Situational liberties

A few months ago, I posted about Slate legal writer Dahlia Lithwick's hysteria-infused take on the freedom of assembly as it applied to protests by what she called "fringe groups" opposed to state-ordered lockdowns. To recap, she argued that the right of "the community" to be free of coronavirus was a compelling state interest that not only justified the prohibition of such protests, however legally and health-consciously executed, but actually necessitated it. She proclaimed -- and I quote -- "And it’s certainly not the case that the federal Constitution protects everything you feel like doing, whenever you feel like doing it."

As if time and shifting political priorities weren't shining a laser in her eyes to blind her to the irony, Lithwick now says, WTF I love the freedom of assembly now.

Despite crowded cities and worked-up mobs, until the late 19^th century, it was widely understood that “street politics” demanded the right to protest, gather, assemble, and shout on busy streets and parks.

Quoting a law review article, Lithwick gives us the crash course on the history of the freedom of assembly she neglected to give in her column on the same topic last spring:

[S]o widely accepted was the fundamental right to gather and protest that it was “included virtually without comment in the First Amendment.” Moreover, “in the first United States Congress a discussion of the proposed Bill of Rights amendment [regarding assembly] was declared beneath the dignity of the members.”

If we're to take Lithwick at her word circa last spring, the only reason one can have for gathering at mass protests during a pandemic would be to inflict harm on the community. But wait, you say, wasn't the freedom of assembly "a vestige of the slaveholder ethos"? Are we not "on the precipice of a moment in which Americans must decide whether the price they are willing to pay for the 'freedom' of armed protesters, those determined to block hospitals, and pundits who want to visit the zoo, is their own health and safety"? After all, last time you checked, a COVID-19 vaccine was still months away at the earliest, right?

Now, we've run away from the precipice and huddled back into the public square, in which we have an absolute right to protest, cough and rub up against each other, etc.

We have, in short, acceded to a regulatory regime that forces protesters to both seek government permission to assemble, and then to be at the mercy of state claims about potential lawlessness, rioting, inconvenience, or traffic, when the government seeks to quell protest. 

Citations to the Magna Carta omitted.

Is Anyone Going On A Real Vacation This Summer?

(Besides professional vacationer StephenG)  For associates at my firm, August is usually the best month ever because partners and clients disappear for weeks on end, and work emails slow to a trickle.

 Not this year! Instead of a spiritual retreat in India, partners are "vacationing" in places horrifyingly close, sometimes within Los Angeles County, in beach houses with full internet access.

So August is a total wash for me. That said, is anybody here actually going somewhere vacation-y?

AG testifies before congress. Meanwhile, Nadler dismisses attempts to burn down Portland fed courthouse as a "myth"

Where to even start.

Attorney General William Barr is testifying before congress today, including about the need for federal law enforcement personnel  to defend a federal courthouse building in Portland, Oregon. You can find his opening statement here.

I assume that most of you have seen the videos of the courthouse siege on Twitter; they are not being broadcast by the mainstream media, which is hewing to the myth that violence by protestors is, well, a myth (to quote Jerry Nadler in an ambush interview yesterday on cellphone video).

Whether you have seen the video of rioters throwing Molotov cocktails and shooting commercial grade fireworks at the at the courthouse or not, Barr's opening remarks on this subject are jarring:

In the wake of George Floyd’s death, violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests to wreak senseless havoc and destruction on innocent victims. The current situation in Portland is a telling example. Every night for the past two months, a mob of hundreds of rioters has laid siege to the federal courthouse and other nearby federal property. The rioters arrive equipped for a fight, armed with powerful slingshots, tasers, sledgehammers, saws, knives, rifles, and explosive devices. Inside the courthouse are a relatively small number of federal law enforcement personnel charged with a defensive mission: to protect the courthouse, home to Article III federal judges, from being overrun and destroyed.

What unfolds nightly around the courthouse cannot reasonably be called a protest; it is, by any objective measure, an assault on the Government of the United States. In recent nights, rioters have barricaded the front door of the courthouse, pried plywood off the windows with crowbars, and thrown commercial-grade fireworks into the building in an apparent attempt to burn it down with federal personnel inside. The rioters have started fires outside the building, and then systematically attacked federal law enforcement officers who attempt to put them out—for example, by pelting the officers with rocks, frozen water bottles, cans of food, and balloons filled with fecal matter. A recent video showed a mob enthusiastically beating a Deputy U.S. Marshal who was trying to protect the courthouse – a property of the United States government funded by this Congress – from further destruction. A number of federal officers have been injured, including one severely burned by a mortar-style firework and three who have suffered serious eye injuries and may be permanently blind.

