HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Tamanaha, Estreicher Respond to Morriss’ Ten Reasons To Be Cheerful About The Future of Legal Education.
Archive for 2015
April 21, 2015
April 20, 2015
ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS! Er, okay, so maybe he’s not exactly a Christian soldier: A Colorado Biker Who Calls Himself ‘Necromancer’ Is Fighting ISIS In Iraq. “I’m here for the people, nobody else. I’m here for all of those who want to live a peaceful life that has been deprived to them by ISIS. I don’t care about politics or religion. That’s not what I’m here for.”
JOHN FUND: Fiorina Has Hillary Defenders Worried. I like Carly Fiorina. She fights. Can we find out what she drinks, and send it to all the other Republicans?
DON’T WORRY! WE HAVE SMART DIPLOMACYTM ON THE JOB! Oh, by the way: The U.S. and Iran may be headed for war off the coast of Yemen. Sink ’em all!
LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Scooby hits the road at 92 MPH! Secret Service zooms Hillary to dinner through driving rain following secret afternoon house party. To be fair, if I were driving Hillary around I’d be in a hurry to reach the destination too.
ED DRISCOLL: How an Internet Stuffed to the Gills with ‘Nonjudgmental’ Users Became a Shame-Storm.
Lefties aren’t non-judgmental. They’re just afraid of being judged.
TONI MORRISON: “I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back.” Get a grip, you old hater.
You know, I was reading some piece of historical fiction or other where physicians were talking about curing the plague by putting a dead rat over the buboes to draw the poisons to the surface. Barack Obama is our dead rat. Since he has occupied the White House, all manner of poisons — already there, but not visible — have been drawn to the surface. Toni Morrison is just the latest example. Though, if she weren’t a bitter racist, she’d know about stories like this one.
UPDATE: Ed Driscoll remembers when lefties were swearing off the rhetoric of violence. Yeah, that didn’t last long. It never does with them.
OBAMA’S NATIONAL SECURITY DREAM TEAM: . . . is more like a nightmare. Scott Johnson over at Powerline catalogs the top Obama security advisors, and reading it, one can’t help but feel like Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
It reminds me of a scrawny JV team (with DOD Secretary Ashton Carter as the only promising prospect), which is ironic, considering that President Obama referred to ISIS as an al Qaeda JV.
PATRICK FREY ON WISCONSIN’S DIRTY DEEP STATE DOINGS:
This is one of the creepiest articles I have ever read. It reminds me of my experience being SWATted — having armed police rush into my home in what looked like retaliation for my speech. Yet in the case described in the article, the SWATting is actually being carried out . . . by the government.
In Wisconsin, citizens had cops bust into their homes with battering rams. Property was taken from their homes, in full view of the neighbors — and in some cases officers mocked them. Then the citizens were told that they could tell nobody about what had happened. If they did, they could go to jail.
All for exercising their First Amendment rights. Essentially, for being conservatives.
And on Twitter, some lefties — including allegedly reputable outfits like the Alliance For Justice — are celebrating it. Alliance for Justice? More like “Alliance for Just Us.”
UPDATE: Kevin Williamson:
Every time a local grand jury investigating a police department comes to a decision that some politicians don’t like, there is a call for a federal civil-rights investigation. In Wisconsin, we have a clear and obvious case of out-of-control authorities conducting a campaign, possibly criminal, of police suppression targeting people for their political beliefs, a gross violation of their civil rights.
Where’s the investigation?
Question for the lawyers here: Isn’t this a case for the Civil Rights Act of 1871, a.k.a. the Klan Act? That act forbids any state or local authority acting under color of law from depriving U.S. citizens of their civil rights under federal law. This seems like an obvious remedy to me.
Well, the Klan was a bunch of Democrats concerned about the locals getting uppity, too.
ANOTHER UPDATE: In the comments, Prof. Stephen Clark observes:
Every Democrat should repeatedly be asked whether they support the police state tactics used by Democrats in Wisconsin. As with Rand Paul every media interviewer should be asked by candidates to answer the same as the price for continuing the interview.
Wisconsin Democrats should be made into a public embarrassment for Democrats generally. Behavior of this kind will cease only when it carries a global political cost.
Indeed. Excellent point.
