I remember when candidate Trump, from the debate stage, announced he would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would overrule Roe v. Wade, as candidate Clinton announced she would appoint one who would uphold abortion. Both made me cringe. It’s now normal for presidential candidates to “sell” Supreme Court seats to voters as an enticement. Even Reagan did it announcing he would nominate a woman, who turned out to be Sandra Day O’Connor.

To be fair, it’s not as if seats haven’t been deemed “owned” by a demographic. The great Thurgood Marshall’s seat was reserved for a black justice, and so Clarence Thomas, whose qualifications were in serious doubt, got the nod. Of course, the only thing in common between Justice Marshall and Justice Thomas is their skin color, dispelling the myth that melanin is all it takes. Continue reading →

In the latest version of “Let’s Come Up With A Stupid Law,” Florida’s entry is the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

A Florida House committee on Thursday passed a bill seeking to ban discussions of sexuality and gender identity in school classrooms, which LGBTQ+ advocates say will effectively “erase” LGBTQ+ history, culture, and students.

The Parental Rights in Education bill, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, passed Thursday in the House Education and Employment Committee largely along party lines.

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It’s not that Facebook forced its users to declare their sex, but that if they chose to do so, they had an option.

Previously, users had to identify themselves as male or female. They were also given the option of not answering or keeping their gender private.

I can hear the cries of “what about me” coming from transgender people, which is curious given that the argument is that a male transgender person is male, so it wouldn’t seem to create any conflict to pick a sex. And if they didn’t like the choices, they weren’t forced to make one. Fair enough? Not anymore. Continue reading →

Biden called some guy named Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch.” It was inappropriate and impetuous, and he quickly apologized for his intemperate remark. But what about the Beatles?

Not so many years ago I would park my then-new car outside the front door of coffee shops where I was playing guitar and singing on Long Island, hold up the keys and announce, “If you can stump me on the Fabs, I’ll give you my wheels.” Or if I happened to have a hundred dollar bill, I’d pin it to the wall behind me and offer it to anyone who could name a Beatles song I couldn’t produce in three seconds.

But the game was rigged — you couldn’t beat the house.

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There are law-abiding gun owners. There are shooters. There is a constitutional amendment, for better or worse, that protects the fundamental right of a citizen to possess a gun. What’s a former police captain turned mayor to do?

In a solemn speech just three days after a police officer was killed in Manhattan, Mr. Adams called for immediate changes to add police officers to city streets to remove guns, and for help from the courts and state lawmakers in the months ahead.

“We will not surrender our city to the violent few,” Mr. Adams said.

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Matt Lutz opens at Persuasion with a great anecdote that I never heard before.

In “The Imaginary Invalid,” a play written by the French satirist Molière, a doctor is asked why opium makes people fall asleep. The doctor replies that “there is a dormitive virtue in it, whose nature it is to make the senses drowsy.” In other words, opium makes people fall asleep because it has the power to make people fall asleep. That joke has since become a favorite among philosophers and historians of science because it is a wonderful example of an explanation that doesn’t explain. Rather than provide an understanding of why opium causes sleepiness, it’s a tautology dressed up in jargon.

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Derek Chauvin has already been convicted for the murder of George Floyd. To the extent any conviction “sends a message” to anyone, the message has been sent. But the trial of the three officers working under Chauvin’s training eye is set to commence today, and the hope is that it sends another message. Where the Chauvin message was that cops can’t recklessly kill people, this message is that cops have a duty to intervene when a “superior” officer engages in improper conduct.

Former Minneapolis officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas K. Lane and Tou Thao are charged with failing to render medical aid after Chauvin pinned Floyd’s neck to the ground for more than nine minutes on May 25, 2020. Additionally, Kueng and Thao are charged with failure to intervene to stop Chauvin. Legally, the trial is unprecedented. Continue reading →

As some of you have noted, I’ve largely stayed out of the comments recently. Some think my involvement, from reminding people to use the reply button to keeping comments on topic as they spiral down the rabbit hole, is too mean and harsh. I long ago decided that it was necessary to play SJ janitor lest a few things happen that I, as the guy who runs this hotel, didn’t want to happen.

I didn’t want this place hijacked by partisan crazies of any flavor, which was a frequent issue as a post was seized upon by some interest group and their minions show up by the hundreds to take over the comments. Continue reading →

It’s fatally vague, backward and fundamentally flawed, so naturally Syracuse University made it a regulation, the violation of which was subject to punishment. To its credit, FIRE took up the cause of Syracuse freshman Samantha Jones, who was found to have inflicted “mental harm” on another student by asking a question.

“Syracuse’s nebulous ban on ‘mental harm’ means students don’t know if they can ask questions or discuss sexual misconduct without getting in trouble,” said FIRE Program Officer Alex Morey. “Administrators should take action now to ensure these kinds of vague policies don’t infringe students’ core expressive rights.”

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In law school, a prawf said something that stuck with me. I paraphrase here, as the original was quite sexist.

Children feel.
Priests believe.
Lawyers think.

John McWhorter writes about a shift in language usage that reveals how the distinctions above have been, and are being, lost. Continue reading →