Largely absent from these scenes of destruction are even superficial attempts by the rioters to connect their actions to George Floyd’s death or any legitimate call for reform. Nor could such brazen acts of lawlessness plausibly be justified by a concern that police officers in Minnesota or elsewhere defied the law.

Remarkably, the response from many in the media and local elected offices to this organized assault has been to blame the federal government. To state what should be obvious, peaceful protesters do not throw explosives into federal courthouses, tear down plywood with crowbars, or launch fecal matter at federal officers. Such acts are in fact federal crimes under statutes enacted by this Congress.

I find it utterly astounding that even in the context of a bitter presidential election contest the Attorney General of the United States has to justify before congress his decision to deploy a relatively small contingent of federal law enforcement officers to a federal courthouse to keep "protesters" from removing plywood protection and throwing destructive devices into the building with the clear intention to burn it down. 

Is this not self-evident, or am I missing something?

What good are, for instance, our civil rights statutes without a federal courthouse in which to seek their enforcement? 

When these lefties wish to file another lawsuit against Trump where do they intend to venue it? CHOP court?

Grand Master Jay, Fill Stucking Around

The ironically named "Not F_cking Around Coalition" was in Louisville, KY on Saturday, with redundant "demands" for charges in the Breonna Taylor case. The leader of the group, who has styled himself "Grand Master Jay," insisted that all of his followers bring real firearms, and that they all be loaded. The reason for this was his ostensible concern that the weapons would be needed for the group's defense.

Likely doomed from the get-go, the chief cognitive defect in the coalition's clever formulation was the difficulty they might have in intimidating people with their heavily-armed presence once the entire general public understood they could only use the weapons defensively. This, alone, was enough to practically guarantee a brush-off by the Kentucky Attorney General, whose easiest course of action was to simply ignore them.

However, the coalition forces, not satisfied with the inherent impotence of their original, simple-minded plan, decided to shoot for (so to speak) an even greater level of comical absurdity. By around 1:00 PM, they had achieved this through playing with their weapons until three members of the group were wounded by accidental discharges and had to be hospitalized.

Grand Master Jay had apparently forgotten to address any requirement that members joining the event should actually know how to use the loaded weapons they were required to bring. The consequent, on-site experimentation unfortunately went very poorly, and seriously undermined the group's representation that they are "not f_cking around." Recognizing the limitations of the assemblage of limited intellects he had brought together for his glorious cause, Grand Master Jay's only word on the incident was, "it happens." (Nothing to see here, move on).

After the triple-shooting and hospitalizations, the group reduced its demands from commencement of criminal charges to commencement of charges or transparency. The members of the group will now be happy if Kentucky's Attorney General will simply agree to share all steps of the investigation with people who can't manage to march without shooting each other.

Despite a few reports of occasional tittering from the general vicinity of the Attorney General's Office, no formal statement has issued in response to the demands.

To maintain the pressure of their armed protest, Grand Master Jay may next need to turn to a tried and true tactic such as having coalition members hold their breath until their faces turn blue. Also, to regain a measure of credibility with the group's name, he might want to shift to something like "The Barneys," in honor of the coalition's apparent firearms safety mascot, Barney Fife.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/26/nfac-members-hurt-by-friendly-fire-during-louisville-protest/

The Tax Man Cometh

My thought from the day of the incident has been that the former officer who put away George Floyd will probably be convicted of some variant of homicide, and do some serious time in the pokey. Of course, nothing is ever completely certain. Nothing, that is, except for death and taxes.

It would seem that some enterprising investigators may have remembered the lesson of Al Capone, to wit, when you really want to put someone away for life plus cancer, send in the tax auditors. They did. Now, Chauvin and the Mrs. (who seemly waited overlong to dump him) are looking at enough felony tax charges to stack on another four and a half decades of state time. Notably, a key feature of tax cases is their document-intensive nature. If the documents show the income existed, and the returns don't show that it was reported for taxation, the defendant is pretty much at the end of the road at that point.

As Al Capone himself cogently demonstrated, if you're going to engage in conduct that pisses off the government, you really need to have paid your taxes.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/derek-chauvin-officer-accused-killing-george-floyd-charged/story?id=71941032

Good news, bad news kind of thing.

The good news is that you won $10M in the lottery. The bad news is that you are under arrest for murder.

One clue was the dead 23 year old the maid found in your hotel room.

On the bright side, you're never going to run out of Twinkie and corn chips money for the prison commissary.

