Before anybody gets their panties in a twist, there was once a time when transgender folks* had a sense of humor.
And rather than fear and loathing, there was humor and acceptance. Sure, it didn’t mean you wanted your kid to be one, but exposure led to societal recognition and acceptance. Just not fast enough. And not seriously enough. And way too campy, because these were real people, not circus oddities. Continue reading
Spying on Muslims is about as New York as it gets, since the NYPD took on the role of mini-CIA and created its own spying apparatus to the applause of appreciative New Yorkers who wanted only to be safe. As they did with the Black Panthers years ago, and whatever threat blinded the city to all those delightful constitutional freedoms they adore for themselves but hate for the bad guy du jour.
And New York City’s most progressive-ish mayor ever, Bill de Blasio, agreed to settle this latest violation, as the winds of social justice shifted and Muslims became a progressive protected class rather than presumptively dreaded terrorists.
In January, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, agreed to appoint a civilian lawyer to monitor the department’s counterterrorism activities as a means of settling two lawsuits accusing the city of violating the rights of Muslims over the past decade.
Problem solved? After all, isn’t this what we call for whenever police departments are caught doing the dirty, such as spying on citizens? We demand the feds sweep in and use their voodoo to make everything constitutional again. After all, if you can’t trust the integrity of the feds, whom can you trust? Continue reading
I wrote a few posts this morning, while reffing the Fault Lines debate between Josh Kendrick and Andrew King over whether FBI Director Jim Comey is a hero or weasel. It’s a great debate. That’s what you should be reading this morning rather than this post.
As for the posts I wrote, I decided afterward to keep them to myself and not publish them. If that’s a problem for you, hit the pink button on the sidebar. And, as always, you get my moneyback guarantee.
Now, get over to Fault Lines and read your ass off. Seriously.
In Toronto, prof Jordan Peterson started a shitstorm by refusing to be compelled to say “xe” because it wasn’t a real word.
By now most of the country is familiar with the story of one professor, Jordan Peterson, at the University of Toronto, who has expressed strong and vivid dissent over the university’s attempt to force him to use certain words — ersatz pronouns, a batch of neologisms (ze, zim, zer, and a raft of others, in place of he or she) coined by progressive groups, intended to apply to students who “self-identify” as other than the archaic and obsolete designations of man and woman.
Prof. Peterson will not use these new cant words. He will not be ordered by the university, or pressured by activists, to take their words and put them in his mouth. He goes further and insists that it is an abandonment of academic freedom, and freedom of speech more generally, for the university or others to insist or attempt to mandate such a practice.
In honor of his bold and principled stance, he’s received a warning and two letters of reprimand. This isn’t a matter of academic freedom or free speech, he’s told. It’s a matter of hate speech. HATE SPEECH!!! That explains it in a rational and articulate way, right?
As a result of Peterson’s speaking on these matters, “Some students have been the target of specific and violent threats, including threats of assault, injury and death against them individually and as members of the trans community. We trust these that these impacts on students and others were not your intention in making (the controversial remarks). However, in view of these impacts, as well as the requirements of the Ontario Human Rights Code, we urge you to stop making these remarks.”
It hurts to find myself in the position of having to defend FBI Director James Comey. We aren’t old friends, and, well, I’m not a big fan. But in order to find a scapegoat, a lot of folks are shedding their blue suits (or blue jeans, as the case may be) for pink hotpants. A week from now, we’ll be past the election, but the damage done people’s understanding of the law will stay with us. That’s a problem.
Jim Comey has no friends in Washington. Harry Reid sent him a letter regretting his backing Comey’s nomination.
It looks like Reid told him. But then, so did some ex-Justice lawyers, like Jamie Gorelick and Larry Thompson, neither of whom was a stranger to partisan politics when in office, and Richard Painter, a former White House lawyer. The former exclaim that Comey will be responsible for the death of democracy (nothing hyperbolic there) for not honoring a decades-old gentlemen’s agreement to do nothing within 60 days of an election to influence its outcome. The latter claims it’s a Hatch Act violation because, well, he never actually says. Continue reading
Not that this is a new phenomenon, or this hasn’t been beaten to death, but every time it happens, it’s still shocking.