DISGRACEFUL: Automakers to gearheads: Stop repairing cars: Car Companies Say Home Repairs Are ‘Legally Problematic,’ Seek Copyright Restrictions. “Automakers are supporting provisions in copyright law that could prohibit home mechanics and car enthusiasts from repairing and modifying their own vehicles. In comments filed with a federal agency that will determine whether tinkering with a car constitutes a copyright violation, OEMs and their main lobbying organization say cars have become too complex and dangerous for consumers and third parties to handle.”
When you buy stuff, you should own it, and busybodies should stuff it. And this is just further proof that copyright law has gone way too far, and become a big-business-protection racket, not something devoted to promoting the progress of science and the useful arts.
WE VALUE DIVERSITY, WE JUST DON’T LIKE PEOPLE WHO ARE DIFFERENT: Calgary Expo faces consumer backlash after expelling female critics of feminism. “A group of female webcomic artists and online radio hosts have been ejected from the Calgary Expo, a Canadian pop culture convention, after publicly disagreeing with members of a feminist panel discussion. Staff at the expo informed them that they had received reports of ‘harassment’ at the panel, but footage of the discussion shows that no such behaviour took place. Consumers accused the Calgary Expo of engaging in political intolerance, and have begun a boycott of the convention’s sponsors. . . . Consumers aren’t just speaking out on Twitter. They’re also complaining to the Calgary Expo’s sponsors, which include CMP Chevrolet, Vue Weekly, Pattison Outdoor advertising, Air Electronics, and ATB Financial. Threads to co-ordinate the email campaign have been posted on Reddit and 8chan.”
SO THIS IS BASICALLY STATE-SANCTIONED HAZING: The Footwear Cadets Were Allegedly Forced to Wear During Political Event March Has Sparked an Uproar. As the commenters note, this was just an effort to humiliate men in the service of PC ideology.
UPDATE: From the comments:
The Canadian Army is deploying to the Ukraine.
The US Army is wearing high heels.
Yikes.
Hopey-changey. And admit it, if in 2012 I’d said, re-elect Obama and you’ll see American fighting men forced to march in red high heels, you’d have thought I was over the top crazy, wouldn’t you? But then, there were a lot of real predictions about Obama’s presidency that seemed crazy and paranoid, but that have also turned out to be true. . . .
TROLL LEVEL: GRANDMASTER. Kurt Schlichter: Sexy Conservatives Will Out-Breed Barren Liberals. “The last time some Twitter leftist sneered at me and called me a ‘breeder,’ I wondered whether this collectivist genius considered not reproducing to be a wise long-term strategy. . . . Liberal women, encouraged by the sour crones of the radical feminist movement, often wait far too long to marry and to begin families. They were lied to – you can’t have it all. Life is choices, and a family is a choice that means trade-offs. Choose unwisely, and one may not be able to undue the relentless ticking of the biological clock. And as far as liberal men go, well, just look at them. It’s hard muster raw sexual energy when you think foreplay consists of sobbing to your life partner about how you can’t bear the weight of your undeserved phallocentic privilege.”
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MY THOUGHTS IN USA TODAY: Wisconsin’s Dirty Prosecutors Pull A Putin.
UPDATE: More:
Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth — two of the targets in the John Doe investigations I wrote about today — have filed suit against the prosecution team that made their lives so unrelentingly miserable. Unfortunately, that lawsuit — like many lawsuits against the “deep state” — faces multiple hurdles that are wholly unrelated to the underlying merits of the case itself. In fact, the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that O’Keefe’s case was barred by the federal Anti-Injunction Act, which prohibits federal courts from enjoining some state proceedings. O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth have petitioned the Supreme Court for review, and the Court will determine whether to take the case very soon. Yet the Anti-Injunction Act is just one hurdle that litigants have to clear. Prosecutors enjoy extensive immunities, damages are notoriously difficult to obtain, and injunctions can’t turn back time to undo the effects of suppressed speech or make terrified families whole.
Nope. That’s why partisan prosecutor John Chisholm and his tame judge Barbara Kluka should be shunned, condemned, subjected to a shower of ethics complaints, protested wherever they appear, and otherwise given the kind of treatment that the Left dishes out to the people that it doesn’t like, until they have suffered more than their victims. Pour encourager les autres.
I say that I look forward to having a normal president again — or rather, a president whom people treat normally. A president whom the press criticizes, and gangs up on. A president whom comedians joke about. And a president who doesn’t treat all criticism, and all opposition, as illegitimate. (I’m talking about criticism of, and opposition to, himself, of course.)
