The argument back in the 1960s and early 1970s was that if a young man was old enough to die for his country in the rice paddies of Vietnam, he was old enough to sip a beer before they buried him.  And indeed, the argument had sufficient appeal that most states reduced the drinking age, as well as the voting age and age of majority, to 18.

When I arrived at college, a brash 17-year-old who had long since gotten a ridiculously bad fake ID in Times Square showing I was of the requisite age, there was a bar in the student union.  A bunch of us from my freshman dorm headed straight over after dinner, and bonded.  We were not, at first, particularly responsible drinkers, but then, we were mere steps away from home.  And so night after night, we stumbled and survived to drink another day.

In due time, the novelty wore off and we became more responsible drinkers, though I suspect a great many happy times for all occurred in the interim.  At the very least, we all had a great time and nobody died of alcohol poisoning or was accused of rape.

At Reason, Robby Soave argues that the 1986 change in law, where states were coerced to raise the drinking age to 21 or lose federal highway funds, has given rise to a plethora of terribles today. Continue reading →

Edit: What follows is, I regret to say, wrong. As reflected in the update below, my commentary was premised on a mistake of law, for which I apologize.  Unlike police officers, my mistake is not worthy of forgiveness, and I do not want any reader to be made stupider by my error.

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To the extent those who seek to trivialize North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager’s killing of Walter Scott can find some comfort, it was that Slager was justified in stopping Scott for a broken tail light.  First out of the box on this claim was former criminal defense lawyer turned shameless TV slut, Geraldo, who argued that this “righteous stop” somehow diminishes the crime of murder:

Putting aside the pandering stupidity of Gerry’s point, it suffers from one huge flaw. He’s wrong.  At Slate, Cristian Farias does what Geraldo failed to do. He did what a good lawyer should do, and looked at the law. Continue reading →

I’ve known Mike Cernovich for years, long before he chose to take a stand in Gamergate and became a primary object of hatred for Social Justice Warriors.  His law blog, Crime & Federalism, has been on my blogroll since 2007, and he brought many strong and illuminating points to the fore.  That said, he’s also made clear that he was not ashamed of being a man, or being the man he was.

Not being a gamer, I never became embroiled in Gamergate.  It wasn’t that I shrugged it off out of some reluctance to join in battle, but that I didn’t know or understand enough about the issues to bring anything useful to the discussion.  I had nothing illuminating to offer, and there were others who were far more knowledgeable and involved.  I chose not to be that dilettante.

Cerno, on the other hand, leaped into the middle of it, mostly under his twitter handle of @PlayDangerously, and at his other blog, Danger & Play.  As he did before, he owned his opinions, for better or worse, and became a target for hatred and revulsion by SJWs.  As the target, he gets cool twits from random people like this: Continue reading →

Lenore Skenazy, who has been called the “World’s Worst Mom” for believing, and acting upon the belief, that children shouldn’t be bubble-wrapped, and instead should be given the freedom to do kid stuff even if there is a one in ten million chance that space aliens might zoom down and snatch ’em, brought attention to the plight of Danielle and Sasha Meitivs’ two children, ages 6 and 10.

It seems the Meitivs’ kids were snatched. No, not by child predators. Not even by space aliens. But by the police.  Again. Radley Balko explains:

Meanwhile, the Maryland couple harassed by Child Protective Services earlier this year for letting their kids walk home alone just had another frightening encounter with the agency.

Danielle and Sasha Meitiv’s children, ages 6 and 10, were picked up by police on Sunday at around 5 p.m., and taken to Child Protective Services. A neighbor apparently saw the children walking alone and called 911 to report it.

Continue reading →

Just because he was 73 years of age doesn’t mean Bob Bates was beyond playing dress up.  In his case, the fantasy was to pretend he was a cop, and the Tulsa Sheriff’s department offered a guy who just happened to donate enough stuff the chance to strap on a really cool uniform.

But not just a uniform. It came with a gun. A real, working, gun.  A gun with which a guy like Bob Bates, an older fellow who might be scrutinized to determine whether he should be allowed behind the wheel of a car, was provided the chance to shoot and kill another human being.  Via Tulsa World:

Robert Bates, the reserve Tulsa County deputy who fatally shot a man who was in a physical altercation with another deputy last week, has donated thousands of dollars worth of items to the Sheriff’s Office since becoming a reserve deputy in 2008.

