Cops lie.

This is not a controversial assertion, because there is nobody, but nobody, who has a clue about criminal law who doesn’t know this to be true. But it’s also not sufficient to mean anything, because some lies are not only useful, but lawful, while others are not.

When cops take the witness stand to testify, they are as obliged to tell the “whole truth” as any other witness. They don’t, of course. At least not most of the time. It’s not that they lie about everything, although that happens, but they lie about little things, the normal gaps in their story that they either never knew, because they can be asked questions on cross that call for information that they took for granted, or they’ve forgotten the details they deem insignificant and so make them up on the stand. Continue reading →

Of all the odd voices to start such a fight, it was former Vox founder turned outcast Matt Yglesias.

I’m for a modest student debt forgiveness program (which I think is what Biden will do) but as you shift from “modest” to “total” debt forgiveness you are increasingly talking about helping dentists and lawyers rather than sympathetic cases.

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Merry Christmas everyone!  Hopefully you’re reading this with a hot cup of your favorite beverage in hand after a visit from Santa. Speaking of that jolly old elf, he’s sort of the subject of today’s post. Imagine that. Topical humor from little ol’ me.

“The Santa Clause” trilogy of films are among my better half’s favorite Christmas movies. We watch them every year in a marathon session. If you’re not familiar with them, Tim Allen plays Scott Calvin, a guy who dons Santa’s suit after an accident and becomes Santa Claus, frolicking his way through Christmas-themed adventures. Continue reading →

My Christmas tradition has been to post this video. This year, it’s an anachronism, as the pandemic precludes us from going to Chinese restaurants, meeting a group of friends and celebrating the day in our own way. But this too shall pass. Merry Christmas.

For some, the idea of showing mercy to the likes of Paul Manafort or Roger Stone is more than they can take. These are venal men who propped up an even more awful man, and for that they deserve nothing but hatred, pain and punishment. That they also committed crimes just proves it, but the truth is that they are not hated for the crimes they committed, but for their connection to Trump.

When Trump pardoned them, there was no question but that it was terrible. At the most superficial level, they were unworthy of mercy, receiving “crony pardons,” which is wrong as an abuse of power for personal reasons. Slightly deeper, it was a quid pro quo for keeping their mouth shut about Trump’s conduct, their loyalty to their patron, thus rewarding them for their role in corruption and concealing it. Continue reading →

Pandemic strikes earth. Women affected most?

As a result, some suggest that a year of Covid-19 may undo decades worth of progress toward gender equity in America, that even after the pandemic is brought under control, a generation of working mothers will never recover what they lost.

It makes you wonder: How meaningful was the progress we’ve made in the last three decades, if it can be undone so quickly and so ferociously?

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There are big issues, huge issues, that demand redress for defendants to get a fair trial. The portraits on the wall aren’t one of them.

A Fairfax County judge has ruled that a Black defendant can’t get a fair trial in a courtroom decorated overwhelmingly with portraits of White judges and has ordered the paintings to be removed for the man’s upcoming legal proceeding.

Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge David Bernhard wrote in an opinion issued late Monday that the portraits of past judges from the Fairfax County Circuit Court could create the impression that the court is biased. Bernhard wrote that he won’t allow any portraits to be on display for any trial he presides over.

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That didn’t take long, even if it wasn’t from the expected direction. After questioning whether the systemic reforms announced by the new Los Angeles district attorney, George Gascón, were sustainable, answers swiftly emerged.

LGBTQ voters and others were dumbstruck last week when Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón announced that, in addition to several other sweeping reforms, he’d be ending sentencing enhancements for criminals, including those found to have committed hate crimes. Continue reading →

Trump may have demanded the repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as part of the defense spending bill, but that was just Trump being self-serving Trump, his twits labeled as false and his ridiculous claims being rejected for being ridiculous. Not that progressives disagree, except that they want Section 230 repealed so they can dictate their own flavor of censorship. Bipartisanship at its best, everybody wants to control people’s speech.

But while the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private entities, and Section 230 enables those entities to both publish and moderate as they see fit, there is an unpleasant fact that remains: the normal channels of communication, newspapers, broadcast television and radio, have been supplanted by social media and search engines. No, Zuck isn’t a government official. Yes, Zuck has a lot to say about what others get to say. No, we don’t want or trust government to decide what ideas are permissible. But let’s be real. Do you trust Facebook, Google or Twitter to decide either? Continue reading →

There are  two problems with a post derived from an article in the Washington Post (sorry, Radley), where democracy dies in the darkness. The first is that WaPo has done as much as possible to force readers to pay because Bezos’ baby needs new shoes. The paywall can be circumvented, but it’s a pain.

So linking to a WaPo story here puts you, dear readers, in the unpleasant position of either paying for it, not reading the underlying story or having to go through the rigors of climbing over the paywall. For this I apologize. Continue reading →