Fox News has the sordid story.  

ABA and the Annual Meeting Fiasco Yet to Come

Rawles shat this bobblefooze out on the ABA Journal online sometime back, and I have been slow in commenting, due to the press of actual business.

I will say this, it is always better to have kind of a "Reader's Digest version" than to actually suffer through one of Rawles' podcasts (or anything that she tries to write). I learned the value of condensed literature in my youth, as it was a useful tool to get through critical content much more rapidly than my contemporaries. I especially enjoyed "The Musketeer," and "The Wife of Henry VIII."

Anyway, I will give you the shortened and more accurate version of "what to expect from the all-virtual 2020 ABA Annual Meeting." First, it will be an absolute debacle, on top of which, ABA will be out all of the normal meeting fees and other revenues it usually realizes from the annual drunken party. Second, some recently-installed, chazzfok ABA sock-puppet will make some bullshit announcement about how the fiasco was an unqualified success. This will fairly stand on a par with Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery's characterization of Operation Market-Garden as a success.

If you enjoy suffering, or just have some extra time on your hands, a link to the full-length Rawles version is below.

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/asked-and-answered-podcast-bonus-episode-130

McCloskeys Mightily Motivate Multiple Missouri Morons

The linked story is only, perhaps, the latest stroke in a seemingly endless tale of moronity that refuses to drag itself away to die in some dark corner.

The whole thing began with the McCloskeys, proper morons in their own right. Stalwart BLM supporters in normal times (i.e., when the mob is in someone else's gated community), the McCloskeys came unhinged when protesters appeared on the private street in front of their own residence.

Heedless of how many of the crowd were or might be armed with firearms of their own, the McCloskeys went outside and stood in front of their mansion, with no cover, pointing their firearms at members of the crowd. (It later developed that the popgun so energetically flourished by the plump, little lady in stripes was actually inoperable). The fact that these two, "Progressive" fuzzlenutzes are even still above ground is cogent proof that Heaven affords special providence to fools, drunks and (apparently) the McCloskeys. I'm going to say if they copped to the charges for some bullshit,"public service" fine, they would still be way ahead of where they probably should be. Morons.

Then, Kim Gardner. Obviously no secret that we're not talking the sharpest tool in the shed there. She feels duty-bound to protect the "first amendment rights" of the protesters against the predations of the gun-waving McCloskeys. Apparently nobody told her that "first amendment rights" generally lie against the government, and don't include special rights to trespass on private property. Also, there is no indication the McCloskeys did anything to prevent the protesters from protesting, or even that the McCloskeys proposed any content-based limitations on the protesters' speech. The moron may have a "brandishing weapons" charge that is viable under Missouri law, but nothing here is about the first amendment. Moron.

Before long, like any good dumpster fire, this thing had attracted every bum on the block. The Missouri Attorney General, the Missouri Governor, Donald Trump, a gaggle of law professors debating the "castle doctrine," and now, 67 current and former prosecutors who have nothing better to do.

When will it be over? Is it possible that the showboating and media frenzy will continue all the way through an actual jury trial? Is there nothing that can save a moronity-weary public?? Creezus, Jucking Feist. The warp engines won't take much more.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/22/67-current-former-prosecutors-defend-st-louis-prosecutor-attacks-mccloskey-gun-case/

Privileged Whites Oppress Dawit Kelete With Criminal Charges

Some may have seen the footage in which the white Jaguar, flat hauling it up an exit ramp onto I-5, collided with two protesters, hurling them a considerable distance into the air, after which, they crashed down onto the pavement. The "non-binary" Summer Taylor, whose pronouns of choice were "they" and "them," was killed, and fellow protester Diaz Love remains hospitalized.

Protesters immediately vowed that such Trumpian, white nationalist, violence would not dissuade them from staying the course. However, almost before their lines were delivered, the preferred narrative began to collapse. Much as the media tried to avoid any mention of the point, the first film footage of the allegedly murderous driver, Dawit Kelete, soon spilled the fact that he is black.

Did Dawit Kelete mistake the protesters for white supremacists? Was he just offended by their performative virtue-signalling? Or, did he perhaps hate Summer Taylor for being a "non-binary" who used the pronouns "they" and "them"?

Is Kelete's motivation even of consequence? As I believe I have already mentioned, Dawit Kelete is black. His life matters. His right to operate his Jaguar luxury automobile on public roadways also matters. If Mr. Kelete was inclined to operate his Jaguar automobile on the I-5 highway, where a bunch of privileged, silly, white people happened to be playing in the street, how is he in any way at fault?

