In an op-ed that is almost certain to be viewed with analog dismay, Shoshona Saxe observes that our love of new, shiny and smart has gotten a bit ahead of itself.

As we know all too well from our personal lives, tech products have a short reliable life span. We accept regular disruptions in internet and cellphone function as a fact of life. Technology ages rapidly, with glitches increasing common only a couple of years into its life.

Yet, “smart” technology is all the rage. Cities proclaim themselves smart by putting cameras everywhere and developing infrastructure scheme based upon as-yet uninvented technologies, mass data collection and the promise of AI to make it work. Continue reading →

At the bond hearing before SDNY District Judge Richard Berman, something almost unheard of occurred. Putative victims of Jeffrey Epstein rose at the hearing and addressed the court.

The women stood just feet from where Epstein was seated in his blue jail outfit as they asked a federal judge to reject a request by Epstein’s lawyers that he remain under house arrest in his $77 million Manhattan mansion until trial on conspiracy and sex trafficking charges.

Until trial? That’s the problem. They’re not characterized as “putative victims” as a pejorative, but because Epstein has yet to be tried and convicted in this case. That whole presumption of innocence problem keeps rearing its nasty head, since we know as a matter of law that it applies, even if we really feel like we don’t want it to. At least this time. Continue reading →

Maybe it would be different if her daughter was a teen or younger, but the alleged victim is now over the age of majority and, theoretically, capable of speaking for herself. But mothers will always be mothers.

“We’ve been living with this for four years,” the mother said. “It’s been constant delays. All I’m asking for is fairness for this, please,” she told Superior Court Judge Joseph Rea.

More than a dozen supporters of the victim were also in the courtroom. The defendant, John Angeline, 44, had apparently been told he did not need to attend the hearing.

The defendant was a former South Plainfield, New Jersey, school teacher accused of sexual assault. It’s the sort of crime that gives rise to outrage, and this court appearance was no exception. But when the unnamed mother expressed her frustration, it wasn’t because the judge asked. Continue reading →

The person in Washington, D.C. most affected by Trump’s outrageous twit was Nancy Pelosi. If Trump possesses the capacity to be devious, his twit was tactically brilliant. If not, he just got lucky. Either way, he took Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti’s smack at dinosaur Pelosi and turned it into a movement.

They call themselves the Squad. Four frosh congresswomen. Four women of color. Four women who speak their minds, and use whatever words they choose to do so.  And with the clapping hands of a million woke emojis, they have become the public face of the Democratic Party.

Pelosi told me, after the A.O.C. Squad voted against the House’s version of the border bill and trashed the moderates — the very people who provided the Democrats the majority — that the Squad was four people with four votes. She was talking about a legislative reality. If it was a knock, it was for abandoning the party. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: Greg Prickett is former police officer and supervisor who went to law school, hung out a shingle, and now practices criminal defense and family law in Fort Worth, Texas. While he was a police officer, he was a police firearms instructor, and routinely taught armed tactics to other officers.

On July 6, 2019, after Baytown, Texas[1] police officers violently assaulted Kedric Crawford, police charged him with actually assaulting them. On July 11^th, the police department released some of the body cam footage in the “spirit of transparency and to add some context.”

The problem is that the video doesn’t add the context they thought it would. It does the exact oppose, showing an apparently unprovoked beatdown and torture of a black Crawford by white police officers. And then, on top of that, because Crawford’s fingernails “scratched” an officer while Crawford was being beaten, he was charged with Assault on a Peace Officer.[2]

The only thing I can think is that whoever thought that releasing this particular video would be helpful in backing up the police side of the story is an idiot and should be fired.[3] Continue reading →

Visiting prawf at Gonzaga, Jeffrey Omari, told the story, so unsurprisingly makes himself its hero. Or in context, the victim.

As the student walked to his usual seat in the seminar, which was directly in my line of vision, the message on his flaming red hat was unmistakable: “MAGA,” or “Make American Great Again.”

A black law prof in a mostly white school. What could it mean? Continue reading →

Branding consultant Carol Blymire posted serial twits about a fascinating thing she watched. For the conveniently cynical, it may be that this never happened, but I prefer to accept its accuracy because I have no reason to doubt Blymire.

In office space near a client, a young woman was meeting with her boss. She was (by my estimation) in her late 20s.

The boss (also a woman) was giving her feedback and reviewing edits she had made on something this young woman wrote.

They had been speaking in low tones, but their volume got louder toward the end of the conversation because the young woman was getting agitated about a particular edit. Continue reading →

What does the title of this post inform you about “they”? Enough to know that they raised an issue, but not enough to tell you who they might be. And in the process, enough to make it sound wrong to the point of difficulty. It’s almost painful to read so awkward a sentence. But for reasons that elude me, Farhad Manjoo, the New York Times tech columnist, decided to drive across three lanes, over the median, straight into linguistic oncoming traffic.

Call Me ‘They’

The singular “they” is inclusive and flexible, and it breaks the stifling prison of gender expectations. Let’s all use it.

Putting aside Farhad’s call to action, “let’s all use it,” as if they’s somebody’s thought leader on such matters as trendy linguistics, they’s hardly the first to suggest the de-genderization of pronouns. People include their pronouns in their twitter bios. Profs are directed to ask students for their pronouns on the first day of class. I’ve even seen pronouns in emails from lawyers next to their names. It tells me something about them, and what it tells me has nothing to do with their particular choice of pronouns. Continue reading →

This week I want to share with you an opinion I find fascinating and stupid. The case is Massey v. Jim Crockett Promotions, Inc.,  400 S.E.2d 876 (1990).

The case is fascinating because it is a court case involving pro wrestling that actually made its way to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.* One can only imagine the rumblings in the heads of the justices about career paths when the record in this case hit their desks.

It’s stupid because the case never should have gone to trial. This is the kind of situation promoters feared, because one question they’d inevitably get asked under oath was certainly, “Are the outcomes of the matches at your events pre-determined?”** It all could’ve been avoided if Crockett Promotions paid Roy Massey’s hospital bills after Lane knocked a disabled coal miner out. Continue reading →

In a quiet moment, the idea of taking a highly scientific poll on the twitters seemed like a good idea. So I did. This was the result:

Granted, the respondents were a select group, and there was no “all of the above” option because that wouldn’t have helped at all. Twitter polls are limited to four choices, so my fifth through 99th couldn’t be included. Maybe my poll wasn’t really all that scientific. Continue reading →