It was 2004 when the phenomenon hit home: to young people, humor was the new journalism.

Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather … and Jon Stewart?

Readers over 30 might scoff at Stewart’s inclusion – assuming they know who he is. For many under 30, the host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” is, improbably, a source for news.

A poll released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 21 percent of people aged 18 to 29 cited “The Daily Show” and “Saturday Night Live” as a place where they regularly learned presidential campaign news.

By contrast, 23 percent of the young people mentioned ABC, CBS or NBC’s nightly news broadcasts as a source.

It wasn’t that Jon Stewart held himself out to be Dan Rather Tom Brokaw. He made clear that his show was comedy. But there was nothing he could do to prevent the phenomenon from happening. If young people wanted to get their news from him rather than the nightly news, what’s a comedian who wants increased viewership and more money to do? Continue reading →

Nassau County, New York, Acting Supreme Court Justice John Galasso no doubt meant well. But somebody, a law clerk, a colleague, someone, should have warned him that he was about to open up a huge can of whup ass.

Supreme Court Justice John Galasso, who wants us to scrub the man’s name from an October 2016 story, must have missed the day the Constitution was taught in law school.

The defendant’s name is Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Eric Lerner. Furthermore, Eric Lerner.

In fairness, there is nothing in Justice Galasso’s background to suggest he’s ever worked with the First Amendment’s right to a free speech and free press. Continue reading →

With the disproportionate emphasis on acceptance of transgender folks comes a secondary problem that few might see, but for this mother’s explanation of her daughter’s choices.

“I just wanted to check,” the teacher said. “Your child wants to be called a boy, right? Or is she a boy that wants to be called a girl? Which is it again?”

I cocked my head. I am used to correcting strangers, who mistake my 7-year-old daughter for a boy 100 percent of the time.

In fact, I love correcting them, making them reconsider their perceptions of what a girl looks like. But my daughter had been attending the after-school program where this woman taught for six months.

“She’s a girl,” I said. The woman looked unconvinced. “Really. She’s a girl, and you can refer to her as a girl.”

Continue reading →

Maybe this seemed as if it would be funny to the 13-year-old girl. Maybe it seems funny to someone. Maybe I just don’t understand what constitutes funny anymore, because there is nothing about it that strikes me as funny. Not even a little bit.

Tysen Benz was in his room when he read text messages saying someone he knew had committed suicide.

Shortly after, the 11-year-old boy from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula hanged himself.

Now, a 13-year-old girl is facing criminal charges in his death. Marquette County Prosecuting Attorney Matt Wiese said the girl posed as someone else when she faked her own death during a text conversation with Tysen. The boy, for reasons still unclear, believed it and killed himself within two hours of receiving the messages, Wiese said.

There is a causal connection issue between the prank and the suicide. Much as it seems obvious when the story is told along this timeline, there may well be influences that made Tysen susceptible to suicidal ideation, that caused him to consider killing himself at all. Maybe this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe not. Continue reading →

In a very provocative post at Dorf on Law, lawprof Eric Segal argues that Supreme Court justice nominees should shed the veneer of judicial neutrality and come clean for the sake of a nation.

The main reason the confirmation process is broken is that the way the public and the Senate view (or at least talk about) the Supreme Court is at odds with reality. Before we can fix the confirmation process, we need to have a more honest conversation about the Court itself.

Segal asserts that the Court is political, and has been since 1803.

By “political”, I mean that the Justices resolve cases, both important front-page controversies and less publicized back-page ones, through a combination of personal preferences, life experiences, partisan politics, and values writ large, where traditional legal norms play only a marginal role in generating (as opposed to explaining) their decisions.

The fiction that prevents us from having a meaningful confirmation process is the repeated falsity that law plays a primary role in the Court’s decisions.

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There are sound reasons why the polity would want both female and male legislators. Each brings different perspectives to the process, and all perspectives ought to be brought to the forefront, discussed, understood. Law needs to be considered, vetted, appreciated, from all points of view. Anything less will produce myopia, and result in more of the unintended consequences that plague society.

So Nevada, with 39.7% female legislators, “near the top” as it’s vaguely described, seems to be doing pretty well, right? Except it’s not just percentages or lady parts.

Cheaper tampons. Office breaks to pump breast milk. No co-pay on birth control.

These are not the talking points of a ladies’ happy hour. They are among the State Senate and Assembly bills being considered in the Nevada Legislature. Not only were the bills designed solely with women in mind, they each were sponsored by a female lawmaker.

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After reading the post at the conservative student newspaper, the Claremont Independent, and the letter sent to Claremont College president, David Oxtoby, the impression was that this was just another Wellesley College debacle, stupid children filled with an excess of passion and empty jargon, and just shy of a full complement of logic. But then I saw Walter Olson’s reply to a twit by some random fool.

Continue reading →

It sucks to be Israel, a rational player in an irrational game. You can rightfully criticize its policies. This sentence has two very distinct meanings, one beingthat its policies toward the Palestinians can be justifiably criticized as unduly harsh and aggressive. But it also means you have the ability to criticize its policies, because it allows for criticism. Its neighbors are not so generous.

Marwan Barghouti was a member of the Palestinian parliament. He was also the head of the Tanzim militia. In the former, he was a proponent of the two-state solution, a position that many, Jews included, agree with. In the latter, he was convicted of killing five people in what was described as a terrorist attack, for which he was sentenced by an Israeli court to five life sentences.

Notably, he was neither stoned to death nor had his head chopped off. Also notably, he was able to write an op-ed for the New York Times to express his views. It’s a political polemic, for sure, reflecting his perception of the legitimacy of his views and the horrors of his captors. Continue reading →

Creating new constitutionally protected “rights” with warm and fuzzy sounding names has become the weapon of choice for the progressive left. Who can be against dignity and privacy? And as is invariably the case, the other team eventually figures out the method to the madness and does it too.

A Colorado State Senator, Kevin Lundberg (R-Berthoud), has introduced a bill to protect “the fundamental right of conscience.” Senate Bill 283 is called, “The Right To Disagree.”

The main point of this bill:

Discrimination laws (rightfully) demand that all people are treated equally, and the business must provide those products and services to all who seek them. But business owners should not be forced to provide products and services that violate their conscience. The business owner should be able to identify the scope of their business and not be forced to go beyond, into any business practice with which they disagree.

What person doesn’t want the right to disagree? This person. Continue reading →

Josie Duffy Rice’s twit got 197 hearts and 73 retwits. By any empirical measure, she won.

In response, Josie twitted: “you’re making things mutually exclusive that aren’t.” That’s kinda true, but not really. There will be times, circumstances, when the two overlap, but that doesn’t change the job. Continue reading →