American gymnast Simone Biles is 24 years old. She’s four feet, eight inches tall. She can do things in gymnastics that totally amaze me and people who know more about the sport than I do say she’s the greatest gymnast of all time, at least until the next GOAT appears as history has taught us over and over.

I have no reason to doubt that she’s the best, but she’s not a demigod. She’s a young woman who is great at gymnastics. On the one hand, the prevailing binary paradigm put her on a pedestal too high for any human being. On the other hand, she basked in her glory, which she was both entitled to do and earned with years of extraordinary hard work and suffering, some of it inexcusable, and dedication. Continue reading →

A deputy out of Crazy Joe’s old office got a bright idea.

A Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office deputy is under investigation for allegedly posing as a defense attorney in a failed attempt to trick a woman and arrest her.

Andy Marcantel, a partner with the Attorneys for Freedom Law Firm, said that Deputy Jeff Miller pretended to be a lawyer at his firm on a phone call four months ago.

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For those of us old enough to remember a world before Trump, the beatification of some former federal prosecutors, Preet Bharara and Sally Yates, by the left was about as goofy as it got. Sure, they were fired by Trump, but did these dopes have a clue who they were, what they did, before Trump? Apparently not, as they neither knew nor cared that there was a world preceding the apocalypse. But more importantly, Preet, Sally, et al., said the words the unduly passionate so desperately wanted to hear. Bad Trump. They swooned with adoration.

When Biden was elected and it was his time to give AG Bill Barr’s chair to someone new, Joe could have picked one of these former prosecutors who now made a living off telling Rachel Madow what her fans wanted to hear, but he did them one better. He chose the most maligned judge in America, Merrick Garland, from whom a Supreme Court seat had been stolen. Surely, he must be the most woke choice possible, since he was the victimiest victim in law. Continue reading →

One of my favorite writers is David French, more so for his exceptional prose than his insight much of the time. Some people just write really well, and I, for one, envy their skill. So when French took on the burden of explaining why “structural racism” isn’t wokeness, or to be more direct, the religious right case against systemic racism, it seems that maybe, just maybe, I would finally find some answers to my question, “what the hell are they talking about.”

Enforcing the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and passing the Civil Rights Act was (and is) necessary to end overt, legal discrimination, but it was hardly sufficient to ameliorate the effects of slavery and Jim Crow. These effects are so embedded in our system that powerful people often perpetuate those structures even when they lack any racist intent at all.

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Every once in a while, a defendant has something to say to a judge that has a positive impact. But that’s like betting on lightning striking. The vast majority of the time, when a defendant speaks out in court, whether he blurts something out in the midst of trial or even after he’s been fully prepped at sentence, it’s at best unavailing and at worst a disaster that ends up doing grave damage.

So naturally, a law review article suggests that defendants should be allowed, even encouraged, to share their voices with the court, unfiltered by their lawyers, and “talk back” to the judge. Continue reading →

Cops don’t want to deal with people having a psychotic episode any more than the people  who call because someone is having a mental health crisis want cops to kill them. The problem was one of default. Who else can you get to respond? In New York City, there’s a standing army of NYPD to take the call, but no smaller army of mental health personnel on top of the cops to respond. So they tried an experiment and it turned out pretty well.

The B-HEARD program — it stands for Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division — launched in a portion of Harlem last month and has sent teams of three unarmed, behavioral health specialists to respond to more than 100 911 calls.
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A few things are relatively uncontroversial. New Yorkers do not like guns. Progressives do not like guns. New York’s public defenders are, politically, very progressive. New York’s public defenders support the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.

Wait, what? You read that right.

The incorporated Second Amendment affords the people “the right to keep and bear arms.” U.S. Const. amends. II, XIV; McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010); District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). Despite the clear text and this Court’s precedent, New York’s licensing regime does the opposite. It deprives everyone of that right, only returning it to those select few who manage to first secure a firearm license from the police. For everyone else, possession of a firearm is effectively a “violent felony,” punishable by 3.5 to 15 years in prison. N.Y. Penal Law §§ 265.03; 70.02(1)(b). New York’s licensing requirements criminalize the exercise of the fundamental Second Amendment right, with rare exception.

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What follows are a series of random thoughts recorded over the last few weeks on a dictation app my wife purchased so she didn’t have to hear me type. Consider this a sort of monologue, if you will

—CLS

Jeffrey Tobin returning to CNN after masturbating on the job elsewhere was rather jarring. I don’t think he suffered enough for this sin. If he’s going to remain on TV, I think he should be renamed Zoom Dick.

“And now, joining us to discuss this matter is CNN analyst Zoom Dick. Zoom Dick, thank you for joining us?” Continue reading →

President Joe Biden called the voting laws being enacted by red states “Jim Crow on steroids,” as if being denied a gift of water from a party seeking a vote was worse, on steroids, from lynching. Granted, Biden’s absurd hyperbole has become the norm for deep political thought among the unduly passionate, but the fact that he invoked the post-Civil War Jim Crow era today raised the question David Brooks asks: What does America of 150 years ago have to do with America today?

Anybody with eyes to see and ears to hear knows about the oppression of the Native Americans, about slavery and Jim Crow. But does that mean that America is even now a white supremacist nation, that whiteness is a cancer that leads to oppression for other groups?

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There’s a routine now. Get called out, whether for good reason or not, whether for something new or ancient, whether for something true or false, and watch the insipid gnats swarm, fearful that they might miss the chance to prove their virtue and because they so adore a chance to part of the gang. Half the time, they aren’t quite sure why they’re swarming, condemning, shaming, but nobody wants to miss the chance to condemn. It’s the new national past time.

The next step in the routine is that the target of this condemnation, bows their head and apologizes. As Seth Moskowitz argues at Arc Digital, it’s one thing if the target of the mob agrees with the criticism and apologizes because he recognizes that he was wrong. It happens that people make mistakes. And when one does, an apology and recognition of a mistake is what a normal reasonable person does. Continue reading →