For a while, there was a hard push to eliminate cash as a medium for transactions. There are a host of reasons why people and businesses would prefer to transact business with plastic or digitally, but that was a business choice above the use of cash. The argument wasn’t just about the virtues of a cashless society, but that cash was the currency of criminals.

The key point is that deals done in cash weren’t on the government’s radar and couldn’t be proven by records. In contrast, deals done by plastic or digitally had records. They could be traced. They showed where you were and when. They showed how much money you paid, and thus how much you had, and whether you were hiding it from the government or paying out more than you should be able to, unless you were engaged in criminal conduct. Continue reading →

Omar Ameen is awaiting decision on whether he lives or dies. Iraq claims he’s a killer and wants him returned. The United States seems all too happy to comply, even though the Iraqi claim is almost certainly false and, should Ameen be sent back to Iraq, he will almost certainly be executed.

His contention is that he was living in Turkey at the time the killing was supposed to have happened, so he couldn’t be the killer.

The key point in the story is that committing the crime would have been physically impossible for Mr. Ameen, who was residing in Turkey and in the middle of his refugee application process at the time. The victims’ parents have also stated that Ameen is innocent of the crime. Ameen is the victim of a false accusation that seems to have been spread by someone with a vendetta against his family, and that false accusation was then accepted at face value and reproduced by American and Iraqi officials. By all other accounts, Ameen has been a law-abiding refugee who fled Iraq because he was in fear for his life, and now he is about to be sent back because of outrageous lies.

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The defense had 20 peremptory challenges, and they were gone before juror 11 was seated in the box. There was no red flag at first. On her jury questionnaire, she wrote that one of her hobbies was “writing novels.” Big deal. Except she studiously omitted a detail that was clearly salient.

Lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi responded by saying juror No. 11’s questionnaire included the fact that she enjoyed “novel writing.”

The juror indicated she enjoyed “novel writing” under the “hobbies and interests” section of the questionnaire, Weinstein attorney Donna Rotunno told CNN.

“Not, ‘I am writing a book on this topic,'” she said. “Big difference.”

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As a guy who earns his living off advising colleges how to run their campus sex tribunals to assure the guy loses while creating plausible deniability to avoid liability, and as president of ATIXA, the Association of Title IX Administrators, an association dedicated to the cause of believing the woman no matter what, Brett Sokolow has long been a primary cheerleader for his tribe, defending the inane and dishonest with rigor.

After all, without the cottage industry of campus sex policing for the sake of saving women’s feelings at the expense of facts and innocence, Title IX administrators would be constrained to get productive jobs. Because of this, Sokolow’s views haven’t been well-appreciated by anyone beyond those who benefit from the grift. Yet, in an LA Times op-ed, it turns out that Sokolow has some observations worthy of note. Continue reading →

The gravamen of the op-ed is about discrimination in housing, a phenomenon that’s gone on officially and unofficially for a very long time. Much as it’s prohibited by law, it still exists in the hands of folks who assume black folks are going to either steal from them or just can’t afford to live in nice white neighborhoods. As Karyn Lacy says, “Black people expend daily energy to counteract racial stereotypes and get fair treatment.”

In support of this indisputable reality, however, Lacy proffers a curious point:

When I talked two decades ago with more than 50 middle-class blacks who lived in the suburbs of Washington, I learned that their awareness of racial stereotypes led them to take on what I call “public identities” — meaning they would strategically deploy cultural capital, including language, mannerisms, clothing and credentials in ways that brought their middle-class status firmly into focus. From their experiences attending integrated high schools, many of these people had come to believe this was key to managing racism in interactions with white people. They hoped it would tip the balance of their public interactions so that class would trump race and persuade white people to treat them fairly.

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I did nothing in particular and I did it very well,

–Chief Justice William Rehnquist

The Constitution, Article I, Section 3, provides that “[w]hen the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” What is meant by “preside” is left unsaid, meaning that it leaves a void, a vacuum. Politics abhors a vacuum.

But wait a minute. While McConnell is not mentioned in the Constitution, Chief Justice John Roberts is. Indeed, it is the Chief Justice of the United States who shall “preside” over the trial, not the Majority Leader. So why isn’t it up to Roberts to decide whether witnesses shall appear?

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For old school liberals*, Martin Luther King is remembered for his monumental contributions toward changing America. Not for womanizing. Not for hating. Not for demanding that white America concede their failings and give up their job to the nearest black woman. He had a dream, and that changed America.

If he had that dream today, would he be canceled for being too centrist?

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The New York Times has “broken with convention” by endorsing two white women white womening for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, and hence for the presidency because Trump.

Curiously, the name given this image by the New York Times is “blackcupcakes.”

The convention of endorsing one individual isn’t merely a “convention,” but an acknowledgement of a fairly basic point, you can only vote for one person at a time. By indulging its dual personality disorder, the Times might seem to be defeating the point of an endorsement. But by understanding the curious division in the Times’ approach, it makes more sense even as it makes no sense at all. Continue reading →

Among the alt-right, the distinction of “platform” and “publisher” has become the rallying cry for imposing liability on internet platforms who toss off the unwoke voices of their favs. How dare these platforms censor the voice opposing social justice and create the impression they don’t exist, that there is no one on the internet challenging progressivism or identity politics, that there is no one to speak for them?!?

If platforms want the benefit of the law, they must not favor one political agenda and be fair and balanced in their content. That’s what the law requires, they say with certainty and fervency. Except Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act says no such thing. It never did. The argument is absolutely baseless, no matter how passionately it’s believed. It’s a catchy argument, both because it serves their purpose and makes sense, in a self-serving sort of way, but it’s false.

And then there’s the other team. Continue reading →

It was true for Ron Sullivan. It was true for Hillary Clinton. And it’s true for Alan Dershowitz.

And then there’s Dershowitz, whose past clients have included such sterling fellows as Epstein, Claus von Bülow, O.J. Simpson and Harvey Weinstein. How did he miss Ted Bundy? Still, Dershowitz has put himself on the side of an impressive pantheon of villainy in the realm of violence against girls and women.

That’s from Maureen Dowd. No doubt she would spew the empty mantra that everyone deserves a defense, because saying otherwise would be too obviously wrong, but when put to the test of defense in action, she’s just as much of a flaming hypocrite as the rest. Her prosaic “impressive pantheon of villainy” is less the key to her flagrant hypocrisy than the “put himself on the side of,” Dersh’s offense being that he chose to defend “those people.” Continue reading →