To read the New York Times, there is no question but that the story is totally, completely, absolutely, irrefutably true.

“I hope you can let this go.”

Those are President Trump’s words, according to the former F.B.I. director, James Comey…

No “allegedly.” No caveat of the details buried in the original story.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.

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In response to a twit about Harvard’s first-ever black student commencement, a random law student told me it wasn’t the bad sort of segregation because black students wanted it. While I understood her point, it reflected the irrational infantile perspective that segregation is an unspeakable evil when perpetrated by some and totally wonderful when perpetrated by others.

I replied that she didn’t get it (which she naturally denied, as everyone who doesn’t get it invariably insists they do, they *do*), but that the response that failed to honor her opinion was condescending. You bet it was. Not only did I not know who she was or care what she thought, but we were not peers. What could make a law student assume that she was entitled to expect not only my attention, but my respect?

The problem with children believing they’re entitled to unearned respect starts in the classroom. Not long ago, there was a discussion about students taking liberties with their professors, as if the teachers were no different than the students, except they go to stand in the front of the room instead of sitting in the seats. The discussion devolved into the risks taken by profs in offending students, not pronouncing their names properly, giving rise to complaints of discrimination. Continue reading →

Some people like Taylor Swift’s music. Others may ask, “Taylor who?” For the latter group, I’m here for you. She’s the party in an action in the District of Colorado federal court trying to get a gender studies professor admitted as an expert witness to “profile” the kind of person who would grab her behind.

David Mueller has been accused of lifting up Swift’s skirt and groping her at a Colorado meet-and-greet in June 2013, an allegation that saw him lose his job as a DJ at the Denver country music radio station 98.5 KYGO. Mueller initially sued Swift for what he described as her “false” allegations, a move that was soon met by a counter-suit from Swift for sexual assault and battery in October 2015. In her deposition, Swift described feeling “frantic, distressed and violated” by the alleged incident.

While these feelings pretty much explain every song Swift has written, it nonetheless does not excuse Mueller if he, in fact, reached under her dress and touched her. But Swift’s lawyer, apparently, is unwilling to try his case based upon her testimony, and seeks instead to bolster her claim by calling an expert witness. Continue reading →

The first thing that hits you when you read something by or about Laurence Tribe is Carl Loeb, which is a bit ironic given that Loeb made his fortune as a Wall Street financier. But it’s right there, front and center, of his Washington Post op-ed.

By Laurence H. Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School.

The time has come for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice.

It’s an impressive thing, to hold an endowed seat at Harvard Law School. He has attributed credibility. And, indeed, Larry Tribe has done much in his career to earn that credibility, even though he’s done a few things to raise questions as well. Continue reading →

For those who believe that training is the answer, two Las Vegas cops came upon a guy who was apparently suffering some sort of psychotic episode. It’s hardly unusual for police to be called upon to deal with people suffering from some sort of mental illness, and it’s not as though this is such a wild, new problem that they are utterly clueless as to what to do. So, they handled it.

The incident unfolded about 1 a.m. when the man approached two uniformed officers inside The Venetian, 3355 S. Las Vegas Blvd. South, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a release.

The Metro officers described the man as “acting erratic” and paranoid. The man told the officers that “people were chasing him.” He ran off, and both officers followed, police said in a release.

As the man came to the cops, it would be fair to assume he sought their assistance for whatever delusion he was suffering.  Certainly, acting erratic inside the Venetian can’t be all that unusual. Continue reading →

Jeff Sessions issued a memo to the United States Attorneys directing them to charge the highest provable offense possible. What this means is that the charging decision dictates the outcome under the regime of mandatory minimums. If this seems like deja vu all over again, that’s because it is. This was the protocol under Attorney General John Ashcroft.

In the interim, Attorney General Eric Holder issued a memo providing for greater exercise of prosecutorial discretion. As should be obvious, the problem with addressing the outcomes of “prison nation” and the draconian “War on Drugs” by memo is that the next guy gets to write a memo of his own.

In this case, Sessions, contrary to some suggestions, hasn’t quite done something new and horrible, but returned to the old and horrible days of Ashcroft.

“We are returning to the enforcement of the laws as passed by Congress, plain and simple,” Sessions said. “If you are a drug trafficker, we will not look the other way, we will not be willfully blind to your misconduct.”

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At Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown describes the execution of the “Human Trafficking” warrant:

“Everybody’s like, ‘Don’t move, don’t move or we’ll shoot you,'” Noel Navarete told local 4 News. His brother Isaias, 18, said he was in the bathroom when police kicked down the door.

According to family matriarch Maria Navarete, police told her to “shut up, you have no rights” when she asked what was happening. She claims police never showed her or anyone in the household a warrant.

Nothing surprising there, as being polite and gracious in the exercise of brute force isn’t part of the deal. And when the crime underlying the warrant is “human trafficking,” one of those phrases that catches in a person’s throat because it sounds so horrifying, who can blame the cops for not being genteel in their actions. Even if the people who are on the business end of their force are the children they’re there to save.

One of the teens was the family’s 13-year-old daughter, who lived there. She wound up face-down and handcuffed on the floor, along with the rest of her family, after cops cut through a locked gate outside the southwest Detroit home and entered with their guns drawn.

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Some cops will hate this. They will rail about how this teaches young people to think cops aren’t there to protect them, to serve them. They’ll mumble about the War on Cops and how young people should respect them because, well, people should just respect cops because reasons. Such fragile teacups, guns and shields notwithstanding.

The Talk. Black parents have been giving it to their black children for ages because they love their kids and want to keep them alive. Is it a shame they need to do this? Of course, but the shame isn’t that they give The Talk, but that they need to give The Talk. But they do.

[Virginia Assembly Delegate Jeion] Ward crafted a bill requiring driver’s education classes to teach students how to handle themselves during a traffic stop.

On Monday, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) signed Ward’s bill into law, making Virginia one of only a handful of states grappling with an issue made urgent by the high-profile wave of police-related shootings of African Americans in the past few years. Continue reading →

Hal Niedzviecki called bullshit on cultural appropriation. It didn’t go well for him.

Hal Niedzviecki, editor of Write — a publication for the union’s members — published an opinion piece in the spring 2017 issue titled “Writer’s Prompt.” In the article, in an issue dedicated to indigenous writing, Niedzviecki wrote: “In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities.

“I’d go so far as to say there should even be an award for doing so — the Appropriation Prize for best book by an author who writes about people who aren’t even remotely like her or him.”

He didn’t wear a sombrero while writing it, or get soused on margaritas. He just challenged cultural appropriation. After all, if you seize someone else’s culture, then there won’t be enough for them. Continue reading →

Jamie Koehler offers, without commentary, a bit of trial transcript.

PROSECUTOR ON RE-DIRECT

Q: Okay. Ms. Smith, you do have a Yahoo e-mail account, right?

DEFENSE COUNSEL: Objection. Leading.

The prosecutor, of course, can’t lead his own witness. Not on direct. Not on re-direct, where a prosecutor will try to rehabilitate his witness after a withering cross. But in this case, the cross didn’t turn out to be particularly withering. Continue reading →