Blog Posts


I'm Now A Suspended Lawyer, So I Am Pulling This Page

As a few snark hunters have noted with glee in comments to posts on this page, I've been suspended from the practice of law for six months. So I am to pulling this blog page, steeped, as it is, in reference to my lawyerly days. (Or, I should say, I've asked my webmaster to pull this page; I am not...

Yo, Can You Spare Forty Acres And A Mule?

It was obvious to me one year ago that the pandemic would yield a time of extraordinary social tumult. Indeed, just over one year ago, I wrote in these pages about the general strike theory of the pandemic, how the viral contagion would be turned into an occasion to try to recast the...

Introducing a New Podcast: Law and Legitimacy

I’ll never forget the first time I heard of blogging. Mike Cernovich called. I think he was a law student at Pepperdine at the time. Did I want to join him on a blog site he had created called Crime and Federalism? The year was 2005.
“What’s a...

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...

Federal Prosecutors Take Aim At Free Speech

Jumpin’ Jiminy, Holy Moly, and WTF: Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York have either lost their minds, or never had minds to being with. They are prosecuting a social media influencer for the snake oil he tweeted in the 2016 election.
It goes...

Demographics, Destiny And The 2020 Election

If Ronald Brownstein, senior political analyst at The Atlantic, is right, the results of the 2020 election hardly matter at all, at least in the long run. He concluded his most recent piece, published just before the election, with the following:
“The 2020...

Covidtopia: Playing With Fire In Connecticut Courts

Finally, something that sounds like reliable information about the COVID-19 pandemic and the courts in Connecticut.
A client of mine faces federal narcotics charges. His case was set for trial in early December in Hartford. At a pre-trial conference with a federal judge moments...

Some Podcasts You Might Want To Consider

I can’t say I’ve found much to like about this pandemic. Today marks the seventh month that I’ve worked from home, hardly venturing out at all. I still have in my wallet the same $413 I had when I stepped off an airplane on March 13 and drove home to quarantine.
...

The Hidden Promise, And Terror, Of Artificial Intelligence

As I watch the nation transform itself into the Failed States of America, I struggle with what the future will hold. My best guess? Long after the union has crumbled, we’ll be coping with, and relying upon, artificial intelligence (AI).
Indeed, I spend a fair...

Mob Rule in Virginia

I’ve never worn blackface, but I’ve laughed when I’ve seen actors like Bing Cosby do so. Just like I laughed when I saw three Coors beer cans in hoods surrounding a Budweiser bottle in a noose. In the highly charged world in which the closest thing to holiness is...

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