I was up most of the night and didn’t fall asleep until the morning, so I slept in and have no post for today. In its place, I’m going to try an open thread, where you can talk about whatever things/issues are on your mind.
Please don’t make me regret this. Thank you.
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
First, it was one high school in Virginia. Students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, already subject to controversy for its plan to end competitive admission in favor of “holistic” admissions, given that the majority of its students were Asian, which meant they weren’t black. But at the time, there was another issue brewing that had yet to become known, that the principal concealed from students and parents the awarding of merit scholarship recognition.
While Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid claims the principal at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology withheld National Merit awards from students in a “one-time human error,” parents at two local high schools got a Friday and Saturday night surprise.
After World War II, GIs came home from the war, went to college under the GI bill as a nation thanked those who survived for their service, and married. These budding new families needed a place to live, and so suburbia was born. Green lawns and trees, Air. Quiet. Privacy. The squalor of city life, too many people in too small a space, was replaced with detached homes and backyard barbecues. Continue reading
For those of you who have been around here for a while, or at least around the blawgosphere in the olden days when there were a bunch of criminal defense lawyers with blawgs, you probably remember Norm. Norm was there before me, hanging with Mike Cernovich at Crime and Federalism, and later on his own, until one day he decided to break ties with the blawgosphere, pretend we were all evil and he was the lone good lawyer who had enough of being tainted by his association with us mean, nasty lawyers.
But Cerno told me his practice was dead, so Norm decided to repackage himself. He built a new website, hired a publicist, and tried to become an important lawyer. That was more than a decade ago, and he’s had some success since then. He beat the case of Yale student Saifullah Khan, which was a great win. Continue reading
Oh look, it’s a new year. Did you miss me, dear readers? I sure missed you.
I said I was going on vacation in my last post of 2022 and I meant it. We’ve been trying to do family vacations since 2019 around the holidays when Dr. S and her sister swindled their parents into taking everyone to Hawaii after Christmas. Continue reading
There is a logical fallacy called “Appeal to Authority,” where someone with ascribed expertise in a subject makes an assertion to be accepted as true because the authority said so. It creates a tension. You, not an expert, are put in a position of being compelled to accept the word of an “authority,” while at the same time the authority may be wrong, whether intentionally or otherwise, such that a false assertion is accepted not because it’s true or accurate, but because an expert said so.
On the other hand, people with legitimate expertise are generally far better authorities on a subject than someone who lacks any expertise. Continue reading
“Hand downs” are back. Yay, you say? More likely, what are “hand downs,” a very fair question for anyone who isn’t paid to sit in the press section of the Supreme Court gallery. It’s when the justices announce their decision to the audience, summing up their rationale and conclusion. It’s not law, like the opinions themselves, but a tradition disappeared during the pandemic, when oral argument went livestream, justices got to feign asking questions in order to put on a play for the listening audience and the lay listening public got to hear argument they rarely understood or appreciated.
While the Court will resume hand downs, it will not do so by livestream, so that it will still only be heard by the audience in the room. Frankly, who cares? Why Linda Greenhouse, of course. Continue reading
There is little doubt that a defendant has a constitutional right to present a defense, and that among the defenses available is duress, that a defendant was forced to engage in the conduct giving rise to the crime. But as a matter of public policy, that choice isn’t available when the crime is murder. But what about the variation of the crime grounded in “depraved heart” murder?
Theresa M. Gafken was convicted following a jury trial in the St. Clair Circuit Court of second-degree murder, MCL 750.317. Defendant drove her vehicle at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour while fleeing the police; she ran a red light and collided with other vehicles, killing one person and severely injuring several others. Defendant was originally charged with one count of second-degree murder and two counts of operating a vehicle while intoxicated (OWI), MCL 257.625(5)(a). Continue reading
My old Congressman, Tommy Suozzi, has an interesting op-ed about his replacement in the House as representative of the New York 3d District. Tommy says it pains him to see a con man sitting in his seat. Of course, it may not happen if there is no speaker elected, but that’s another problem. Assuming the new class gets sworn in today, it will include Santos, despite his stunning array of lies and potential campaign finance crimes
Assuming George Santos, if that really is his name, will get sworn in today provided a speaker is elected, there’s nothing to be done to stop it. As we learned when they tried to keep Adam Clayton Powell Jr. out, as long as someone qualifies constitutionally and was elected, he gets to sit. That he got there because of lies does not disqualify anyone from being in Congress. Continue reading
After a couple years of grievances dropping, which coincided with a pandemic that closed campuses and prevented students from having personal interactions, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is thrilled to announce that complaints are back and there are more of them than ever.
Nearly 19,000 complaints were filed to the office in the last fiscal year — between Oct. 1, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2022 — more than double the previous year and breaking the record of 16,000 filed in fiscal year 2016, according to figures provided by the department. The surge reversed the decline in complaints filed to the office under the Trump administration, which rolled back civil rights protections.