Indeed, the honor of being separated from this life by the impact of Mr. Kelete's Jaguar may even have extirpated Summer Taylor's white privilege and ethnic birth guilt, potentially so qualifying Summer Taylor for admission to "Non-binary," White Ally Heaven. It may have been the only thing that actually could have. If they were proper white allies, Summer Taylor's surviving companions would get down on their prayer bones and beg Dawit Kelete to serve them similarly. At the very least, they need to be protesting for his immediate release and for a prompt end to all this tom-foolery about charging him with crimes. Nobody is ever going to take the lot of them even half-seriously if they can't maintain the most basic focus on their mission.

https://komonews.com/news/local/dawit-kelete-accused-driver-pleads-not-guilty-in-death-of-i-5-protester

Really fucked up

CNN)On his website, Roy Den Hollander described himself as an "anti-feminist" lawyer who defended "men's rights." His personal writings and life's work reveal a toxic stew of sexist and racist bigotry.

He had unsuccessfully filed lawsuits against bars and night clubs offering "ladies' nights," claiming they violate the 14th Amendment, and he filed suits against the federal government, challenging the constitutionality of its Violence Against Women Act -- the "Female Fraud Act," as he referred to it -- and against Columbia University, for its Women's Studies program. 

Federal authorities on Monday said Den Hollander is suspected of shooting the husband and son of US District Judge Esther Salas at her North Brunswick, New Jersey.

The FBI called Den Hollander the "primary subject," and said he is dead. Two law enforcement sources told CNN that the suspect died of what is believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The attorney penned lengthy documents filled with bigoted and sexist content on his website. One document, which he called a "Cyclopedia," is 152 pages of anti-feminist musings.

In the so-called "Evolutionarily Correct Cyclopedia," Den Hollander made chilling remarks about "solutions" to what he called "Political Commies" and feminists.

"Things begin to change when individual men start taking out those specific persons responsible for destroying their lives before committing suicide," he wrote.

Den Hollander argued one case before Salas, according to federal court records: a lawsuit where he represented a woman and her daughter as they sought to register for the military's selective service. In the case, Den Hollander's clients claimed the draft was unconstitutional because it barred women from registering. 

The case, like at least one other in the federal court system, raised intricate legal questions about the treatment of women in the military.

Salas sided against a part of Den Hollander's arguments last spring, but also agreed with some of his claims and allowed the lawsuit to continue on. 

The attorney exited the case in June 2019, handing it over to a team of lawyers at the large New York-based law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.

Den Hollander said he "would not be able to see the case through" because he was terminally ill, Nick Gravante, Boies Schiller's managing partner, told CNN on Monday. 

Den Hollander had called Gravante out of the blue last year, asking the larger firm to take over the case before Salas.

On his website, Den Hollander wrote an autobiographical document in which he personally disparaged Salas in racist and sexist terms. 

While speaking about Salas, he claimed he often ran into trouble with female judges of Latin American descent, claiming they were "driven by an inferiority complex." 

He attacked Salas' professional record and associations, and at one point, appeared to push a white nationalist belief that organizations are "trying to convince America that whites, especially white males, were barbarians, and all those of a darker skin complexion were victims."

Amid the ladies' night lawsuit, filed in 2007, Den Hollander was featured in reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker and made a guest appearance on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."

"The feminists have taken control over every institution in this country -- they want to take control over men," he told the Times in 2011 after the Supreme Court declined to take up his ladies' night lawsuit. "I'm going to fight them to my last dollar, last breath." 

The New Yorker profile in particular focused on a night at a club with him in which he railed against "feminazis," spoke of his attraction to "black and Latin chicks, and Asian chicks" and held forth on his tactics for picking up women.

In 2017, he unsuccessfully sued multiple media outlets, including CNN, accusing them of disseminating "false and misleading news reports" about Donald Trump's candidacy for president. The case was dismissed.

Den Hollander graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1985 and then worked as an attorney in the Office of Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service, his online resume says.

From 1986 to 1989, he worked as an associate at the prestigious legal firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and he has since primarily worked as a private attorney in New York, according to his resume and court filings.

Justice Ginsburg has liver cancer - rasing stakes for 2020 election

****Breaking, via the WSJ 

"WASHINGTON—Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Friday she is being treated for liver cancer, but remains fully able to perform her work at the Supreme Court.

"The court’s eldest member and leader of its liberal wing, Justice Ginsburg said lesions on her liver were discovered during a February biopsy, and that the initial treatment of immunotherapy proved unsuccessful. On May 19, she began chemotherapy, which “is yielding positive results,” she said in a statement released by the court."

