It might strike some people as hypocritical that the ACLU fired its senior policy counsel, Kate Oh, for using racist language, both because the organization wants to pretend it’s a defender of free speech and because there was nothing about Oh’s language that was racist. For others of us, however, it’s comical with a twinge of irony.

A judge ruled on Wednesday that the A.C.L.U. had illegally fired an employee, Kate Oh, from her job as senior policy counsel. The group had accused her of using language that was racist and that singled out people of color in the office. Continue reading →

How long was the honeymoon going to last? This long, apparently.

Before Vice President Kamala Harris confronted pro-Palestinian and anti-Gaza-war protesters on Wednesday at a campaign rally in Detroit, she faced demands from the leaders of a group that has mobilized voters to protest the U.S. government’s support for Israel.

The founders of the Uncommitted National Movement, the group that mobilized more than 100,000 people to withhold their votes from President Biden in this year’s Michigan primary over his support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, were among those invited to welcome Ms. Harris and her new running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, to Michigan in a photo line.

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His biography is really good. History teacher. Football coach. Football coach who became the first advisor to his high school’s gay-straight alliance. National guard for 28 years. Reared in the state wise enough to make me an admiral. What’s not to like?

An Instagram account run by staffers for Rep. Summer Lee, known as “dear_white_staffers,” posted in all-caps, “WE FUCKING DID IT WE FUCKING WON LETS GO LETS GO LETS GO!!!!!”< Continue reading →

At some point later today. Democratic presidential candidate (that’s right, the vote’s been taken and the deed is done) Kamala Harris will announce her choice of running mate. It could be one of the worn list of potential vice presidents, or it could be a surprise. Who knows? More importantly, who cares? Why has the scrutiny of Harris’ VP choice engendered such vicious and critical scrutiny?

“Common wisdom” is that the person chosen will be a “signal” of what Harris’ presidency would be about, which raises two questions. First, is it a substantive signal or is it a political choice calculated to help Harris beat Trump in the general election. Continue reading →

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has a book coming out, so he’s doing what every author does to sell books and what most justices don’t to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Justice Gorsuch sat for an interview with David French. To be fair, David is a lawyer, a never-Trump conservative and deeply religious, so there was little expectation of an interview starting with “j’accuse.”

That said, it was a very interesting interview and revealed some of Gorsuch’s views that are often overlooked by pundits lambasting him for being on the wrong side of a decision. Notably, he served as a judge on the Tenth Circuit from 2006 until 2017, when he was appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court, where he was well-regarded and uncontroversial. But nothing courts hatred like an appointment by Trump, even though a dear friend to SJ, Senior District Judge John Kane, testified on then-Judge Gorsuch’s behalf at his confirmation hearing. Continue reading →

After the dread of realizing that President Biden was not going to be re-elected president, his withdrawal and the anointment of his successor, Kamala Harris, was sure to cause a reaction. After all, going from near-certain defeat to the possibility of winning is a huge paradigm shift, one that would naturally cause certain cohorts to enthusiastically embrace the change. Viva la difference, right?

And the reaction has been enthusiastic, especially in comparison to the doldrums of a party running an octogenarian of dubious fertility. So it is similarly natural that the opposition do its best to downplay the enthusiasm, and so they did. Continue reading →

Not that it has any chance of passing in the current Congress, but if there is a major shift following the next election, who knows? Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has proposed what he delightfully calls the No Kings Act, the putative purpose of which is to reverse the Supreme Court’s presidential criminal immunity ruling in Trump v. US and strip the president (and vice president, although the Court never mentioned the Veep) of any immunity from prosecution whatsoever.

(1) NO IMMUNITY.—A President, former President, Vice President, or former Vice President shall not be entitled to any form of immunity (whether absolute, presumptive, or otherwise) from criminal prosecution for alleged violations of the criminal laws of the United States unless specified by Congress.

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The National Association of Black Journalists invited Donald Trump to be interviewed at their annual meeting. He came. By that, I mean not only was he physically present, but he was Trump at his Trumpiest.

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For all the cries about free speech when it serves their purpose, 70% of students on campus believe that “speech can be as damaging as physical violence” according to a new Knight Founndation campus survey.

Sixty percent believe that “[t]he climate at my school or on my campus prevents some people from saying things they believe, because others might find it offensive,” which is down from 65% in 2021, but still substantial. At the same time, students believe it has become more difficult to express themselves, with black students feeling it most. Continue reading →

At the LBJ Presidential Library in Saigon Austin, Texas, President Joe Biden made a major proposal to change the Supreme Court.

President Biden, warning that the country’s courts were being weaponized as part of an “extreme and unchecked” conservative agenda, said on Monday that he would push for legislation that would bring major changes to the Supreme Court, including term limits and an enforceable code of ethics on the justices.

Of course, what Biden means by “extreme and unchecked” might have something to do with the other tribe having greater control than his, and it would be less weaponized if it was the Warren court. But I digress. Continue reading →