It’s not entirely clear what departments, what courses, will be eliminated. Some are named. Most are not. Are they eliminating basic liberal arts courses like English Lit or, as we used to joke before grievance studies became a thing, underwater basket weaving? Hopefully, it isn’t economics, because an education in economics seems critically important.

In proposing last week to eliminate 169 faculty positions and cut more than 30 degree programs from its flagship university, West Virginia, the state with the fourth-highest poverty rate in the country, is engaging in a kind of educational gerrymandering. Continue reading →

At Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene tells the story of what Black Lives Matters Sacramento did to a woman, Karra Crowley, who did nothing to deserve it. It’s a compelling story of what’s deeply wrong with the empowerment of activists incapable of handling their power, from their doubling down on the attack after being informed that their target was not the person who did it, to their calling upon their swarm of gnats to do harm, or as founder Tanya Faison called it, “make her famous.” Continue reading →

Did you think there was any chance in hell he was going to get up on that stage and let Chris Christie, who may be a disingenuous turd but isn’t a blithering coward

(at the moment) blithering idiot rip his nonsensical spewings to shreds? Trump has nothing to gain from debating his opponents and plenty to lose. After all, it’s a lot easier to get away with vapid whining when there’s nobody present to call you on it.

But what about the voters? Continue reading →

I avoid doing topical stuff in these posts for a couple of reasons. First, topical humor is extremely hard. Second, just about everything one can do that’s “topical” or “current” these days is extremely polarizing and emotionally charged to a ridiculous degree. In case you haven’t noticed, part of the reason I do these dumb joke posts is to send y’all home with a laugh at the end of the week. Folks who read SJ tend to have a pretty gallows-level sense of humor, so I’m glad I get an opportunity to make you smile before you’re on your way to the weekend.

There are times, however, when a big ol’ bear just rears its head in view of your humble humorist. Sometimes, like today, those bears need a good poking.

Hand me a pointy stick and let’s get started. Continue reading →

Florida’s Stop Woke Act is an unconstitutional, misguided, ham-handed effort to dictate what academics cannot teach. But what about its converse, California’s regulations dictating what academics must teach? Unsurprisingly, few voices have been raised in opposition even though it’s little more than the flip side of unconstitutionality, except for FIRE bringing suit on behalf of six community college professors.

“I’m a professor of chemistry. How am I supposed to incorporate DEI into my classroom instruction?” asked Reedley College professor Bill Blanken. “What’s the ‘anti-racist’ perspective on the atomic mass of boron?”

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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis informed the court that she seeks a trial date in the Trump RICO case of March 4, 2024, which coincidentally is the day before Super Tuesday. Proposed trial dates in the other cases are peppered before and after, but all before the presidential election in November.

In the New York County “hush money” case, the proposed date is March 25, 2024. In the Jack Smith documents case, it’s May 20, 2024. In the Smith J6 case, it’s January 2, 2024. In the Letitia James civil fraud case, it’s October 2, 2024, which Justice Arthur Engoron says is “written in stone.” Continue reading →

The question is not, as some simpletons often seek to frame it, that too many criminal cases end in plea bargains rather than trials. They obviously do, and there are many reasons why this is the case as I’ve argued in the past. But in a new pitch to alter the calculus, Clark Neily goes to a place even darker than usual. Rather than argue that trials, rather than pleas, are necessary to vindicate the rights of the accused, Clark argues that it’s the right of the public to enjoy salacious legal content about the public figures they hate the most.

Think how much more we could learn about Biden-family influence peddling and the machinations of foreign agents if the charges against Hunter were litigated in open court, as the Constitution provides. Among other things, the relevant tax filings would have to be offered into evidence and there would be testimony about them, potentially including how Biden earned the income upon which he neglected to pay taxes, who paid him, and whether any other family members participated in the performance or the fruits of that labor. Those questions might lead to others, such as why the government appears to have cherry picked Biden’s least culpable tax shenanigans while turning a blind eye to more serious misconduct, as alleged by multiple IRS whistleblowers.

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My old pal Ken had a handy reply whenever someone mindlessly claimed that conduct he found offensive violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act: “It’s not the RICO.” According to the indictment filed by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willi against Trump and 18 other defendants, including such legal “luminaries” as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman and Jenna Ellis, it is indeed the RICO. It’s very much the RICO.

Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on  November 3, 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other Defendants  charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.

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Five, if not six, of the co-conspirators in Trump’s January 6th indictment are lawyers. Lawyers?!? According to Cardozo con law prawf Deborah Pearlstein, that must mean something.

At least five and perhaps all six of the individuals who are alleged to have conspired with Mr. Trump to strip millions of Americans of their right to have their votes counted had a special duty to protect our constitutional system. They were lawyers.

In one sense, it would be easy to make too much of this fact. The former senior Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and the former law school dean John Eastman, who seem plainly to be two of the unnamed co-conspirators, are hardly representative of the million-plus practicing lawyers in the United States. Thousands of lawyers, most of them career civil servants, served honorably in Mr. Trump’s administration.

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The old saw is never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. While ink has been largely replaced by pixels, and it’s unclear that the Marion County Record, a weekly newspaper that few beyond Marion County would be aware existed, bought pixels in bulk, but when one of the media tribe gets raided, the wagons circle and the outrage flows.

In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home. Continue reading →