Granted, the woman is resilient (surviving four previous bouts with cancer). But is she likely to continue her Supreme Court tenure beyond the 2021 presidential term? Not likely.

Will Trump have enough time to fast track her replacement prior to the expiration of his first term? Again, not likely.

The biggest issue of this presidential race will not be COVID-19, or Black Lives Matter, but rather the Supreme Court.

So Where Is Everyone Working These Days?

Gov. Gavin Newsom has grounded us yet again but my firm could give a shit seems to be unaffected even though everyone is muttering about the air conditioning since that is (allegedly) Corona's lair from which it ( insert your preferred pronouns) strikes.

Are you all back in the office?? Is the air conditioning on full force? Also: Are you dead? If yes, what is the afterlife like? Kinda...unpleasantly warm?

Back to what I'm watching on Netflix: the  TV show The West Wing was before my (adult) time but everyone keeps yammering about it so I tried to watch it. I lasted 7 minutes, good God how coked up were these people? So exhausting to watch.

Finally let's talk about Lat: desperate to stay relevant, Lat tweets some faint praise about how Bari Weiss (NYTimes person who quit and wrote some letter) was a semi-decent editor for his MANY MANY NYTimes op-eds. Naturally he was mocked. "With lukewarm friends like these..." was the general theme.

The Ballad of Stabbity Chick

Some sixty years or so ago, there was an excellent version of the old Stagger Lee and Billy Lyon ballad making the rounds. Cisco Houston kind of sort played it in a recording that was posted on YouTube about nine years ago, finally getting most of the melody by the time he got to the end. I'm a little too busy to play and record it the right way just now, but if you find Cisco's version, that will give an idea, at least, of the tune. For Stagger Lee (a legendary sore loser), the moral was "When you lose your money, learn to lose." For Stabbity, I offer a slightly different lesson (though she seems to be resisting), and Harvard, well, Harvard can just be proud.

One day on social media,
Among the usual chatter,
Young Stabbity Chick told how she'd stick,
The fans of "All Lives Matter,"
Posting threats,
Of violence,
Is abuse.

Well, the firm where she was set to start,
They took it mighty rough,
Saying, "We can't have her stabbing folks, While working on our stuff,"
Posting threats,
Of violence,
Is abuse.

An accountant's brother heard of it,
Near caused his blood to freeze,
He called the firm and begged,
"Don't let her shank my sister, please,"
Posting threats,
Of violence,
Is abuse.

An HR staffer phoned her up,
And said, "Ms. Stab-bi-tee,
If ever a career you have,
There'll be no shanks to me,"
Posting threats,
Of violence,
Is abuse.

Then, back on TikTok, Stabbity,
She let the tears run free,
And she wailed, "It's Trump supporters,
Not my own stupid-i-ty,"
Posting threats,
Of violence,
Is abuse.

So members of the jury,
That's how it came to pass,
That Stabbity slew her future,
With the jawbone of an ass,
Posting threats,
Of violence,
Is abuse.

Now some are trashing Stabbity,
While others sing her praise,
But what the Hell is Harvard
Up to teaching kids these days?
Posting threats,
Of violence,
Is abuse.

Stabbity Chick's Delusional, Rambling Apologia

Let it not be said that B. McLeod is not down with fair and balanced reporting. In this prolix diatribe, Stabbity tries to rehabilitate herself, and to show how she was really right all along. On the issue of whether her two-week "dream job" had any substance, Stabbity now asserts that she additionally had an offer for permanent employment from Deloitte, contingent on graduation, and that it was withdrawn concurrent with the two-week internship. This seems suspect, as normally one would not expect the decision to be made on permanent offers prior to completion of an internship, and it has not been confirmed by Deloitte. Also, given Deloitte's mass layoff, hard on the heels of Stabbity's monumental, social media fail, she was probably gone no matter what, under the last in, first out, Yarn of the Nancy Bell method.

Notably, much of Stabbity's "reasoning" here is bare emotionalism, suggesting that she would have made a very poor analyst and that Deloitte indeed (as a prior commenter suggested) dodged a bullet this time. Among other things, Stabbity acknowledges that it might have been "All Lives Matter" supporters who came after her, but they are identical with "Trump Supporters," because she says so.

