President of the New York Police Benevolent Association, Pat Lynch, has never been shy in his defense of NYPD cops. If they administered a beating, a killing, lied, cheated, raped or stole, Lynch was always available to remind us that if we didn’t like they way cops handled things, the next time we were in trouble, call a criminal. It was, in essence, Pat Lynch’s way of reminding us that cops were all we’ve got, and if our option was take them as they came or tough nuggies.

Or, as was too often then case, take them if they came, since they didn’t owe us the time of day, no less a little courtesy or concern for the public. If they had a job to do, maybe they would do it. Maybe not. Maybe they would do it badly. Maybe violently. Maybe violently against the wrong person. Maybe any damn way they pleased, because they were the cops and we were…not. Continue reading →

News broke that the Staatsballett in Berlin had canceled this winter’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.

The Staatsballett Berlin has quietly removed Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker from its year-end programme.

Director Christiane Theobald says it contains a Chinese dance and an oriental dance that amount to ‘a clear case of racism’ – even more so since the Berlin production follows Tchaikovsky’s 1892 original.

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled Friday Funny to bring you my unsolicited thoughts on the second season of “Tiger King,” the Netflix docuseries about a gay meth-head country singer who once owned a bunch of tigers.

The following will contain plenty of SPOILERS (which I am advised I’m to type in all caps for those who believe such warnings necessary), so if you’re really interested in taking in the whole experience for yourself, come back to this post after watching the five episodes. For the rest of you with better things to do, read on! Continue reading →

For decades, some defense lawyers have been screaming into the void about how the economic loss guidelines for federal sentencing are out of whack, arbitrary, and many times just plain draconian. I’m lucky enough to have been doing it for about 10 years, and whenever a sentencing hearing is around the corner, I scavenge for more ammo to convince Judges to look past the nonsense that’s in section 2B1.1.

Some of the best weapons, though, come not from the defense’s argument, but from Judges who have found these numbers to be the equivalent of black box science. It’s as if the defense is telling the sentencing Judge, “Your Honor, it’s not just your not-so-humble servant that says that, but some of your brethren have also said it!” Implied in that message is something like, “Your colleagues took the plunge and called BS on these things, and now this Court can too!” Continue reading →

You may not remember, given the length of the average attention span these days and the refusal to admit that yesterday’s outrage, so vehement that some were ready to change everything because of it, turned out not only not to be particularly outrageous, but not to matter at all. At the outset of the Arbery trial, the media, the punditry, the social justice warriors, the work reformers, went nuts over the racial makeup of the jury. Sound remotely familiar?

The jury, which is made up of residents from Glynn County, where more than a quarter of the population is Black, includes 11 white people and one Black person. Anxiety over what the jury’s racial makeup would be had been palpable among observers and participants in recent days.

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There are some who passionately believe that it’s their duty to ruin Thanksgiving. It used to be that they were duty-bound as allies to inform their less-woke relatives at the table of how privileged they are and wrong about everything. It now includes the duty to inform them of their complicity in genocide, ethnic cleansing, stolen land and colonization, demanding the right to acknowledge that the land upon which their table sits once belonged to others from whom it was stolen.

Screw that. History is replete with people doing bad stuff to other people, and good stuff too, though it’s never good enough to match up, no less overtake, the bad. But we can’t change history, good or bad. We can only do better ourselves, and one very important way to do so is to be appreciative of what we have, family, friends and the opportunity to tell them how thankful we are. Continue reading →

It wasn’t too long ago that calls to eliminate the crime of felony murder were loud and strident. After all, why, but why, should some kid who only meant to steal go to prison for life when it was his partner who pulled the trigger and killed the shopowner? He didn’t do it. He didn’t know his partner would do it. He just wanted to steal. He never wanted anyone to die. Is this justice?

While the specific parameters of the rule vary between jurisdictions, the general idea is that if a death results from the conduct of committing a felony, everyone involved is guilty of murder for the death. Usually, there is a requirement that it be reasonably foreseeable, at least to accomplices or co-conspirators if not the actual killer, but that’s more a matter of coming up with a good explanation for chaos theory connections than reality. Continue reading →

From the vacatur of the convictions of the Central Park 5 to the numerous prisoners whose convictions are being vacated after spending decades in prison, the headlines are that these individuals are “exonerated.” Is that the right word to use? Does exoneration convey the correct meaning?

According to Merriam-Webster, exoneration means

1. to relieve of a responsibility, obligation, or hardship
2. to clear from accusation or blame

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It’s understandable that many will cheer the outcome of the trial against the neo-Nazis and white supremacists stemming out of the “Unite The Right” march in Charlottesville, culminating in James Fields running down and killing counterprotestor Heather Heyer, 32. Fields is in prison, serving life, for his crimes, as he should be, so he won’t be contributing much to the $25 million verdict.

The cheers are for the ordinary reasons, that these were bad dudes who believed bad things and acted upon them to harm good people. And so the jury’s verdict, that they should be liable for the damage the march caused is a good verdict. Continue reading →

The timing could not have been worse. It was 2017. The sixth season of House of Cards was being filmed. Harvey Weinstein’s conduct made powerful Hollywood men a primary target of the MeToo movement. And Kevin Spacey was the host of the Oscars. It was more than Anthony Rapp could take, and so out it came.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Rapp is publicly alleging for the first time that in 1986, Spacey befriended Rapp while they both performed on Broadway shows, invited Rapp over to his apartment for a party, and, at the end of the night, picked Rapp up, placed him on his bed, and climbed on top of him, making a sexual advance. According to public records, Spacey was 26. Rapp was 14.

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