Happy Friday, everyone! I’m proud to announce this week I’ve assumed my place in a marginalized group—the visually impaired. I would ask in this time of reflection that you all respect my lived experiences and affirm my new identity. Otherwise you’re all ableist bigots.

I knew I needed some kind of glasses back in December when we took the kids to Vermont. When you’re navigating at night based on vibrations from your Apple Watch because you can’t read the road signs, you really need to get your shit looked at. So I did. Continue reading →

The day after Georgetown Law School dean Bill Treanor put lya Shapiro on administrative leave, the Black Law Students Association held a sit-in. Treanor attended, telling the students that the school would reimburse them for the cost of any food they ordered in, because what’s a protest without a nosh. The students in turn, informed Treanor that they needed a space to cry.

Cry? If one’s traumatized, one cries. And it appears that people are crying a lot. If you break a bone, you can see it on an x-ray. If you’re cut, you can see a wound and blood will come out. But if the pain is emotional, there is no visible proof that it happened, that it exists. Crying would be an outward signal of the pain, the trauma, and if people cry a lot, then they are traumatized a lot. Continue reading →

That Whoopi Goldberg has been sent to stand in the corner to think about what she did wrong is asinine. She expressed a view, albeit a bit too vociferously, that many share, as fleshed out on Colbert.

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Micheal K.Williams, who played Omar Little in The Wire, died of an overdose, reportedly from a “deadly dose of fentanyl-laced heroin.” The Drug War has been a disaster, and it’s still bad to be a junkie, and junkies sometimes die of overdoses. Four men have been arrested for selling this “deadly dose” to Williams. Not for homicide, as has become a popular enhancement to drug prosecutions, but a federal narcotics conspiracy.

Someone who knew Williams well, David Simon, says he would have been against this prosecution.

Please don’t @ me on this. I do not think Mike is honored or properly remembered by more incarceration in his name. Knowing him and his thoughts, I think he would be appalled at this. End the goddam drug war.

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In a suit almost certain to fail, Brian Flores is suing the NFL, et al., for discrimination on the basis of race. His argument, in part, was that teams sought to interview him not because they were open to hiring him, but because of the Rooney Rule.

The Rooney Rule, introduced in 2003, requires NFL teams to interview even minority candidates for head coaching and football operations opportunities in senior manager positions. It is often cited as an example of positive action.

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A while back, I attended what’s delightfully called a “webinar,” which is like a seminar but on the web, so there’s nothing to prevent you from playing spider solitaire, dozing off, going to the bathroom or having a nosh, all while feeling that you’re involved. I hate the format, and have turned down a few requests to participate. I don’t blame anyone who enjoys, or at least tolerates, them but it’s not what I care to do.

But this wasn’t just a generic webinar, but one put on by an organization I support, that included people I respect on a subject that was of interest to me, so why not? I swiftly got my answer. The webinar opened with a warning, that anyone who used “dehumanizing” language in the scrolling comments would be ejected. Some examples of “dehumanizing” words were given. Continue reading →

In Grutter v. Bolinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Conner infamously predicted that 25 years would be long enough.

The Court takes the Law School at its word that it would like nothing better than to find a race-neutral admissions formula and will terminate its use of racial preferences as soon as practicable. The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

That was 2003. John McWhorter argues that we’re ahead of schedule, at least when it comes to race and gender. Continue reading →

The assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is Kristen Clarke. Her bona fides as a warrior for racial justice, whatever that means, are far beyond reproach, to the extent that her office pursued a second prosecution of the three men convicted in Georgia of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery after they had been sentenced to life in prison, two without the possibility of parole.

In some cases, the family of a murder victim takes a magnanimous view toward the killers. Not here. His mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, demanded more.

Arbery’s family was outraged that the plea would allow the McMichaels to serve time in federal prison instead of the Georgia state system. Continue reading →

Not that I knew Ilya Shapiro well enough to believe I knew what was really going on in his head, but having followed him for some time, I felt I knew him well enough to know that while he was libertarian on the conservative side, he wasn’t racist. What he could be was  too cavalier, a bit too cocky in his thrust. Sometimes it could manifest itself as snark. Other times, it was reckless.

The problem I had was that he was a very smart guy, smart enough not to be this reckless. And if it wasn’t reckless, then it was something else, something worse. Continue reading →

How cool is it that you can make a restaurant reservation online? And you can see the menu online. And if you’re ordering out, you can place your order online, and even set the time when you want to come pick it up. It’s easy, painless and convenient. No waiting for someone to answer the phone, or finding out that someone misheard and screwed up the order. It’s wonderful. So why then should restaurants have phones anymore?

Gregory Ryan, 39, owns and operates two restaurants in California’s Santa Barbara County: Bell’s and Bar Le Côte. Neither of the restaurants has a phone line, a decision Mr. Ryan said was made because they have small teams. People reach Mr. Ryan and the restaurants through email and Instagram direct messages, which he said “are a good way to be able to connect and speak with people in very, very quick ways.” After being in the restaurant business for 15 years, Mr. Ryan said about 80 percent of phone calls are “typically a waste of time.” Continue reading →