We’re all used to the cocktail party question, “How can you defend those people?” But there’s a new variation on that theme, directed at women criminal defense lawyers, and more specifically, women who defend men accused of rape. These women, Kathleen Walsh contends, are “soulless,” traitors to the feminist cause and weaponizing their gender for a “brand.”

As R. Kelly’s long-awaited criminal trial got underway last week, I was unsurprised to see that the most public-facing of the four defense lawyers representing Kelly was also the lone woman among them. If you are a hugely famous alleged rapist and sex pest with accusers in the double digits, there is an obvious optical advantage to having a woman as the public face of your legal team. Harvey Weinstein had Donna Rotunno, Andrew Cuomo has Rita Glavin, and Bill Cosby had Jennifer Bonjean. And now, R. Kelly has Nicole Blank Becker, a Michigan-based attorney who has used her credentials as a former sex-crimes state prosecutor to build a personal brand specializing in sexual-assault defense.

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It was, if nothing else, a captivating cry by once-respected lawyer Sidney Powell, that she was about to release the Kraken. It’s just a word. It meant nothing. It was empty, like too many other cries directed to the emotions of the insipid who need something to grasp when reality fails to provide support to their feelings. But that was all it was. A word. An empty, meaningless, childish word.

And like too much meaningless gibberish being spewed to play into the bias of its desperately hopeful supporters, Powell, together with people of dubious mental health, tried to wrap it up in enough ribbons to not appear as devoid of fact or reason as it was. Maybe it worked for some, but it didn’t work for most. One such person was District Judge Linda Parker. Continue reading →

I have no clue why someone decided to send me a review copy of Alexandra Brodsky’s new book. She was a founder of Know Your IX, a self-described “survivor” advocacy organization that has propounded the worst of the lies and disinformation upon which the campus sex tribunals rely. I’ve mentioned her here a time or two, but rarely favorably. Yet, the book came in the mail.

Having read some of Brodsky’s writing in the past, and it having ranged from the depth one would expect of a C+ sophomore at a third-rate college to a facile effort to dissemble shamelessly for the cause, I opened the book with reluctance. It did not take long before my  head began to pound and my eyes began to bleed. Continue reading →

If it were some practical joke devised by a bunch of bored geeks on 4-chan, say like creating the unbearably nonsensical belief that the ubiquitous “OK” hand signal used by pretty much everyone was a secret “white supremacist” sign, it would have been spectacular. It was that dumb.

The University of Wisconsin removed a 42-ton boulder from its Madison campus Friday after complaints from students of color who called the rock a symbol of racism. 

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Work was kind of the point. Whether because it was fulfilling or put food on the table, much of our world is directed toward the goal of a career. Hopefully a good one, but few would argue that the goal is to do…nothing. Unless you subscribe to the notion that the point of existence is “lying flat.”

By June, American news outlets were describing the “lying flat” trend as a natural consequence of China’s hypercompetitive middle-class culture, where employees often report working “996” weeks — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — a lifestyle praised by the founder of the online shopping giant Alibaba, Jack Ma, and other captains of commerce.

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In a unanimous decision, the Court of Appeals of Nova Scotia held that the Impact of Race and Culture Assessments (IRCAs) is properly applied in sentencing African Nova Scotian offenders. The IRCAs were enacted to accommodate Canada’s indigenous population. In this case, the question raised was whether the same considerations were properly applied to “African” defendants. The court held it was.

As the Ontario Court of Appeal observed in Borde nearly twenty years ago, the underlying reasons for the over-representation of Indigenous offenders in Canada’s prisons – poverty, substance abuse, lack of education, lack of employment opportunities, and vulnerable, marginalized communities – are also factors in the over-representation of offenders of African descent. Continue reading →

Among the many jobs I had in my wayward youth was bartender at a college bar. I was paid minimum wage and was damn glad to have the job. It meant I could eat the next day, and I really liked eating as opposed to, well, not eating. But college students were not known for being particularly generous with tips, all their money going to pitchers of cheap beer and the occasional mixed drink if they were buying a beverage to impress someone. So I tried my best to be accommodating to get the occasional tip. After all, it was called “hospitality” for a reason.

What I understood was that the bar didn’t exist so I had a place to make food money, but to make money for its owner who took the risk of opening it, at his expense and hoped it would produce enough revenue to survive. The way that happened was that the joint was sufficiently hospitable that people would come, bring their money and spend it there. If not, then it wouldn’t survive. Harold would be out of business and I would be out of a job. Continue reading →

Around these parts, school starts in the beginning of September. It’s a pretty big deal, with parents buying their kids new school supplies, clothing and issuing edicts about hard work, college and future success. Around these parts, teachers are very well paid, and it’s very hard to get a plum job as a public school teacher. Accordingly, the cost per pupil is astronomical, charged via property taxes that people in other parts of the country would find shocking.

But rarely is a school budget voted down, and even when it is, it’s approved in the next vote with a tweak here or there. The reason is fairly simple. Around these parts, education matters. Continue reading →

At Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene discusses the conundrum in Legacy Entertainment & Arts Foundation v. Mina, where suit was brought to pre-emptively challenge Florida’s new Combating Public Disorder Act.

A person commits a riot if he or she willfully participates in a violent public disturbance involving an assembly of three or more persons, acting with a common intent to assist each other in violent and disorderly conduct, resulting in: (a) Injury to another person; (b) Damage to property; or (c) Imminent danger of injury to another person or damage to property…

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It’s been argued with passion that prisons have become the mental health facilities of last resort, contending that many, if not most, criminal defendants are not evil but mentally ill. This sets off calls for empathy, treatment and alternatives for these people, since they shouldn’t be held criminally culpable for conduct over which they neither had control nor malicious intent. No matter how horrible the conduct may be, if its cause was mental illness, how can you blame them criminally rather than treat their illness? What’s accomplished by locking them away forever rather than addressing the cause of their behavior?

It’s a strong argument. Continue reading →