Bates, 73, accidentally shot Eric Harris on Thursday, according to Maj. Shannon Clark, after Harris — the subject of an undercover gun and ammunition buy by the Sheriff’s Office’s Violent Crimes Task Force — fled from arrest and then fought with a deputy who tackled him. Bates, Clark said, thought he was holding a stun gun when he pulled the trigger.

Continue reading →

The New York Times offers one of its occasional editorials decrying the death penalty by pointing out that nobody wants innocent people executed.

And yet, far too often, people end up on death row after being convicted of horrific crimes they did not commit. The lucky ones are exonerated while they are still alive — a macabre club that has grown to include 152 members since 1973.

The rest remain locked up for life in closet-size cells. Some die there of natural causes; in at least two documented cases, inmates who were almost certainly innocent were put to death.

If the innocent on death row are a macabre club, what about its auxiliary, the tens of thousands of people convicted and imprisoned shy of death by the same system? Continue reading →

Not that anyone paying even a modicum of attention is unaware that there’s a cool box around that mimics cell sites so that it picks up your cellular communications, colloquially referred to as the Sting Ray, but that law enforcement has been using it with reckless abandon and without judicial approval. Ah, good times.

The excuse proffered is that Harris Corp., maker of the cell site simulator, required a non-disclosure agreement of law enforcement, and you know how law enforcement feels so strongly about its duty to uphold the law.  Unfortunately, some judges haven’t gotten with the program, and compelled the disclosure of both the NDA and the technology, causing sad cop tears at the idea that the bad guys will learn about the tradecraft.

Bad news for the cops is good news for the bad dudes?  Ironically, yes, but not for the reason one might expect.  It’s not that the gangsters are busy pouring over the schematics of Sting Rays to figure out how to elude detection, but that the feds are so bent on keeping their spyware from judges and public scrutiny that they would rather cut criminals loose than reveal their voodoo. Continue reading →

Among the few saving graces of the New York Court of Appeals was its stand-alone protection of constitutional rights.  Not that it was some long-haired hippie throw-back to the Warren Court, but that there was a long tradition of the top court refusing to trot in lock-step with the United States Supreme Court when it came to finding novel excuses to ignore the Bill of Rights, or the local flavor, Article I, § 12 of the New York Constitution.

Say bah-bye, as the Court of Appeals, in an opinion by one of its newest judges, Leslie Stein, capitulated to one of the most doctrinally bizarre and incomprehensible decisions ever issued by the Supremes, Heien v. North Carolina.  So much for New York protecting constitutional rights. So much for New York defending its own Constitution. And reason? Be damned.

Lest anyone forget the brilliance of Heien, the Supreme Court held that a police officer can possess probable cause not only for a mistake of fact, which is disturbing enough, but for a “reasonable” mistake of law. Continue reading →

At Above The Law, Tamara Tabo does the unthinkable.  She refuses to be the victim.

As a university employee, my personal experience with Title IX has been discouraging, frustrating, alienating. I have been recruited to join complaints against male colleagues, most recently against someone with whom I was friends outside of our workplace. I have, when I refused to be a complainant, been interviewed as a witness. I have, when interviewed as a witness, been grilled over a multitude of conversations and social interactions that took place away from campus, in the company of adults, that I never expected that I would one day have to explain in a formal setting.

I quickly realized that Title IX can be applied in ways that don’t tolerate ambiguity or, God forbid, a bawdy sense of humor.

This stemmed from a post about the unfortunate link in an email to students by Drexel law professor Lisa McElroy: Continue reading →

A while back, Keith Lee wrote about the Imposter Syndrome, and took the path to happiness:

The problem many people who suffer from imposter syndrome are unable to engage in authentic, detached self-assessment. Some people are unable to look at themselves and their performance in an objective manner. Far easier to look at other people and find yourself lacking by measure. Instead you have to step back and try and look at how you are really performing. 

At the outset, Keith properly criticizes the inability to engage in “authentic, detached self-assessment.”  A worthy point. But then he veers hard left when he writes, “find yourself lacking by measure.”

Why is this a problem?  Chances are pretty darned good that you are lacking. Me too.  Mark Bennett responded to Keith’s happy dance with a smack:

This should be no great surprise; Dunning and Kruger would predict this result. And there are certainly exceptions, but the exceptions are those that Dunning and Kruger might predict: unskilled people who overestimate their own level of skill, rather than the more skilled who underestimate their own.

Continue reading →