had taken while in office.

Judge Henderson pointed out that until Mr. Trump was indicted, courts had never had to consider the criminal liability of former presidents for things they had done while in the White House.

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Two North Carolina paralegals, Morag Black Polaski and Shawana Almendarez, have sued to challenge the prohibition against the unauthorized practice of law. It’s not that they want to play lawyer, but to engage in a business helping people fill out legal forms for a lesser expense than a lawyer would charge. They are claiming that the law violates their First Amendment rights.

The plaintiffs filed a complaint in federal court in North Carolina that said the state courts give unrepresented litigants online forms for summary ejectments, absolute divorces, and protective orders — forms that are “not complicated,” but that “can still be confusing.” They said that many residents cannot afford to hire a lawyer to guide them through filling out the forms, and that many who fall into the “missing middle” level of income are too poor to hire a lawyer but not poor enough to qualify for free legal help.

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