On July 8th, President Biden made his stand.

Q: Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?

The President: No, it is not. Continue reading →

One wag replied to me that “tolerance isn’t a virtue.” And, indeed, he had a point. Most people who aren’t vaccinated aren’t the right wing crazies and conspiracy theorists, but ordinary people who harbor sincere fears and concerns. There are a not-insignificant number of physicians and nurses who have chosen not to be vaccinated. The New York Times recently noted that only 28% of people between the ages of 18 and 44 are vaccinated.

Their reasons vary from concerns about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine to more idiosyncratic views. Continue reading →

There was never any doubt, at least among people who had any realistic clue about the criminal legal system, that some of the folks released without bail were going to commit crimes while out. On the one hand, those who opposed bail reform would point to the heinous crime and use it as a bludgeon to demand the return to the old bail system for the sake of public safety.

On the other hand, advocates highlight the injustice of holding presumptively innocent people in jail over petty offenses. The story of Kalief Browder is a stark reminder of the harm. Mere days ago, 25-year-old Brandon Rodriguez was found dead on Rikers Island, where he was held in lieu of bail for a misdemeanor. That someone released would do harm was generally minimized or denied. Few were willing to concede that some would walk out of arraignment and, with their case pending, kill someone. It was not a good selling point to their passionate allies. Continue reading →

David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad” (2016) is best described as cinematic masturbation. It’s good for a quick, cheap thrill, but you feel dirty and unsatisfied afterwards.

Maybe that’s why James Gunn’s latest offering, “The Suicide Squad,” feels so satisfying to watch. It’s not a reboot or a remake; it’s a fresh coat of paint on an IP that desperately needed one.

Continue reading →

The “takeovers” of district attorneys’ offices by running, and sometimes getting elected, progressive prosecutors was a remarkably smart plan. It was an office of little interest to most, ripe for the picking. It put the reins of exceptional power in the hands of activists whose goal was to do the opposite of what the job was previously understood to be.

It crosses some significant lines when prosecutors believe they are empowered to ignore legislators and laws, using the power of the office to pursue their personal, often radical, agenda rather than the ministerial tasks of enforcing the law that separation of powers would mandate they do, but then again, it wasn’t as if they didn’t say that’s what they were going to do before they were elected to office. Continue reading →

Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws against illnesses like small pox. The Court’s decision articulated the view that individual liberty is not absolute and is subject to the police power of the state.

The decision was 7-2. Justice John Marshall Harlan delivered the decision for the majority that the Massachusetts law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Specifically, the Court’s decision articulated the view that individual liberty is not absolute and is subject to the police power of the state. Continue reading →

One of the first things you come to grips with in criminal law is that bad things happen to good people, and as awful as that realization may be, there isn’t necessarily a crime involved. Sure, there are often people who will immediately react with “someone must pay,” but that rarely reflects a thoughtful understanding of the purposes of criminal prosecution. Is the conduct so reprehensible that it’s criminal? It’s not the outcome, but the conduct, that justifies prosecution. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

Last month, a grand jury in Clayton County indicted LaRosa Maria Walker-Asekere, the head basketball coach at Elite Scholars Academy in Jonesboro, Ga., and Dwight Broom Palmer, the assistant basketball coach, on charges of second-degree murder, cruelty to children, involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct. The charges were announced this week. Continue reading →

I can’t, and won’t, vouch for the credibility or accuracy of Nathan Winograd’s assertions. He’s pretty deep down the rabbit hole of animal rights, not a particular concern of mine per se. But  his points raise some curious and bizarre issues at the intersection of critical race theory (in its broadest sense) and the care and feeding of critters.

In books and journal articles, CRT advocates have: Continue reading →

It comes as no surprise that the motion to dismiss by Netflix and Ava Duvernay was denied, and former Manhattan sex crimes chief Linda Fairstein’s defamation suit survived the most serious threat. Defamation suits are notoriously hard to maintain, between the defenses of opinion and substantial truth, which defendants tried but lost as documentary evidence proved that it didn’t even meet the threshhold of “truthy.” As I noted at the time Fairstein objected to When They See Us and then filed her complaint, this suit had merit.

Here, where voluminous exhibits were attached to the complaint and answer, and a trove of additional documents was publicly available, allowing the judge to take judicial notice, and the court watched the series, submitted by the defense with the plaintiff’s acquiescence, surviving a Rule 12(b)(6) motion crushes the defendants. Continue reading →

In the course of reviewing two books, one by Michael Knowles and the other by Harvard Law’s pride, Ben Shapiro, Kat Rosenfield points out that the grievances of the right against the progressive left aren’t really about the wrongs done to conservatives at all. They are not the real enemy.

What the free speech fretting from the political Right often misses is that this culture war is largely a Left-wing civil war — and its worst casualties tend to be self-inflicted wounds. American society is increasingly segregated along political lines: we live, work, befriend and marry people with whom our primary point of commonality is that we all vote the same way. Continue reading →