Blog Posts


The Unwinding of Ye

I've now viewed Ye's appearance on Alex Jones in it its entirety. (You can view it on Banned.Video; as of this writing, it has been viewed almost 5.3 million times.) Herewith a report.
I won't call the appearance an interview of Ye by Alex; neither will I call it an interview of Alex and...

Rushdie, Fatwas and Cancel Culture

This just may be what comes of the triumphant cry of the warrior who knows but one truth, and who is determined to destroy all those who stand in its way: Salman Rushdie, laying in a pool of blood on a stage at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. He was getting ready to speak to a group...

John Locke and the Basketball Analogy

The opening moves in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government have dramatic and rhetorical appeal, even if they lack coherence. Strictly speaking, there was no “state of nature” in which fully capable and competent individuals struck bargains with one another. And...

A Matter Of Survival -- Self-Regarding Acts?

For years, I’ve been haunted by the message of a slender volume written in 2014. Only China survived the challenges imposed by climate change. It did so because it alone had the ability to mobilize itself against the threat.
Western societies, western...

Beware An Algorithmic Coup

A bold new body of law will emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. Expect expanded police powers for states, a re-striking of the balance between state and federal governments, and a re-examination of what is reasonable in terms of the Bill of Rights. Expect all that.
But...

Memo to NAACP: Trial Advocacy Matters

Darnell Moore was charged with murder. He was black. Almost every potential juror was white. We made an issue of it. After his conviction, the Courts must now decide whether he was deprived of a representative...

Tolstoy, Berlin and Artificial Intelligence

I wonder what Isaiah Berlin would have had to say about artificial intelligence. This occurred to me as I sat listening to presentations on big data and the Fourth Amendment at a recent conference in New York City sponsored by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. It turns out...

Dylann's Killers Take Aim

I can’t say I am surprised by Dylann Roof’s decision to conduct his own defense. What, really, has he to lose?
Mr. Roof is standing trial in a South Carolina federal court, accused of 33 crimes — ranging from murder to obstruction of religion to firearms charges and to hate...

Getting Radicalized in an Era of Jihad

I have a confession to make. It’s not pretty. Indeed, given the argot of the day, it’s pretty terrifying. You see, I’ve been ”radicalized.”
Why, I am even going to take a course to qualify for a pistol permit, this coming from a guy who once wrote, and still...

An Invitation To John Grisham

I imagine John Grisham, the best-selling author of plot-driven legal thrillers, channel surfing late one night on his 100-plus-acre farm in Oxford, Mississippi, and settling on an episode of "Better Call Saul." The author of books selling 275 million worldwide must have felt a pang of regret on...

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