Talking to a long-time SJ reader, I spoke of the social shift between the time SJ started in 2007 and now. Back then, people were still of the general view that police were the good guys and that the bad things people claimed cops did were, well, untrue. Why would they do that? A great question to which there was no good answer, because there was often no good reason for the violence, the meanness and the cruelty, yet it happened. Continue reading →

Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick has been doing a series of posts about a stunningly dystopian scheme to protect children from “inappropriate” content, whatever that means in California, and which could very well end up affecting SJ (and hence you, dear reader) as it would the readers of Techdirt and pretty much every other site in existence.

Eric Goldman parsed the bill when it was little more than a twinkle in an unduly passionate eye.

First, the bill pretextually claims to protect children, but it will change the Internet for EVERYONE. In order to determine who is a child, websites and apps will have to authenticate the age of ALL consumers before they can use the service. NO ONE WANTS THIS. Continue reading →

Sure, the Supreme Court held that corporal punishment in schools was not cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment in Ingraham v. Wright, but we’re better than that now. We don’t let teachers strike kids anymore. We know that’s harmful, that’s cruel and that’s wrong. Or do we?

The road to corporal punishment in Cassville, [Missouri] a city located nearly 60 miles southeast of Springfield, started earlier this year with an anonymous survey of parents, students and school employees. Continue reading →

In elite circles, where they keep changing pedagogical methods until every child is equitably illiterate, the test for being licensed as a social worker has been branded “racist.” John McWhorter points out a problem with the conclusion.

The Association of Social Work Boards administers tests typically required for the licensure of social workers. Apparently, this amounts to a kind of racism that must be reckoned with. Continue reading →

Edward Niedermeyer (no known relation to Douglas) isn’t wrong.

Compared to the herculean task of building supply chains to sustain a broad domestic E.V. market, tackling this problem from the demand side almost seems easy. Proving that E.V.s can road trip may have been an important psychological hurdle for the technology to tackle, but it remains more psychological than real: the average American motorist drives about 40 miles per day and 95 percent of our car trips are 30 miles or shorter.

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Pastor Michael Jennings of Vision of Abundant Life Ministries in Sylacauga was, as one would suspect, a good guy, meaning that he was engaged in a good deed and perceived himself to be on the correct side of the good guy curve, where a pastor ought to be. And to be as fair as humanly possible to Pastor Jennings, he was not wrong. But he wasn’t quite right either.

It all started with Jennings being a good neighbor, according to Georgia-based civil rights attorney Harry Daniels, one of three attorneys representing Jennings. Continue reading →

Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart has directed the Department of Justice to produce a redacted version of the search warrant affidavit used to obtain the warrant for Mar-a-Lago. The government has done so and the mag has ordered its release by noon today.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered that a redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain a warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence be unsealed by noon on Friday — paving the way for the disclosure of potentially revelatory details about a search with enormous legal and political implications.

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Some rando jumped into my mentions on the twitters in reply to a twit of mine about student loan debt forgiveness with the riposte, “but what about PPP loans”? I blew it off because it was so monumentally stupid as to be unworthy of discussion. I mean, there was nothing about the PPP, the congressionally enacted Paycheck Protection Program, that bore any relation to presidential forgiveness of student loan debt under the guise of a national emergency response to COVID.

And then it happened. First, former Southern District of New York United States Attorney cum drug warrior and black man enslaver turned dream date of the chic left for being fired by Trump despite prisons filled with black and brown people for drugs, Preet Bharara. Continue reading →

In the scheme of Title IX suits brought in federal courts to challenge the outcomes of campus sex tribunals, pseudonymity has largely been the norm other than the few cases where the identity of the accused is so well and widely known that there’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. And, indeed, that was the analogy drawn by Judge Bruce Selya writing for the court in Doe v. MIT.

While the underlying facts of the case really aren’t relevant to the holding, the only issue being whether the plaintiff could proceed under the Doe ‘nym rather than in his true name, it’s helpful to briefly take note of the facts only to appreciate what’s at stake in these cases, and at risk of being turned into an untenable challenge because the accused would be burned at the stake once his name became known, and any eventual ruling in his favor would do little to unring the accused death knell. Continue reading →

Death tends to be something of an equalizer. Aside from someone so awful that death presents relief, most of us (Felicia Sonmez notwithstanding) defer to condolences or, at worst, silence. After all, don’t speak ill of the dead isn’t merely a well-established social norm (unlike the many invented last week and now being forced upon us), but a sound one.

Death is sad. Whether we love someone or not, loved ones are left behind who deserve some sympathy. When the death is tragic, what sort of animal would use the opportunity to attack the deceased? Continue reading →