Yeah, well, don’t expect that from Hillary.
CHILD SUPPORT NEWS: Skip Child Support. Go to Jail. Lose Job. Repeat.
By his own telling, the first time Walter L. Scott went to jail for failure to pay child support, it sent his life into a tailspin.
He lost what he called “the best job I ever had” when he spent two weeks in jail. Some years he paid. More recently, he had not. Two years ago, when his debt reached nearly $8,000 and he missed a court date, a warrant was issued for his arrest. By last month, the amount had more than doubled, to just over $18,000.
That warrant, his family now speculates, loomed large in Mr. Scott’s death. On April 4, he was pulled over for a broken taillight, fled on foot and, after a scuffle with a police officer, was fatally shot in the back.
The warrant, the threat of another stay behind bars and the potential loss of yet another job caused him to run, a brother, Rodney Scott, said.
“Every job he has had, he has gotten fired from because he went to jail because he was locked up for child support,” said Mr. Scott, whose brother was working as a forklift operator when he died. “He got to the point where he felt like it defeated the purpose.”
Related: Forgiving $38,750 in Child Support, for My Kids’ Sake.
Earlier this year, I spent three hours sitting on a hard, wooden bench in the Queens County Family Court, waiting for a judge to approve my petition to forgive $38,750 in child support arrears from my ex-husband.
The judge said, “Well this is a rare one,” then asked me several times if I was aware of what I was doing and if I had received legal counsel. When I told my single mom friends, they looked at me as if I had committed an act of treason. “Child support is all we have!” one friend exclaimed.
Is it?
This was not a decision for divorce lawyers or court clerks. Or the unofficial single moms club, for that matter. This was about redefining what child support really is, for our family — and it’s a redefinition that other families should consider.
We have too often reduced nonresidential fathers to being weighed and judged by a financial transaction. If you don’t pay, you’re a “dead beat.” End of one story, beginning of a new one, one that can mean suspended drivers’ licenses and professional licenses, seized bank deposits and tax refunds, and the very real risk of jail time. The family of Walter Scott, who was fatally shot in the back following a traffic stop, speculates that a similar narrative led him to flee the police, fearing another lost job and another jail stint. It can also mean some mothers blocking access to children (called “pay per view”) and children becoming pawns in a game that puts their development and psychological well-being on the line.
For many, many reasons, I was determined to ensure that our family story did not include any version of that too-common series of events.
And note this from the first item:
Rodney Scott said his brother resented that his ex-wife was not required to work and that the pressure was always on him to pay support. Critics of the child support system say this imbalance is reflected in rules that say that if a mother receives public assistance, the father must pay it back, even if he is also poor. . . .
Ms. Turetsky, the head of the federal child support office, said the system should be based on the expectation that both parents would contribute toward their children’s needs. “It’s nuts,” she said of the policy of making destitute fathers repay welfare. “She gets the assistance; he gets charged with the bill.”
The system takes a punitive approach to fathers that it would never take toward mothers.
BECAUSE DEATH IS SO FUNNY (OR BECAUSE THE DEAD DON’T VOTE?): An op-ed in today’s Washington Post argues that it’s okay for health care professionals to make fun of dying patients. And while I confess to chuckling at some of the euphemisms for death (e.g., “circling the drain”), overall I find such attitudes crass. But in typical liberal/progressive style, the author tries to assure us that there are some limits: “That’s not to excuse all humor by health-care professionals. For example, mocking disabilities and using racial, ethnic or other cruel epithets go too far.”
Okay, so let me get this straight: It’s okay to make fun of the dying, but not their ethnicity or race. Because racism and stuff. Plus, cynically, dead people can’t vote Democrat, so they are fair game for off-color humor. Well, wait a minute, that’s not quite true.
UPDATE: As a viewer points out, apparently such macabre humor is completely unacceptable, however, when it emanates from conservatives, as the tea party candidate for U.S. Senate in Kansas (unsuccessfully challenging Pat Roberts), Dr. Milton Wolf, found out. As an added bonus, our informed reader notes that Dr. Wolf is a distant cousin of none other that President Obama.
OUT: STRING BIKINIS. In: C-String Bikinis.