Anyway, I don't want to give too many spoilers. I suggest sitting down with some popcorn and an adult beverage, and seeing how far you can follow the tirade. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Stabbity Chick, in her own words:

https://medium.com/@cjanover/what-happened-to-claira-janover-3dc16768b461

Judy Perry Martinez Admits ABA "Deeply Disturbed"

On another political frolic, the marginalized poseurs could not control their desire to weigh in on the Stone commutation. Although Obama's commutation of Manning's espionage sentence didn't bother them one whit, this one "undermines justice." Never mind that commutations of sentences always negate punishments put in place via normal criminal process. What matters is whether the ABA thinks the criminal's conduct should have been OK. Here, the added irony is that ABA should take such great offense at Stone's dishonesty in lying to Congress (something the ABA does each and every time it provides testimony while purporting to represent the legal profession in this country).

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/aba-president-says-trump-shouldnt-use-commutation-power-to-undermine-justice

Still "Rachel Dolezal" in the New York Post

In the "Where Are They Now" category for this month, Rachel Dolezal has declared herself "vindicated" by the Black Lives Matter movement. She copped a plea in her fraud case for a fine and some "community service," and now "makes a living" braiding hair and selling her "art." For her, it is clear the Crazy Train is still going, and may never come into the station.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/04/rachel-dolezal-vindicated-by-black-lives-matter-movement/

Insufficient Revolutionary Zeal

Apparently some of the Jacobins and fellow travelers are realizing, all too late, that stifling free speech is not always a great idea.  I’m sure Trotsky would be proud.

“ Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.”

https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

Stabbity Chick and the Long Con

As the donations to the various fundraising sites are approaching $10,000, it seems increasingly likely that Stabbity Chick (who actually posted a number of videos threatening various acts of violence) always intended to be "fired" from the two-week internship so she could suck in donations from the weak-minded with her ostensible victim credentials.  The chain of events (and the representation of the "firing" as a major financial impact when requesting donations) bear a striking resemblance to garden variety affinity fraud. It is certainly not beyond the pale that she may even be a Trump supporter herself, laughing behind the backs of the clueless yutzes who are tripping over themselves to give away their money. (Note that her degrees were in government and psychology).

https://dcdirtylaundry.com/harvard-grad-claira-janover-never-had-a-job-at-deloitte-but-is-set-to-cash-in-on-gofundme-for-being-fired/

Time to update the Commenteriat style guide

A few months ago, I began to notice something odd in news articles of media organizations, both major and niche. In headlines, hyperlinks and bodies of text, the word "black" -- both as a noun for people of non-Arab African descent and as adjective for people fitting that description -- had begun to appear with the "b" capitalized.

It has been many years since I cracked open an AP Style Book, the de facto standard for most American news organizations, so I thought faulty memory had led me erroneously to believe that both "black" and "white" had always been lowercase. Additionally, one of our esteemed Commenteriat colleagues pointed out to me in an unrelated thread that "Black" had appeared on government forms for as long as he could remember. I have no reason to doubt that that is true. Yet, it turns out many media outlets have in fact very recently made this stylistic change:

AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a person.

We also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.

These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American. Our discussions on style and language consider many points, including the need to be inclusive and respectful in our storytelling and the evolution of language. We believe this change serves those ends.

 In my opinion, if the capitalized "Black" supplants the ungainly and potentially confusing "African-American," then good. When I think of all the awkward line justifications and jumps the latter has caused, a vein pulsates on the temple of my inner copy-editor. As for "Indigenous," I find it a mild improvement over the too-precious "Native American."

At the same time, the change raises uncomfortable questions about what want we believe the purpose of standardized language is. Is it to foster clear understanding between speaker and audience? Or is it to affirm the values of a political moment and apply different rules to people in the news based on their race? Proponents of the style change argue for the latter.

For many people, Black reflects a shared sense of identity and community. White carries a different set of meanings; capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists.

But in addition to being in accord with the logic of the style guide of the Daily Stormer, just with the colors reversed, this rationale runs into problems when one remembers that in many parts of the world, black people form distinct identities that may have little to do with their skin color. Does a black person from Brooklyn share a sense of "identity and community" with a black person of Nigerian heritage who grew up in a French banlieue more so than he does with a white person from Brooklyn? Perhaps, but probably no more so than a white person from Chevy Chase, Maryland, shares a sense of identity and community with a white person from Lapland.

Per this understanding, it is a kind of orthographic injustice to lowercase the B: to do so is to perpetuate the iniquity of an institution that uprooted people from the most ethnically diverse place on the planet, systematically obliterating any and all distinctions regarding ethnicity and culture. 

 In other words, if you're still using last year's AP Style Guide, you're a racist.

