When  asked what a woman is at her confirmation hearing, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson demurred. Some attacked her for it, but it was the only answer she could legitimately provide since that will likely be an issue that comes before her as an associate justice on the  Supreme Court. The Eleventh Circuit’s en banc decision in Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, in contrast with the Fourth Circuit’s  G.G. v. Gloucester County decision, is why.

Both cases involve the question of whether a sincere transgender high school student can use the bathroom/locker room that corresponds with the students’ gender identity rather than sex. In both, the students possessed, at least in part, the genitalia with which they were born. The same Title IX carve-outs for single sex bathrooms applied. Yet the decisions took opposite directions. Continue reading →

Over the past year, there are many posts left unwritten here. To my mind, there was usually a reason. Maybe it was something I had already written about over the 15 years of SJ’s existence. Maybe it was something that seemed premature to write about, a possibility of a post with too many unknowns to be ripe for discussion. Maybe it was something that many had already written about, such that it was just beating a dead horse. Maybe it was something to which I had no value to add. Maybe it just didn’t interest me.

For some, my failure to join in the chorus of people praising or condemning something meant I took a side, and it was the “other” side if it wasn’t the side they wanted, expected or demanded of me. The simplistic woke platitude of “silence is complicity.” Continue reading →

In a deep dive, ProPublica tracks how Tracy Harpster, a deputy chief from Ohio, turned a pompous yet ridiculous claim of knowing “what a guilty father, mother or boyfriend sounds like” into a cottage industry and junk science.

Harpster tells police and prosecutors around the country that they can do the same. Such linguistic detection is possible, he claims, if you know how to analyze callers’ speech patterns — their tone of voice, their pauses, their word choice, even their grammar. Stripped of its context, a misplaced word as innocuous as “hi” or “please” or “somebody” can reveal a murderer on the phone.

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An unfocused, meandering New York Times op-ed that struggles to find a point opens with a bizarre anecdotal paragraph.

On a cold October morning, Colin Canham and his wife, Sara Emerick, were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide. Mr. Canham was found lying near a firearm outside the couple’s home. Ms. Emerick was inside. A detective told me that it seemed that Mr. Canham had committed a crime of passion — a legal term that implies a lack of premeditation, an act supposedly born out of love or devotion.

The link for “legal term” provides a relatively accurate definition of “crime of passion.” Continue reading →

It’s understandable that 19 states want to prevent the Biden administration from ending the Trump-era Title 42 Covid emergency immigration expulsions of people who are certainly eligible to apply for asylum and may very well prevail. And there is a pretty good chance that the Biden administration doesn’t so much want to end Title 42 expulsions, which would relieve the pressure to some extent at the border from cities and states dealing with the massive influx of immigrants in need of food, housing and care.

But it’s politically untenable for Biden not to do so, given his base of support, even if the calls for compassion conflict with the physical realities of far more bodies than beds. So Biden had to end the program in April 2022, even though there is no plan for dealing with the consequences, which fall heaviest on southern border states. Red states. Continue reading →

I asked a neighbor of mine who had a Santos sign on his property what he thought. George Santos was elected my congressman, having beaten the Democratic nominee, Robert Zimmerman, pretty handily, replacing Tommy Suozzi as our representative. Why, I asked. He wasn’t the Democrat, was the answer my neighbor gave me. But did you know anything about Santos, who he was, what he stood for? “Nah. Who cared? He wasn’t the Democrat.”

As it turned out, George Santos wasn’t a lot of things. Continue reading →

With a tip from Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire who described herself as “Jewish. queer/agender/woman/she” with an overactive twitter account seeking out and attacking people for their failure to live up to her woke demands, an article in Science accused James Webb of being unworthy of having a telescope named after him.

But as the telescope neared completion, criticism flared. In 2015, Matthew Francis, a science journalist, wrote an article for Forbes titled “The Problem With Naming Observatories for Bigots.” He wrote that Mr. Webb led the anti-gay purge at the State Department and that he had testified of his contempt for gay people. He credited Dr. Prescod-Weinstein with tipping him off, and she in turn tweeted his article and attacked Mr. Webb as a “homophobe.”

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What’s Christmas without traditions? Merry Christmas all and thank you for stopping by here.

Esau McCaulley writes of hearing the “Christmas spiritual ‘Sweet Little Jesus Boy‘” when he was a young boy in his grandmother’s kitchen. Great. And it would be totally fine if he just really liked it, or even kinda liked it, or even just remembered it. But that’s not lofty enough to set us up for where he’s taking us.

“Sweet Little Jesus Boy” was, in my childhood imagination, a connection to the faith of my ancestors, a song composed in the hush harbors where enslaved people gathered clandestinely to celebrate the birth of our savior. The song fought for supremacy in Black church Christmas services alongside hymns like “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Mary Had a Baby.”

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There is a general assumption that if a venue is open to the public, then you can buy your ticket and enter. The basis of this assumption is that it’s pretty much the way the world has always functioned, not to mention that it would be pretty bonkers otherwise. After all, if you’re in business to sell tickets to your venue, why would you not want people to buy them, watch whatever display you’re putting on and enjoy it, just as you enjoy the sweet, sweet money they’re paying for entry? Continue reading →