One of the most difficult problems with any discussion of the shift in federal deportation priorities is that people have no idea how it works or who we’re talking about. This isn’t accidental, as it became politically incorrect to call a person an “illegal alien” (“no person is inherently illegal”) in favor of “undocumented immigrants.” Now, all are wrapped up under the word immigrants, regardless of status, as if noting that some are here lawfully and some are not is a racist slur.

To drag someone out of the life they have painstakingly created over many years, for something as petty as traffic violations or shoplifting, is a gross violation of the proportionality principle — that the punishment should fit the crime. To execute longtime residents of the United States for traffic violations would clearly be a violation of their human rights. Human rights by their nature apply to both citizens and noncitizens alike. It is difficult to see why deportation for such violations is not also a human rights violation. How, then, have so many of us accepted these policies so at odds with our American values?

In an op-ed which conflates every conceivable distinction into a blizzard of ignorance, one detail is omitted from this appeal to emotion: no one is being dragged from their life because of a traffic violation or shoplifting. They are being deported because they are here illegally, and came to the government’s attention because they committed a violation of law, petty though the violation may be.  Continue reading →

It’s true that the Antifa doesn’t represent all college students, a generation’s reaction to hate speech. But then, even if most students know better than to resort to violence to silence speakers who espouse ideas they deem reprehensible, it doesn’t mean they don’t agree that hate speech isn’t free speech. This, according to a white paper put out by Newseum President and CEO Jeffrey Herbst, is their “alternate understanding of the First Amendment.”

Systematic public opinion polling and anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that the real problem of free expression on college campuses is much deeper than episodic moments of censorship: With little comment, an alternate understanding of the First Amendment has emerged among young people that can be called “the right to non-offensive speech.”

This perspective essentially carves out an exception to the right of free speech by trying to prevent expression that is seen as particularly offensive to an identifiable group, especially if that collective is defined in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity. The crisis is not one of the very occasional speaker thrown off campus, however regrettable that is; rather, it is a generation that increasingly censors itself and others, largely silently but sometimes through active protest.

Of course, high-level observations about an entire age cohort are by definition difficult and care must be taken in making generalizations. However, to ignore the different view that many of today’s students have on free speech would be to doom any effort to promote intellectual exchange on campus.*

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Jordan Rushie tells of his travails as he left the big city of Fishtown behind to teach the bumpkins of bucolic Ridgway, situated in Elk County, Pennsylvania, how law is done.

As I arrived late on a Sunday night, the area had a certain charm to it. Surrounded by state game land and steel factories, I felt like I had traveled back in time about 100 years. Things seemed much simpler out here.

Starving after a long drive, I pulled up into a diner and sat down next to a heavy fellow. We began striking up a conversation.

“You look fancy in that suit and tie. Are you a lawyer or a banker or something?”
“Lawyer. I have a trial out here tomorrow.”
“Where are you from?”
“Philadelphia… Fishtown.”
“Ah, a city slicker…” he said with a bit of a twang.

There is a certain rush to hitting the road when you’re a young lawyer, finally having someone think well enough of your talents to want you to travel far away to represent them. A change of pace, a test of one’s mettle, the chance to imagine oneself as Paladin, Have Gun, Will Travel. But being a stranger in a strange land has its disadvantages. Every lawyer loves My Cousin Vinny, even if we forget that it’s just a movie. Continue reading →

That a man must break his back
To earn his day of leisure?
Will she still believe it when he’s dead

–John Lennon, Girl, 1965

Jill Filipovic was born in 1983. That was the year I was admitted to the New York bar, having passed the July, 1982 bar exam. She tells of her grandmother’s, her mother’s experience leading to hers. It’s assumed she’s telling the truth, though she hasn’t earned the right to be believed.

But there isn’t much question of her reliance on her own narrative from which we are to extrapolate that the significance of the female experience can be inferred from her story. Pundits like to do that, to assume that they are universal and their experience is a substitute for everyone else’s experience. It’s not like readers have their own families, mothers and grandmothers, from which to draw.

Her point was that women in the olden days were forced into “women’s work,” mostly motherhood and housewifery, and if not, teachers and nurses. As Filipovic speaks of my generation from her own distance, she’s not entirely wrong, but not entirely right either. Feminism in the 60s and 70s sought equality, and women were seeking out new territory, new occupations and professions. Continue reading →

Most of us never give much thought to the exclusion of deaf people. And deaf people don’t give a damn about the exclusion of blind people, because they’re deaf and not blind, and deaf is definitely worse based on a poll at Gallaudet University. This is why clapping is literally horrifying.

