1. [Insert boring double standard comment here] This was already mentioned in another comment thread today, but attention must be paid: on MSNBC, “The Cross Connection’s” host Tiffany Cross brought on African-American lawyer and pundit Ellie Mystal, who has one of the more disturbing Ethics Alarms rap sheets. Mystal finally got too extreme for “Above the Law,” as difficult as that is, and now hangs his web shingle out at the far, far Left “The Nation.”

Cross asked Ellie about the gun-rights case currently before the Supreme Court [Item#2], where the question is whether a state (New York) can forbid citizens from carrying guns outside the home. Somehow, he used the question to justify stating that white people primarily care about “using their guns on black people and getting away with it. That’s what they want. That’s what they actually are in it for.” Cross, who had the same responsibility as any TV host whose guest makes a flat-out racist statement about any race or group, didn’t object to Mystal’s despicable assertion or question it. As Sir Thomas More reminded his jurors during his trial for treason, the maxim of the law is that silence denotes consent.

Anti-white racism is more or less routine on MSNBC, but this was more flagrant than usual, especially after Cross introduced Mystal as “our audience favorite,” and her “pal.” Remember, Mystal is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, They sure did him a lot of good.

2. Speaking of that gun rights case, the questioning from the justices last week had all listeners convinced that New York’s law requiring those seeking a license to carry a handgun in public to show a “proper cause” would be struck down, as a majority of justices felt that it imposes an unreasonable restriction on the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

Essentially, Barbara D. Underwood, New York’s solicitor general, was unable to make a convincing argument that the right of a citizen to arm himself or herself for self-defense was more pressing in the home than out of it. “If the purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow people to protect themselves,” Chief Justice Roberts said, “that’s implicated when you’re in a high-crime area. It’s not implicated when you’re out in the woods.” This exchange was part of the discussion over whether a permissible law could limit gun possession in “sensitive areas.” But what’s a sensitive area? And, as Justice Roberts summarized the question, “You don’t have to say, when you’re looking for a permit to speak on a street corner or whatever, that, you know, your speech is particularly important, so why do you have to show in this case, convince somebody, that you’re entitled to exercise your Second Amendment right?”

That also addresses one of the standard arguments of those who would ban semi-automatic weapons: a citizen doesn’t “need” such a powerful firearm. Yet the essence of liberty is that the citizen gets to decide what is needed in an individual case.

The guess here is that the Court will try to craft some narrow exceptions where a state can legitimately allow a gun ban, like sports stadiums. That, however, will not be an easy line to draw…

Continue reading →

I don’t know why this particular op-ed brought the headline above vividly into my mind; it would easily have been dozens of other episodes. But as I was reading the standard issue, progressive censor essay in the Times by Jennifer Finlay Boylan (not to be confused with the Boylan who first accused Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment), my mind flashed back to turning on the lights late at night in the kitchen of an Arlington, VA. house I was renting with four law school classmates in my first year at Georgetown. There were more than a hundred roaches in that room, all over the counters and floor, and they scattered and vanished in seconds. We had seen perhaps one roach in our first weeks in the house. The sight made me physically ill. How did the owners allow such an infestation to happen?

Boylan is a left-wing ideologue who has been outed here before. She’s an English professor at Barnard who periodically spreads her bad ideas in the Times op-ed pages after injecting the poison into the brains of her trusting students. The essay in question was titled, “Can We Separate the Art From the Artist?,” and in it she raises, gingerly, seductively, the question of whether works of art should be torn down like Thomas Jefferson statues if the artists who created them behaved or thought in ways that the progressive thought police found offensive.

Boylan writes,

The past several years have seen a reassessment of our country’s many mythologies — from the legends of the generals of the Confederacy to the historical glossing over of slaveholding founding fathers. But as we take another look at the sins of our historical figures, we’ve also had to take a hard look at our more immediate past and present, including the behavior of the creators of pop culture. That reassessment extends now to the people who wrote some of our best-loved songs. But what to do with the art left behind? Can I still love their music if I’m appalled by various events in the lives of Johnny Cash or Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis? Or by Eric Clapton’s racist rants and anti-vaccination activism?

Of course, there is no easy answer here.

Of course there damn well is; Boylan and her censoring, culture-strangling fellow bullies just refuse to acknowledge it. The ideas, innovations and artistic creations that have advanced society, human knowledge and inspiration remains exactly as valuable and deserving of honor, circulation and, often, immortality regardless of the personal transgressions of the thinkers and creators. Frankly, I’m sick of writing about this topic and even got bored wading through my own posts about it. Here: in this one about Disney World denying the worth of Bill Cosby’s contributions to humor and entertainment because he is a rapist, I begged,

Stop airbrushing your history, your heroes, your geniuses and your trailblazers, America. It is wrong—dishonest, incompetent, unfair, irresponsible, destructive….and so, so short-sighted and stupid.

It is particularly destructive in the field of popular music, because musicians, like comedians, are typically maladjusted social misfits who are too often unfit for civilized society when they aren’t doing what they are best at. Boylan’s totalitarian reasoning leads directly to bad art by politically-approved artists supplanting transcendent art by creeps. And people like her really and truly believe that’s the better choice. Continue reading →