President Barack Obama, in the wake of Ferguson, announced that he’s discovered police body cams.

The Obama administration wants to set aside $263 million to improve law enforcement training and fund the purchase of 50,000 cameras that police officers can wear on their bodies.

The White House proposed the move in a review of local-law-enforcement funding, released on Monday. It arrives one week after a Grand Jury decided not to indict Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of teenager Michael Brown, a decision that has sparked widespread upheaval across the country.

The announcement suggested myriad initiatives, like the end of providing excessed weapons of mass destruction to local police “just in case,” but as Trevor Timm notes, it was just empty rhetoric to calm the natives, with no actual change intended.  But the body cams, 50,000 of them (maybe), raised the specter of the remarkably successful Rialto, California experiment. Continue reading →

Twitter has lists. Black lists. Lists of people to be blocked en masse so that your eyes need never again see anything these blacklisted twitters write. Whether MRAs or feminists, SJWs or racists, there will be lists.

This isn’t a free speech issue. Twitter is a commercial enterprise, and can provide its service any way it pleases.  Presumably, it is doing so in response to demands by its customers, and that’s what commercial enterprises do.  No one has stepped on your First Amendment rights. You have no right to enjoy Twitter’s services.

The justification was horrible twits threatening rape and harm, abusive twits, stalkers, and indeed, there was some of that. When particularly controversial issues arose, so too did the volume of offensive twits. And make no mistake, some were extremely, inexplicably offensive. Continue reading →

When I first read the story at Rolling Stone, I twitted “This is rape.” I fell prey to confirmation bias, as was made painfully clear in a subsequent post by Richard Bradley, which asked whether Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s story of the gang rape of a University of Virginia freshman, identified only as Jackie, might be a lie.

Some years ago, when I was an editor at George magazine, I was unfortunate enough to work with the writer Stephen Glass on a number of articles. They proved to be fake, filled with fabrications, as was pretty much all of his work. The experience was painful but educational; it forced me to examine how easily I had been duped. Why did I believe those insinuations about Vernon Jordan being a lech? About the dubious ethics of uber-fundraiser Terry McAuliffe?

The answer, I had to admit, was because they corroborated my pre-existing biases. I was well on the way to believing that Vernon Jordan was a philanderer, for example—everyone seemed to think so, back in the ’90s.

We all have pre-existing biases.  The problem isn’t ridding ourselves of them, since we can’t, but recognizing that we have them and doing everything possible to overcome them. Continue reading →

My fellow curmudgeon, Mark Herrmann, offered a bit of worthy advice in his column at Above The Law.

If you’ve really got it, then you don’t have to flaunt it.

Shamelessness has become a national pastime.  Not only do people feel no shame whatsoever for flagrant self-promotion, but they similarly feel no shame about puffery, overstating their worth.  Often grossly overstating their worth.  Like the Super Blogger and her team of blogging rockstars, the absurd hyperbole seemed so obvious that it was unworthy of mention. Yet, some commenters took it seriously enough to point that it may not be true. You think?

Herrmann noted that it was unnecessary to go on at length to explain how someone who is truly renown needs to prove it.  Larry Bird was his example.

In other words: “I’m Larry Bird. Yes, that Larry Bird.” ‘nuf said.

Continue reading →

In Latin, the phrase is “murum aries attigit,” which just happens to be my buddy Marco Randazza’s personal mantra.  It’s from Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War:

Caesar described the principle of “murum aries attigit,” which literally means the “The Ram Has Touched the Wall.” It referred to a Roman policy: surrender would be accepted before—but not after the battering ram touched a enemy’s city walls. Wikipedia explains the purpose behind the policy well: “The policy was to act as a deterrent against resistance to those about to be besieged. It was an incentive for anyone who was not absolutely sure that they could withstand the assault to surrender immediately, rather than face the possibility of total destruction.”

