Richard Epstein taught at the University of Chicago for 38 years before retiring,* then promptly came out of retirement to take a chair at NYU Law, while being a Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover institute. He seems like a smart guy, and his name gets thrown around as being a legitimate voice in support of something whenever it suits the thrower.

So why is he a pariah today? He wrote that the coronavirus predictions were exaggerated, that the models were flawed and that it wasn’t going to be anywhere as severe as commonly thought.

The Hoover Institution’s Richard Epstein also waves a flag of caution regarding the COVID-19 dashboards that many news networks and online sites now prominently feature. Epstein’s analysis shows that COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. and worldwide will be dramatically fewer than many have predicted — possibly even fewer than the Hong Kong flu of 1968, the swine flu pandemic of 2009-2010 or seasonal influenza, which can claim hundreds of lives a day.

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Wills testamentary. Living wills and health care proxies. Durable powers of attorney. Testamentary trusts. You know all about this already, but what often eludes people is that their affairs are a mess. Since most of us have a little more time on our hands at the moment, and some of us harbor a dull concern about impending death, this would be a good time to prepare your “cheat sheet.”

Create a document for your kids, your heirs, whoever, that helps them to know what you have, where it is and how to get at it. Also, there are things today that won’t find their way into their hands, like your social media accounts. This is a non-exhaustive list to give you an idea what I’m talking about. Continue reading →

There likely is no one with a more apolitical resume than Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has quietly served a nation as its foremost expert in infectious diseases since 1984, the Reagan administration. Watching him during the daily press briefings, Dr. SJ and I were highly impressed with his savvy in stating medical fact without making Trump look like a simplistic blustering fool.

He’s been around politicians and political appointees for a very long time, and presumably survived by threading the needle between ignorance and ego. You don’t last in government, no matter what your role, by pissing off those in power. Continue reading →

When he was a Texas Supreme Court justice, Don Willett twitted. His twits are exceptionally witty, and he was adored for them by the many, even if too many were mere judicial sycophants. But what they were not was insightful, other than illuminating the fact that Judge Willett, now of the Fifth Circuit and his twitter account all but abandoned, was a very funny guy. But his judicial philosophy? His view of legal issues, lawyers, the law? His twits offered nothing.

So why was Judge Willett twitting? Maybe he just enjoyed making funnies. Or maybe he enjoyed the validation that came of it. Playing to an audience has become something of a national past time on social media, but as thrilling  as it may be to bask in the warm glow of 10,000 “likes,” it can turn into a prison. Continue reading →

When the Sixth Circuit ruled in Doe v. Baum, following up on its decision in Doe v. University of Cincinnati, the law appeared settled: The male students accused of sexual misconduct were entitled to cross-examination in Title IX sexual misconduct proceedings. Problem solved, right? So why then didn’t the University of Michigan’s president get the message?

In its desire to be a mecca of political correctness, the University of Michigan continues to prioritize the rights of some students over others.

And that does not fly in the courts, thanks to the U.S. Constitution, which demands free expression and due process for everyone.

UM’s resistance to ensuring its codes of conduct abide by that framework keep landing the university in court.

It got slapped once again by a federal judge this week.

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What you’re about to read is the written version of a weird dream I had a couple of nights ago while my wife held our TV hostage with a binge session of “Dharma & Greg.”—CLS

 [We open on the exterior of a big box grocery store. At the store’s entrance are Glen the Greeter and Travis from Atlas Security.]

[Glen is a white middle-aged man wearing the traditional store attire: a blue smock with his name emblazoned on the lapel, khaki pants and a white polo shirt. Travis wears a black and gray Atlas Security uniform that looks very similar to a cop’s, complete with badge and gun. He’s also wearing black sunglasses, surgical gloves and a face mask.] Continue reading →

If America had a pause button, we could push it. But it doesn’t and we can’t, so we’re constrained to figure out some other way to deal with exceptional circumstances. And whether the coronavirus pandemic constitutes circumstances so exceptional as a health crisis may be subject to some debate, what is undebatable is that the Senate passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill by 96-0 (which will almost certainly pass the House and be signed into law) and there were 3.3 million new applications for unemployment.

Remember when the gig economy was the newest, coolest thing ever? Remember when being an independent contractor gave people the freedom to pursue their dreams in whichever way they chose? These choices might present a problem now that unemployment is the new black. The stimulus package says they might be eligible for federal relief, but saying so and being so aren’t the same, a point many people just can’t wrap their heads around when reading headlines that make them feel better. Continue reading →

At 7 pm on the dot, L. Phillips said it out loud.

Is it just me, or did both of today’s threads go straight to hell in a handcart?

It wasn’t just him. I watched it happen. I was as much a part of it as anyone else, although it struck me when we went from trucker music to Jerry Reed. Ordinarily, it happens with comments where someone goes off on a tangent, frequently an exceptionally stupid tangent, which then gives rise to a discussion about the exceptionally stupid tangent, which leaves SJ as the locus of an exceptionally stupid tangential discussion. That wasn’t what I had in mind when I wrote the post. Continue reading →

When I thanked the people we don’t see, my use of the word “we” might have been a bit too broad. While most of us may not have “seen” some of the people risking their health for the sake of others, the commanding officer of the 66th Precinct did.

As the sun slowly begins to crack just over the elevated subway station, a crack comes over the radio signaling the beginning of “Operation Cluster Fuck”. An operation spearheaded and ran by no other than Long Island native, Deputy Inspector James King. Like the brave soldiers on Omaha Beach, members of the 66 Pct and the NYPD Traffic Enforcement Division charged the block and risked it all to wake sleeping out of state truckers.

Truckers. Not killers. Not gangbangers. Not drug dealers. Truckers. Those men and women driving big rigs across country to bring food and toilet paper to the huddled masses yearning to be isolated. Continue reading →

Long before the pandemic, when the word “corona” was mostly associated with a beverage with a lime, I made the point that sentences had grown outrageously long, beyond any rational justification. I blame Nelly Rockefeller for starting this mess, his idea being that if we make sentences irrationally long, rational people will stop committing drug crimes to avoid them.

This idea failed because Nelly miscalculated the causal connection between deciding to commit a crime and reason. The more significant factor was the likelihood of being arrested, not the length of sentence, and so the Rockefeller drug laws failed to produce the desired results. And unable to let go of the notion, sentences were made longer and longer, as if one more decade would do the trick because the first few weren’t Draconian enough. Continue reading →