Professor at Fordham Law. Prisons and criminal justice quant. I'm not contrarian, the data are. Author of Locked In. New stuff at johnfpfaff.com.
The best way to defeat Steven Miller is mass immigration, you say?
Ronald Reagan: Tear Down This Wall SpeechAlt: Ronald Reagan: Tear Down This Wall Speechstatic.klipy.comJohn PfaffSo what’s he saying is that the US needs waves of immigrants to ensure that our worst, most inhumane instincts are kept in check? Sounds good!
So what’s he saying is that the US needs waves of immigrants to ensure that our worst, most inhumane instincts are kept in check? Sounds good!
Alexander ClarksonAnother datapoint for the fascist radicalisation of institutional pillars of much of the American Right
Real investigative journalism would be digging up a CORRECT prediction by Kevin “The Dow will hit 36,000 in 2002” Hassett. Could be impossible. But yes, if they’re starting to lose Baritromo, their Reality Distortion Field is cracking.
Mike MasnickYes this is all ridiculous but if even Fox is asking Hassett about his previous wrong predictions... that's a significant change.
I just got home from a two-hour drive with three teen-age boys (who I had to pick up after they botched a train schedule) following a 12-mile hike involving over 2000 feet of elevation gain, some of it in the rain. The smell. OMFG. The smell. In the car.
The Horror, The Horror - Apocalypse Now QuoteAlt: The Horror, The Horror - Apocalypse Now Quotestatic.klipy.comPlease PLEASE tell me someone is going to use this as a shock to test the need for the bar as a screening mech. I know Covid is generally a bad discontinuity, bc everything changed at once, but it could work to see long-term outcomes for lawyers starting in 2019 vs 2020 (vs even 2021).
Barred and Boujee aka Madiba DennieI wrote about the hotass mess that hundreds of recent law grads in Washington are going through for no good reason! ballsandstrikes.org/legal-cultur...
Sadly, I think this is a win-win in the eyes of the Trump admin and MAGA. “We must ask whether the Trump administration is so determined to win a culture war against American higher education that it is willing to risk the decline of American influence.”
Jeremy StahlThe Trump administration sued Yale for its admissions policies (alleging too much diversity). Yale is negotiating with DOJ, whereas Harvard fought Trump. The former dean of Yale Law School thinks he knows the real reason why. slate.com/news-and-pol...
I would again like to re-up my complaint from the other day that I’d like to get back to a timeline where the political press is not constantly setting new records for the worst r/brandnewsentence entry-of-the-year each week.
dan solomonwriting these words in this order made me feel like i was having a stroke, i am pleased to share it with all of you
Also, just guessing here, but bet in many of these cases the ppl who need aid are in GOP parts of blue states. So he’s killing his OWN CONSTITUENTS (albeit ones who may not “matter,” electorally, bc of the execrable Electoral College). That 2000 Election map broke a lot of brains.
Seth MasketI've been seeing a lot of people responding to this with "there ought to be a law," but importantly, we haven't needed a law for this sort of thing because no prior president wanted to be known as a leader who would literally kill people in their hour of need for not voting for him
This was the book that liberated me. Until I read it, I had this strange view that if I started a book, I had to finish it. Like it was a sort of moral obligation. At p. 25, I gave myself to p. 100 to find it even remotely readable. At p. 100 I threw it to the curb. And the world didn't end.
Dara LindOkay. If I’m 15 percent of the way through A Confederacy of Dunces, and more than 15 percent of the way to permanently damaging my eyes from rolling them so frequently, should I give up? Or does it get more pleasant or insightful?
It’s like … well … it’s like owning a casino in Atlantic City, and then opening a second one in Atlantic City, and thinking both will be profitable, not that one will just cannibalize the fixed number of gamblers coming to Atlantic City.
