From the sanitary perspective, it’s a bizarre decision lacking both sound rationale or respect for precedent. The Fifth Circuit got it wrong.

Yesterday, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld Texas’ law banning major social media websites from using most forms of content moderation. The decision is at odds with a recent Eleventh Circuit ruling striking down Florida’s similar law (written by prominent conservative Trump appointee Judge Kevin Newsom). In May, the Supreme Court signaled that at least five justices believe the law to be unconstitutional, when it overturned a previous Fifth Circuit ruling lifting a trial court injunction against implementation of the Texas law.  For reasons I summarized here, I agree with the Eleventh Circuit’s approach, and believe the Texas and Florida laws violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. In this post, I argue that these laws also violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

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The underlying case was a travesty on level after level, as the pseudonymous “survivor” ended up with the credibility of a dead slug, having done pretty much everything humanly possible to demonstrate that the University of Maryland student fabricated claims of sexual assault against two male students. The two men were found not responsible, as it would be impolite to make a finding that the accuser was a  lying sack of shit.

But it didn’t end there, because this was Title IX and “believe the woman” doesn’t suffer the possibility that women lie, even after it’s conclusively proven that the woman lied. When the two co-presidents of the school’s “Preventing Sexual Assault” organization, which worked with and was given special access to and influence at the university’s Office for Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct, persisted after John Doe was found not responsible in alerting clubs, sports teams and others that he was a “rapist,” Doe brought a complaint to the University of Maryland’s Title IX office. They ignored it, then dismissed. Doe then sued the university and the two PSA co-presidents. Continue reading →

“Cheap Heat” is a professional wrestling term used to describe a throwaway remark or action by a performer that requires little effort and is guaranteed to elicit a negative crowd reaction. Examples of this would be wiping one’s ass with a Josh Allen jersey in Buffalo or reminding the fine people of Jacksonville their football team’s never going to win a Super Bowl.

The use of cheap heat by conservative commentator Matt Walsh on his Daily Wire Plus show is especially galling, considering Matt’s schtick would fit right in if he were a heel wrestling manager back in the territories. I’m talking specifically today about a clip my mean-ass editor assaulted me with Wednesday night where Walsh took issue with Disney casting a young black girl in the lead of the live-action “Little Mermaid” remake. Continue reading →

The reply was short and sweet, “Lawyers aren’t supposed to represent clients they know are guilty.” I would have shrugged it as with most of the inanity seen on twitter, but for the fact that its author was Charlotte Allen, who, among other things, was a lawyer.

About Charlotte Allen

I’m an award-winning journalist who has published prolifically in the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, Insight, City Journal, Washington Monthly, the New Republic, and the Atlantic. I’m the author of “The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus” (1998). I have a B.A. from Stanford, an M.A. from Harvard, a law degree from U.S.C., and a doctorate in medieval and Byzantine studies from the Catholic University of America.

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On the twitters, a lawyer said that his concern for due process caused him to be a liberal 30 years ago and a conservative today. These 19 Democrats in the Senate seem determined to prove him right when it comes to Title IX.

Changes to the School Grievance Process We appreciate that the proposed rule updates the requirements for schools’ grievance procedures addressing incidents of sexual violence to provide more flexibility for schools, allow processes that are not punitive and do not disincentive reporting, and include guardrails to ensure all students, including Continue reading →

That some will engage in dangerous or criminal conduct is pretty much a given if the opportunity presents itself, but not necessarily a reason to prohibit the lawful version of the conduct. In this instance, the conduct is ingesting marijuana, and the danger is driving high. Before you pooh-pooh it off, consider that if you or a loved one is in the car next to Tommy Chong on the highway, it could take on a more ominous concern.

Any form of driving while intoxicated is obviously a bad idea, but smoking a joint or taking an edible before getting behind the wheel can pose distinctive risks. That, experts say, is because of the particular ways that marijuana affects the brain, and the fact that there’s no standard dose for a federally criminalized drug.

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The initial charge was first degree murder, but it was subsequently reduced to involuntary manslaughter, for which Pieper Lewis was sentenced to five years of closely supervised probation and ordered to pay $150,000 restitution to the family of the deceased. So what’s the issue? The man Lewis stabbed to death when she was 15 had been raping her with regularity.

Lewis was 15 when she stabbed Brooks more than 30 times in a Des Moines apartment. Officials have said Lewis was a runaway who was seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother and was sleeping in the hallways of a Des Moines apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in before forcibly trafficking her to other men for sex. Continue reading →

Want to become a tiktok star but not sure you can survive without eating by joining the “Great Resignation,” and really don’t want to suffer the pain and indignity of being a “spoonie”? Then maybe “quiet quitting” is right for you.

“I recently learned about this term called ‘quiet quitting’ where you’re not outright quitting your job, but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond,” says Zaiad Khan, a TikTok user with over 10,000 followers, in a soothing voice, juxtaposed with a video of the New York City subway. “You are still performing your duties, but you are no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentally that work has to be our life.”

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Are we all part of a big social conversation, where each of us gets to express our views on whatever issue arises, strikes our fancy or about which we have an opinion? Are we not paying the taxes that pay for the programs that pay for the solutions demanded of government for social ills?

Well, no, apparently. At least when it comes to issues raised by people who claim a different “lived experience,” we not only have no right to speak, but are to shut up so as not to talk over others who claim to be marginalized or ignored, to detract from their message and make it about us. And that gave rise to two distinct problems with the reaction to the grievance by Chaedria, who curated a Basquiat exhibit at the Guggenheim which turned into her worst racist nightmare ever. Continue reading →

The outrage on the twitters was palpable. Imagine docs performing non-consensual hysterectomies on immigration detainees? It had to be true, because all the woke activists on twitter were going nuts over it, so one more activist decided he would join in the frenzy.

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