There is little question that a public school teacher can’t decide to reject the school’s curriculum and teach students that the world is flat. Maybe that’s what the teacher belives. Maybe that’s what the teacher’s religion mandates. So what? The teacher isn’t in the classroom to push his own agenda or religion, but to do a job for which he is hired, retained and paid. And that’s to teach what the district tells him to teach, right?

But that’s about the substance of what’s taught, not the language. Is it the same? The ACLU argues that it is in its amicus brief in Vlaming v. West Point School Board. The case involves a teacher who, despite a district non-discrimination policy, refused to use the pronouns of a transgender male student. Continue reading →

In an odd case out of Minnesota, in which the plaintiff in a libel action following a #MeToo accusation of rape from a former girlfriend of a couple years was held by the trial judge, as a matter of law, to not have raised a triable issue of fact when he denied that sexual contact was non-consensual. Unsurprisingly, the male was black and the female was white.

Johnson is a dance instructor and event promoter. Freborg was the director of a bachelor’s program in nursing and assistant professor at Augsburg college, until she relocated to California. She worked as a staff nurse for 17 years before receiving a doctorate in nursing from Augsburg in 2011, after which she spent ten years as a professor.

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I left my parents’ home at 17 and the idea of ever, but ever, going back to live with them was never considered. Wasn’t that the point of growing up, to strike out on your own and to establish yourself as an independent adult, for better or worse? Perhaps it was, but not anymore.

This year’s rapid inflation rates have meant higher prices for virtually everything, including rent, food and even partying. So what comes next may not be much of a surprise: Nearly a third of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 — part of what is collectively known as Gen Z — live at home with their parents or other relatives, according to a new study, and they considered it a long-term housing solution.

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In fashioning the plethora of laws triggered by a post-Roe legal regime, most states have sought to carve out some sort of safe haven for the outlier medical conditions, whether ectopic pregnancy, fetal death or any other tragic circumstance arising during pregnancy. Some, mind you, are so dogmatic that they leave no room to move, and there’s little to say about such puny minds.

Some take comfort in what they argue are their exceptions, their safety valves, as if to prove they aren’t the heartless religious zealots they’re accused of being. “Look at what our law says. See?” Except that wasn’t how law worked before and it isn’t how law works now, when it’s applied to an invariably shifting set of facts that requires a high level of education, experience, specialized knowledge and discretion. Continue reading →

Concern for the environment has long been important around Casa de SJ. We’ve recycled from the beginning, cleaned litter from roadsides and do most of our driving in a Prius, as we have for most of the 21st Century. It’s not because it’s a good-looking pod car. We have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country. And while we’re not climate scientists, we are fully prepared to rely on and believe those who are that global warming is real and a critical danger to humanity.

So why, then, do climate activists make me want to do unspeakable things to their arms? Continue reading →

It’s a question I’ve been asking for a while* here: Why is it people prefer misery? They catastrophize everything. They absurdly exaggerate everything bad. They inductively reason that one outlier instance of something tragic means it’s endemic. They whip up a word salad about some banal thing that’s been happening forever and, while perhaps unpleasant, never caused any actual damage that’s going to destroy humanity before the end of the week. Why? It’s not merely a matter of neglect but an active choice. You want everything to be the worst thing ever and the end of humanity.

Jane Coaston calls it “doomerism.” Continue reading →

In a series of “I was wrong about” op-eds, New York Times’ columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote about her being wrong to condemn Al Franken in an essay all about why she wasn’t really wrong. Another columnist, never-Trump conservative Bret Stephens had his own mea culpa essay.

The worst line I ever wrote as a pundit — yes, I know, it’s a crowded field — was the first line I ever wrote about the man who would become the 45th president: “If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling.”

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Hi everyone! I hope you’re having a great start to your Friday. This week I learned about something rather interesting concerning a company called CoreCivic. In case you’re not familiar with them, CoreCivic is one of the largest private prison companies in the nation. They run a facility in my home state called the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center.

Trousdale is, to put it nicely, a shithole. It isn’t properly staffed, the inmates have free run of the entire facility, and one ended up dead because the Subway Sandwich Shop trained hacks couldn’t be bothered to actually conduct regular cell or pod inspections. Continue reading →

Is the Senate anti-democratic? Is the electoral college some absurd arcane contraption, the existence of which not only defies the notion of majority rules but invites gamesmanship, if not a coup should we have a president so unworthy as to consider such a thing? Well, yes. There are reasons why these things exist, why the system was crafted the way it was in order to create any union, no less a more perfect one, because without the Senate, without the electoral college, would there be a United States of America at all?

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of 16 senators, led by Susan Collins of Maine and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, released the text of a new bill intended to make it harder to overturn the results of a presidential election. A direct response to Donald Trump’s multipronged attempt to stay in power, the bill is meant to keep a future candidate for president, including a losing incumbent, from following the same playbook.

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Should the bar exam be eliminated? There is a lot packed into that question about the efficacy of the bar exam, whether it serves to assure a minimum level of competence for admitted lawyers or whether it’s a waste of time, a barrier to keep the number of lawyers down and/or a rite of passage. But is it discriminatory?

The recommendation to eliminate the admissions testing requirement comes amidst cascading charges that reliance on the Law School Admission Test hurts minority applicants. The proposition is sharply contested by many friends of diversity….  Some find  it stigmatizing to be told they can’t do as well on the test as White applicants. But given that the case against the test appears to have persuaded the wordily named Council of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the LSAT does indeed represent an unfair barrier to entry to the legal profession. Continue reading →