One of the problems with “faith-based” charities is that they’re faith based, as demonstrated by the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission’s rulings that the Downtown Hope Center, which provides shelter for homeless and battered women, engaged in discrimination.

According to commission records, Samantha Amanda Coyle, age 52 as per Coyle’s legal records identifying Coyle as Timothy Paul Coyle, filed a “public accommodation” discrimination complaint on Feb. 1 against the Downtown Hope Center located at 240 E. 3rd Ave regarding Coyle’s unsuccessful attempts to access the facility on Jan. 28 at night and on Jan. 29 prior to 5:45 p.m. when the shelter opens for admission.

Coyle’s complaint charges that Coyle was discriminated against based on “sex” and “gender identity” as per the Anchorage Municipal Code Section 5.20.050. Coyle states, “I am female and transgender and thus I belong to a protected class,” on the official complaint.

The response was Coyle was drunk. Continue reading →

With the president promising to announce his nominee for the Supreme Court mere days from now, Linda Greenhouse has taken to the papers to reiterate why the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch was the worst ever, and why there is no excuse for the next nominee to not answer the one, the only, question that matters.

With the future of the court — indeed, of the Constitution as we know it — now at stake, it’s urgent for the senators and the public to understand that Mr. Gorsuch’s stonewalling of the Judiciary Committee was not consistent with historical practice and should not be viewed as a norm. Rather, it should be called out for what it was: a derogation of the democratic principle at the heart of Article III of the Constitution, the judiciary article that places the confirmation of life-tenured judicial nominees in the hands of the people’s representatives. Until recently, the modern confirmation process has assumed at least a modicum of substantive engagement between those representatives and the nominee.

She has a point, that Justice Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings weren’t exactly chatty. Then again, she ignores the tenor of the times, given that progressives were still outraged that Gorsuch “stole” the chair from Judge Merrick Garland, even though he was hanging in Denver at the time and had nothing to say about the denial of confirmation hearings in Washington. It also didn’t help that Democratic senators were haranguing Gorsuch over the “frozen truck driver” case, posed as man against corporations rather than law. Continue reading →

It usually surprises people that “serve and protect” on the side of a police cruiser is just a marketing ploy, not a duty. But if you are educated in the Detroit public schools, it might not matter as you can’t read what it says on the side of the RMP because the educational conditions are so atrocious, overcrowding, lack of teachers, vermin and worse, that schools fail to provide the opportunity of literacy.

An outrage? Absolutely, particularly given the fact that education isn’t some vague gimme, but something paid for through taxes. Unlike the myriad cries of newfound “rights,” like the right to health care, it hardly seems like a stretch to expect a right to something the government takes money to provide. Then again, it’s not as if the cops are free.

The question was posed in Gary B. v. Snyder before Judge Stephen J. Murphy III in the Eastern District of Michigan. Notably, the question was not a “right to literacy,” which is an outcome and beyond anything the government can guarantee, but rather the right to access to literacy, the opportunity to learn to read. In almost every discussion of rights these days, this critical distinction is missed. And there is little doubt that kids in Detroit were being denied the opportunity, regardless of what they might make of it. Continue reading →

Other nations celebrate national holidays without rancor, as did we until something snapped. How did it become horrible and exhausting to take pride in one’s country, to celebrate its founding and singular dedication to freedom beyond every other nation that’s ever existed?*

First, a little history. The original Constitution of 1787 was, for all its genius, a deeply self-contradictory document — a charter by and for a free people who enslaved hundreds of thousands of others. In 1776, America’s founders declared that human equality was not only a self-evident truth, but a fundamental premise of their new nation; barely a decade later, they officially rejected that premise, writing inequality and subjugation directly into the Constitution.**

There was no “original Constitution,” but the Articles of Confederation. It was hardly genius, but a stop-gap measure that failed miserably because it failed to provide for a federal government capable of binding together the 13 colonies and fulfilling its function. And the language relied upon came not from the Articles of Confederation, nor even the later-ratified Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence, that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”  Continue reading →

When Hillary Clinton ran for the presidency, one accusation thrown at her was that, as a lawyer, she defended a rapist. “She was a rapist lawyer!” shrieked the fools. Even worse, she wasn’t doing so as a public defender, compelled by her position to take on such a horrible client, but she chose to do so. What did it prove about Hillary? That she was a lawyer.