Stabbity Chick Stands Up For Violent Protests

While it may have initially seemed unclear how any large accounting firm could pass on an intern destined to leave "an indelible mark," this additional Stabbity Chick video may serve to help explain it. Once again, Stabbity takes issue with the offensive speech of others, but in this instance, she is offended by people who crticize violent protests (however, she doesn't threaten to kill them). I am going to go out on a limb and say that Stabbity Chick's life (and professional prospects - if any remain) might be better if she would learn that other people also get to say words and have opinions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgUDSYgp4LA

Aurora Officers Sacked for Mocking Photos

Several Aurora police officers have joined the ranks of the unemployed after taking and sharing (by email) photographs reenacting the choking of Elijah McClain at a memorial set up for his remembrance. Why the officers decided to do this is unclear, and it appears the department determined it to be sufficiently mean-spirited and outrageous as to demonstrate unfitness on the part of the officers who participated.

The incongruous thing here is that the department has yet to take disciplinary action for the actual incident that led up to Elijah McClain's departure from this life. As best I can discern from any of the reports, he wasn't breaking any laws, and the officers basically roughed him up because he was odd. He died after being subdued by a chokehold, and after a sedative had been injected by EMS staff responding to the scene. The exact causative role of the police activity is still under investigation, but it does seem evident at this point that the foundation for the stop, detention and use of force was very shaky.

https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/07/03/3-aurora-police-officers-fired-over-elijah-mcclain-photo-scandal/

Crying Harvey Laments Job Loss From Stabbity TikTok Video

This past week, hypersensitivity resulted in job losses in several quarters. A rookie cop was ousted after sharing a post of a relative at a BLM protest. Halfway across the country, a prosecutor had to resign after sharing a post that was seen as likening statue-attackers to Nazis. Social media is growing more and more hazardous for anyone of any political stripe.

This video circulated by a stabbity Harvard grad, however, would have likely been a problem even before the current climate of hysterical interpretation. The crafty Harvey was not sharing somebody else's post. It was a video she posted on TikTok, in which she threatened to fatally stab anyone who said that "all lives matter." It seems that, in her view, "standing up for Black Lives Matter" inherently entails this sort of "argument."

When the video got around to the large accounting firm where our stabbity, young Harvey had landed a cushy job, she was sacked. She promptly returned to TikTok, crying like a small infant, to blame "Trump supporters" for her job loss and to decry the "cowardice" of the firm for firing her (DESPITE its alleged commitment "to stand against systemic bias, racism and unequal treatment" -- THE BASTARDS)!!

Undaunted, she is resolved to make "an indelible mark" on the world, as her old chums from school set up charity fundraising accounts to raise donations for her rent and groceries.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8481777/Harvard-grad-shared-TikTok-video-against-Lives-Matter-fired-job.html

KRR Reditardation [T-Bag Post, executed by Mari --who will be invoicing T-Bag later]

Note from Mari--Below is a contribution from T-Bag which I am posting on his behalf.

Mr Bag is providing commentary on an article which appeared today on ATL, authored by Ms. Rubino, who is so desperate for content that she's cut & pasting stuff from Reddit. The title of her ATL article is "Partner Up and Quits Her Job Because Big Law is the Worst."

[Intro from T-Bag]
Good day commentariat and hope you all are making the most of this COVID opportunity. Personally, I hooking up w/ girls has been easier as now I just sit on the toilet and use tinder to call girls over -- even less effort than I'm used to. Also, as a big civil rights activist, I was able to retaliate for the injustice to George Floyd (PBUH) at the hands of Kreiss Home Furnishings; unrelated, I redecorated my house.

I wanted to share this post from KRR with annotated commentary below (commentary in ALL CAPS/BOLD). Hope you are all well and love you.



*******************************************************************

 
 [Note from Mari-- As a reminder, the non-bold text is from the pen of KKR and Reddit, THE BOLD ALL-CAPS TEXT IS FROM T-BAG]



Reddit user feeling-likealoser asks the relationship subreddit how to deal with reactions when she tells them yes, she’s leaving her law firm job and no, she doesn’t have another job lined up.

]WITH ALL GOING ON IN THE LAWFIRM WORLD, THIS IS WHAT ATL REPORTING ON, SOME ANONYMOUS AND IMPOSSIBLE TO VERIFY POST ON REDDIT. THE QUALITY JUST KEEPS GOING UP AT ATL.]

The OP says they feel like a loser — hence the screen name — for taking some time off of the law firm rat race, but for my $.02, all I see is smart woman [LOL, OK TARZAN] who knows what she needs even if it isn’t the same thing she’s worked the last 13 years for:

I (38F) resigned from being a partner at my law firm only to be unemployed and everyone around me questioning my decision.

