Lee Siegel writes a powerful philippic for the New York Times Sunday Review entitled “Why I Defaulted on My Student Loans.”  It may not be entirely clear from his rant that he’s no kid, but the same age as me.  That being so, I call bullshit.  Siegel is full of crap and playing his audience for fools.

Siegel begins his facile spin in his first paragraph, painting the banker who gave him his student loan as his own personal merchant of Venice.

ONE late summer afternoon when I was 17, I went with my mother to the local bank, a long-defunct institution whose name I cannot remember, to apply for my first student loan. My mother co-signed. When we finished, the banker, a balding man in his late 50s, congratulated us, as if I had just won some kind of award rather than signed away my young life.

No. The “balding” man, an interesting detail recollected by someone who can’t recall the bank, didn’t congratulate Siegel “as if” he won an award, but as if he was just enabled to get an education.  It might fairly be said that is a prize, a college education which he would otherwise not be capable of obtaining. Continue reading →

Before the hyperbole spins out of control, no one was killed.  No innocent person. No guilty person. No cop. Under the circumstances, that’s nothing to sneeze at. With that in mind, Leo Lech, who bought the house for his son, had reason to be miffed.

The home, in Greenwood Village, Colorado, took a hit. And another. And more still. Continue reading →

During the dinner party Friday night (yes, old people still have dinner parties), the guy sitting across from me explained that we’re back to rampant crime, a crime spree.  I asked him why he thought so, and he looked at me like I was a moron. “Don’t you read the papers?” he finally sputtered.

I sighed, knowing what he meant.  If it bleeds, it leads, and there has been no shortage of news about people getting killed, both cops and robbers people shot by cops.  For nice people who have no other context, it could well seem like we’re back to gunfights in the street.

After gently suggesting that there really isn’t any crime spree going on, to which he gave me one of those looks that suggested I shouldn’t move any closer to him or he would have to take a defensive stance, I tried to explain that a handful of high profile issues mask the fact that, compared to the 1980s, we’re living in crime paradise. It’s just not happening, a point echoed by the New York Times editorial. Continue reading →

What kind of truck does an old judge drive, and why should you care?  Because that’s the sensibility of the geezer who’s going to make some decisions that dictate what will happen with your life or fortune.  In America, most judges are, well, old.

Conventional wisdom has it that wielding the gavel takes years upon years of lawyerly practice. Judging by that standard, the U.S. federal bench must be very effective, indeed: About 12 percent of the nation’s 1,200 federal judges are 80 or older, according to a 2010 survey by ProPublica. Eleven were over the age of 90, almost three times as many 20 years before. Other things that happened over those 20 years: the Internet. Plus smartphones, Twitter, Facebook, hacking, legal weed, etc., etc., etc. Plus dementia and senility, for some. On issues of the day, like privacy or hacking, can older judges possibly keep up?

On the one hand, they have the wisdom and experience gained from a lifetime, assuming you don’t look too closely at how their lives paralleled yours. On the other hand, they don’t have an adequate appreciation of the value of Facebook friends, or the insult of being unfriended by your former BFF. Continue reading →

It was one of those videos that didn’t seem to make much sense, the shooting and killing of Dillon Taylor by Salt Lake City Police Officer Bron Cruz.  Shaun King at the Daily Kos gave a moment by moment run down of what happened, but it clarified nothing.

At 0:17, Officer Bron Cruz gets out of his vehicle. You will notice people confused by his presence.

At 0:22, Officer Cruz walks past two men who were friends with Dillon Taylor.

At 0:24, Officer Cruz walks behind Taylor, who has on a white T-shirt and is listening to music. Continue reading →

A company in Israel, Odortec, makes a substance that is non-toxic and, the developers maintain, even drinkable.  It’s only got one drawback:

IT SMELLS like raw sewage mixed with putrefying cow’s carcass…

And, apparently, it doesn’t wash out of clothing easily.  On the bright side, the substance, called Skunk, is remarkably effective as a riot control measure.

