Christina Lorey is an independent, Madison Wisconsin-based journalist, “positive news” creator, and former local television reporter, anchor, and producer.
And also, apparently, a moron.
From The Res Ipsa Loquitor Files…
Law & Law Enforcement
Wow. Who CAN You Trust In 2026? The Latest: Rigging Bar Exam Scores….
[For the pop culture history challenged, that was the title card for Johnny Carson’s first TV show, a sort-of quiz show that was really just a set-up for Johnny to ad lib and be clever. If you don’t know who Johnny Carson was, shame on you.]
Nancie Givens, former executive director of the Arkansas Office of Professional Programs, was arrested and charged with 65 felony counts of tampering with public records. An investigation “uncovered extensive irregularities involving Arkansas Bar Examination scores spanning from July 2020 through July 2025.” Prosecutor Will Jones said in a release,
“As Prosecuting Attorney, I recognize the responsibility Ms. Givens was entrusted with to safeguard the accuracy of bar examination results and preserve the records supporting them,” Jones said in the release. “The charges concern how she handled those specific duties, including the alteration of exam results and the destruction of supporting records.”
The investigation is ongoing. It isn’t clear how or why Givens altered those bar exam results. Here she is…
(Yikes)
You can read the details as we have them so far here. My rule is never to trust anyone who spells “Nancy” as “Nancie,” but that’s just me.
McDonald’s Is Being Sued Over “The McRib”: Good!
Also, yecchh.
A class-action lawsuit against McDonald’s looks like it is going to go forward after to proceed, after U.S. District Judge April Perry ruled that it was premature to conclude that consumers would be unreasonable to expect that the seasonal pork sandwich offering contained rib meat. Plaintiffs allege the sandwich’s name and rib-shaped patty deliberately mislead customers because the thing contains no pork rib meat.
Gee, why would anyone think that a sandwich called the “McRib” and shaped to look like spare ribs would contain pork rib meat?
One survey presented as evidence found in the court filing found that 72% of respondents expected the McRib to contain rib meat. Another found that 67% considered rib meat important or very important to their purchasing decision. Wow, people are getting more cynical by the hour: 28% expect to be lied to in advertising. Even food advertising! I must confess, when I bought a McRib, I assumed that it contained rib meat—which made it surprising that it tasted like crap and had a disgusting texture. The law suit claims that the McRib should be called the McLow-grade-pork-products, because it really contains just pork shoulder, heart, tripe and stomach. (cont.)
Deconstructionists United vs The United States of America
Guest post by peanutclearly45eb6e57bb
Many constituencies of discontent seem to have coalesced into a unified front with the objective of destroying the founding principles and proven long-held values of the United States. This intersectional dissent is represented by the BIPOC/LGBTQ+ flags flying seemingly everywhere in place of the Stars and Stripes.
Broadly speaking, these constituencies are deconstructionists, seeking to take apart nearly everything that had made America great and reassemble it in their preferred order. They seem to assume everyone will get along once the capitalist, white, heterosexual, Judeo-Christian, Constitutional, patriarchal society is relegated to the dustbin of history or the reeducation camps.
What are these constituencies and what new reality do they plan to deliver that will make all the evils they’ve experienced in the United States disappear in the rearview mirror of history? [Cont.]
And Now For Something Completely Different: The Hypnotist High School Principal
How did I miss THIS story? I guess People Magazine does have its uses: it recently surfaced what EA would headline as a “Now THIS is an Unethical High School Principal!” piece if I had been doing my ethics story research better in 2012. People’s catalyst was a episode of the docuseries “The Curious Case Of…“, and there had been an earlier docuseries on this screwy case in 2023, True Crime Story: Look Into My Eyes.
The bottom line: Dr. George Kenney was a North Port High School in Sarasota County, Florida who got interested in hypnotism, took some courses in the procedure, and decided to hypnotize over 70 people according to the Sarasota-Herald Tribune, including students, athletes and colleagues,to help them cope with problems in their lives, or something. Hypnotism is regarded as therapy, and one has to be licensed to use it on consenting adults unless you have a Vegas act that makes volunteers from the audience think they are chickens or wombats. Hypnosis can be dangerous with subjects who have mental or emotional disorders, so when three of his student subjects died in the spring of 2011, one in a suspicious car crash and two by suicide, Kenney’s hypnosis hobby came under fire. He was never indicted or sued in connection with the three teens’ deaths, but Kenney was charged with two misdemeanors for practicing therapeutic hypnosis without a license. He pleaded no contest and resigned as principal in 2012.
You can read the People story from earlier this year here. Meanwhile,
Culture, Not Race
I ran across two essays just as I was prepping for a rare, in-person live seminar for young lawyers focusing on basic non-legal, life-competence skills essential to the effective and professional practice of law. One of those is understanding the importance and the power of culture. We all have a responsibility to care for the various cultures we swim in: a bad culture will corrupt us; a good culture will ennoble us and make us more successful and virtuous. If you can’t change a culture, you have to get out. The upcoming election is about, about, other things, what kind of culture our nation will have. People who don’t understand culture (or who don’t make the necessary effort to know what their culture is, like Malcolm Gladwell in his recent book) create problems for everyone, especially themselves.
