Blog Posts

Among the world’s mysteries is the transformation of naked power into authority. Yes, from time immemorial, there have been those with the means to impose their will on others. But we say, or at least we used to say, that when the state acts, its agents possess not mere power, but...

Fifty-three weeks ago today, I got off of an airplane in Hartford, Connecticut, and headed home to face the pandemic. Since that time, I’ve been in my office with other people once. I’ve been physically within six or so feet of non-family members not at all. I’ve eaten...

A year ago, I watched New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to try to catch my bearings as a pandemic struck. Donald Trump was the black beast of politics then. In the contrast media of the cable news cycle, Cuomo came out looking like a white knight. Hell, he wrote a book about it all. He was king...

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court appeared to ask a lot of the right questions in arguments this week on Bill Cosby’s appeal of his criminal conviction for sexual assault. What worries me are the answers the court is likely to give.
It took two trials for the...

Spotify just earned my respect. It did so by looking cancel culture in the eye, and saying: ‘f@ck you.’ I’ll be taking a subscription to Spotify this afternoon. It’s a safe haven for freedom of speech.
What did Spotify do?
It...

What if the would-be assassins plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were neither left nor right? What if the plotters were little more than canaries in the mine shaft, bearers of a warning of what is to come if we don't pull ourselves together?
News that 13...

Here’s a wrinkle I didn’t foresee in Covidtopia, our brave new world bounded by the pandemic.
A colleague of mine appeared in court in central Connecticut this morning. This in and of itself is remarkable. There are no jury trials taking place, and there...

Connecticut lawmakers undoubtedly thought they did something significant the other day, when, after pulling an all-nighter, they rushed through an “emergency” piece of legislation on police accountability. When it comes to making it possible to sue police officers who engage...

I spent more than a decade suing poiice officers in federal courts under the tutelage of one of the nation’s best civil rights lawyers, John Williams of New Haven. I like to joke that I educated my children on the proceeds of those suits. Federal judges weren’t happy with all...

Machine learning transforms computers from tools performing rote operations to devices sharing attributes we associate with human creativity, such as finding novel solutions to problems. Computers have bested top competitors at chess and Go, and they have beaten champions at Jeopardy....