Not that anyone necessarily agrees with me, but I’m a supporter of affirmative action, of diversity. From a group of otherwise fully qualified candidates, bringing together people of diverse backgrounds and experiences, and that includes people’s race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and, yes, social class, a deeper pool is created from which better ideas rise. Don’t hate me, and no, this is not the subject for discussion here, but merely a preface.

It’s because of my belief in the value of diversity that I say this to the University of California at Berkeley: you fucked it all up.

The University of California has been requiring prospective faculty members to affirm that they support diversity. This was Orwellian in its own right—reminiscent of the university system’s 1950s loyalty oaths, which required faculty to attest that they were not members of the Communist Party.

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It’s a trick question, of course, because it assumes the Iowa caucuses are dead, but then, Dr. David Leonhardt pronounced the death, so they must be.

It should never go first again because it is an overwhelmingly white, disproportionately older state that distorts the presidential nominating process. In the 2020 campaign, Iowa’s outsize role has already helped doom two black candidates (Cory Booker and Kamala Harris) and given a boost to candidates whose main appeal has been among white voters (like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar). Iowa’s Democrats look nothing like the nation’s Democrats, as Michael Tomasky explained in a Times Op-Ed.

Booker and Harris are out, which was either going to be Russia’s fault or Iowa’s, because it couldn’t possibly be their fault. After all they were “two black candidates,” which is a stand-alone policy position in the New Democratic Party. And not to be a pedant, but Tomasky didn’t explain much of anything, but argued in the finest progressive tradition that if you assume racial demographics are all that matter, then Iowa doesn’t matter. Continue reading →

Before the Iowa caucuses, the New York Times published an op-ed calling for the Democrats to ignore the state as being racially unrepresentative.

This must end for Democrats. Everyone knows it. Everyone argues it. But then, everyone throws up their hands. Iowa has been first for nearly 50 years now, a position to which the Democratic Party has given its tacit assent.

Does everyone know it? Does everyone argue it? Does everyone throw up their hands? Continue reading →

Emeritus Harvard criminal law prof Alan Dershowitz has become a marginalized academic over the past few years, but upped his game when he undertook to play a neutral constitutional scholar on behalf of Team Trump in the impeachment “trial” in the Senate.

Part of that defense, in Dershowitz’s words, is that “if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

Those comments were immediately criticized — including by a number of law professors at Harvard University, where Dershowitz is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus — as meaning that a president can do virtually anything, as long as he or she believes it’s in the public interest. Continue reading →

The constitutionally dubious compromise solution to taking guns out of the hands of people whom family members or police deem dangerous, red flag laws, has claimed a backfire victim.

The law allows immediate family members, household members or law enforcement officers to file a petition requesting for someone’s guns to be seized on that basis that they’re a danger to themselves or others. If a judge agrees, that person’s guns may be taken away for a year.

Colorado has a red flag law, so Susan Holmes tried to use it against Colorado State University Cpl. Phillip Morris, who killed her son, Jeremy. Morris was cleared of wrongdoing in the killing. Continue reading →

Johnny Depp was an abused husband. So why did so many women rush to Amber Heard’s side when she claimed to be the abused spouse? Heard called Depp a “monster” who beat and choked her. How could that not be true?

The US actress alleged Depp, 55, left her fearing for her life after he choked her and ripped chunks out of her hair in more than a dozen violent altercations.

The details emerged yesterday as Heard, 32, asked a judge to dismiss a $50 million defamation lawsuit filed by Depp over an article she wrote in The Washington Post in December claiming to be a victim of domestic violence.

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People are always fascinated by high profile defendants, and assume that criminal defense lawyers who represent these defendants must be making bank. They want us to tell them the inside story, the titillating tale of how the famous have fallen. They always promise to keep it between “us,” as if we have some burning desire to reveal secrets for their amusement.

But the one assumption that never seems to go away is that the lawyers must be making a fortune representing a high profile defendant, especially when that person was fabulously wealthy. Elizabeth Holmes’ lawyers can explain why it just doesn’t work that way.

It’s been a minute since Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford to found her so-called revolutionary blood-testing company, Theranos. Remember how she was supposed to be able to diagnose thousands of diseases and conditions with one drop of blood? It turned out it was all a fraud, her method didn’t work, and she was sending blood out to traditional labs for testing and not telling patients. That all imploded and her downfall was as swift as her ascension to the billion-dollar company valuation. Once the toast of Silicon Valley, these days she’s mired in lawsuits in multiple states and if reports are to be believed, cannot afford her attorneys.

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Not everyone is aware that the #MeToo “movement” didn’t arise organically. I had been told it was coming well before it happened, that there was a deliberate plan to circumvent the difficulties presented by the legal system, even the Title IX campus sex tribunals, because they required two things that proponents found too hard to address: Evidence and the possibility that their accusations might be tested.

When it started “happening,” meaning that it wasn’t just some crazy conspiracy theory but had metastasized into reality, I wrote about it. For the sake of time frame, this was before Alyssa Milano grabbed onto Tarana Burke’s 2006 coinage of Me Too. This wasn’t an accident, but a decision to elevate unproven accusation into indisputable “truth.” It was a decision that the cost of the “few” false accusations and ruination of innocents was unfortunate, but necessary, collateral damage. Continue reading →

At least they warned us.

https://twitter.com/decolonize_this/status/1222218010267734017

It wasn’t much of a warning, but it was as articulate as they could muster and certainly appeared to make their point. Continue reading →

I recently stumbled on a book with a rather horrendous title. The book is “I Wish My Kids Had Cancer: A Family Surviving The Autism Epidemic.” Michael Alan, the book’s author, apparently has two children with autism and the tome “intimately, honestly, and powerfully, addresses the emotional, social, financial, political and medical aspects of a family fighting for their very existence.”

The title is tone deaf. The premise is idiotic. This twelve-year-old book’s been bashed so many times that addressing it further would be like beating a dead horse until the corpse squeaks. I am not concerned with the book or its substance, however.

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