That infuriating video above prompted a racist substacker named Max Remington (maybe) who describes himself as an “America First, isolationist, unilateralist, shameless nationalist, and post-Christian radical right-winger” to post this long essay. It’s lucid, more-or-less well-written, and provocative, but also displays the logical and ethical fallacies typically embraced by racists who are made stupid by their bias. I know them well: my ex-Marine law school room mate was a racist (and anti-Semite) much like this guy. My room mate got himself killed, but I have another racist friend with similar views, and most of my Greek-American relatives on my mother’s side were racists, including Mom.
In response, another substacker who goes by Sensurround Q Catgirl (or maybe that’s her real name) wrote this essay. Its main theme is that Max “provides absolutely ZERO evidence that race is the cause of the behaviors he’s describing.” “He provides statistics,” Catgirl continues. “He describes experiences. He identifies behaviors he finds objectionable, but then he makes an enormous logical leap from observing behavior to attributing that behavior to race.”
She’s right, Max is wrong
Watch the video, and read the essays.
I’ve got to get ready for my seminar…
An Unethical Vote From The Pope, and a Weak Analysis From Professor Turley
Well, I didn’t see this coming.
Because Pope Leo XIV is an American citizen and because he’s an unethical and arrogant SOB, he just became the first Pope ever to vote in a U.S. election. Leo, aka Robert Prevost, mailed an absentee ballot to Will County, Illinois. The clerk’s office has confirmed that “Robert Prevost is on the list of individuals who requested a Vote by Mail ballot.”
Why did the leader of a foreign nation vote in an American election, the very epitome of a leader of another country engaging in election interference? Because he could, that’s all. It is legal, because American legislators never considered this combination of factors occurring. “It is legal!” is also the rationalization (#4. Marion Barry’s Misdirection, or “If it isn’t illegal, it’s ethical“) being used by the cheating Democrats and their drained-of-ethics followers to shrug off their Senate candidate in Alaska trying to game the state’s ranked choice voting system by recruiting another Dan Sullivan to confuse voters. The Pope is a Democrat, so, naturally, he has the same set of values. “Because I could” was also Bill Clinton’s explanation in his autobiography for why he sexually exploited a star-struck female intern while he was President. “Because he can” is also the answer to the question, “Why does a dog lick his balls?”
Stay classy, Pope Leo!
The Pope didn’t have to vote in our mid-terms, and the ethical, diplomatic and respectable (and respectful) decision would have been to eschew the temptation. I thought Popes were supposed to be good at that.
The Judge Flipped At Dawn*
Texas lawyer Ezra Young (right, above) filed a judicial complaint against Judge Ada Brown (left) of the Northern District of Texas who went bonkers during a hearing last April. Brown excoriated Young for—wait for it!— being white. Young corrected her, saying that he is Hispanic (which is white, but the Left’s group-labeling obsession has obliterated that detail for all time), so Judge Brown said he was“white-presenting.” Here’s a description of the exchange from Bloomberg Law:
Throughout the hearing, the judge, a Black woman with Native American ancestry, accused Young of mistreating Black attorneys, took “judicial notice” of her own background in making findings against Young, and repeatedly referred to Young, who is Latino, as being White. Brown called the hearing months after she revoked Young’s ability to practice in her courtroom to weigh whether the lawyer should face sanctions.
“I think what’s happening here, quite candidly, is you are very intimidated for some reason, Mr. Young, with Black excellence, in light of your White mediocrity. Yeah. Right?,” Brown said, according to the transcript. “You should write that down. I mean, you — I’m — you look like a White man, right?”
“I’m not White, Your Honor,” Young replied, adding that he’s Latino. “Well, you are White-presenting; is that fair to say?” Brown said, according to the transcript. Young said that he’s “fair-skinned,” and Brown said that Young had “White privilege” when he argued his client didn’t receive key evidence in the case.
“You’re the White savior, come to save all the stupid Black lawyers in Texas who need your help, from New York,” Brown later said, according to the transcript. . . .
During the April 24, 2026 hearing, Brown accused Young of “racial bullying” toward Black attorneys in the case. Brown also said that Young was acting like a “Chad,” a term Young wasn’t familiar with. The judge said it was the male version of a “Karen.” “It’s someone who calls the manager when they don’t get their way. They stomp their foot when the rules are supposed to apply to them, right?” Brown said, according to the transcript. . . .
During the April hearing, Brown took issue with an article headline describing the case when it went before the Supreme Court of Texas. The article quoted a brief filed by Young that referenced another law professor apparently comparing what happened in the tenure denial to a “lynching.” The judge accused Young of making up that quote to “get a headline.”
“And so when I read a headline — a sensationalized, very racialized headline that says, ‘it’s like I’ve been lynched,’ and it’s literally got no connection to this case, I have to ask you, Mr. Social Media, Main Character Chad, White Hero, Savior, Loves to Help Black People Be An Ally, where the lynching in this case came from?” Brown said, according to the transcript.