Justin BaragonaNEW: Under Bari Weiss, CBS News has shifted to the right to try to grab some of Fox News' audience. Not only have they failed to do that, but they've driven off so much of their core audience that CBS Mornings is now perilously close to getting beaten by Fox & Friends. zeteo.com/p/mamdani-de...
Honestly, I assumed he had retained David E. Kelley—creator/producer of, among other shows, The Practice, Boston Legal, and Allie McBeal—since that David Kelley in fact also has a JD, and his Hollywood status prob carries more weight with the Trump admin than crap like “investigating terrorism.”
Josh GersteinAmong the shocking things in these Comey filings is that fed agents and prosecutors didn't seem to know who Comey attorney David Kelley was & often misspelled his name. He was the top terrorism prosecutor in SDNY and oversaw DOJ's investigation into 9/11 www.politico.com/news/2026/07...
Lowest approval in modern polling history is Truman at 22%. Trump is a man who generally fails so hard he can bankrupt a casino, but I'm rooting for him to wrests this title from HST's bony fingers.
Josh MarshallTrump down to 32% approval in new Q poll. poll.qu.edu/poll-release...
I feel like every test style privileges some forms of learning or thinking or accommodation or something over others. So it's impossible to ask what is "most fair" without some sort of concrete definition of "fairness" to start with. And that definition will be inescapably value-laden.
Orin KerrI’d be very interested to hear from current or recent law students on whether they agree with this argument that fairness concerns justify switching to closed-book exams.
My crying/deranged laughing exam story. Not law school, but first quarter of my first year of grad school. Econometrics class w a relatively new prof. We had her previous two years of exams, tough but fair, felt prepped sitting down for the test. Test gets handed out upside down.
T. Greg DoucetteSlightly off-topic: this whole discussion reminds me of my "Fundamentals of Taxation" class in law school The only law school class that made me cry (literally) 1/
With impeachment and removal structurally impossible, I again feel that the immediate follow-up to SCOTUS expansion is a redefining of the lower courts, with the worst of the worst (like Bove and O’Connor) assigned to the new District and Circuit Court for the … Moon, maybe?
emptywheelThe chances are quite good that the "number three" at DOJ who ordered Jim Comey to be illegally surveilled was Third Circuit judge Emil Bove. (He was nominated days later.) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
“Lanes? We don’t need no stinkin’ lanes.” I love how no one associated with this admin feels any need to actually be an expert on what they talk abt … and repeatedly get away with it! The logical conclusion of our pundit-driven Discourse. Everyone’s take on everything is legit!
Aaron RuparPeter Navarro is on TV talking about hydroxychloroquine, which is enough to cause a PTSD flareup. I'm not sure it's smart for Trump's cronies to publicly relitigate their handling of covid.
Shock level: 0.00. Honestly, less. But I wanted to comment on the pic. One big cultural fight we need to have over the next decade is making this sort of Seal Team Six Cosplay policing shameful.* It wasn't always like this. I recall seeing the FBI's HRT at Waco and thinking "those are ... cops?!"
Los Angeles TimesImmigration agents used racial slurs referring to Latinos in text messages, video obtained by ACLU
If they actually build anything, rather than just burn cash through an inefficient no-bid procurement process, a Dem POTUS should make razing them an early-term project, both as a symbolic gesture but also to ensure there is no excess capacity for any future nativist GOPer to use.
Austin Kocher, PhDICE is seeking builders for up to 14 new or expanded detention sites, from the Virgin Islands to Guantanamo Bay, under a plan capped at $10 billion. It is shifting from renting detention to building it. Full edition: austinkocher.substack.com/p/this-week-...
EVERYONE PAYS TAXES. And sales taxes are distinctly regressive. Anyway, rich hearing a TechBro argue that “poor = no vote” the same week I saw yet another article abt workers at places like Amazon qualifying for govt benefits. Talk abt an incentive for CEOs to underpay workers.
☀️ Jon Schwarz ☀️Founding Father John Jay famously believed "those who own the country ought to govern it." That perspective has never actually gone out of style at the top of society.