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…

Continue reading →

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 →

Prefatory note: Are you interested in cryptocurrency? Do you understand how Bitcoin works? If the answers to the above questions are “Yes” and “No” then the latest “report” from Deputy Tyrone, the mental midget of Mud Lick, might be of interest.

I’ve got nothing else to explain this mess. Enjoy!–CLS

Hello. My name is Deputy Tyrone Wentzel of the Mud Lick, Alabama Sheriff’s Department. Today I am going to explain cryptocurrency in this report while the dumb Use of Force panel tries to figure out if the last bad guy I shot really needed it. My commanding officer, Sheriff Roy, says if I can explain cryptocurrency to people then some good will have come from the shoot. Continue reading →

Whether you’re a fan (or flan, as that tempster Andrew Fleischman used to suck me in) will probably matter as to whether this strikes you as important at the moment. There are, of course, many other important, even more important, things happening, and even though people say they can think of two or more things at once, they usually can’t. And then there are those people who sincerely believe that only things that matter to them matter at all, because how can anything matter if it doesn’t matter to them?

But Ars Technica founder Jon Stokes said, it’s just a matter of time. Continue reading →

The decision rocked the criminal and immigration law world, as this was a law so widely used, and broadly accepted, that it was essentially inconceivable that a court would reject it. Yet Nevada Chief District Court Judge Miranda Du, appointed by President Obama in 2012, did. And the roar was deafening.

The substance of the law, 8 USC § 1326, creates a crime when someone who has been “denied admission, excluded, deported, or removed” re-entered without prior permission. It kind of seems like an obvious law. After all, if someone has been deported and unlawfully re-enters, it’s unlikely to be an unfortunate mistake, and merely deporting them again isn’t going to change the incentives to not unlawfully re-enter again. Continue reading →

Some years ago, a lawyer pal told me about what happened when he and his wife went on a cruise. He had his sight for most of his life, but woke up one morning after a murder trial blind. It was shocking, but there it was. Diabetes was to blame, and despite heroic medical efforts to deal with it, it wasn’t going away.

There were forms to fill out for the cruise and one asked if he was differently abled. He answered that he was. When he arrived at the ship, he was met with a person with a wheelchair. His reaction was to inform the boat guy that he could walk just fine, but he was blind. Blind, as in he couldn’t see. Not blind as in he couldn’t walk. Continue reading →

It was 2014, and FedEx, or Federal Express as they were formerly officially named, refused to cooperate. They were indicted for it. The putative argument was that FedEx, whose role was to take boxes from point A and deliver them to point B, was responsible for knowing the contents of the boxes. The argument had some holes, and to its credit, FexEx wasn’t about to roll over on its customers.

But as reflected in the decision of the Eighth Circuit in US v. Green, times change and FedEx changed with them.** Continue reading →

When I wrote about tolerance being dead, it expressly spoke to people with “sincere reasons.” Both words were purposefully included to include both the subjective (sincere) and objective (reason) why an position with which many disagree is still worthy of respect. While this shouldn’t have been too nuanced for basic comprehension, it was to some.

The stated reason was they knew of no one who proffered a “sincere reason” for their position. In other words, their rejection of tolerance was based on their personal experience, or at least their claimed experience, as if the limits of their world defines the world for others. The idea that anyone could have a “sincere reason” was at best a theoretical premise and at worst a lie. The only people who disagreed with getting vaccinated were evil and selfish, who cared only for their personal desires at the expense of harm to others and their social responsibility. Continue reading →