If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.

— Lucille Ball

With alarming regularity, people ask me how I do it.  I’m told by people who don’t know me that it’s impossible to write as much as I do. I’m told that I must spend every waking second writing, and when can I possibly find time to do work. I’m asked what my secret is.

Here’s the secret: Continue reading →

[Not to be disclosed without authorization of the Third Deputy Assistant Grand Poobah.]

Many contend that agencies of the United States tend to mark too many documents “secret” or “top secret,” or maybe even “super-de-duper secret.”  After all, it’s only the lunch order, and while it does relate to the special sauce, it really lacks sufficient impact to invoke the Espionage Act of 1917.

But the New York City Police Department has gone one better, Continue reading →

At Huffington Post, Radley Balko writes of an old SWAT operation in Detroit, back when someone thought cleaning up Eight Mile Road would save the city from moral bankruptcy.

Over a three-day period in June 2007, heavily armed SWAT teams, supported by tanks and helicopters, descended on Detroit’s Eight Mile Road. The massive operation involved police and agents from 21 different local, state and federal branches of law enforcement, and was intended to rid the notoriously crime-ridden area of drug houses, prostitutes and wanted fugitives. Continue reading →

The set up was damn near perfect.  A public junior college, rules that would assure a conflict, a camera and a document no less dreaded than the United States Constitution. What could go wrong?

Via FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:

Modesto Junior College in California told a student that he could not pass out copies of the United States Constitution outside the student center on September 17, 2013—Constitution Day. Continue reading →

With her typical clarity, Judge Shira Scheindlin shut down New York City’s attempt to spin her ruling in Floyd v. City of New York, that the execution of the stop & frisk policy violated the rights of millions to nab a handful, with a resounding smack. Via Tim Cushing at Techdirt:

As to the city’s argument that carrying out the Finest message (i.e., instructing its officers to operate in adherence with the Constitution) will cause “irreparable harm” via confusion in the ranks (especially if Sheindlin’s ruling is overturned on appeal), both in implementation and (possible) retraining (again, dependent on the success of the appeal), the judge had this to say:

The City’s first argument is circular. Continue reading →

With the Senate Judiciary Committee conducting hearings on the efficacy of mandatory minimums, and football season upon us, who would field a team to champion a concept that has proven itself an abject failure?  It’s the National District Attorneys Association, of course, with Executive Director “Mr. Scott Burns, Esq.“* as quarterback.

A prosecutor told me the other day, after reading General Holder’s statements, “to me, I see this as we are three touchdowns ahead and many are now saying we should take out some of our best players — and mandatory minimum sentences are one of our best players”.  Why now, with crime at record lows are sweeping changes being suggested? Continue reading →

The rote recitations of excuses for the use of force usually fly because they have some connection to reality, at least for those inclined to believe whatever the police say.  But once in a while, the story crosses a line of absurdity that would make for a fabulous joke, if only it hadn’t actually happened.  It happened in Laguna Beach.

From the OC Weekly:

When Marilyn Injeyan–a 5-foot-3 and 125 pound, 71-year-old retired school teacher without a criminal record–opened her front door, Continue reading →

Many readers are aware of my friend Ken’s initiative to help bloggers who are attacked for what they write by putting up the Popehat Signal, a call for lawyers and supporters to back a blogger who has been threatened or sued by what Ken calls a “censorious asshat.”  By this, he’s become the “go to” guy in the blawgosphere for those in need of pro bono assistance in fending off assaults on their First Amendment rights.

It goes in hand with Ken’s other interest, naming and shaming those who have the misfortune of coming across his radar.

Speech has consequences.  It ought to. Continue reading →

If something is so wrong today that it violates the Constitution, how could it not be that wrong yesterday?  And yet, as the New York Times editorial points out, the Supreme Court of the United States once again left us hanging when it comes to the retroactivity of Miller v. Alabama.

In 2005, the court banned the death penalty for juveniles. In 2010, it outlawed sentences of life without parole for juveniles convicted of crimes other than homicide. And, in a 2012 case, Miller v. Alabama, it said juveniles may never receive a mandatory sentence of life without parole, which prisoners refer to as “the other death penalty.” Continue reading →

We make them pledge allegiance to the flag. We make them stand for the national anthem. But the days of “better dead than red” are well behind us.  Our children aren’t buying, even if we still shed a tear when we hear “and our flag was still there.”

In a New York Times op-ed. Northwestern philosophy prof Peter Ludlow writes about the “banality of systemic evil,”

In recent months there has been a visible struggle in the media to come to grips with the leaking, whistle-blowing and hacktivism that has vexed Continue reading →