DISPATCHES FROM LIBERTARIAN UTOPIA: Uber Driver With Carry Permit Stops Mass Killing By Shooting Gunman.
Authorities say no charges will be filed against an Uber driver who shot and wounded a gunman who opened fire on a crowd of people in Logan Square over the weekend.
The driver had a concealed-carry permit and acted in the defense of himself and others, Assistant State’s Attorney Barry Quinn said in court Sunday.
A group of people had been walking in front of the driver around 11:50 p.m. in the 2900 block of North Milwaukee Avenue when Everardo Custodio, 22, began firing into the crowd, Quinn said.
The driver pulled out a handgun and fired six shots at Custodio, hitting him several times, according to court records. Responding officers found Custodio lying on the ground, bleeding, Quinn said. No other injuries were reported.
Okay, it’s Chicago, which isn’t a libertarian utopia. But even there, tiny shards of libertarian utopia can creep through.
“HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT!”: But it’s not your stereotypical white-officer-in-minority-neighborhood situation, where we are admonished by the political left that “Black Lives Matter.” Instead, it’s in America’s Heartland, Wisconsin. And the targets are–gasp!–conservatives who supported modification of Wisconsin’s collective bargaining rules for public employees. In this terrific new piece at National Review Online, David French breaks down the shocking excessive force used against conservative targets of the so-called “John Doe” investigation. In the words of one target, “Anne”:
“It’s a matter of life or death.”
That was the first thought of “Anne” (not her real name). Someone was pounding at her front door. It was early in the morning — very early — and it was the kind of heavy pounding that meant someone was either fleeing from — or bringing — trouble.
“It was so hard. I’d never heard anything like it. I thought someone was dying outside.”
She ran to the door, opened it, and then chaos. “People came pouring in. For a second I thought it was a home invasion. It was terrifying. They were yelling and running, into every room in the house. One of the men was in my face, yelling at me over and over and over.”
It was indeed a home invasion, but the people who were pouring in were Wisconsin law-enforcement officers. Armed, uniformed police swarmed into the house. Plainclothes investigators cornered her and her newly awakened family. Soon, state officials were seizing the family’s personal property, including each person’s computer and smartphone, filled with the most intimate family information.
Why were the police at Anne’s home? She had no answers. The police were treating them the way they’d seen police treat drug dealers on television.
In fact, TV or movies were their only points of reference, because they weren’t criminals. They were law-abiding. They didn’t buy or sell drugs. They weren’t violent. They weren’t a danger to anyone. Yet there were cops — surrounding their house on the outside, swarming the house on the inside. They even taunted the family as if they were mere “perps.”
As if the home invasion, the appropriation of private property, and the verbal abuse weren’t enough, next came ominous warnings.
Don’t call your lawyer.
Don’t tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends.
The entire neighborhood could see the police around their house, but they had to remain silent. This was not the “right to remain silent” as uttered by every cop on every legal drama on television — the right against self-incrimination. They couldn’t mount a public defense if they wanted — or even offer an explanation to family and friends.
Yet no one in this family was a “perp.” Instead, like Cindy, they were American citizens guilty of nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights to support Act 10 and other conservative causes in Wisconsin. Sitting there shocked and terrified, this citizen — who is still too intimidated to speak on the record — kept thinking, “Is this America?”
Sadly, it is America, as controlled by a liberal/progressive agenda that inanely believes that conservatives who “coordinate” their political messages are somehow subverting the democratic process (rather than actually furthering it).
These secretive “John Doe” proceedings in Wisconsin are but a page in the progressives’ political playbook, evidenced by IRS targeting of tea party and other conservative groups, pressure on A&E to suspend Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson for making politically incorrect comments, and Rep. Raul Grijalva’s letter to 7 university presidents outing professors who dared to question global warming climate change (just to name a few): Harass conservatives; make it hard for them to raise money/make a living; get the media onboard to paint them as “shady,” subversive or dangerously ignorant; and tie them up with legal fees and lawsuits, with the goal of marginalizing and silencing them.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering arguments in the case via papers only, to decide whether the secret prosecutions should be halted under Wisconsin law. Oral arguments were cancelled to protect the identities of the targets. Frankly, it’s shocking that it’s taken over 5 years to get consideration from the Wisconsin Supreme Court–5 years of abuse of free speech and association rights is too much.
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