Britain’s largest national student union has told attendees of its annual conference they would face “consequences” for cheering and clapping because these forms of expression exclude deaf people.

What those consequences might be is unclear, though it clearly involved repeated warnings, public shaming, and the occasional burning of a witch. And like all truly exhausting problems, it required the institution of official rules to make it so.

In response to the complaints, the Durham University student union proposed a motion at the conference that would see clapping and whooping banned at all future NUS events. According to the motion, “access needs of disabled students are disregarded/overlooked in terms of conference member behaviour and NUS structures”. Continue reading →

It was nothing more than dumb luck that I saw this twit.

@nytopinion @BretStephensNYT This is so irresponsible. For many readers, anything that comes out of the times has its authority. They don’t know you hired an idiot.

— Monica Potts (@MonicaBPotts) April 28, 2017

Not that anyone cares what Monica Potts, whoever she is (but she has that blue tick, so she must be twitter-important) says, but Nate Silver, tarnished though he may be after his botch of the election outcome, says so too.

The Truth Is More Important Now Than Ever, Except If You’re Reading Our Op-Ed Page

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So what if Jeff Sessions doesn’t realize Reefer Madness wasn’t a documentary, but a propaganda film, best watched high to achieve maximum enjoyment. The opposing viewpoints, far from the quiet of Main Justice, are locking arms behind him. If they have their way, Sessions may end up a hero, prescient in reviving “just say no” as the cell door slams.

It’s the opioid epidemic. Not problem, but epidemic. The thing about using words like epidemic is that they scare people. They make people leap to the conclusion that this problem is so extreme that it must be fixed. Immediately. By any means possible. And this is the word of choice on the left and the right. When consensus appears, hold on to your hats.

German Lopez at Vox says it completely changed his view of legalization of drugs. Apparently, this 2012 graduate of the University of Cincinnati* knows a lot of addicts.

By the time I began as a drug policy reporter in 2010, I was all in on legalizing every drug, from marijuana to heroin and cocaine.

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Press releases are great, especially when they’re all about really important things like reducing the United States prison population by 50%.

As part of its effort to achieve a 50 percent reduction in the U.S. jail and prison population, the ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice today announced a new multi-year initiative to overhaul the power wielded by prosecutors.

Overhauls are great, particularly when the overhaul is of power wielded by prosecutors. Who doesn’t want to see that happen, John Pfaff?

The ACLU’s initiative includes a series of high-impact, locally driven prosecutorial reform campaigns in a number of states across the country, beginning in Philadelphia where #VoteSmartJustice is underway to educate voters about the district attorney race in the May 16 primary.

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It was only a year ago that everyone who didn’t share your feelz was racist and sexist. Good times. Now, they’re fascists and nazis*. This is a problem, because they’re running out of horrible names to call people, but that doesn’t mean they can’t stop a rose parade in Portland.

Across the nation, peaceful protest against President Trump continues. But a violent fringe has been using Trump’s rise as a justification for political violence, as if his authoritarian impulses justify authoritarianism from his opponents.

This tiny faction knows that most of their compatriots on the left are committed to nonviolence, so they frame their aggressive actions as a narrow exception to the rule.

Is it a tiny faction? One would suppose, despite the lack of any metric by which to determine it one way or another. We would certainly prefer to believe the faction to be tiny, because if not, then mass hysteria has turned America into its worst nightmare. Continue reading →

Scammers made a small fortune off robocalls that purported to be from the IRS. They tapped into two things that characterize America: ignorance and fear. Some recipients of the calls had no clue that the IRS, not to mention the legal system, didn’t work that way, that they didn’t call up people to inform them they were going to be prosecuted unless they paid money. And people fear the IRS, that universally despised branch of government, that brutal bureaucracy, that can and will destroy lives.

Doubts? Sure. Want to roll the dice? A lot of nice people didn’t. Great way to run a government, guys. The New Orleans District Attorney’s office played a variation on the same game.

The notice Tiffany Lacroix received in November had “SUBPOENA” printed at the top, next to a logo of the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. It ordered her to meet with a prosecutor to discuss the upcoming trial of Cardell Hayes, charged with murdering former Saints player Will Smith.

“A FINE AND IMPRISONMENT MAY BE IMPOSED FOR FAILURE TO OBEY THIS NOTICE,” it declared.

To a criminal defense lawyer, this subpoena might fail miserably to suffice.  Continue reading →