AG James Wants To Hold Platforms Liable For Mass Murders

There are black holes on the internet where few of us normies tread, And no doubt if we  unwittingly stumbled into 4chan, our reaction would be shock, as the unpleasantness of certain unfiltered humanity would make us question how our species survived. And to be fair to New York Attorney General Letitia James, it can well be a festering, puss-filled sore that any decent person would want cured.

But as much as we may hope and pray such black holes didn’t exist, and that our fellow humans wouldn’t be this way, can it be stopped? Tish James calls for criminalizing the broadcasting and distribution of mass murderers on social media, and civil liability for the platforms that fail to prevent it from happening. Continue reading

Acquitted of a Crime of Passion

What’s most remarkable about Wayne Hsiung’s description of what he did is that he doesn’t wrap it up in a slurry of empty rhetoric. He basically concedes that he, along with a group of people who shared his views of animal rights, planned and then committed crimes.

We sneaked into the farm one night in March 2017. Inside, we found and documented sick and underweight piglets. One of them could not walk properly or reach food because of an infected wound to her foot, according to a veterinarian who testified on our behalf…Given their conditions, both piglets were likely to be killed and potentially tossed into a landfill outside of Circle Four Farms, in which millions of pounds of dead pigs and other waste are discarded every year. Continue reading

Tuesday Talk*: Slaves of Training

You accept a job, and your new employer informs you that you will be required to go through training before you begin work. Perhaps that training is to obtain a particular licence, like a commercial driver’s license or a certification that you’ve completed 10,000 hours of eyebrow threading training, or perhaps the training is more a matter of learning how your employer wants you to perform a function, for which you were already licensed or qualified, but their way.

To get the job, you agree to the training, but at some point down the road, you decide that you no longer want the job. Maybe you don’t want to work for the employer, now that you’ve come to know more about the company or people. Maybe you got a better offer along the way and decide that the job wasn’t as great as you thought. Whatever the reason, you decide to quit. That’s your right, of course. Or is it? Continue reading

Marginalizing The Supreme Court

There is a curious belief among progressives that they are not merely smarter, righter and better than others, but the majority, because how could any decent person be anything  other than a progressive? This arrogance led a couple of law profs to propose a monumentally disruptive concept: Ignore the Supreme Court.

For American progressives, the Supreme Court has become a maddening institution. The comforting notion of the court as umpire lies in tatters. It is Justice Samuel Alito’s court now: methodologically flexible but ideologically rigid.

Continue reading

Destruction, Rationalized

Over the past couple of days, some kids threw tomato soup on a Van Gogh (yes, it was covered in glass, but that doesn’t make this better) and glued their hands to a wall, while other kids poured milk over the floor at Marks and Spencer. The former was to “protest” climate change, while the latter had something to do with animals. There are videos floating around of both, but to the extent promoting themselves as the heroes of the woke is the purpose, I decline to post them here. Continue reading

People Lie

To tell you that cops lie is like telling you the sun rises in the east. A generation ago, people wouldn’t have believed, but today it’s so well known that it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. Then again, it’s so well known that many now believe that a cop couldn’t tell you the time of day without lying, just as ridiculously wrong as pretending cops don’t lie.

And to explain, yet again, that there are false accusations of sexual assault and rape seems too obvious for words. The reason for “believe women” started to blunt the assumption that when a woman accused a man, she was not to be taken seriously. Over time, it’s become that she can’t be doubted. So here we are, pretending women don’t lie. Continue reading

Short Take: Fetterman and Functionality

Pennsylvania Lt. Governor and Democratic senatorial candidate John Fetterman, who is running against New Jersey’s favorite TV snake oil salesman, Mehmet Oz, gave an interview to NBC News that created a shitstorm.

This week, John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for the Senate from Pennsylvania, appeared in what NBC News billed as his first on-camera, one-on-one interview since he had a stroke in May. The interview went well and was conducted with Mr. Fetterman and the reporter, Dasha Burns, sitting in the same room, as Mr. Fetterman used a captioning system on a computer screen to assist him with his auditory processing, something he has needed help with since the stroke. Continue reading

Muskets Without Numbers

Whether its purpose is to shine a light on the untenability of the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision or it’s just another example of district court judges trying their best to apply the Supreme Court’s rejection of the means-end test when it comes to Second Amendment gun cases, Judge Joseph Goodwin was left in the odd position of having to address whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(k) is constitutional. As Mark Joseph Stern points out at Slate, this has become something of a cottage industry for district judges.

Thomas’ test has already wreaked havoc in the lower courts. One judge has struck down a Texas law that prohibits 18 to 20-year-olds from carrying a handgun outside the home. People under 21 are significantly more likely to commit gun homicides—but in Bruen, Thomas announced that courts may never consider the real-world, life-saving impact of gun safety laws when gauging their constitutionality. A different Texas judge invalidated a federal law barring individuals from purchasing a handgun while they’re under indictment, even for a violent felony offense. Just last week, another judge struck down New York’s ban on concealed carry in airports, train stations, domestic violence shelters, summer camps, the subway, and other “sensitive locations.” Now Goodwin, who sits in West Virginia, has joined the chorus of lower court judges who feel that Bruen obliges them to strike down longstanding, widely accepted firearm laws.

Continue reading

Ho, Ho, Ho, Yale Responds

My reaction to Fifth Circuit Judge Ho’s announcement that he would not consider hiring students from Yale Law School as clerks, and his call to other judges to do the same, in reaction to the school’s embrace of “cancel culture,” was that it was misguided. This wasn’t because YLS hasn’t done enough to deserve to be called out for its failure to protect speech, as it hasn’t. It’s been a disgrace.

Occupying the lofty position of one of the top law schools in the nation and a primary feeder to clerkships and judgeships, the impact of sending law graduates into the legal ecosystem who believe they are entitled to silence and destroy anyone who fails to adhere to progressive ideology means that we face a future where free speech, along with a host of other rights like due process and presumption of innocence, is at extreme risk. Continue reading

Short Take: If Kafka Wrote Satire

In a column about some entertainer holding no interest for me, the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg begins with a curious reference.

In a sketch on the German comedy show “Browser Ballett,” a man in a Nazi uniform, replete with jackboots and a red swastika armband, is marching down a street in 1933 when another man hisses, “Nazi.” The Nazi, aghast at the insult, confronts him.

Continue reading