Can a virus be sexist? Racist? What sort of idiot would even ask such questions in the midst of a pandemic? The questions might not be timely in the sense that we have bigger issues, such as survival, to address at the moment, but having run through the first 10,000 coronavirus issues and run out of otherwise useful things to discuss, it was only natural that the culture war would find its moment to shine.

With more and more people working from home, it is likely that many families will find themselves in a situation where both parents are trying to work from the kitchen table while also attempting to home-school the children.

This, on top of the regular household chores as well as cooking and cleaning can feel like an extra load for many parents at this time. The likelihood is though that despite both parents now being at home, much of the “domestic” work will still land squarely on the shoulders of the women of the house. So much like the 1950s housewife, women will not only be expected to make exciting meals, keep the house clean and tidy and the children entertained – but she’ll also have to do all this while working from home.

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In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, what else is worthy of our concern? How about the victims of crime, or in this particular instance, gunshots.

My pager goes off again: The police are en route to my hospital. They’re bringing a gunshot victim. E.T.A.? Right now.

People are still shooting people. I know, there are no outraged anecdotes by criminal reform activists about this, even though there is a non-strop stream of stories of how jails and prisons are incubators for disease and will result in mass havoc. And they are and they will. But in this time of playing the emotions of the intellectually puny, everybody seems to forget that there are still bad people out there doing bad things to other people. Continue reading →

The law school class of 2009 did everything right. They went to college and did sufficiently well to be admitted to law school. They went to law school and did sufficiently well to graduate. They took the bar exam and did sufficiently well to pass and be admitted as lawyers. And for far too many, that’s where doing everything right came to a crashing halt.

There were no jobs. They were out their tuition, or accumulated significant debt. They were out years of their life. They were out their dream of practicing law. They graduated into the Great Recession and there was nothing they could do about it. It wasn’t their fault. It took years before the job market got better, but for the class of 2009, there was no salvation. They were lost and, eventually, mostly forgotten. Continue reading →

Charles Dickens, writing of the years before the French Revolution leading to the Jacobin Reign of Terror, opened a Tale of Two Cities with these ominous words.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

Much as they might apply to any time, as they aptly describe the human condition, the question of whether this particular moment in time is the right time for the Secretary of Education to issue regulations to undo the unlawfully issued Dear Colleague Letter and its ironically-named guidelines on the conduct of Title IX sex tribunals. Eighteen Democratic attorneys general, the American Council on Education and the National Women’s Law Center contend it’s the worst of times. Continue reading →

Caveat: For the intellectually challenged, nothing that follows raises or addresses the merit or efficacy of a solution (such as, oh, Medicare for All), which is an entirely separate problem and issue. Remember, the alternative to bad isn’t necessarily good. It can always get worse.

Do you have the ‘Rona? If your symptoms are “right” and sufficiently severe, maybe the government will deem you worthy of being tested, and the president has said that  Seoul has 38 million residents the Chinese flu will magically disappear tests will be free. Isn’t that wonderful?

Within minutes, he got a call from the heads of a hospital emergency room and infectious-disease department where he lives in upstate New York: He should come right away to the E.R. for newly available coronavirus testing. Though they offered to send an ambulance, he felt fine and drove the hour. Continue reading →

There’s an old saying, that god answers all prayers. Sometimes the answer is “no.” Was that the message Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne should have taken from coronavirus, or was the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion paramount?

Before the Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne, the pastor of a Pentecostal megachurch in Florida, held two church services on Sunday — each filled with hundreds of parishioners — lawyers from the sheriff’s office and local government pleaded with him to reconsider putting his congregation in danger of contracting the coronavirus.

The pastor ignored them, proceeding with the services at the River at Tampa Bay Church and even providing bus transportation for members who needed a ride.

Church services were held, and Rev. Howard-Browne was arrested for his troubles. Continue reading →

The news hit Miami and its Latino diaspora like a breath of fresh justice: Venezuelan President* Nicolas Maduro and other government officials have been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice. The charges range from narco-terrorism conspiracy to money laundering, and, in short, they’re accused of conspiring to ship tons of Bolivian marching powder to the U.S., where apparently the demand has always been high for that kind of stuff.  If they’re ever tried before a jury of their peers, chances are they will never get to eat a pabellon again.

There’s a $15 million bounty on Maduro’s head, and an additional $10 million for each of his confederates. The DEA was offering only $5 million for El Chapo, so apparently they really mean business, and perhaps they know a lot that we plebs don’t (e.g., Venezuelan Generals finally running out of cash for the gumars and they can also see the writing on the wall).** At minimum, when an indictment of this magnitude comes down, it means that at least a lot of people have been singing for a while. Continue reading →

Before he was thrown off the island, B.McLeod would participate in the ABA Journal’s Easter “Peeps” contest with the creation of a diorama plus a song. Since the ABA Journal went woke, and B.McLeod did not, he needed a new home for his handiwork. How could I say no?

I leave it to B.McLeod to explain the method behind his madness. Continue reading →

Richard Epstein taught at the University of Chicago for 38 years before retiring,* then promptly came out of retirement to take a chair at NYU Law, while being a Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover institute. He seems like a smart guy, and his name gets thrown around as being a legitimate voice in support of something whenever it suits the thrower.

So why is he a pariah today? He wrote that the coronavirus predictions were exaggerated, that the models were flawed and that it wasn’t going to be anywhere as severe as commonly thought.

The Hoover Institution’s Richard Epstein also waves a flag of caution regarding the COVID-19 dashboards that many news networks and online sites now prominently feature. Epstein’s analysis shows that COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. and worldwide will be dramatically fewer than many have predicted — possibly even fewer than the Hong Kong flu of 1968, the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010 or seasonal influenza, which can claim hundreds of lives a day.

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