Conor Friedersdorf is exceptionally smart and invariably polite. Both of these qualities are reflected in his reply to Noah Smith’s cartoon characterization of the intellectuals of the right and left. Conor provided a well-conceived argument on behalf of conservative intellectuals.

I admire Conor’s restraint. I do not, however, share it. First, Smith’s contention.

“On the left, the drive to purge racism, sexism, etc. from American society is very strong,” he tweeted, “and most discourse concerns this drive––either decrying examples of racism/sexism, discussing institutions that maintain these -isms, or discussing how to effect change.”

That may well be a fair characterization of the end game, the goals of the progressives. To the extent it suggests that anyone other than the left doesn’t support ending “racism, sexism, etc.,*” however, it’s bullshit. But more importantly, Smith uses the word “purge.” Does that mean that they will do anything, anything at all to eradicate “racism, sexism, etc.”? Continue reading →

It was hard, very hard, to get past the opening words of this Pomona College story in The Student Life.

Renowned feminist scholar Roxane Gay spoke alongside two others to an overflowing crowd of nearly 300 students at Rose Hills Theater Tuesday, and engaged in a contentious debate about the #MeToo movement.

Wait, that Roxane Gay? The Roxane Gay who has yet to deny killing puppies? Were they misinformed? Continue reading →

Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke is on trial for the first-degree murder of Laquan McDonald. Try as he might, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s post-Obama-White-House clout wasn’t enough to keep the video of the killing under wraps, although it was sufficient for Rahm to escape unscathed in the aftermath of recreated history of everything pre-Trump being wonderful.

Van Dyke still faces trial, but he’s got a defense. Despite the video showing that he murdered McDonald like a dog in the street, it appears that Illinois law will permit him a fantasy defense.

At the closed-door hearing, Van Dyke’s defense team is expected to call witnesses who are slated to testify at trial about McDonald’s allegedly violent history and character. In January, Gaughan agreed to let as many as nine witnesses testify on the issue, but he plans to decide at the hearing next week on how much of their testimony he will allow at trial.

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The only thing clear about Fordham philosophy prof William Jaworski is that some people didn’t like what he had to say. Had he done something, as in sexually molest a student, it would be understandable that he was a target of student outrage. But there isn’t a whisper of anything of the sort.

“Right now it’s unsubstantiated allegation,” [Associate Dean of the School of Professional & Continuing Studies Cira] Vernazza said. “The key is to substantiate or not. Right? So that’s the procedure. That’s the investigative procedure. So try to be fair about it. We don’t know because we don’t know. If you have firsthand experience, you should come forward.”

Firsthand experience of what? There isn’t the slightest clue given. But that didn’t stop two seniors from deciding to rise up to save others from . . . something. Continue reading →

The jury returned its verdict in the retrial of Bill Cosby. Guilty, guilty, guilty. And much as honor an acquittal for sustaining our presumption of innocence, a guilty verdict brings that presumption to an end. Cosby is guilty. Guilty defendants can become unguilty if a subsequent court reverses the conviction, but until that happens, guilty he is. That’s just the way the system works.

But the retrial, unlike the first trial, was a very different beast. An expert to tell the jury the right way to think. Five witnesses who witnessed nothing of the conduct between the defendant and the one accuser, but got to tell their stories anyway. And between the first and second trials, there was the #MeToo movement, which changed the paradigm from facts to feels when it came to women’s sexual complaints.

The conviction of Bill Cosby for conduct committed in 2004 may be the first #MeToo conviction. At least, that’s how some are trying to spin it. Continue reading →

You haven’t met me. How do you know I’m not a dog? Well sure, you could check to see that someone with my name is licensed to practice law in New York, but am I that guy? The New Yorker ran a famous cartoon years ago about this.

But we’re so much smarter now, so much more sophisticated that no one could get away with creating a fictional persona online. As Dan Bauman shows at the Chronicle of Higher Education, we’re still easily fooled. Continue reading →

For criminal defense lawyers, the question was why it took so long for him to file the declaration.

Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, will invoke his Fifth Amendment right in a lawsuit filed against the president by Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film star better known as Stormy Daniels.

On the one hand, there was little question but that his exercising a fundamental right embodied in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution would bring about a storm of stupid from those who despised his beloved boss, and by extension, him. But on the other hand, there was no serious question that it had to be done. Continue reading →

The Texas Tornado took a loss. Not being a kid in need of manufacturing a shiny internet persona, he used his loss as a learning, and teaching, opportunity. Good lawyers will do that. They don’t have to pretend that everything they touch turns to acquittal, though some detractor will eventually point out it and shout “loser, loser.” That guy will always be there, so all you can do is shrug and thank your lucky stars it’s not you.

It wasn’t an earth-shattering case. Not a high profile murder. Not a massive drug conspiracy. It was a DWI, but even DWI defendants deserve lawyers as good as Mark Bennett. The defendant’s BAC was tested 80 minutes after the stop, and rang the bell. The prosecution’s expert testified that “it was impossible to say what the BAC at the time of driving was from the blood test 80 minutes later.”

This was enough. Or it should have been enough. Continue reading →

Some angry random person twitted some ridiculously outrageous crap about former First Lady Barbara Bush and everybody went nuts.

“Conservatives keep sparking ‘free speech’ battles. When a Muslim professor tweeted about racism, guess what happened?” The subhead adds, “Randa Jarrar’s case is a reminder that when a woman of color speaks out on her views about race, she faces unique dangers.” The way Vox senior reporter Anna North tells it, Jarrar is a victim of anti-minority bigotries, a case study about what happens when progressive women of color try to engage in important conversations about race.

Some called for her to be fired, to which this angry random person replied: Continue reading →

So much of our beliefs about “who done it” is conclusively wrapped up in the gold standard of identification, DNA. It’s not just all scienc-y, but good, solid repeatable science. Sure, there are tons of quibbles about the statistical likelihood of DNA being from a different person, contamination, magic-box testing and whatever other screw-ups humans bring to the lab, but when we’ve got it, we can take comfort in knowing that science says we got the right dude. Or better yet, they got the wrong dude, an innocent person, so cut him loose.

But there remains another nasty problem with DNA, that it doesn’t like to stay in one place.

Back in the 1980s, when DNA forensic analysis was still in its infancy, crime labs needed a speck of bodily fluid—usually blood, semen, or spit—to generate a genetic profile.

That changed in 1997, when Australian forensic scientist Roland van Oorschot stunned the criminal justice world with a nine-paragraph paper titled “DNA Fingerprints from Fingerprints.” It revealed that DNA could be detected not just from bodily fluids but from traces left by a touch. Investigators across the globe began scouring crime scenes for anything—a doorknob, a countertop, a knife handle—that a perpetrator may have tainted with incriminating “touch” DNA.

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