On the one hand, Donald Trump’s captured “private” chat with Billy somebody was disgusting. If misogyny alone was enough to preclude a person from being elected president, that would have been the end of things. It wasn’t. The difference in what was said, that he actually engaged in the conduct spoken, is that those actions would be illegal. On the other hand, even that wasn’t enough to stop voters from rejecting Hillary Clinton.

Rather than get the message that America doesn’t buy the hysterical hyperbole, Vanderbilt philosophy prof Kelly Oliver doubles down.  It’s not just misogyny, but violence.

Well before the election of Donald J. Trump, the mainstreaming of misogyny during his campaign caused justified outrage and fear. Now, with the alarming reality of his coming presidency and his choices for a number of cabinet posts, that fear has been multiplied among the nation’s vulnerable, and those who stand to defend their most basic rights.

Of course the problem of misogyny and violence against women existed long before this election cycle. But the immediate danger that comes with raising an unrepentant misogynist to the nation’s highest office is emboldenment; the implicit condoning of degrading or violent behavior against women, and the diminished fear of punishment from authorities.

Continue reading →

While everyone, myself included, has some fun with the pettiness of the president-elect’s reaction to an uncivil curtain call, a wonkish concern goes relatively unnoticed.

Friday evening, the Washington Post reported that about 100 foreign diplomats gathered at President-elect Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC to “to sip Trump-branded champagne, dine on sliders and hear a sales pitch about the U.S. president-elect’s newest hotel.” The tour included a look at the hotel’s $20,000 a night “town house” suite. The Post also quoted some of the diplomats saying they intended to stay at the hotel in order to ingratiate themselves to the incoming president.

What? You didn’t know the guy had hotels? Of course you did. But you assumed that he would at least have the good sense not to engage in the transparent conflict of interest of using them as an opportunity for foreign governments to curry his favor.

Donald Trump has decided not to put his businesses in a blind trust, a mechanism by which his assets would be managed by people with no direct connection to the President. Instead, he has asked his children to continue to manage the global operation, which raises the possibility of an appearance of a conflict of interest.

Continue reading →

With each new rumor, screams were heard. Rudy Giuliani as Attorney General? As Secretary of State? Chris Christie as White House doorman? The runt of the Sessions litter? Steve Bannon as anything? How could this be? They’re awful, terrible, racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, white supremacists+. How was it possible that the president-elect chose these horrible people?

Early signs of what the Trump administration may look like: A man associated with white supremacy and misogyny will be White House chief strategist; a man rejected for a judgeship because of alleged racism will be attorney general; and an Islamophobe who has taken money from Moscow will be national security adviser.

No, this is not satire.

I’ve repeatedly noted that my side lost this election, that elections have consequences, and that President-Elect Donald Trump should be given a chance. He seems intent on blowing that chance.

Given a chance to do what, exactly? Make Lena Dunham Secretary of Education? Put Lady Gaga in charge of wardrobe? It’s not that the people being chosen, or whispered about, or rumored to be something, aren’t the people I would choose if I was president, but I’m not president. Neither are you. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: Long time reader and commenter, Patrick Maupin, provides an answer to a question that so many have asked, “what can I do?” He saw the opportunity to be heard and did something. It worked, so I asked him to write a post about it. Thank you, Pat.

Back in July, I received a pre-recorded call on my cellphone. It was a breathless, chirpy female voice, probably Rachel from cardholder service’s little sister:

Hi! We haven’t heard from you after the recent disaster in your area! Call the Wells Fargo Disaster Recovery Team at 1-888-818-9147 if you need financial assistance or need help rebuilding!

In order to look outside and verify that the sun was still shining and the birds were still singing, I had to use my window — the walls and roof of my domicile seemed quite intact, so I wasn’t exactly sure what the disaster was, or what I was supposed to be rebuilding. The whole spiel sounded as bad (or as good) as the IRS calls, so I duly wrote down the number in preparation for explaining to Wells Fargo that they should warn their customers about this scam. Continue reading →

Mark Lilla, who gets a paycheck for, of all things, teaching humanities at Columbia University, took his career into his hands by writing an op-ed entitled The End of Identity Liberalism. Oh boy.

But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.

While I would take issue with his characterization of liberalism, which I view as a conflation of liberalism with progressivism, that’s just my pet peeve. I’m big on definitions, which have gone out of fashion among intellectuals. But putting aside the labels, he makes a point that must have been painful:

One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election campaign and its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end.

Continue reading →

It’s given the name “probable cause” even though it’s neither probable nor cause. The law likes to do that, because it lets good people sleep at night believing that there is a viable system in place that both protects them from the bad guys and preserves their freedom.  Yay, law!