I (38F) recently resigned from my position as a partner at a law firm that I have worked at for 13 years. I’ve been killing myself taking crazy assignments and working intense hours in order to further my career. I sacrificed so much for this company. Once I made it as partner, I realized that I was putting myself through a lot and the money just wasn’t worth it. While I made good money, I was not pulling in even 50% of the comp compared to my male partners that managed a book of business about 1/3 of my size

[THIS IS 100% TRUE, AND IF YOU DOUBT IT, OR EVEN QUESTION THE LOGIC OF IT IN THE CONTEXT OF A PARTNERSHIP, THEN YOU ARE COMMITTING GENOCIDE]. 


I’ve felt this way for a long long time but finally pulled the trigger after the partner in charge of my department didn’t make any of the changes I’d requested [AGAIN, TOTALLY REASONABLE. I ONCE QUIT A JOB BECAUSE THE PARTNER IN CHARGE OF MY "DEPARTMENT" WOULDN'T LET ME TAKE DUMPS IN THE URINAL].

I’m so burnt out I’m not looking for another position. I just want to be free of that toxic place and take the next 6 months or so to recover. Ever since I resigned, everyone in my life other than my husband has been questioning my decision even when I have clearly set boundaries. I have 3 more weeks with the firm and have agreed to transition the clients. Every client, coworker, family member, and friend has been in shock that I don’t have something lined up. They think it’s crazy to leave at the peak of my career in the middle of a pandemic.

Honestly after all of this, I just need some time to myself. I’m completely drained. I don’t know how to best respond to this without ruining relationships or being way to personal with people that I don’t feel comfortable sharing my innermost thoughts. I feel like a complete loser that I don’t have something lined up but I really don’t have the energy anymore to put even a tiny bit of effort to find the next job [AGAIN, IF YOU EVEN QUESTION WHY A PARTNER W A BOOK OF BUSINESS THAT DWARFS ALL OTHER PARTNERS WOULD HAVE TO PUT ANY EFFORT IN LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB, OR WHY SHE WOULD TRANSITION HER CLIENTS TO THE GENOCIDAL PATRIARCHY, YOU ARE COMMITTING VIOLENCE].
What would you say to people when they ask why you are leaving and where you are going when 1) some are people you are not close with and 2) some are people you are very close with and care deeply about? Some coworkers I’ve known for a long time and I have really gone through the trenches. I don’t want to say anything that makes them feel bad about staying [DON'T THINK SAYING, I'M LEAVING BECAUSE I AM NOT GETTING PAID ADEQUATELY GIVEN I AM #1 RAINMAKER WOULD MAKE ANYONE FEEL BAD, BUT WHATEV].

I also feel like a complete failure when I say I’m taking time off [I AM SURE IT IS MORE LIKELY YOU FEEL LIKE A FAILURE FOR OTHER REASONS, SUCH AS LYING, BUT WHATEV]. People are baffled and don’t understand why I wouldn’t work in my 30s.


TL;DR! I’m leaving my job of 13 years and don’t know how to respond to people that are baffled as to why I’m leaving at the height of my career to go nowhere.

For the record, in the comments the OP says she has no immediate financial concerns about her looming unemployment. So… yeah, she’s winning, because… Biglaw is fucking toxic. You can practically feel the misery seeping from her words, the brutal hours, the unfair origination credit, the sexism, and the desperation.

Maybe it’s just because as a recovering Biglaw attorney [LOLOLOLOL, THESE ATL PPL HAVE NO SHAME IN CLAIMING CREDENTIALS THEY HAVEN'T EARNED -- NEXT STACI Z. GONNA BE TELLIN PPL "I WAS A FORMER WACHTELL PARTNER"],
I know a lot of former Biglaw people. And they are all happier now than they were in the midst of their Biglaw hell. I’d advise the OP that it doesn’t matter what other people think, and just tell them you’re doing what’s best for you right now. It’s both true and vague enough not to ruffle the feathers she’s concerned about.

And when the OP checks back in with folks after leaving her law firm far behind, they’ll be able to see the weight that’s been lifted off of her shoulders and how much happier she is, and they’ll understand why she had to leave [OR, IN KRR'S CASE, SEE THAT THE WEIGHT THAT WAS ON HER SHOULDERS FOR BEING A CONTRACT ATTORNEY HAS BEEN ADDED TO HER MIDSECTION AND MULTIPLIED B x10].

BOM: Discuss.