Thomas Edsall provides a fair survey of academic challenges to the current understanding of the First Amendment. Two points stand out, the first being that the internet has given rise to a structural change in society where crazies and fools were once isolated, but now have the ability to find each other, link arms and create a cohort of like-minded people.

People were always crazy, but they couldn’t find each other, they couldn’t talk and disperse their craziness. Now we are confronting a new phenomenon and we have to think about how we regulate that in a way which is compatible with people’s freedom to form public opinion.

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My old pal, the Texas Tornado, has forsaken his exemplary blawg, Defending People, in favor of his occasional substack, which is an odd way to start a year whose word is “write.” But blawgs are old, long, boring and take effort to read. Is there really any interest in reading something longer than a twit?

Mark Bennett was obviously way ahead of me, as reflected by the fact that I’m writing this blawg post and he has a substack, which I do not. Then again, I’m older than he is and still feel the need to write thoughts down at some length. But Mark is kind enough to have me on the list of recipients of his substack, so I still get to enjoy and learn from him. This morning, he struck a nerve with me when he wrote about the Harris County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Continue reading →

Dr. SJ and I aren’t kids anymore. She’s a health care provider. We’ve waited patiently to learn when and where we should get our vaccines. The silence has been disappointing, if not deafening. Nobody seems to know, and our primary care docs are getting annoyed with people asking because they have no answers.

It’s easy to blame Trump, because that’s both the cool thing to do and everybody does it, but when it comes to the actual distribution of vaccines, it’s local politics. The states get their vaccine and then are left to move it from vial to arm. This raised the usual problem, Governor Andy caught between getting on TV to spew empty platitudes for his next book about what a great job he did to knee-jerk punitive fixes to the ordinary combination of people being people and people still being people. Continue reading →

When I first heard the news about Oregon’s set-aside of $62 million in COVID relief, it was because Maria Garcia was denied funds.

Maria Garcia, owner of the Revolucion Coffee House in Portland, applied for support. She was denied because her business “does not meet the criteria because 0% of its owners identify as Black.”

She sued for denial of Equal Protection, seeking to enjoin the distribution of monies from the Oregon Cares Fund. Continue reading →

In a curious and troubling decision, the Minnesota Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals holding that its state revenge porn statute, which as such statutes go is at least fairly well circumscribed and limited so that some of the worst excesses are avoided.

617.261 NONCONSENSUAL DISSEMINATION OF PRIVATE SEXUAL IMAGES.

It is a crime to intentionally disseminate an image of another person who is depicted in a sexual act or whose intimate parts are exposed, in whole or in part, when:

(1) the person is identifiable: Continue reading →

What if an elected official ordered his subordinate, a lawyer, to issue a legal opinion that the law permitted the elected official to do something it did not? No, not President Trump ordering the attorney general to assert that the Pardon Power allows him to pardon himself. Not this time, anyway. Rather, the newly elected Los Angeles County District Attorney, George Gascón, is being sued by the union representing his subordinates for directing them not to apply charging enhancements.

The union representing Los Angeles County prosecutors has sued their boss, newly elected District Attorney George Gascón, over his attempt to impose justice reforms. Continue reading →

It’s not as if you hear much about it. It’s not good for the narrative. But that doesn’t do much to help the victims of the ongoing destruction in Portland.

A palpably angry Mayor Ted Wheeler today pledged a zero-tolerance policy toward property destruction by “violent antifa and anarchists… rampaging through Portland,” and demanded the Oregon Legislature increase criminal penalties for repeat vandalism offenders.

“My good-faith efforts at deescalation have been met with scorn by antifa and anarchists bent on destruction,” Wheeler said. “It’s time to push back harder.”

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In a surprisingly insipid post, L.D. Burnett attempts to rebut Nick Grossman’s Arc Digital post that the damage done following the utterance of a racial epithet in a three-second snapchat failed to recognize that young people’s lives shouldn’t be ruined for the poor decisions that are emblematic of children. Considering that Burnett’s writing is usually thoughtful, this was disappointing, as was her reaction to criticism.

But considering her very progressive stance, this stood out above the myriad other failings of her argument:

But committing racist acts without expecting to face serious consequences is not a sign of immaturity; it is a symptom of assumed impunity.

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If you’re reading this, congratulations. We did it. We survived 2020. It’s worth celebrating.

While I’m sure most of us would love to relegate 2020 to the dust bin of history, it’s important we take a moment to appreciate how batshit insane the year was and give it true justice by making fun of the weirdness.

The only problem with doing a proper 2020 year in review is the sheer volume of material. So much happened in the last year some weeks flew by in minutes. So if a particular item of interest isn’t here, feel free to let us know in the comments. Let’s get started. Cast your minds back to… Continue reading →

To non-lawyers, the threat of suing carries some inexplicable weight. Do this or we’ll sue, they exclaim. Lawyers shrug. Sue away, we think, because so what? Will that be the reaction of whoever is making decisions at the University of Rhode Island to the cries of their activist students?

“Some Black, White and Latino students shall join in another class action lawsuit if the next URI President is not an African-American with an ancestry to slavery,” read the list of demands put out by the Diversity Think Tank at the University of Rhode Island. Continue reading →