In 1971, Helen Reddy released “I Am Woman,” which became a number one hit after being re-released the following year. It was a great song, catchy tune, good beat, and made Reddy some decent coin. It became the anthem of the Women’s Liberation Movement, and changed everything. Oh wait. No. It didn’t actually accomplish anything. But it was definitely empowering at the time.

There is nothing wrong with music, art, symbols that stir people’s passions. Sure, they may be merely feel-good symbols, and they raise awareness of issues that matter to people. Whether the issue is one you care about isn’t important. If someone does, they’re entitled to their say, their song. Or their statue. And if it’s good enough, it will sell a million copies. Or get approval to stand on a traffic island in downtown Manhattan, even if it began life as guerrilla art.

Arturo Di Modica dropped his bronze, Charging Bull, in front of the New York Stock Exchange in the middle of the night on December 15, 1989. He intended it to send a message.

Arturo Di Modica first conceived of the Charging Bull as a way to celebrate the can-do spirit of America and especially New York, where people from all other the world could come regardless of their origin or circumstances, and through determination and hard work overcome every obstacle to become successful. It’s this symbol of virility and courage that Arturo saw as the perfect antidote to the Wall Street crash of 1986.

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Not that the dedication of Ezra Klein to explaining the universe for the benefit of the unenlightened isn’t appreciated. It is. It’s just that, well, he’s got a slight tilt to his explanations, all of which are meant to suggest that his politics are right and anyone who doesn’t share his (and partner Matty Yglesias‘) strong progressive feelings is a shitlord. Maybe he’s right, but then, some of us are more tolerant of different values.

Yet, Klein offers a post at Vox that raises a curious possibility, given the depth and scope of partisan divisiveness in the nation. Many would attribute the mindless tribalism to the advent of the internet, of social media, allowing echo chambers to create the impression of public discourse when it’s nothing more than confirmation bias on steroids. Is politics broken? If so, who broke it? Common wisdom attributes this to social media. But common wisdom is often wrong.

Here’s something everyone knows: Social media is driving American politics into a ditch of partisanship. Political junkies log on and cocoon themselves in a bubble of friendly punditry, appealing fake news, and outrageous acts from the other side. Every retweet and every like is another moment of identity confirmation, another high five to our friends, another reminder that we’re right and they’re wrong.

The result is, well, this ugly mess — President Donald Trump, red and blue Americas, polls showing we fear and hate the other party more than ever before, conspiracy theories growing like weeds, a polity where agreement is impossible and everyone is angry. Damn you, Facebook! Curse you, Twitter! (Instagram, you’re cool.)

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One of the reasons some people prefer a condo, just as others reject one, is that they come with rules. If you like the rules, then it’s the right place for you. If not, then maybe you would do better elsewhere. One common rule is no dogs. Regardless of your feelings toward critters, some people prefer it that way. Are they not allowed?

Well, sometimes the answer is no, when the rules of private accommodations clash with government regulations.

Two residents, Walters and Kromenhoek, had emotional support dogs authorized by their doctors (these were not “service dogs” as defined by the statute, though the plaintiffs called them service dogs). As you can imagine, other condo residents are not OK with the facial violation of the condo rules. Talkington blogged about the situation, and he and another resident Felice repeatedly complained about it for months.

Walters and Kromenhoek sued Talkington and Felice for alleging violating 42 U.S.C. § 3617, which says: “It shall be unlawful to coerce, intimidate, threaten, or interfere with any person in the exercise or enjoyment of, or on account of his having exercised or enjoyed, or on account of his having aided or encouraged any other person in the exercise or enjoyment of, any right granted or protected by section 3603, 3604, 3605, or 3606 of this title.”

Two residents didn’t like the way two other residents flouted the rules with their “support” dogs, and wrote about it. Continue reading →

How much fun is it to have a cop pull you over and, after some cute little word games, hand you a ticket? For an ice cream!!!  Even better, an invitation to the prom!!!

When Officer Cameron Burke pulled over Jenna Rodgers, a student at Warwick High School in Lititz, Pennsylvania, and told her she had exceeded the speed limit by 15 miles an hour, she was confused because she knew she hadn’t. It turned out the traffic stop had been arranged by her boyfriend, Collin Kauffman, who approached her car holding a sign that said, “You’re under arrest if you don’t say yes. Prom?”

Is that not adorable? Imaginative? Charming? Oh, come on. It fills people’s hearts with joy, and only the most cynical haters would find something malevolent in such a cute ploy.

Whether Kauffman’s promposal strikes you as charming or alarming will depend on your attitude toward police and the restrictions imposed on them by the Constitution. Although everyone involved thought it was all in good fun, Burke violated the Fourth Amendment by stopping Rodgers for no legal reason, and there are similar problems with other feel-good stunts involving cops and motorists.

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In the scheme of socially engineered trade-offs, like eliminating the vestiges of perceived sexism in exchange for the collateral consequences of destroying some poor kid’s life, the war is largely waged at the rhetorical level.

On the one side, you have social justice warriors ‘splaining their feelings when a guy tries to convince them to have sex, or their friends explain days later that they didn’t actually consent when they completely consented because of the laundry list of excuses for post-hoc regret.