Skunk, as it is appositely called, has been used by Israeli soldiers since 2008 to disperse Palestinian protesters. Now it has attracted the interest of law-enforcement agencies in America which, after riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, crave better ways to scatter rioters without killing or injuring them.

In Israel, where it’s been in use since 2008, the main complaint against it is that it’s been used against Palestinians.

Skunk has been used mainly to deal with the weekly protests against Israel’s “separation fence” that cuts through the West Bank; and increasingly over the past year at demonstrations in East Jerusalem. Sprayed from water-cannon, it has become the characteristic odour of Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human-rights group, reports that it found no health hazard, but still criticises it as a humiliating method used so far only against Palestinians.

Continue reading →

Make no mistake, Cesar Adrian Vargas is fully qualified to practice law in the State of New York. He graduated from CUNY Law School and passed the bar exam on his first try. That was in 2011.  Yet, he didn’t get to raise his right hand and take the oath on Monroe Street in Brooklyn.

After considering it for nearly three years, the New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division in Brooklyn approved Vargas’ application to the New York State bar. Five judges agreed that Vargas’ immigration status “does not reflect adversely upon his general fitness to practice law.”

Vargas’ “problem” wasn’t any question of his competence, his character or fitness to be a lawyer.  His problem, as reflected in the opinion of the Appellate Division, Second Department, was that he was born in Puebla, Mexico.

His mother brought him and his siblings to the United States when Mr. Vargas was 5½ years old, without lawful documentation to enter or remain in the United States. The family settled in the New York City area, where Mr. Vargas continues to reside today.

Continue reading →

Jane Doe, a pseudonym, moved to expunge her conviction before Judge John Gleeson in the Eastern District of New York.  It wasn’t that evidence came to light that she was innocent of the crime. It did not, and she was not.

It wasn’t that her conviction for healthcare fraud wasn’t relevant to her current circumstances.  She was a home health aide, it was directly relevant, at least on its surface. But as Judge Gleeson wrote in his decision:

I sentenced her to five years of probation supervision, not to a lifetime of unemployment.

Jane Doe’s background was fairly common, a mother of four whose husband left her, working as hard as she could. Still, she was unable to earn enough to pay her rent, no less feed her children. Continue reading →

There is a guy in Florence, Kentucky, who knows how to protect children. His name, shared by a curmudgeon pal of mine, is Mark Herrmann, and he took a video of a young child in his car seat in a running pickup truck with no parent present.

Because someone could snatch the kid and force him into a life of human sex trafficking. Or worse!  The Florence police think Herrmann is a hero. Continue reading →

On grandma’s internet, a company called eBay made a boatload of moolah by skimming a piece off the top of thousands of counterfeit Louis Vuitton purses.  Vuitton wasn’t amused, and pressured eBay to end the sale of counterfeit bags, even though ironically the auctions didn’t prevent a single legitimate sale.  After all, buyers of ridiculously expensive plastic purses were not looking to eBay for knock-offs. But it did dilute their brand.

But where was the message from the feds that this must stop, that this new-fangled internet could hurry the downfall of civilization by providing an outlet for cheap ladies’ accessories?  It’s not that the silence was deafening, but that everyone understood that the internet was going through growing pains, and part of those pains involved dealing with its use by those who might use the new forum for illicit purposes.

Yet, when time came for SDNY Judge Katherine Forrest to impose sentence on convicted Silk Road impresario Ross Ulbricht, it was all about the message.

Ahead of Ulbricht’s sentencing Friday, prosecutors in his case have sent the judge a 16-page letter asking that Ulbricht be given “a lengthy sentence, one substantially above the mandatory minimum.” And one of the reasons for that harsh sentence, the Department of Justice attorneys argue, is to “send a clear message” to anyone who would follow in Ulbricht’s footsteps and create the next Dark Web drug market.

Continue reading →