Cleveland Police Officer Michael Brelo was acquitted of voluntary manslaughter of Timothy Russell and Melissa Williams. A total of 137 rounds were fired into their car, including 49 by Brelo, as he stood atop the hood of their car and fired through the windshield. They were unarmed, although reported to have fired shots because their car had earlier backfired.

The bench trial was marked by the disgraceful refusal of the other police officers present to testify, under the guise of Fifth Amendment privilege (to which they’re entitled) but for the purpose of protecting their fellow officer.  The verdict still shocked.  Judge John P. O’Donnell began his decision with an acknowledgement of Cleveland’s disastrously poor relationship between police and the public.

In many American places people are angry with, mistrusting and fearful of the police. Citizens think the men and women sworn to protect and serve have violated that oath or never meant it in the first place. Some of these places are long familiar: New York City and Baltimore. Some were unfamiliar until incidents there laid bare the divide between the people and the police: Ferguson, Missouri and North Charleston, South Carolina. Probably not coincidentally these places are mostly African-American communities. Continue reading →

While I’ve heard rumblings about some of the stuff Jordan Rushie explains, it was never really worth my time to look into it. I’m well past my dating years, and have no plans to go back. The whole notion of “the game” and the “red pill” are, from my distance, kinda funny, the sort of things that clog young men’s minds while the hormones that kept humanity going continued to flow dangerously.

Sure, I was aware of the introduction of gender studies in liberal arts education, which struck me as a worthwhile course of study as soon as someone opens up a chain of gender stores.  But then, philosophy majors weren’t in high demand either.

Needless to say, we’ve moved far from the days of Aristotle and Camus, and philosophizing about important yet practical topics like a natural order, morality, primary cause, virtue, ethics, and the meaning of our existence. It seems to me that academia is currently focused on pushing a third wave feminism ideal.

As a single guy in my 30s, all of this feminist gender studies stuff has absolutely no practical application to me. It won’t help me be a better lawyer, make more money, or live a more fulfilling life. In contrast, I will often refer back to classical philosophy for inspiration or perspective. A manuscript on cisgender heteronormative white male privilege, not so much.

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New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote of his humble beginnings as a blogger the other day.  Just like me? Hardly.

In my own case, I began writing online in 1996, when Michael Kinsley signed me up to write a monthly column for Slate. This was still traditional column-writing — length constraints were less rigid, editing less intrusive, and gratification less delayed than in print, but still relatively old-fashioned. But it did get me accustomed to the online format.

Krugman, then an MIT professor, created a page for himself on the MIT servers, where he lists his many Slate and other articles on economics, before moving to Princeton, then to the Times.

A proper blog came much later, when I realized that I wanted a place to put the backstory behind my Times columns; the Times added a Twitter feed (which I didn’t even know existed until Andy Rosenthal casually mentioned that I had 600,000 followers). And so here we are today.

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There are 169 bikers in jail in Waco, now that Jeff Batley made $1,000,000 bail.

As Mark Bennett pointed out, the million dollar bail set for these bikers, due to nine dead and 18 injured in the Twin Peaks melee, is off the charts. Continue reading →

If Earl Warren and Albert Camus fought George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who would win?  That’s the question posed by Bill Otis in his rejoinder to George Will’s conservative case against the death penalty.  It’s rather surprising to learn that Otis is so on top of internet memes.

But first, the lead-in comes from no less an interested party as Paul Cassell at Volokh Conspiracy, who writes:

George Will recently wrote an op-ed in the Post, advancing the “conservative case” against the death penalty.  My friend Bill Otis has written this strong response.

This is noteworthy only for its indication of Cassell’s tacit endorsement of Otis’ obsession with making the trains run on time.  Will begins with the assertion that capital punishment is withering away in America, and offers a “threefold” justification for the conservative case against the death penalty, as reflected in dark red Nebraska’s effort to abolish it. Continue reading →

Nobody likes the fact that corporate crime ends up with the payment of a big fine and a deferred prosecution agreement.  It’s so unsatisfying, there being no perp walk, no face to hate and ridicule, no physical embodiment of corporate evil to name and shame.

That the problem might have more to do with the poor fit of criminal laws to corporate conduct doesn’t soothe the townspeople holding torches and pitchforks. They want blood, dammit, and don’t they deserve it?

