New Jersey’s favorite son, Dr. Mehmet Oz, demanded that his senatorial rival, Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman, fire two staffers from his campaign, ironically named “Horton.”

In 1993, Lee and Dennis Horton were accused of providing a ride to a friend who killed a man at a Philadelphia bar. The brothers, who insisted they were innocent, declined plea bargains that would have seen them released from prison in 5 to 10 years, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, and received life sentences instead.

They were ultimately released in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons, which Fetterman chairs, unanimously recommended that their sentences be commuted.

Continue reading →

There was once a time when a shake of the hands was good enough for a contract to be formed that people felt obligated to honor. In some instances, it was a valid contract. In others, it wasn’t. But either way, one’s word was one’s bond, and honoring one’s word was what one did. The point isn’t that people never found themselves unable to keep their word, but that when they didn’t, they felt shame for their failure to do so.

Is this still the case? Will this be how people feel going forward? Or is shame for failure to honor one’s obligation the latest “stigma” to fall out of favor? Continue reading →

There was no question that the old constitution from Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who seized power from socialist Salvador Allende, had to go, and who better than former student activist, 36-year-old leftist president Gabriel Boric, to create a glorious new Constitution that would change everything.

Chilean voters rejected a 170-page, 388-article proposal that would have legalized abortion, mandated universal health care, required gender parity in government, given Indigenous groups greater autonomy, empowered labor unions, strengthened regulations on mining and granted rights to nature and animals. Continue reading →

It was hard to miss with its prominent placement on the top right corner of the New York Times’ home page, and what it said was pretty shocking. American theater is a hotbed of racism?

In a way, it shouldn’t be surprising. The more sensitive a group is toward an issue, the greater the issue looms and the more damnable the group is. But it’s the irony of it all, the theater, those people most theoretically progressive, sensitive, empathetic, and open to rhetorical gibberish that appeals to the uneducated and shallow mind, would seem to be the least racist place one could find outside of the grievance studies department in academia. Yet, here we were, racism as the star. Who knew? Continue reading →

There’s a kid in Iowa or Kansas, somewhere that doesn’t appear on New York maps, named Derek who is constantly replying to my twits by going ballistic about my friendship with Mike Cernovich. Yes, that Mike Cernovich. I’ve known Mike for a long time now, as he was doing a blawg called Crime and Federalism with Norm Pattis back when SJ was born. Mike,  you see, is a lawyer, and a very smart one. That’s when we became friends.

And there’s another kid who used to be ridiculed for being a bit overweight, not being the best speller and being a little loose with details when he wrote at Above the Law, after winning David Lat’s “ATL Idol” contest by being very funny. And he was very funny, and very smart, and provocative but in a way that would have you rolling on the floor. Elie Mystal was a friend, he would jokingly call my “angry black man friend.” At least I thought he was joking, but he never came to dinner, so who knows? Continue reading →

Let’s begin this week with some observations I’ve made over the course of last week’s visits to the grocery store.

First, our society has become a lawless hellscape run by thugs, the likes of which haven’t been seen since “Mad Max.”

Second, people clearly haven’t been taught proper grocery store etiquette. Continue reading →

The concluding sentence of Mary Pilon’s homage to economic ignorance points at us.

Now it’s on fans to pay attention.

To be fair, more you (if you follow basketball) than me, since I’m not really a fan. But either way, Pilon’s dot connections are clear: the reason Brittney Griner in in prison in Russia is because you suck at being fans. Continue reading →

It’s the first day of school,* so the Times has a series of op-eds about education in America. It’s an interesting mix of the usual assortment of fantasy and condemnation that largely goes nowhere as the educational establishment engages in its annual determination of what new fashion trend to promote this time around.

But one op-ed faces a hard choice, one that is so disfavored as to require parents to go to court to stop their local school board from trampling hard working, dedicated students under the sharp hooves of their unicorns. It’s an homage to merit. Continue reading →

At the New York Times, Charles Blow announced that “Defund the Police” is dead. It’s not that it needed announcing, but that it died with such a whimper that few noticed, but with President Biden talking about putting more cops on the street, Blow made a political assessment.

Some said it was dumb.

Some thought it was politically disastrous. Continue reading →

Talking to a long-time SJ reader, I spoke of the social shift between the time SJ started in 2007 and now. Back then, people were still of the general view that police were the good guys and that the bad things people claimed cops did were, well, untrue. Why would they do that? A great question to which there was no good answer, because there was often no good reason for the violence, the meanness and the cruelty, yet it happened. Continue reading →