She also apparently gave Young a copy of a 1920 newspaper article that described a lynching. “So we don’t find lynching jokes funny down here, sir,” Brown said, according to the transcript.
Fascinating. Brown is a Trump appointee, which means that even supposedly conservative clack judges may have had their brains addled from years of anti-white, anti-male indoctrination, propaganda and an implanted victim mentality. Of she just snapped like a dry twig in the wind. She has been suspended pending psychiatric testing; apparently the judge had been acting strangely for quite a while. Brown has refused to decide some cases and hasn’t shown up to face her disciplinary proceedings. This, Josh Blackman deduces at The Volokh Conspiracy, suggests that “something is amiss” with this judge.
Ya think?
More on the Democrats’ “Confuse the Voters!” Plot In Alaska
The big story yesterday was the revelation of the Democratic Party’s plot to steal an Alaska U.S. Senate seat by confusing voters.…well, that, and the fact that the New York Times reported damning conduct by the party it pimps for most of the year. Stephen Green, usually an astute political analyst from the Right, thinks that the scandal may have national impact, that the GOP should use it nationally as it makes the final pitch to voters. He says, “[I]f the Republicans play their cards right, they can make the fallout go national. Because it DESERVES to go national. In fact, this ought to be one of the defining issues of the 2026 midterms.” Got it. Since it ought to be, it will be. Welcome to Fantasy Land. Green adds, [O]nce again, the same people screaming about “saving democracy” and “democracy is on the ballot” have been caught trying to rig an election.”
Also, trees have leaves! Why would any indoctrinated, progressive, Trump Deranged voter anywhere but Alaska—heck, even in Alaska!—suddenly think “THIS is the final straw!”? The Democratic Party had its puppet President call Republicans Nazis and threat to democracy…
…as it knowingly inflicted a demented POTUS on the nation, let a former President pull the strings, had its captive media lie that the shuffling geezer was “sharp as a tack,” and then replaced him as the 2024 candidate with a far left dim bulb who never faced a single primary opponent or a competitive convention vote. Its favorite Communism-loving Senator, Bernie Sanders, assured radical voters that what she was saying on the campaign trail were just lies to placate moderates until she was elected. The party has been trying to inflame its wackos to kill Donald Trump for years, and came within inches of succeeding—then tried to claim the assassination attempt was a MAGA hoax. It has repeatedly tried to defy election results by concocting one scheme after another (and the Big Lies to support them) to remove an opposing party’s President, including an audacious, Obama White House-engineered investigation of “collusion” with Russia.
It flooded the nation with illegal aliens, all the better to get census results that give Democratic states more electoral votes and representatives. Democrats in Virginia tried to sneak an illegal and unconstitutional redistricting scheme into law by lying about it on a referendum. In Maine, Democratic leadership kept insisting that a fake oyster fisherman who abuses women was a legitimate Senate candidate while he lied about the Nazi tattoo he had on his chest. In Minnesota, a Democratic rep almost certainly engaged in fraud to become a U.S. citizen and has been lying about it ever since, while stating that her first loyalty is to a foreign, Muslim nation. House Democrats let one of their Reps break the law to delay a House vote and lie about it. The party has successfully blocked efforts to ensure election integrity on multiple fronts, but the late revelation of another Democratic cheat in Alaska is going to finally make Americans figure out where the real danger to democracy comes from?
Malcolm Gladwell Jumps The Shark
I’ve enjoyed several of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, though their quality has been on a definite downward slope since “The Tipping Point.” But like so, so many other relatively intelligent people who have let political bubbles and partisan bias infect their brains, Malcolm finally capitulated to the progressive mob and decided to wade into fact-infested waters he wasn’t prepared for. Too bad.
Don’t you love it when non-lawyers, especially journalists, start criticizing Supreme Court decisions that they haven’t read carefully and can’t understand? That’s Gladwell’s new, pro-gun control screed “The American Way of Killing,” released last month. American law isn’t all Gladwell doesn’t understand: he’s clueless about American culture too (Malcolm is Canadian). In this interview with TIME, he says, “There’s no reason why the United States cannot have the same level of homicide as its Western European peers. It just chose a different direction.” That statement is ignorant and delusional, but I’m not writing about his unfamiliarity with U.S. roots, culture and history here. The issue at hand is guns.
In his book, Gladwell defaults to the hoary “1619 Project”-redolent claim that the Second Amendment was designed to protect Southern slave patrols, which would be quite a surprise to the Massachusetts delegation to the Constitutional Convention. That’s dumb, but he goes beyond that to attack the SCOTUS ruling that the right to bear arms is not restricted to militias but is an individual right. Gladwell compliant is its alleged reliance on an old English case from the 17th Century. He states that Court’s conclusion that the Founders believed there was a right to bear arms for self-defense was “bananas” because it used an old obscure precedent to interpret a law in the 20th Century. What Justices should use to address legal controversies is “common sense,” the British-Canadian intellectual without a whiff of legal comprehension intones.
