Ed. Note: Our intrepid TV and Movie Critic, Harris County Public Defender Alex Bunin, reviews the final episode of Better Call Saul, which turned out to be a TV show and not a completely unethical actual lawyer. My bad. But I digress.

As someone who practiced in the federal courts for many years, the final episode of “Better Call Saul” (BCS) was somewhat disappointing. It was not the resolution that bothered me, just some basic misunderstandings of how federal criminal cases are disposed. Spoilers will follow. Continue reading →

Regardless of whatever else you may think about Kesha Williams, she was committed to being a woman. That’s how she lived for 15 years, how her drivers license read and why she took hormones. This was someone who was sincere. So when she was pulled from the women’s side of the Fairfax County Detention Center and put into the male side, what the hell did they expect to happen?

While Williams was housed on the men’s side of the prison, prison deputies repeatedly harassed her regarding her sex and gender identity. Deputies ignored her requests that they refer to her as a woman. Instead, they referred to her as “mister,” “sir,” “he,” or “gentleman.” Williams’ requests for some accommodations — to shower privately and for body searches to be conducted by a female deputy — were denied. One deputy threatened to place her in solitary confinement if she resisted a search by a male deputy. Male inmates also harassed Williams, causing her to fear for her safety throughout her incarceration in male housing.

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Childcare has become a hot button issue from all angles. Parents with young children have discovered the relative connection between their little darlin’ needing someone to keep them out of the liquor cabinet and how that damn kid keeps them from doing what they want, like going to work. What to do? Childcare, because don’t parents have a right to feel accomplished and fulfilled, and locking this little brat in a closet under the stairs is frowned upon?

But childcare is too expensive. But the people who work at childcare who have neither education nor specialized skills are underpaid. But the people who work at childcare should be able to make junior the best toddler he can be so mom and dad don’t feel guilty for not being sure which kid is theirs when they arrive for pickup. In Washington, D.C., these conflicted desires came together in a local rule requiring childcare workers to have, at minimum, an associates degree. And the D.C. Circuit, Judge Sri Srinivasan, held the law constitutional. Continue reading →

To no one’s surprise when President Biden appointed Catherine Lhamon as head of the DoE Office of Civil Rights, her raison d’etre swiftly focused on undoing one of the few good things that came out of the past administration, the DeVos Title IX regs that sought to introduce some small measure of due process into the morass of campus Title IX sex tribunals. Lhamon, one of the primary architects of the Sexual Inquisition, would have none of it.

Specifically, the rule would:

• Enshrine protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as “sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, [and] pregnancy or related conditions.”
• Permit, but no longer require, live hearings and cross examination in Title IX investigations. Continue reading →

When Florida’s governor targeted progressive prosecutor Andrew Warren, he used the same rhetoric that’s thrown at others across the nation, blaming them and their decarceral policies for the “catastrophic rise in crime” that isn’t actually happening, and certainly not in the way claimed.

In announcing the suspension, DeSantis excoriated Warren for being a “woke” prosecutor more interested in social justice than in enforcing the law. He warned of a “pathogen” spreading in U.S. cities — progressive prosecutors trying to reduce incarceration rates they see as overly punitive and that disproportionately affect people of color. He said prosecutors like Warren have caused “catastrophic results” in other states.

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They can be entertaining. They can be interesting. They can, on rare occasion, be enlightening. They can. They rarely are. Yet, Jane Coaston says today’s column will be her last at the New York Times, not because she’s gone legit but so that she can focus on her podcast, The Argument.

This is my final newsletter for The Times, and I’ve valued having this space in which to wax philosophical about sports and culture and history, but I’m looking forward to focusing on my podcast, “The Argument.”

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Salman Rushdie is 75, an age to which many thought he may not make it after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (with a $2.5 million bounty) because he wrote a book, The Satanic Verses. After the ’90s, he chose to live his life and no longer be guided by fear of assassination, which worked well until he was stabbed by 24-year-old Hadi Matar in his neck, arm and liver. He’s on a ventilator after surgery, expected to suffer loss of an eye, nerves damage in his arm and liver damage. If he lives.

Rushdie was a huge proponent of free speech. Not just the First Amendment kind, but the concept. He signed onto the Harper’s Letter, which rather than persuade the scolds of the left to be tolerant of ideas that challenged their hatred, became a list of people to denigrate as dark “intellectuals” for their failure to be woke. Continue reading →

PREVIOUSLY ON THE FRIDAY FUNNY:

Some things in life couldn’t be compromised on, the Sheriff decided that day.

Those things were the rule of law, the US Constitution, quiet dishwashers and functional central air.

NOW, ON WITH TODAY’S INSTALLMENT: Continue reading →

Not that long ago, people wrote things by hand. I know, but the ability to do so was a skill of some value before computers and printers, and then who needs printers anyway, right? But in 1874, someone got the bright idea to compile all federal statutes into a code, and the duty to do so was given to the Reviser of the Federal Statutes.

Most critically, scholars and courts have overlooked the originally-enacted version of Section 1983, which contained a provision that specifically disapproved of any state law limitations on the new cause of action. For unknown reasons, that provision was not included by the Reviser of the Federal Statutes in the first compilation of federal law in 1874. This Article is the first to unearth the lost text of Section 1983 and demonstrate its implications.

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Dan Alonso emphasized to me the phrase “burden of transparency,” as if such a burden existed, because who isn’t making up new burdens these days? But the battle being fought yesterday was who had the “duty” to come forward with the warrant executed* at MAL. While Trump claimed to have the “warrant” that put his “beautiful home” under “siege,” he demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland release the warrant and explain himself.

Of course, if there was anything in the warrant that Trump could use, no matter how hard the spin required, for his benefit, he would have plastered that sucker everywhere. Trump is not shy about anything that benefits him or any lie needed to justify it. But here he didn’t, which suggests that whatever he had either couldn’t be used in any way to help him or was pretty darn bad for him. Continue reading →