But probable cause is a rhetorical trick. Doggie sniffs, which are basically coin tosses with cute puppies who, when ordered, will bite your head off, continue to impose their tyranny on the public because judges aren’t cat people. When there’s no doggie to be had, what’s a cop to do?

When officers tested the powder using a $2 narcotics identification kit, it was identified as a controlled substance.

The only problem with the $2 testing kit, available at a K-Mart near you, is that it’s prone to false results. This isn’t a secret. So why use it? Did you not read that it only costs $2? The government has a duty to protect the public fisc. That’s your taxpayer money they’re spending, you know. And besides, they’re out there doing god’s work nailing criminals, and of all the things not worthy of your hard-earned tax dollars, who is worse than criminals? Continue reading →

As charged, Josh Kendrick made the argument that the defense lawyer should put the needs of the defendant ahead of any societal desire for racial neutrality on the jury. Not only is this a reflection of the ethical duty to zealously defend, but the recognition that in the clash between the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the Equal Protection Clause, a defense lawyer’s duty is to the former.

For having done as charged, he received this reaction:

The question is: Do the ends justify the means? Seems like a decided question. As Caleb writes, “Unequivocally, the answer is no.”

You have defined the ends as “win, win, win.” You don’t care if the client is innocent or guilty. You don’t care if you destroy a witness’ reputation or career by admittedly misrepresenting and distorting the truth. Your goal is to get every client off so nobody ever goes to jail. And you think morals are relative.

I just can’t find a bit of this persuasive. Do lawyers study moral philosophy or jurisprudence anymore?

Continue reading →

Most young people had never heard of Korematsu until yesterday, when Carl Higbie, another name no one ever heard of until he appeared on Megyn Kelly’s Fox show, did the unthinkable.

During an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show, Carl Higbie said a registry proposal being discussed by Trump’s immigration advisers would be legal and would “hold constitutional muster.”

“We’ve done it with Iran back awhile ago. We did it during World War II with the Japanese,” said Higbie, a former Navy SEAL and until Nov. 9, the spokesman for the pro-Trump Great America PAC.

This is lunacy of the worst order, and yet another reason why we shouldn’t look to Navy SEALs to explain law. They’re great at killing Osama, but really lousy at constitutional interpretation. Continue reading →

One of the most moving, tearful expressions of deep concern came from César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández:

We are one week into the age of Trump. Two months remain before he takes office. A man who campaigned on a platform of rhetorical violence will soon occupy the highest political office in the United States. Already the effect has been unmistakable. Incidents of hateful attacks have risen sharply. Among the millions of people who fit a description that Trump ridiculed or demonized, fear has become palpable. I have seen the tears and heard the despair. I have felt the threat seep into my daily experience.

He doesn’t hate undocumented immigrants. He doesn’t hate illegals. He has a blog with the cutesy name crImmigration, and appears to want to be empathetic toward the fearful. So why is he doing everything possible to scare the shit out of them?

As a teacher and scholar of crimmigration law, I realized that over the next four years, migrants, our families, and our communities will not simply suffer from a continuation of the nightmare of the last eight years. In the age of Trump, the destructive, heavy-handed immigration law enforcement strategy favored by the Obama Administration will be merely the foundation on which to build. If a President Trump implements what candidate Trump promised—what he continues to promise—the fear that I have heard and seen, the fear that I feel, will become nothing short of terror on overdrive.

Continue reading →

At Minding the Campus, K.C. Johnson tries to discern the implications of a paradigm shift in governance on what it means for Title IX. The foundation, mentioned here on occasion, produced a scenario of devastation for some, jubilation for others.

Since 2011, the federal government has made successful and devastating efforts to undermine civil liberties on campuses. The surprise outcome of the presidential election raises at least the possibility that this illicit campaign, based on a vast extension of Title IX, will be reversed. Thousands of students accused of sexual misconduct but denied due process have been victimized by the frenzy stimulated by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and by the unfair procedures that OCR has championed. (Consider events at Amherst or Yale or UVA or Brandeis, for starters.)

From the perspective that the evisceration of due process, the extension of Title IX into campus adjudications of every ill, real or perceived, was lawful, that a post-factual society is better than a factual society* is a bad thing. Will it be fixed?

President Obama’s two heads of the OCR have ignored the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act and imposed their dubious interpretations of Title IX without required notice and comment. They never offered a convincing explanation as to why, in part because Congress only rarely pressed them; outgoing OCR head Catherine Lhamon purported to justify OCR’s actions in this exchange with Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander, but only revealed herself to be ignorant of congressional authority. Continue reading →