You cannot help but be inspired by Becca Meyers. She didn’t ask for her challenges. She did nothing to deserve them. But she didn’t let them define or limit her, and instead won three gold medals at the Rio Paralympics in swimming. Big deal? It is when you’re blind and deaf.

The 26-year-old suffers from Usher syndrome, which caused her to be blind. She has also been deaf since birth.

Usher syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that causes deafness “due to an impaired ability of the inner ear and auditory nerves to transmit sensory (sound) input to the brain (sensorineual hearing loss) accompanied by retinitis pigmentosa, a disorder that affects the retina and causes progressive loss of vision,” according to the National Organization for Rare Diseases.

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I love Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Granted, they don’t make the most intersectional flavor ever, Maple Walnut, but they make some other delicious flavors.** It’s dense. It’s creamy. It’s got lots of fun stuff in there. Yes, it’s very expensive, but some things are worth it. Plus, Jerry’s got a cool last name.

The brand started as a hippy approach to capitalism, projecting a vibe that supported liberal causes and enjoyed the trappings of the age, like tie-dyed shirts and reflected in it’s motto, “Peace, Love and Ice Cream,” Ben and Jerry made their way from Long Island to Oberlin to Burlington, Vermont, where the ’60s never went out of style. Social consciousness was always a part of their corporate psyche, which was fine because they made really great ice cream. Continue reading →

Cops are quitting. Cops are retiring. Cops are turning down assignments they perceive to put them at risk of public damnation. While “defund” or “abolish” the police has done little to change sane minds, the public perception of cops has shifted and it has taken its toll.

In the past year, city police departments across the country have reported a dramatic drop in manpower, as cops retire, resign, or leave for the suburbs. The NYPD’s headcount fell to its lowest level in ten years. In Chicago, police retirements rose 15 percent. The San Francisco Police Department is short 400 officers; over 115 officers, including an entire unit dedicated to crowd control, have left the Portland PD; and nearly 200 have left the Minneapolis PD or are on leave, rendering the department unable to engage in proactive policing. A recent survey of police departments found that hiring fell an average of 5 percent in 2020, while resignations rose 18 percent and retirements a whopping 45 percent.

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A few quotes and slogans immediately come to mind reading this New York Times story about how the New York County District Attorneys office has failed #MeToo women by passing on  a couple cases its writer, Jan Ransom, believes valid.* The current district attorney, Cy Vance, and his sex crimes unit, headed by Marsha Bashford, are held up for blame, for failing to prosecute the accused because the accusers want them to.

The experiences of women like Ms. Duong raise questions for prosecutors like Mr. Bragg and lawmakers, who have been reconsidering New York’s rape laws. How should prosecutors approach cases where victims’ accounts are credible, but may be difficult to prove in court? Should the state’s laws make convictions in such cases easier to win? And how should the criminal justice system balance the rights of the accused with a modern understanding of sexual violence?

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As long as there’s no blind transgender Aleut in the room, Roxane Gay gets away with using her victim points to attack anyone who points out that she’s full of shit. She a woman. She’s black.  She’s Haitian. She’s gay. She’s morbidly obese. Somehow, the fact that her parents were wealthy, she went to Philips Exeter for prep school and then Yale for undergrad doesn’t manage to find its way into her oppression narrative. Hey, there’s only so much room.

But in an op-ed in the New York Times, where her marginalized voice seems to find a remarkable amount of real estate, Gay has come to the ironic realization that twits are nasty, brutish and short. Continue reading →

Local judges are notoriously bad when it comes to ruling on constitutional matters. This stems from their general unfamiliarity with federal constitutional law, which just doesn’t come up all that often when deciding building code disputes, and their sense that they reflect the conscience of the community they serve. Some are elected, and need the support of their neighbors. Others just agree with their neighbors, that a wink and nod make for a nicer place to live than an ugly adherence to the Constitution.

Let’s be honest. Constitutional rights can get a bit unpleasant. We tolerate the unpleasantness for good reason, but that doesn’t mean we’re happy to have our kids see vulgar signs as they walk to school any more than be told that they should loathe their skin color. And given that every idiot is entitled to free speech, there isn’t a lot you can lawfully do about vulgar signs, right? Not so, says Roselle Park Municipal Court Judge Gary Bundy. Continue reading →

When it happened, K.C. Johnson was outraged. Not only was the resolution blindly, by which I mean ignorantly, biased, but what business did the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY, the union representing faculty in labor negotiations, have taking a public position condemning Israel? The irony, given the history of CUNY aside, aside, this was a union. It has one job and that job has nothing to do with conflicts in the mid-east.

I am an ardent, lifelong supporter of organized labor. In the past, I served on the executive board and two contract negotiating teams for the Los Angeles College Faculty Guild. In recent years, I have focused on other areas and done other work — so during my five years teaching as an adjunct in the English department at Queens College, CUNY, my participation in the City University of New York’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC) has been limited to membership and reading union communications (many of which over the past couple of years concerned contract negotiations and the COVID-19 pandemic).

I first learned of the PSC’s so-called “Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People” on the very day, June 10, that the union’s delegate assembly was scheduled to vote on it. Like much American campus activity that is part of the malign campaign against Israel, it was a stealth act. Not primarily the supportive statement it labels itself to be, the resolution is really a malicious attack on the moral legitimacy and character of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

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It’s been quite the week, dear readers. We recently had a flood of in-law…I mean rabid squirrels descend on my quiet mountain home. Sometimes one needs a vacation after dealing with a rabid squirrel infestation.

Anyway, with my wits sorely needing a break, I thought it time we played a bit of a game. Continue reading →

It’s long been explained that our constitutional rights and principles are tested by how we treat the most despised among us. But even so, the despised person isn’t quite so despised, so disgusting, so unspeakably horrible as Thomas Alan Arthur. It’s nearly impossible to believe that any human being could be as repugnant as Arthur.

Trial evidence showed that Arthur had run a website called Mr. Double since 1996 and began charging people to access the site two years later. The site contained numerous stories about and drawings of children, infants and toddlers being raped, tortured and murdered. Arthur allegedly approved each story before it was posted and used the website as his sole source of income for 20 years.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer proposes federal decriminalization of marijuana.

Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) has joined with Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) to propose serious marijuana reform legislation. Although still in a discussion draft, the proposed Cannabis Administration & Opportunity Act (CAOA) represents a serious attempt to respond to the dramatic increase in support for marijuana legalization while still respecting those jurisdictions that have refused to embrace marijuana law reform. In short, the CAOA embraces Marijuana Federalism.

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