The mythology of crack cocaine was strong. Everyone knew it, and it made perfect sense. That its active ingredient was no different than powdered cocaine somehow never seeped into the public consciousness. Guys who freebased became animals, killers. They magically got the strength of ten men, as cops would tell the story, and had to be dealt with forcibly or there would be dead cops in the streets instead of dead crackheads.

And when women used it, they gave birth to crack babies, who would obviously suffer from disastrous complications, physical, intellectual and emotional, that would produce a generation of children incapable of a normal life. Who would care for them? What would we do with them? Not only was this beyond dispute to most people, because this was crack, the devil drug, but there was medical science to back this up. It was a looming catastrophe.

Except, as it turned out, none of this was true. Crack was just a different delivery system for coke, and crack babies ended up being like pretty much any other baby. Still, the panic caused by the myth informed our legal system, medical practice, education and sense of morality. And because we’re human, we’re doing it again, using the same myth to breed panic to dictate policy and execution. Continue reading →

It’s not just that history is written by the victors, but that there are winners and losers in history. Whether it was a war or vote, colonization by a group with superior power or a culture dying on its own, someone prevails. Someone ends up better off than the other someone. It may not be “fair,” but it’s history. And life goes on from there.

At The Atlantic, Kimberly Reyes writes one of the more clear and compelling arguments in favor of reparations rather than diversity, using critical race theory as her vehicle. The tone is well set by her opening anecdote.

I was a 16-year-old student at the Bronx High School of Science, scribbling Concrete Blonde lyrics at my desk, when my English teacher abruptly called on me, without a heads-up or any preparation, to explain my thoughts on the word nigger in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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Raising kids is hard. Raising kids when there are people like Darcia Narveaz around would make it much harder. Resisting the temptation to scream at her may well be impossible, for she’s that self-righteous busybody who believes she has an “ethical duty” to stick her nose in and tell other mothers how to raise their children.

I heard the toddler wail across the store. He kept up his protest as we passed him in a cart along the checkout lines. He sounded both angry and heartbroken. After our purchases, he was still upset, tears leaping from his eyes as he cried sitting next to his mother in a booth. She asked him if he wanted to try his pizza. Distressed, we walked on by, not knowing what to do. I now consider that an ethical failure. I became haunted by my failure to help.

Kids crying in stores isn’t exactly unheard of. Kids crying anywhere isn’t exactly unheard of. That hearing a child cry “haunted” Narveaz, however, is bizarre to the point of suggesting the need for serious therapeutic action. Not for the kid, but for Narveaz. But then, her facile, yet delusional, description that  he “sounded both angry and heartbroken” provides some insight. Continue reading →

In the scheme of things, Ken White is more accommodating of the social justice side of the political spectrum than I am. It may be because he’s been repeatedly targeted by alt-right nutjobs, or that he’s less concerned about the harm done by the untenable political left than ignorant right. And he’s allowed to be anywhere on the spectrum he wants.

Not that it matters a lot when one’s a lawyer.

Yeah you’ll have to forgive my personality trait of judging you for accepting nazi money

As it turned out, it had nothing to do with Ken “accepting nazi money,” but Ken being friends with, and sharing a platform with, Marc Randazza, who was the lawyer accepting nazi money. So we have guilt by association on top of guilt by representation. The only thing surprising about this is that Ken found it less usual from the “nominal left” than the right. My experience has been different, and it’s concerned me that this has become a constant refrain from the left since before the “punch a Nazi” days. Continue reading →

Should you vote for Michael Donnelly for the Ohio Supreme Court? Beats me.* As he’s been a trial judge on the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court for 13 years, and was a prosecutor from 1992 through 1997, he’s been around long enough for lawyers who have practiced against him and before him to form valid opinions. For all I know, he may be a great choice.

But this Daily Kos interview is troubling. The first question sets the tone.

Transparency in the plea-bargaining process is a major platform of your campaign. Can you explain why?

After noting the obvious, that about 97% of cases are disposed by plea, Judge Donnelly raises his concern. Continue reading →

The disfavored rights are the ones where it starts. As long as you’re against hate speech, rationalizations to censor speech are understandable, even if still troubling, and you’ll overlook some of the unpleasant details about rights because the outcome seems okay with you. After all, what sort of horrible person doesn’t abhor hate speech? And if hate speech is bad, guns are far worse.

Corporate activism and corporate power combine to achieve results that government cannot. American freedom suffers. We lose a culture that respects liberty even as the law remains (for now) intact.

Smarter gun-control activists have taken note of this fact. In August I wrote a piece noting that corporate gun-control efforts are on the rise. Citigroup and Bank of America both imposed restrictions on their business customers. Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Amazon, and Shopify have all imposed various limits on efforts to speak about or seek firearms.

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While the name “Sargon of Akkad” sounded vaguely familiar, I had no clue who he was or what he did. That was probably for the best. But who cares if he’s not someone I would care to know about? Others did and, even if they didn’t, he still has as much right to express his views as I do. But not on Patreon, apparently.

On Dec. 6, Patreon kicked the anti-feminist polemic Carl Benjamin, who works under the name Sargon of Akkad, off its site for using racist language on YouTube. That same week, it removed the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos a day after he opened an account.

Whether there’s a connection between Milo, with whom I’m more familiar, and Sargon is unclear. Perhaps they appeal to the same crowd. Perhaps the inclusion of both in the same paragraph in the New York Times is meant to taint Benjamin with Milo’s provocations, not to mention affinity for children. But Sargon’s “deplatforming” produced a reaction. Continue reading →

A good craftsman knows that his job isn’t done when he holds up the magnificent object he just created, using all his skills, judgment and passion. He knows that his tools have to be cleaned and put away, his workplace swept and the debris removed. The creation of the object is the thing of wonder, but the job isn’t over until everything is restored to the way it was when he began.

Seth Godin uses the post-Christmas dinner analogy to make the point.

If you don’t have time to clean up, you don’t have time to cook

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Both policy and hysteria tend to be driven by change, whether it’s a one-off incident like 9/11 that is so shocking that it demands action, or year over year increases in crime. With the former, there’s a huge tendency to over-react, allowing hysteria to seize control over the recognition that it’s more shocking than significant. The latter, however, presents more sober challenges.

First, there’s the problem of numbers, whether it’s the seemingly large percentage change resulting from there being low absolute numbers. This was the case with police killings, where the numbers are so low that a small change in real numbers creates a percentage change that makes it appear as if there is a huge change. Without both real numbers and percentage change, the numbers do little to inform us, and are far more likely to inflame people without illuminating whether there is a real problem.

But the other change is in definition. As has been discussed here many times, when someone talks about rape, are they speaking to forcible rape or post-hoc regret rape? Even if you’re of the view that both are rape, they remain rape of a very different species. By expanding the definition, the numbers will increase not because of an increase in incidence, but a broader definition. Continue reading →

Some said it wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t. The sky was falling, the end was nigh. Yet, here we are, another year gone by and we’re still here. As awful as it may have been, the Apocalypse has not happened, and the Sweet Meteor of Death has not claimed us yet. I choose to take this as a good thing, at least for today.

So as is my Christmas tradition, a video.

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