In the government’s latest round of collecting donations from bank customers against their will, $5.6 billion this time which will of necessity be passed through to the townfolk as “new and improved” banking products and hidden fees to better serve you, the government proves that it’s not afraid of going after big banks. Continue reading →

The New York State Bar Association, unlike bar associations in some other states, is a club lawyers can join or not, depending on the need for another impressive certificate to hang on the ego wall to prove to potential clients that you’re worthy of getting paid. It’s a voluntary organization, consisting of some folks who want to improve the law, and some folks who adore being on committees.

One such committee is Ethics, where a bunch of lawyers with dubious qualifications offer advisory opinions on what we’re ethically allowed to do.  Despite the fact that so many around the blawgosphere mistaken believe that these ethics opinions reflect the “rules” for the practice of law, they are merely “advisory,” meaning that they carry no greater force of law than if I set up the SHG Ethics Committee requiring lawyers to wear shoes instead of those ridiculous black sneakers that some lawyers think they can get away with.

That said, the NYSBA’s advisory opinions are given some persuasive authority by the Departmental Disciplinary Committees, which have actual authority over lawyers, all of which makes the inane sophistry ridiculed by Appellate Squawk* worthy of note.

Scene: Courtroom.

A.D.A. Tightskirt:  We’re offering a plea to 20 years on condition that the defendant waive his right to appeal anything whatsoever in any case past, present or future including ineffective assistance of counsel. Continue reading →

The former Chief of Police of Mt. Airy, Georgia, together with his wife, will get 25 weekends in jail.  Upon hearing that, some might cheer. After all, it’s not often a cop gets jail, and 25 weekends is nothing to sneeze at, right?  But maybe not this time.

Richard Scott Burton, the former police chief of the tiny northeast Georgia town of Mt. Airy, was staring down 31 felonies — two counts of aggravated child molestation, one of child molestation and 28 of first-degree cruelty to children.

His wife, Cheryl, was looking at the same, minus the molestation. The possibility of decades in prison loomed over the couple, accused of abusing and neglecting their four adopted children for years.

Within the “pantheon” of crimes, molesting children has long been considered the one that is most disgusting, most intolerable.  And in this instance, unbearable, as it smacks of “buying” kids, via adoption, to be abused.  If ever there was a crime worthy of utter revulsion, Burton committed it.  Continue reading →

The other day, Ken White at Popehat created a laundry list of tropes about free speech.  While some may nitpick it around the edges, it’s remarkably good as it debunks the mindless cesspool of feelings about speech that has overtaken actual thought.  Charles C.W. Cooke connects this to a survey at YouGov.

YouGov’s latest research shows that many Americans support making it a criminal offense to make public statements which would stir up hatred against particular groups of people. Americans narrowly support (41%) rather than oppose (37%) criminalizing hate speech, but this conceals a partisan divide. Most Democrats (51%) support criminalizing hate speech, with only 26% opposed. Independents (41% to 35%) and Republicans (47% to 37%) tend to oppose making it illegal to stir up hatred against particular groups.

Support for banning hate speech is also particularly strong among racial minorities. 62% of black Americans, and 50% of Hispanics support criminalizing comments which would stir up hatred. White Americans oppose a ban on hate speech 43% to 36%.

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A 20-year old black man, Terrance Kellom, was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Mitchell Quinn.  You probably didn’t hear about this.  After all, there is a lot of news, and you can’t hear it all. But what if Kellom was shot in the back, much like Walter Scott?  Why do you know all about Walter Scott’s killing, but nothing about Terrence Kellom?

Terrance Kellom, a young black man who was killed during an arrest in Detroit last month, was shot in the back, the attorney for Kellom’s family claimed Friday — a claim that appears to contradict a federal officer’s earlier allegation that the shooting was justified because Kellom had charged at him with a hammer.

Mitchell Quinn, a special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, shot Kellom the afternoon of April 27 during a raid at Kellom’s home in Detroit, according to Quinn’s lawyer and others. Several officers on a multi-agency fugitive apprehension task force were serving an arrest warrant for Kellom, 20, who had previously been charged in several crimes and was wanted as a suspect in an armed robbery of a pizza delivery person.

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