While the forces of good, evil and fantasy fight over the promise of debt cancellation and free college tuition, a curious subtext emerged at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Noting initially that it was activists pushing Sen. Bernie Sanders and Reps. Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal to introduce the College for All Act of 2019, neither academics nor college administrators came out in force to support the cause.

Why? Such laws would seem to inure enormously to their benefit, since it would disengage the cost of college from the pockets of students and their parents, thus enabling universities to charge ever-greater tuition with the taxpayer footing the bill. It somehow manages to float under the radar that the high cost of a college education has less to do with the ability of the poor to afford it, or assume enough debt to pay for it, and more to do with increases dwarfing the cost of living and rise in income.

Ann Larson argues that this is because we no longer “understand” the purpose of education. Continue reading →

The problem isn’t hard to explain or fathom. Local prosecutors work hand in hand with the cops. They need each other, even if they don’t necessarily like or respect each other, and both know it. So when a cop does wrong, there is invariably an inherent conflict in expecting the local prosecutor to treat her as he would any other defendant. And it’s not just the one dirty cop, as cops come in packs, and the brethren get rather protective of each other, so the prosecutor faces a police force that might not appreciate that she’s just doing her job.

There are alternatives, of course. There are other prosecutorial offices who can step in when a conflict arises. There are cities and states with special prosecutors to address conflicts in general and cops in particular. And, in fairness, there are local prosecutors who have the integrity to do what the law requires, even if it means making enemies on the force.

Joshua Michtom, an assistant public defender at the Connecticut Office of the Chief Public Defender, offers an interesting alternative. Continue reading →

The defendant, Michael Duhon, wouldn’t stop. He was being sentenced in Judge Marilyn Castle’s courtroom for the theft of more than $25,000 and money laundering, and he wouldn’t stop.

Duhon repeatedly interrupted the hearing, and Castle ordered a bailiff to tape Duhon’s mouth shut, according to court minutes.

Clearly, Duhon’s lawyer, Aaron Adams, had no control over his client. Whether the best course of action was to tape his mouth shut or employ other options is subject to debate. In some courts, shock belts are used to inflict pain on a misbehaving defendant. Continue reading →

Had it been a “garden variety” murder trial, the decision of Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Alexander P. Bicket would likely be celebrated. Activists would be arguing whether the statue they demand built of him outside the courthouse should be bronze or marble. But there will be no statue of Judge Bicket built, and the question now is whether he will survive his decision or be the next judge to be Persky’d by the mob.

An Allegheny County judge last week overturned a jury’s guilty verdict in a sexual assault case and acquitted the defendant, a controversial move so rare that it stunned the state’s victim advocate and led two of the jurors to question their service.

The decision feels “like it’s almost an abuse of power,” Jennifer Storm, Pennsylvania’s Victim Advocate, said.

“I’m absolutely appalled,” said juror Leslie Mason, 33.

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There are two assumptions by people who have never had to suffer the oddities and ironies of real people in real criminal court. The first is that if there is a dead body, somebody has to pay. The second is that nobody, but nobody, would do something so awful or inexplicable without some malevolent intent. As becomes quickly clear to those of us who serve as janitors of the law, neither life nor people work so neatly. Sometimes, inexplicable tragedies just happen.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that wasn’t the case for Juan Rodriguez.

By all accounts, he was a doting dad to his year-old, twin son and daughter, setting up a bouncy castle in the yard for their recent first birthday party and dressing them in their latest cute outfits while his wife made breakfast in their Rockland County split-level.

Then, on Saturday, Juan Rodriguez, 39, was hauled handcuffed before a judge, charged with the babies’ hot-car deaths.

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Maureen Dowd’s effort to prove herself a card-carrying member of the proletariat would have been unnecessary a decade ago, and rings peculiar today.

Then this week, lefty Twitter erected a digital guillotine because I had a book party for my friend Carl Hulse, The Times’s authority on Capitol Hill for decades, attended by family, journalists, Hill denizens and a smattering of lawmakers, including Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Susan Collins.

I, the daughter of a D.C. cop, and Carl, the son of an Illinois plumber, were hilariously painted as decadent aristocrats reveling like Marie Antoinette when we should have been knitting like Madame Defarge.

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If it was up to me, I probably wouldn’t pick graduation day as the best time to ask my beloved to marry me. There are plenty of other days, and this one was already taken with happiness. More to the point, the happiness of the day is about the recognition of study, years of work, and the graduate. What it’s not about is me, so let her have the day without my stepping on her achievement.

Then again, that’s me, and I’m not Edgaras Averbuchas.

When Edgaras Averbuchas successfully proposed to Agne Banuskeviciute at her graduation ceremony, both were delighted. The romantic moment at Essex University, where Ms Banuskeviciute received her Master’s degree in English, was filmed and posted on the university’s website to celebrate their engagement.

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Lindsay Shepherd has been permanently banned from twitter. She came to fame, or notoriety according to how you feel about free speech, as a Ph.D. grad student who showed a clip of Jordan Peterson on the issue of pronouns in her class. That was more than her college could take.

Since then, she’s become a rational voice for free speech and heterodox thought. Then came Jessica Yaniv.

Free-speech activist Lindsay Shepherd was permanently banned from Twitter earlier this week, following a clash with trans-woman Jessica Yaniv. Responding to Yaniv’s misogynistic comments about her uterus and vagina, Shepherd ‘misgendered’ Yaniv, which led to Shepherd’s permanent suspension.

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The silliness of this week almost meant no new Friday Funny. From a human rights tribunal musing over whether waxing a transgender woman’s testicles was a fundament right to the Bob Muller Comedy Hour, your humble writer felt the world maxed out on pure silliness. Then Erica Thomas’s story fell into my lap, and immediately I thanked the comedy gods.

Erica Thomas** is a Georgia representative, woman of color, mother, and a shopper at Publix. Now I’m by nature suspicious of people who shop at Publix, because despite their excellent customer service and the local store being the one place in town I can get a certain kind of spaetzle my better half prefers, Publix’s prices are rather inflated. So by nature, anyone who frequents a Publix has more money than sense.

Apparently on July 19, Representative Thomas had a bad day at the local Publix. In a video posted to Facebook, Thomas claimed tearfully that she’d been in the express checkout lane with fifteen items when an “angry white man” told her she was over the ten item express checkout limit. Continue reading →

Before you read that which I write next, listen to Judy Collins as she sings “Turn, Turn, Turn! / To Everything There Is A Season.” If nothing else, you will enjoy her magnificent voice.

As I watched Robert Mueller testify before Congress regarding his findings on the Trump investigation, the voice of Collins haunted me. Accurate or not, my impression was that Mueller was far past his “sell by” date. His fumbling, at times incoherent or inaudible responses, coupled with his apparent lack of knowledge of the written report to which he signed his name, reminded me of that which I fear most. Continue reading →