As it happens, there is a football club called the Rams, and they happen to be based in St. Louis, Missouri, not far from a place called Ferguson.  Some of the players on that team expressed their thoughts on recent happenings in Ferguson.  Five St. Louis Rams players entered the field in protest, with their “hands up, don’t shoot.” Continue reading →

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument today in Elonis v. United States, testing the scope of the First Amendment when words that certainly sound like true threats are made on Facebook by a man after his wife left him.  It’s an ugly fact pattern, offering such social media gems as:

Exhibit 12 in the government’s case against Anthony Elonis is a screenshot of a Facebook post he wrote in October 2010, five months after his wife, Tara, left him. His name appears in the site’s familiar blue, followed by words that made Tara fear for her life: ‘’If I only knew then what I know now . . . I would have smothered your ass with a pillow. Dumped your body in the back seat. Dropped you off in Toad Creek and made it look like a rape and murder.’’

If this strikes you as too prospective, try this one instead:

‘’There’s one way to love ya but a thousand ways to kill ya. I’m not gonna rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts’’

Continue reading →

“But they can’t do that?!?”

Well, yes and no. Perhaps legally and ethically, they’re not supposed to be able to do that, but there is a reason Alexander Hamilton called the judiciary the “least dangerous branch” in Federalist 78.  A straggler offered a comment to my post about the Ferguson Lie:

But again, as one poster pointed out, wasn’t he under extreme pressure by the African-American community to prosecute? And because he knew the evidence would not substantiate the claim that Wilson murdered Brown, he chose to present the case to the Grand Jury to in fact “be fair”? Or more probably, to pass the buck so that he would not receive the lion’s share of the wrath of the locals because he didn’t prosecute?

One poster?  Math challenged is nothing to laugh at, but what else could I do?

Is there a reason why repeating the same thing over and over is necessary? There is no exception that allows him to present to the grand jury do appease public pressure. “But he did it?” Yes, he did. “But, but, but…” Continue reading →

At the top of the story is a parenthetical, meant to calm the cries of foul for the story after it hit social media and Cleveland.com was excoriated for it.

(Update: A line has been added to this story to give insight into the motivation to investigate the parents’ background)

The story is all about Leonard Warner.  Yes, that Leonard Warner.  Who, you ask?  Why, Leonard Warner. Have you been hiding under a rock?  You know, Leonard Warner.  Of course, if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t seek legal advice from past episodes of the Kardashians, the name may not mean much to you.  That’s because it shouldn’t. That’s because the name is utterly irrelevant to anything whatsoever.

And that’s why Cleveland.com inserted the explanatory parenthetical.  And that’s why thoughtful people everywhere ripped Cleveland.com a new one for having posted the story.  It’s not merely outrageous, but feeds the public ignorance by suggesting that it matters and is worthy of space. Continue reading →

Among the many things I’ve learned from twitter, almost everyone there is far, far more important than me.  I read the bios of some of the people who follow me, and learn they are all bloggers, aspirational speakers, available for concerts and, in a surprisingly high number, rock stars.

I know! Rock stars are following me! No, I have no clue why either. I’m just a lawyer.

In the email the other day, I received a guest-posting pitch, which I would normally delete like the other dozen I get every day.  For no particular reason, I took a look, and boy was I glad I did.  This wasn’t from the usual desperate writer or gal from Bangalore trying to eek out a buck.

Hi Scott,

Just a quicky. Your blog http://blog.simplejustice.us excites me! it’s a great looking and well kept blog. Unusual these days! Continue reading →

Some police departments have established rules for when officers can unholster their sidearms.  The concern is that a time may arise when a cop should have, but didn’t, draw his gun because of the rules. The concern is that the cop may be killed for following the rules.

No one wants a cop killed, especially his department. So the New York Police Department, which has a Patrol Guide big enough to choke a carriage horse, dealing with everything from the tilt of a cop’s cap to his nose hair, has no rules as to when a cop can draw his gun.

There are some New York City police officers who can count on one hand the number of times they have drawn a gun, even over decades on the force.

Then there are the officers who patrol the city’s 334 public housing complexes. There are about 2,350 uniformed officers in the department’s Housing Bureau, about 1,825 of whom are rank-and-file police officers.

To some of them, drawing their guns, even with no present threat, is routine, a practice borne of habit or some internal gauge of an encounter that might go bad. And their bosses, unlike some police commanders around the country, permit it.

Continue reading →