It’s not that the Virginia lege isn’t trying. The problems it’s addressing are undoubtedly real and serious, even if they also happen to be unduly popular at the moment. Cops profile. Cops use traffic stops as pretexts for searches. Sometimes, they just make up reasons to stop people, because they can. This happens disproportionately to black people, and minor problems, a headlamp out for example, end with serious problems. Something must be done.

This is something.

The legislation bars police from stopping drivers for a wide range of vehicle equipment infractions — from tinted windows and faulty brake lights to loud mufflers and objects dangling from rear view mirrors. Continue reading →

The Senate Judiciary Committee, ostensibly a bipartisan group tasked with advising and giving consent on Presidential judicial nominations, packed up and left town this week for Mitch and Lindsay’s Traveling Circus. The star act was, of course, Judge Amy Coney Barrett and her confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Ringmaster Lindsay Graham started the party Monday by letting everyone know his team had the votes to do what they wanted, so this would go either the easy way or the hard way. Committee Democrats responded by complaining how unfair the thing Lindsay’s team wanted to do was and they were all mean, no good poopy-pants. Continue reading →

There is a serious question whether it’s wise to pursue Amy Cooper for falsely reporting an incident in the third degree. For one thing, she’s already suffered substantial consequences for what happened without benefit of due process. Yeah, yeah, we all know how every woke anticarceral activists wants her to be burned at the stake. No need to explain why killers deserve our empathy but Cooper deserves life plus cancer. We got it.

For another thing, we’ve promoted the notion that women are entitled to feel threatened, even if irrationally, to make false claims because that’s “their truth” twisted by the litany of excuses as to why it’s too hard to be rational and honest when one’s emotions run rampant. Except when it’s caught on video against a black guy, in which case every absolute tenet of social justice flips on its head and the woman becomes the criminal. Continue reading →

Among the casualties of an otherwise remarkably uncontroversial hearing for a Supreme Court justice, perhaps due to Michael Avenatti’s bond conditions precluding his trotting out some handsome stud to allege he was sexually molested, are certain interpretative methodologies used by judges, originalism and textualism. Their meanings have been twisted.

“Originalism” would mean, among other things, that women couldn’t vote, that black people wouldn’t be people, that religious and ethnic abuse and exploitation of minorities and say gay people would be perfectly acceptable. When ACB uses that word, think about all that.

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Alcedis Ortiz had been accused of sexually assaulting* a 12-year-old girl, and he was scheduled to stand trial in Miami.  Ortiz is a Colombian national without legal permanent residence in the U.S., and without any other authorization to remain in the country, he was fair game for ICE.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office was in charge of his prosecution, and if a one-word verdict came back, it was also tasked with convincing a Judge to send Ortiz to a Florida prison for a very long time.  For ICE, Ortiz was a man with no legal status who was charged with a serious crime, and whose asylum application had been denied by an Immigration Judge at the Krome Processing Center (a.k.a. Miami’s Immigration jail/court, a one-stop shop).  He was facing criminal charges in Miami’s state court while simultaneously seeking asylum in an Immigration Court. Continue reading →

There are many generic arguments against the Senate’s confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, bearing on the timing, the rush and the institutional hypocrisy that can only be denied by people with their eyes wide shut. But that’s a slam on the process, not Barrett, although it’s hard these days to separate the two.

At the close of questioning, Judiciary Committee chair Lindsay Graham made the point that, for a nominee from a Republican president, she was fully qualified, just as was Justices Kagan and Sotomayor as nominees from a Democratic president. Yet, that’s not quite the way it’s being seen.

They have the votes to confirm her, and confirm her they will, but her insistence that she is an “originalist,” along with her refusal to answer any questions on topics relevant to the present, including on racial prejudice, climate change, voter suppression, and so on, have made her extremism clear.

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During his questioning of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, former Connecticut attorney general, now senator, Richard Blumenthal, claimed that Barrett “admitted” her dissent in a Seventh Circuit Second Amendment case, Kanter v. Barr, was “radical.”

“Did I say it was radical in the opinion?” Barrett asked.

“I think you said, quote, ‘it sounds kind of radical to say felons can have firearms.’ That’s a direct quote.”

“I didn’t remember that particular language,” Barrett said, adding that she did not want to nitpick.

“We can look it up,” Blumenthal said.

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No regular reader at SJ is unfamiliar with the sex offender registry, the simplistic solution birthed by a public panic that became a convenient tool of politicians to keep the public in fear so they could fix it by adding more people, more crimes, more punishment to the list. Guy Hamilton-Smith has laid bare his story here. They now exist as a permanent underclass, condemned to live under bridges until imprisoned for not being able to register their new address.

At Persuasion, Carol Nesteikis tells of yet another wrinkle to this Fool’s Paradise based on what happened to her son, Adam. Continue reading →

It was one of the goofier conceits of the Republican Party to wrap itself up as the Party of Lincoln. That was long ago and far away, and lines can’t stretch that far without breaking. That doesn’t make it necessarily bad, as times change. platforms change. people change and, well, a legacy name doesn’t make it the same party. But not being the same doesn’t make it better or worse, just different.

Not that it mattered in Portland on the eve of Indigenous People’s Day, formerly known as Columbus Day until Columbus was canceled.

Protesters in Portland, Ore., swept through the city on Sunday night, toppling statues of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and damaging the entrance to the Oregon Historical Society in a demonstration against colonization and the treatment of Native Americans.

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About an hour after the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senate minority leader and one of the largest consumers of microphones in New York, Chuck Schumer, threatened to “pack the court.” No, the Republicans aren’t, and haven’t packed the court, no matter how despicable you might believe their mad rush to fill judicial slots (including Justice Ginsburg’s). Packing the court has a specific meaning, to add new seats to the Supreme Court for the purpose of installing one’s own people under the belief they will serve a political cause.

If Judge Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, as appears likely, will Joe Biden pack the court? It’s a fair question. Continue reading →