A few weeks ago, one of my “reply guys” on twitter pointed out to me that my damnable reliance on facts and reason, on “hard” fixes to actual problems rather than empty platitudes and my moderated refusal to indulge in simplistic hatred of tribal enemies, missed the boat.

He told me, “You’re wrong. We’ve moved the Overton Window* so far left that defunding the police is taken seriously.”

At the time, I didn’t appreciate his message. But after due deliberation, I’ve come to realize he’s got a point. A very good point. It’s no longer limited to a small group of nutjobs screaming for inane radical solutions that no one, no elected official, no business leader, no academic, no one of modest intelligence and a limited capacity for reason, would take seriously. Continue reading →

It was a lame joke. It was racist. It was offensive. And to add insult to injury, it had already been done before, and so wasn’t even novel. But Kansas State University student Jaden McNeil made it anyway.

Get it? George Floyd was murdered, which was the only way to keep a black man from using drugs. Sick burn, Jaden, who describes himself as the founder and president of America First Students. What’s a state university to do with such a blithering asshole? Continue reading →

Without a doubt, there could be no one, but no one, worse to communicate this change.

The bizarre choice of spokesmodel for the Trump family business notwithstanding, does that make the Executive Order a bad idea? Continue reading →

The cause was simple enough, a vigil to remember Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old black man who died last summer at the hands of police.

Mr. McClain was walking home from a convenience store on Aug. 24 when someone called 911, saying he “looked sketchy” and was wearing a ski mask and waving his arms.

The police arrived, and after struggling to handcuff Mr. McClain, officers brought him to the ground and used a carotid hold, which restricts blood to the brain to render someone unconscious. When medical responders arrived, after about 15 minutes, paramedics injected him with ketamine, a powerful sedative.

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The cry of “systemic racism” in the criminal justice system continues to be heard. I remain unpersuaded that this empty phrase is correct or even modestly useful in either fixing the legal system or eliminating racism (which, as I’ve made abundantly clear, are two distinct problems that have been simplistically conflated). But since I may very well be wrong, I pay attention when people I respect have something to say about the point.

So when Reason held a debate between former libertarian Agitator Radley Balko against the Manhattan Institute’s Rafael Mangual, it was worth a listen. The issue was framed as “Is the Criminal Justice System Racist?” Continue reading →

His words were uttered at a time when the issue of consistency made not only different sense, but carried different meaning. They were thrown at me by a former federal defender, about to take his new job as a budding law prof, and he took comfort in the United States Sentencing Guidelines. This was jarring. When did the defense find the sentencing guidelines their friend?

It came in response to my “modest proposal” for crim law reform, that we roll back everything about the system, from laws to sentencing to police, to May, 1973. Oddly, no one either asked why May, 1973. But his response was surprising. Continue reading →

For some, watching statues destroyed pains our sense of history. Destroying historical artifacts has historically been viewed as a terrible thing, although at the time the mobs, marauders and righteous were certain they were doing the right thing, god’s work, and would be vindicated by history. Nobody seems to learn much history, which makes George Santayana sad.

But beyond the destruction of history, there is the broader random destruction following protests, riots and looting. Which act it involves tends to be a product of who’s asked, as vandals fail to see their acts of vandalism as vandalism, but rather as acts of protest and revolution. Continue reading →

In the aftermath of the Bubba Wallace noose outrage, where it turned out that the “noose” was there as a pull for the garage door, had been there for years before Bubba Wallace, who supported Nascar’s decision to ban the confederate battle flag from Nascar, was assigned to the garage, and reflected nothing about lynching. It was a good thing, that no one hung a noose in Bubba Wallace’s garage as a racist threat. But it was, as Wallace said afterward, still “a straight-up noose.”

In a world where the only point of reference is slavery and racism, a noose means lynching, and lynching means that horrific thing done to black people. Hanging had long been a means of execution having nothing to do with black people. Gallows have existed for hundreds of years before the advent of African slavery and continued after the emancipation. A noose can be about lynching black people, but neither the knot nor word is inherently about lynching black people. Continue reading →

Disclaimer/Preface: As I sat down to write this week’s funny, it came to me that this might be your first time at SJ, and I might be the first writer you graced with a click. So to get this out of the way, the following are jokes made for the sole purpose of making people laugh. Call it satire, humor, or whatever floats your boat—just don’t take any of this seriously. Neither my mean-ass editor nor I condone any criminal acts, including the toppling of statues.

It’s summer, the block is hot, and people are out looking to fuck shit up in full force. Whether it’s to protest the deaths of black people at the hands of police or generally sounding the revolutionary bells for the woke and oppressed, people everywhere are toppling statues left and right. Continue reading →

Remember when the woke discussion at dinner was for parents to teach their boys to be girls? No more. There’s a new dinner conversation.

Ibram X. Kendi, author of the best-selling book “How to Be an Antiracist,” has compiled a reading list he calls a “step ladder to anti-racism.” It’s not enough to be “not racist,” he says, because it’s a claim “that signifies neutrality.“

“Those who are striving to be anti-racist realize it’s not an identity,” said Dr. Kendi, who is the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. “It’s something they’re striving to be, to be sure in each moment they are expressing anti-racist ideas and anti-racist policies.”

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