There have been a great many people talking about the success of Bidenomics and how great the economy is doing, and yet how few people seem to believe so. Most argue that the problem isn’t the economy, but the messaging, that people just don’t know the economy is doing swell and so they believe it’s not. Then again, the economy is one of those curious things that requires no messaging. People are either making money or not. Costs are either inflating or not. People are living well or not. If not, no amount of messaging is going to convince them they’re doing fabulous. Continue reading →

For the most part, arguments about policing are based on statistics of crime rising or waning, punctuated by stories of horrific police abuse or horrific crimes. But the view from 30 thousand feet often bears little relation to the view from street level. Statistics don’t change the sense of fear on the street that crime is pervasive, or the loathing on the streets of cops treating human beings like scum. While progressive and conservative views have largely moved in tribal circles, the Oakland NAACP has broken from the fold in an open letter with a plea. They want the cops to protect them. Continue reading →

If you were a bank, would you want to know whether an applicant for a loan has a history of defaulting on loans beforehand? It’s a rather important bit of information since repayment of the loan is kind of a big deal in making your lending decision. Similarly, if you’re a landlord, you want to know whether a person has been evicted in the past before signing a lease with a tenant, since tenants that fail to pay rent kind of defeats the purpose of being a landlord.

But what if it turns out that perfectly rational and reasonable decisions have a disparate racial impact? The ACLU argues that makes it racial discrimination and should be prohibited. Continue reading →

The Olentangy Local School District in Ohio is big, meaning that a great many students are within its ambit to be provided their free and appropriate public education. In order to address its pluralistic student body, the school district has formulated policies for the putative purpose of making it an educational environment free from discriminatory harassment and bullying. What could possibly be wrong with that?

To that end, Policy 5517 prohibits students from engaging in discriminatory harassment or bullying based on the personal characteristics of other students, such as their race, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or ancestry. Similarly, Policy 5136 prohibits students from using their personal devices to send messages that threaten, humiliate, harass, embarrass, or intimidate other students. And lastly, the Code of Conduct prohibits speech that involves “discriminatory language,” including the intentional misgendering of transgender students—i.e., failing to address a student by their preferred pronouns.

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It’s that time of year in the South when it gets hot. And when I say hot, I don’t mean “hot” like “enjoy this sunny day at the beach” weather. Try more along the lines of feeling like you’re breathing soup when you step outside.

Fortunately for my family, we have this great invention we use regularly. It’s called “air conditioning” and it’s glorious, no matter what the climate wokescolds tell you.

Anyway, with summer ending it was time to take the kids to Dollywood. Continue reading →

At Techdirt, Tim Cushing makes a good point.

A law enforcement activity doesn’t get a catchy nickname unless it’s pervasive. And the “Kansas two-step” is not only pervasive, it’s becoming known nationwide despite being a local phenomenon.

Kansas state troopers are taught this one cool trick that, they were told, enabled them to circumvent the Fourth Amendment and turn a seizure into a consensual stop and, well, whatever follows once consent is tacitly obtained. From Senior U.S. District Judge Kathryn Vratil’s decision holding it unconstitutional, the description of the dance is too cute by half. Continue reading →

Former Harvard law prof, now Massachusetts senator, Elizabeth Warren, is a big fan of the bureaucratic state. It’s hard to say what Lindsay Graham is a fan of, but at the moment it would appear it’s Senator Warren, as reflected in a New York Times op-ed announcing their bipartisan bill to create a new administrative agency to rule the internet.

Nobody elected Big Tech executives to govern anything, let alone the entire digital world. If democracy means anything, it means that leaders on both sides of the aisle must take responsibility for protecting the freedom of the American people from the ever-changing whims of these powerful companies and their unaccountable C.E.O.s. Today we’re stepping up to that challenge with a bipartisan bill to treat Big Tech the way we treat other industries.

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In an underappreciated ruling, District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the multinational law firm Covington & Burling must comply with an SEC subpoena requiring the firm to give up the names of clients, publicly-traded corporations, in order for the SEC to investigate whether there was any trading on non-public information. This didn’t arise because of suspicious trades or other red flags on the corporate side of the ledger, but because hackers working for China launched a successful cyber attack on Microsoft which ultimately gave them access to the firm’s internal records.

This case concerns the intersection of a federal law enforcement agency’s interest in rooting out possible law violations and a law firm’s ethical obligations to its clients. On March 21, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or “the Commission”) served a subpoena on Covington & Burling, LLP (“Covington”), a multinational law firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. The subpoena sought information relating to a cyberattack on Covington’s information technology systems that had occurred a year prior. Covington largely complied with the subpoena. It balked, however, in one key respect. Citing its ethical obligation to protect its clients’ identities, Covington refused to disclose the names of its nearly 300 public company  clients whose files had been compromised by the attack.

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Neither I nor my children benefited from legacy admissions. Indeed, if anything, we were the group left behind, neither rich enough to be anywhere near the top one-tenth of one percent who enjoy privileges of real wealth, nor poor or ethnic enough to enjoy the largesse of the elite. So as far as self-interest goes, it would be mine to join in the chorus of voices condemning the sham of elite schools feigning meritocracy when, as this report of a story in the New York Times concludes, “being rich is its own qualification.” Continue reading →

In earlier days of the internet, review sites like Yelp fought against businesses buying positive reviews to bolster their online reputation. One tool they used was badging businesses with a “consumer altert” when they found a business engaging in fraudulent reviews.

“The bigger Yelp gets, the more incentive there is to game the system,” said Eric Singley, its vice president for consumer products and mobile. “These notices are the next step in protecting consumers.”

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