When word broke of massive layoffs at New York’s number 2 tabloid and number 3 newspaper, shock waves hit the world of journalism. The owners of the New York Daily News cut half the newsroom.

“We are fundamentally restructuring the Daily News,” an email from Tronc to the staff reads. “We are reducing today the size of the editorial team by approximately 50 percent and re-focusing much of our talent on breaking news — especially in areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility.”

The “death” of newspapers, preceded by massive layoffs, isn’t new. It’s been going on for years, as the internet has made dailies superfluous and financially unviable. Why pay for news you already know about? Who wants to read today’s news tomorrow? Why buy a paper, no less maintain a subscription, when there’s nothing new in the news? Continue reading →

A commenter to my post about Judge Kopf’s twit on the law clerks’ demands wrote something concerning.

I find it curious that you honestly seem to believe that decades of experience in the judiciary necessarily qualify someone to effectively make policy on sexual harassment.** It really doesn’t, no more so than decades of judiciary experience qualifies someone to play second base for the New York Yankees.

Putting aside the bizarre attempt at analogy,*** there is a shocking disconnect reflected in this assertion. Decades of experience don’t matter. Experience has no value. Continue reading →

There are some recurring debates within the legal academy, what to call your professors (first name or Prof. Smith) and whether to allow students to type out notes on their laptop or hand write them. But this post at PrawfBlawg by Hadar Aviram caught me by surprise.

I run my class on an all-volunteer basis because I was raised in a system that did not have cold-calling and I dislike it. But this nifty idea from Nathan Robinson, which he claims he learned from James Forman, holds some promise. He hands each of his students a card with three colored stripes and instructs them to write their name on all three stripes, and then to fold the card so that only one color is showing at the time.

There is a view within the Academy that cold-calling can be humiliating when a student isn’t prepared, if a student can’t handle the pressure of speaking before her class, or if a student utters something inane and the class laughs at their dumb classmate. Continue reading →

If the name Shiva Ayyadurai  sounds familiar, it’s likely because he sued Mike Masnick and Techdirt over its calling bullshit on Ayyadurai’s claim that he invented email.  He lost. But he’s running for Senate from Massachusetts and, well, see for yourself.

I will take a punch in the face ANY DAY for America & Free Speech. We will have another ANTI-RACIST Rally against the scumbag #FakeIndian @SenWarren and her White Supremacist THUGS. JOIN US. Declare Your Independence! Stop Race War pic.twitter.com/IOtTCTzi1h

— Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai,PhD (M.I.T.) Inventor of Email (@va_shiva) July 22, 2018

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After 23 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Darryl Fulton suffered far more “inconvenience” than any person should ever have to endure. But he had yet to deal with Chase.

“I’m just trying to deposit my check,” Fulton said. “I just wanted to be treated like anyone else.”

[Fulton’s lawyer] Kathleen Zellner criticized Chase for not allowing Fulton to deposit a $169,876 check from the state at its bank branch on 79th Street and Cicero Avenue, questioning whether racism played a part. The first time Fulton tried to deposit the money, Zellner said, the bank said she would have to endorse the check because her firm’s name was under his, though Fulton’s name was on the “pay to the order of” line.

Lest there be any confusion, the firm’s name was printed in the portion of the check reflecting where it was mailed, nothing more. It’s almost as if Chase has never seen a mailed check before. Continue reading →

It wasn’t long ago that the nation went bonkers at the threat of terrorism, and with some cause. But as with most hysteria, it went from serious concerns to less serious concerns, and ultimately the word took on such significance and outrage that the actual facts no longer mattered and the mere incantation of “terrorism” was enough to bring the bludgeon down on a defendant’s head. Senior District Judge John Kane said “Enough.”

After his co-defendant Jamshid Muhtorov informed him that the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) was in need of financial support, Defendant Bakhtiyor Jumaev mailed Mr. Muhtorov $300. Mr. Jumaev wrote only a single check, and the funds never reached the IJU or any other foreign terrorist organization. Mr. Jumaev had no specific plot or plan and did not intend to further any via his contribution. The idea to aid the terrorist organization was proposed and facilitated entirely by Mr. Muhtorov. Indeed, Mr. Jumaev had no direct contact with the members of any terrorist organization. And, significantly, he never committed any act of violence, nor did he advocate for any particular violent act.

Providing “material support” to a terrorist organization is a crime. Whether the donation of funds was meant to support terrorism or other purposes isn’t relevant under the law. Nor does it matter whether the funds actually ended up there. That Jumaev mailed a check was enough for the law to kick in, for a jury to convict him. And they did. With the level of gusto reserved for a guy planning to blow up the World Trade Center, using all the official means crafted to thwart the most serious of terrorist outrages. Continue reading →

One of the more peculiar aspects of the social media age is that random people feel compelled to inform you of their sensibilities. Sometimes they will let you know that they agree, or disagree, with you. Sometimes they will tell you that they think you went too hard or too easy on an issue. Oftentimes, they will tell you that you’ve violated their flavor of a social norm.

Why?

I received a twit yesterday from a law professor telling me that she felt I was gratuitously rude in a characterization that appeared here. Who and what isn’t important, as this post has nothing to do with the target of the twit. There were no reasons proffered, not that such matters are susceptible to reasoning; they’re just a matter of one’s feelings, like one’s preferred flavor of ice cream. Continue reading →

In its effort to present a balanced portrayal of the presumed sexual assault epidemic on American college campuses, a weird thing happened.

There is an epidemic of sexual violence on America’s college campuses, according to some researchers. Sky News travelled to Ohio, home to several large universities and a huge student population, to find out more.

Notably, the opening graf begins with the conclusion that there is, there must be, an epidemic. Like too many “deep dives” and empirical studies, the question begins not with whether the phenomenon is true, but begs the question. This is one of the reasons this article is interesting.

It’s a notoriously hard thing to measure but one estimate suggests that as many as one in four students will be subjected to a serious sexual assault before they graduate.

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When Senior District Court Judge Richard Kopf wrote the “dirty old man” post at his blog, Hercules and the umpire, I cringed. Not because I didn’t get his point, but because I knew, with absolute certainty, that most people wouldn’t, and would instead hang on the words of an old joke* in an effort to hang Judge Kopf. And so I leapt into the fray, not because I agreed with his choice of words, but because the castigation he would (and did) receive was misguided.

Here, I do so again.

How Appealing:

“[All female] Law Clerks for Workplace Accountability launches a web site, a Twitter account, and issues its ‘Response to the Federal Judiciary Workplace Conduct Working Group’s Report.’”

New Spanish Inquisition by SJWs? Thank goodness for Article III.

RGK pic.twitter.com/SSicuI41rO

— Richard G. Kopf (@JudgeKopf) July 20, 2018

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Maggie Haberman is an excellent reporter, a big player in the big leagues of journalism as the White House correspondent for the New York Times. And like many in her position, and indeed like many who aren’t in her position but have just had enough of the constant onslaught of idiocy, she’s decided to take a twitter hiatus.

That’s cool. Many others have, and many of us take the occasional week or month off from the never-ending reminder that the average IQ is 100, and half of all twitter users are below that. But Haberman didn’t just log off. She wrote an op-ed.

The evening before, I had complained to a close friend that I hated being on Twitter. It was distorting discourse, I said. I couldn’t turn off the noise. She asked what was the worst that could happen if I stepped away from it.

There was nothing I could think of. And so just after 6 p.m. last Sunday, I did.

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