There are so many reasons why this is wrong, why this should never happen, why, when this does happen, it should be addressed. But no one gives a damn, and no one ever has. Gots to get the bad dudes, and the litany of excuses for incompetence gets pulled out and splayed.
But none of this was necessary on any level. No need for the raid. No need for the damage. No excuse for the mistake. None of it. Continue reading
In a weird sense, given that the marketeering apparatus of the internet feeds the belief that lawyers are all whores walking Google Boulevard in hot pants begging for the opportunity to always be closing, you can’t blame Suzanne Hooper. Sure, I didn’t do it. I don’t offer free consultations, even though the marketeers say I do. Not directed personally at me, of course, but spreading stupidity wherever they go, because it’s all they have to offer.
So when Suzanne Hooper called “Jane,” she assumed she was entitled.
The subject of the review (call her “Jane”) doesn’t advertise free consultations. Suzanne called her wanting free legal advice. Jane didn’t give the free advice. Suzanne did not like that. Suzanne punished Jane.
Jane didn’t give Suzanne an answer (or at least didn’t give Suzanne the answer she wanted to hear); Topek and Topek spent 45 minutes on the phone with Suzanne, who never intended to hire them, and gave her the answer she wanted to hear.
Jane, a pseudonym because Mark Bennett won’t give the name up, now has a review on the Googles. Continue reading
Within hours, Orin Kerr twitted the obvious:
Interesting to see Comey transformed from a pro-Clinton hack to an anti-Clinton hack with just one letter.
— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) October 29, 2016
And then the machine of a presidential campaign turned on the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for doing the unspeakable, throwing a sabot into the gears of an apparent downhill slide to victory.
The spin is all about the feelings of the few eligible voters who are either not committed regardless of the news or somehow missed the past 1000 days because they were working hard and feeding their families. To the firmly partisan, the only question is for or against, will Jim Comey’s letter ruin Hillary Clinton’s moment of glory. Nothing else matters. Continue reading
Judge Jack Weinstein raised a very interesting, and difficult, problem when he rejected the valuation of future income in a tort case of a 4-year-old boy who suffered mental disability from the ingestion of lead paint.
Attorneys representing G.M.M. said $3.4 million was the right number, arguing that the boy would have had a bright career ahead of him; both of his parents had graduated from college and his mother received a master’s degree, according to the court documents. But the landlord’s defense put the figure at less than half that – $1.5 million. Attorney Roger Archibald noted that because the boy was Hispanic, G.M.M. was unlikely to attain the advanced education that would garner such a large income.
“The [proportion] of Hispanics attaining master’s degrees was in the neighborhood of 7.37 percent,” Archibald told the court.
See the problem? Projecting future earnings is based on a statistical analysis, and statistical analysis is based on past experience. But past experience is based upon societal discrimination. So, does the amount get reduced by the facts, or by the fact that the facts are the product of discrimination? And what of the possibility that the boy wouldn’t have a future that would either overcome past discrimination, or that society would sufficiently address discrimination such that the boy’s future wouldn’t be constrained by the past? Continue reading
A while back, I read a post about how young lawyers can promote themselves by getting gigs at Continuing Legal Education presentations to show off for older lawyers, the ones with business to refer out. The irony, of course, was that it neglected to explain what a lawyer who had no clue could teach a lawyer who did, but since the baby lawyers who read drivel can’t think that hard, nobody noticed.
But since the wall of required CLEs had broken free of competent content, the ABA saw the opportunity to push its agenda into the mix.
In June 2016, in response to the efforts of the ABA’s “Diversity & Inclusion 360 Committee,” the ABA Board of Governors adopted a new ABA Rule for all ABA-sponsored Continuing Education (CLE) Programs. The ABA intends that this new rule be mandatory, not aspirational. It will “take effect March 1, 2017.”
This new rule does not remove barriers to equal opportunity nor does it promote intellectual diversity. Instead, this rule imposes a requirement that each CLE panel has “diversity” based on sexual orientation, gender identification, and so forth.