And it stops being rhetorical when there’s a dead body.

A male student who was accused of sexual harassment committed suicide just days after the University of Texas at Arlington ignored its own policies in order to punish him.

It can never be entirely clear why a person commits suicide. Whether this was the cause, or the straw that broke the camel’s back is unknown. After all, Thomas Klocke is dead, so no one can ask him. Continue reading →

The story told by United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz was that Dr. David Dao was “disruptive and belligerent.” He Ignored the existence of a video that proved the lie, the words used to rationalize calling the police to remove a passenger who had the temerity to remain in the seat he paid for after he was ordered to leave, as the randomly chosen passenger, which put into action the event that followed.

Subsequent discussion ranged from the entirely irrelevant media smearing of Dao, because they could and lacked the depth of understanding why they shouldn’t, to the abuse of the scenario as an excuse to further the social justice agenda of “privilege.” The guy just wanted to get where he was going. The guy bought a plane ticket and, like anyone else on the plane, took his seat. That’s about as far as any reasonable person’s duty to the airline goes. Continue reading →

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he was ending the Forensic Science Commission.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions will end a Justice Department partnership with independent scientists to raise forensic science standards and has suspended an expanded review of FBI testimony across several techniques that have come under question, saying a new strategy will be set by an in-house team of law enforcement advisers.

In a statement Monday, Sessions said he would not renew the National Commission on Forensic Science, a roughly 30-member advisory panel of scientists, judges, crime lab leaders, prosecutors and defense lawyers chartered by the Obama administration in 2013.

What a terrible thing to do, given the impact of junk science on wrongful convictions. Who doesn’t pine for the old days now, when the Department of Justice heeded the voices of scientists telling them that all their cool forensics were bullshit. Just total bullshit.  Continue reading →

His Election Law blog should be the go-to resource for honest, authoritative information as to the law in the aftermath of an election of a president that causes so many people to feel, write, believe, so many monumentally nonsensical things about the law. You know, the opportunity not to make people stupider. That’s pretty much what intellectual integrity is all about, why academic freedom exists.

Rick Hasen just couldn’t. He may not be as rabidly partisan as the once-respected Larry Tribe, but he makes his sympathies clear. The problem is that his blog, rather than provide insight, goes down the lazy route of merely linking to other people’s writings. One might hope a scholar would add some critical analysis, something resembling thought, to justify the murder of bandwidth. If only.

But Hasen actually wrote something which, despite being noted on his blog, appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Even before the Senate confirmed Neil Gorsuch as a justice of the Supreme Court, and before it “nuked” the filibuster for nominees, the Trump administration and conservatives were already plotting to fill the next vacancy. Indeed, they have made overtures to swing Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to get him to feel comfortable with retirement. If Kennedy goes, or if a liberal justice gets sick or dies, Democrats have few levers to stop Republicans from confirming a nominee even more conservative than Gorsuch. The future, then, holds a Supreme Court where Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is the swing vote — a scary eventuality for progressives.

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The last time I read an article by feminist-with-a-law-degree, Jill Filipovic, it was a listicle in Cosmo entitled, 9 Reasons Constitutional Originalism Is Bullsh*t. It wasn’t that I was an originalist. It was that her article made people stupider, as it was complete, utter nonsense. She distorted, well, lied unless she was really stupid enough not to realize how far from the truth she was, to advocate against then-Judge Gorsuch.

But there were others who were far more deeply concerned with originalism to take her to task, and there were other stories that grabbed me harder. So I let it go. It’s not as if her name hasn’t appeared in the annals of SJ before, That she’s a cartoon character of feminist progressive sentience is beyond doubt. That anyone lets her on their soapbox is telling. It’s like asking Ann Coulter to be fair.

Yet, whom did the New York Times turn to for its review of KC Johnson’s and Stuart Taylor’s The Campus Rape Frenzy? Continue reading →

Over the past few years, definitions have fallen out of favor, replaced by Humpty-Dumptyisms that serve their purpose in twitter-level discussion. But the vagaries that make total sense in the context of the echo chamber have yet to be accepted in court. As Eric Goldman discusses, there is a definitional void that needs fillin’.

This is an interesting opinion from the Texas Supreme Court on citing Wikipedia as a dictionary. The underlying case involves an article in D Magazine titled “The Park Cities Welfare Queen.” The article purports to show that the plaintiff, Rosenthal, “has figured out how to get food stamps while living in the lap of luxury.” After publication, evidence emerged that the plaintiff has not committed welfare fraud. She sued the magazine for defamation.

So what is a “Welfare Queen”? Much as it has become a common slur, roundly understood as such, is there an “official” definition? If so, who gets to decide what it is?

The appeals court denied the magazine’s anti-SLAPP motion in part because it held the term “Welfare Queen,” as informed by the Wikipedia entry, could be defamatory. The Texas Supreme Court affirms the anti-SLAPP denial, but it also criticizes the appeals court for not sufficiently examining the entire article’s gist. Along the way, the court opines on the credibility and validity of Wikipedia as a dictionary. TL;DR = the Supreme Court says don’t treat Wikipedia like a dictionary.

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