After the stunning implosion of a sweet plea deal that, all things being equal, should never have been allowed to escape the grasp of the defense, Hunter Biden is going to trial. You remember Hunter Biden, whose conduct was denied and pooh-poohed when initially raised, another fabricated conspiracy theory of the right crafted as disinformation to harm his father, which turned out to be not merely true, but damning? Last September, a federal grand jury charged Mr. Biden with three felonies: lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the federal firearms ap ..read more

Like many of us who found the legal theory upon which the New York County “hush money” indictment of Trump problematic, former prosecutor turned prawf Randall Eliason had his doubts. The New York courts appear to be mixed on this question and there is no definitive ruling from the state’s highest court. If Bragg’s theory is that the false entries were part of a scheme to defraud an agency such as the New York State Board of Elections, then a court might apply this broader definition. If his theory is that it was a scheme to deceive the voters, I think a court is likely to hold that does not c ..read more

The COVID-19 pandemic severely harmed schoolchildren in ways we’re only beginning to fully understand. Loss of instruction time, socialization and structure have repeatedly shown in the past four years to have negatively affected everything from reading comprehension to basic speech. Some states brushed away the problems by abolishing tests and declaring subjects like math racist. My home state of Tennessee, not to be outdone in acts of legislative stupidity, decided to base all of third grade on one pass/fail test. The Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act updated ..read more

There are a few decisions which, by law, are left entirely to the defendant. Whether to plead guilty. Whether to testify. But trial strategy is the lawyers’ domain. And with any other defendant, there is a good chance that the lawyers defending Donald Trump could have mustered a defense that would have sufficiently countered the prosecution’s narrative to get an acquittal, or at least a hung jury. Even with the defense provided, there were serious doubts whether the jury would find the defendant guilty. It did. The defendant blamed the corrupt judge and rigged trial. He called it a disgrace, o ..read more

Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland has cred that few others in Congress can match, as he was a con law prawf at American University for 25 years before he won office. He must know things, right? So when Raskin opines on the Constitution, people take him seriously. And Rep. Raskin says that the generally-accepted-view that there is nothing to be done about Congress imposing an ethics code on the Supreme Court is wrong. Everyone assumes that nothing can be done about the recusal situation because the highest court in the land has the lowest ethical standards — no binding ethics code or proces ..read more

From the safety and comfort of a tent on a college quad, it’s easy to argue ad nauseam about the horrors of war and why they shouldn’t happen. And it’s similarly easy to do the same from the oval office and halls of Congress. Brett Stephens argues that it’s the reason America has  in the past 50 years gone from the winner of wars to loser. But what about wars that are existential? We know how America fought such wars. During the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, hunger “yielded to starvation as dogs, cats, and even rats vanished from the city,” Ron Chernow noted in his biography of Ulysses Gra ..read more

At Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr raises an interesting point about what he calls “meaning assignment.” For years, I’ve challenged the morphing of definitions, from rape to sex, from what were once clearly defined words into vagaries that enable everyone to claim their own idiosyncratic definition. It makes communication rather difficult when we use the same words but either use our personal definition or untether them from any cogent definition. For many, vibes have replaced meaning, and even if they can’t quite offer a definition for their use of a word, they can justify their use by what they ..read more

My father taught me that there was no glory in dying in battle. He served in the European Theater in World War II in the 86th Infantry, the Blackhawk Division. He mostly spoke of how cold it was, but he never forgot the men with whom he served who never made it home. My father hated war, not that there were times it couldn’t be avoided, but he honored those who died and taught me to honor them as well. They didn’t ask to die, but they served knowing it could happen. They went anyway because that was their duty. Did other fathers teach this lesson to their children? Apparently not. Shameful Pr ..read more

This wasn’t the same as other protests, as it pitted one group of students against another rather than the government. It was students who embraced the lie that Israel was the oppressor and the Palestinians were the oppressed. It was students who believed the deluge of propaganda pictures and videos that rarely showed what they claimed to show, rarely held up to scrutiny, all designed to play their shallow emotion and feigned claim to be on the side of morality. It was students who claimed to hate Zionists, but not be antisemitic, without the slightest clue how those two things were inherently ..read more

Note: The following was my proposed commencement speech for the 2024 class of the “People’s School of Gaza” at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. For some reason, the “faculty” declined my invitation to speak—CLS Good afternoon. Before I begin, if everyone could please deactivate your explosive vests, remove your keffiyehs and silence your cell phones until commencement exercises conclude, that would be appreciated. Also a brief housekeeping note: If anyone knows who spilled red paint all over the Student Union men’s bathroom, please invite them to clean that shit up. This isn’t a dayca ..read more