The New York Times published a news story, a distinction that’s growing less meaningful by the minute, about the lawyer who would be so scummy, so awful, as to defend “Infowars” Alex Jones. Who would be such a disgusting horrifying lawyer?

Lawyers for Neo-Nazi to Defend Alex Jones in Sandy Hook Case

The lawyers have names: Marc Randazza and his associate, Jay Wolman. If Marco’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s been written about here numerous times. He’s my friend. He’s my lawyer. He’s also Andrew Anglin’s lawyer. He’s represented the “sort of” people the New York Times would deign to call “good people.” He’s represented people the Times crowd despises. Just like Hillary representing a rapist. Just like me representing murderers and drug dealers. This is what lawyers do, represent the people in need of representation. Continue reading →

David Brooks points out some curious statistics about a growing division between Millennial men and women.

In 2016, female voters under 30 years old voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump 63 percent to 31 percent. Males in the same age cohort gave Clinton a much smaller edge, voting for her 46 percent to 42 percent. That’s a 17-point gender gap.

Since the election, the gap in leanings has gotten even bigger, as white male millennials have shifted to the G.O.P. A recent Pew survey of midterm party preference suggests that women under 35 tilt Democratic by an astounding 68 percent to 24 Republican. Men under 35 now tilt Republican 50 percent to 47 percent Democratic.

Continue reading →

The story doesn’t appear to be particularly complicated, even if there may be variations of it hidden behind Facebook and Twitter posts. Ellie Johnson was a student at Indiana University in Bloomington, and did what students have done for a very long time.

An 18-year-old woman told Bloomington police Sunday that she was raped after a party Friday night.

The woman told police she and the man were messaging back-and-forth on a dating site before they decided to go to some parties together.

She said the two of them drank vodka throughout the night and were drunk when they returned to his apartment and had sex. She said she was too drunk to consent to sex.

Continue reading →

After Adam Liptak’s page one news story at the New York Times explaining why the First Amendment is a conservative weapon, Jeffrey Toobin joined the party. The party is the Democratic Party, and it’s the last ditch effort to feed the hysteria and undermine whatever trust and integrity there may be in the Supreme Court.

After all, they may not be able to stop Trump from nominating Justice Kennedy’s replacement, but they can sure as hell feed the frenzy to turn the Least Dangerous Branch into the impotent cabal of disingenuous partisan scoundrels. The Supreme Court has no army to force Americans to do as it rules, so it relies on our acceptance of the proposition that it is an honorable institution. Or in the alternative, that without trust in the legitimacy of the Court, we devolve to anarchy.

Toobin has made his choice. Continue reading →

He was a Ph.D. student in materials engineering at Northwestern University, which is nothing to sneeze at. But Lawrence Crosby had two strikes against him, one permanent and one by his choice of attire that evening. It was the old racist joke come to life, and a woman* saw a black man in a black hoodie getting into a car.** What else could it be but grand theft auto?

So a student is getting into his own car, and a vigilant woman sees something and says something, because she has no idea whether the car belongs to Crosby, but why not? Continue reading →

In the scheme of “she said-he said” allegations of rape, there is usually other evidence. It may not conclusively resolve any question of fact, but it’s what distinguishes the utterly baseless accusation from the one that warrants more serious consideration. After all, anyone can tell a story, make an accusation, but contrary to the “believe the victim” narrative, not all stories are remotely grounded in reality. What about Catherine Reddington’s?

Catherine Reddington, 22, claims on social media that Alex Goldman, also 22, raped her vaginally and anally in a bedroom of Syracuse University’s Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity following a party in April 2017.

She went to the police and the university with her accusations, and has posted her brutal tale of assault on Facebook in a campaign that Goldman says got him fired from his summer job and could get him tossed from his new college. Continue reading →