University of Alabama lawprof Russell Gold opened the abstract to his new law review article with a very provocative assertion: Criminal procedure is systemically racist and classist. He sums up his argument succinctly:

This Article argues that comparing criminal procedure to civil procedure on a broad scale provides new and valuable insight into the systemic racism and classism woven into the fabric of U.S. law. Criminal defendants are disproportionately poor people of color, while civil defendants are often wealthy corporations whose executives are largely White; those wealthy civil defendants play an outsized role in developing civil procedure. One might expect to see greater procedural protections before criminal defendants are deprived of their liberty than for civil defendants before they are deprived of their money. But the reality cuts decidedly the other way.

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There has been a spike in random violent attacks against Asian people, and it’s a problem. It’s a problem because people are being harmed. It’s a problem because the fantasy propagated by social justice precludes even the LA Times from telling a factual story.

Last March, 34-year-old Bawi Cung was grocery shopping at a Sam’s Club in Midland, Texas, when a man grabbed a knife from a nearby rack.

Cung was slashed on his face, his 3-year-old was stabbed in the back, and his 6-year-old was stabbed in the face. Continue reading →

For years, I’ve used religious allusions when describing the various flavors of progressive ideology. Praying at the altar of woke. Adhering to the orthodoxy of the high priestesses. It may be secular, in that there’s no particular deity at stake, but it has otherwise had the attributes of a religion. Blind faith in an ideology and intolerance for non-believers. John McWhorter has been pounding on this point. Even Andrew Sullivan explains its “win” in religious terms.

Belief in something bigger, better, than ourselves has long been a staple of the human condition. Whether it’s Jesus, Buddha or Mohammed, people need something to believe in to make their existence meaningful. Is woke any different? Continue reading →

For most people, avoiding an avoidable confrontation with a police officer was the objective. Just as nobody got a happy feeling when they heard a siren and saw lights flashing  behind them, why put yourself in a position where things could go bad quickly and, well, right or wrong, nobody sought out the opportunity for a tune up by cop.

That hasn’t been the case for some lately.

“In these riots, you see people getting up in officers’ faces, yelling in their ears, doing everything they can to provoke a violent response,” Carroll said. “I’m not saying the officers do that, but there has to be a provision within that statute to allow officers to react to that. Because that does nothing but incite those around that vicinity and it furthers and escalates the riotous behavior.”

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The “Brawl For All” is arguably the worst idea in wrestling history. A Toughman style tournament between WWF wrestlers for bragging rights and a cash prize, the Brawl For All would end two careers, shelve several men with injuries and cost the WWF five million dollars in one night.

Vince Russo, a New Yorker who caught the WWF brass’ attention with his “Jerry Springer” style of television writing, sold the “Brawl For All” as a way of injecting much needed realism into WWF shows. If audiences were tuning in for the moments the show seemed real, why not make the in-ring action real? Continue reading →

Delvin White was a black man. He was also a cop, a school resource officer as cops in schools are euphemistically called. So is he black or blue, because that would seem to dictate what words he is permitted to use without losing his job.

Officer Delvin White was fired for “violations of policy that prohibit discriminatory conduct,” said a news release. He was an eight-year veteran of the department.

A disposition letter released by police about White’s actions said he used the racial slur while on the phone and directly to a person while he was arresting them Nov. 30.

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Questioning why the adults can’t seem to muster the guts to say “no” to the woke might seem like a lost cause. There are no doubt many reasons and influences that go into this morass. Andrew Sullivan has waded into the puddle in an effort to explain why woke is winning.

It’s been a staggering achievement, when you come to think of it. Critical theory was once an esoteric academic pursuit. Now it has become the core, underlying philosophy of the majority of American cultural institutions, universities, media, corporations, liberal churches, NGOs, philanthropies, and, of course, mainstream journalism. This summer felt like a psychic break from old-school liberalism, a moment when a big part of the American elite just decided to junk the principles that have long defined American democratic life, and embrace what Bari Weiss calls “a mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality.”

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Kavanaugh? Nope, she can’t even step foot in the Supreme Court anymore knowing that “rapist” is on the bench. Kozinski? Not a chance. Cuomo? Ah, yes. Cuomo.

I am a journalist myself, and I am wholly in favor of a sober and serious probe into Cuomo’s alleged conduct. It’s not a terrible thing to allow an independent investigator to gather all the facts and arrive at a formal conclusion before calling for his immediate ouster. To allow a formal fact-finding process to play out is neither a disparagement of his accusers—whose accounts should be taken absolutely seriously—nor a get-out-of-jail-free card for the governor. It is merely an acknowledgment of something that should have been clear from the vitally important beginnings of the #MeToo era: There is a difference between having the media surface and report predation, and having something akin to a formal process investigate and determine what occurred and what should be done about it.

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The Supreme Court heard oral argument in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, a case of extreme importance to both political parties for all the wrong reasons.

Though the Voting Rights Act seeks to protect minority voting rights, as a practical matter litigation under it tends to proceed on partisan lines. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked a lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party why his client cared about whether votes cast at the wrong precinct should be counted, he gave a candid answer.

“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” said the lawyer, Michael A. Carvin. “Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us.”

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The token punching bag at the New York Times, Bret Stephens, made an interesting observation in his post-mortem on  the Smith College fiasco:

Why does the embrace of social justice pedagogies seem to have gone hand in hand with deteriorating race relations on campus?

One answer is that if many students are enjoying a diet of courses on critical race theory, and employees are trained on the fine points of microaggressions, they might take to heart what they are taught and notice what they have been trained to see. Continue reading →