It took quite a few mistakes, varieties of wrongful conduct, incompetence and negligence to kill Phil Paxson. He was driving home from his daughter’s ninth birthday party in Hickory, North Carolina, using a GPS to guide himself through a dark and rainy night. But the GPS hadn’t been updated for a while: Phil was going to get around to it, but never did. The GPS directed him to take a bridge that was no longer there: it had been washed away in a storm nine years ago. It still wasn’t repaired because the state of North Carolina and the city of Hickory couldn’t, or wouldn’t, agree on who should pay for it.

While they were debating, kids kept stealing the warning signs and barriers, like the young Addams Family son above. There was no barrier or warning as Phil drove along, following the dulcet tones of the GPS lady.

So he plunged into the river to his death on September 29, 2022.

The Unibomber would have something to say about our dependence on technology, and how dangerous it is to rely on machines. Relying on government bureaucracies is even more dangerous. Apparently we also can’t rely on families, schools, churches and society to install the most basic ethics alarms in our young, like the one that pings when they think, “Hey, that ‘STOP! Bridge Out!’ sign would look cool in my room!”

Phil Paxon was killed by an excess of trust.

Nice.

Northeastern University’s law school this week erroneously emailed 205 current applicants and nearly 4,000 more who had applied the previous year with an offer of admission for its 2023 class.

The Boston school discovered the mistake and sent a follow-up “Oopsie! Never mind!”email several hours later, blaming “a technical error.” “The school of law deeply regrets this unintended mistake and is taking steps to ensure that it will not happen in the future,” the university said in part.

Oh! Well, that’s okay then, as long as you’re taking steps! Nope…not good enough, not nearly. There are some mistakes that simply cannot be excused, because one simply cannot allow them to happen. Telling anxious applicants for a coveted position or benefit that they have been accepted when they have not is a blatant one, and the remedy should be, in cases like this, to be accountable and follow through on the promise of the mistaken message. For one thing, such a tradition would guarantee schools are more careful.

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Come into the Light! All are welcome!

…which reminds me: interestingly, the professional listserv where I and another lawyer were reprimanded and threatened for daring to express non-conforming opinions in a forum where the previous president feels it necessary to include “he,him” to his posts went almost silent yesterday, The Day After. There were just three timid offerings as opposed to the usual 15-40 in what is usually a very active platform. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I’m pretty sure what looked like a sudden drop-off in enthusiasm was noticed. Good. Maybe it will spark some introspection from the would-be censors.

I belong to a distinguished legal association—I bet you can guess the field– that one would expect to understand the importance, indeed the necessity, of encouraging open discourse that is welcoming to divergent points of view. Yet yesterday, when I and another lawyer dared to make observations that varied from official progressive cant, the president of the organization, no less, reprimanded us for making comments others on the list found “offensive.” She then posted the listserv’s rules and standards which, as with all such things, were completely subjective, and translated to, in the words of my similarly reprimanded colleague, opinions that conform to the consensus here are acceptable; those that do not are uncivil and subject to censure. Finally, in a remarkable display of self-indictment, she told my colleague that continued publication of non-complying positions and arguments would result in his losing professional referrals.

That’s called “a threat.” It’s also called “chilling speech.”

To the target of this reprimand’s credit, he responded (no weenie he): “I guess I’ll just have to down-size then.” I would have opted for the less elegant “Bite me,” and will, if I have the opportunity in the future.

This is no right-wing conspiracy theory. This is what is going on in all the professions now. I know that there are many lawyers on the list who have been cowed into silence, and shame on them. The only way to fight nascent totalitarians is to fight them.

And that’s the way it is.

Did you know that President Trump was an authoritarian, abused his power and violated the Constitution?

Nothing Trump did in office was as clearly, obviously and intentionally a direct violation of the Constitution’s limits on Presidential power as what President Barack Obama did in 2012 when he could not get Congress to pass a law allowing so-called “Dreamers” to stay in the United States. He used an Executive Order to establish the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program despite saying himself (remember, Obama is supposedly a Constitutional Law scholar) that he didn’t have power to do it.

That was the exact moment when I concluded that Obama was not only a weak and feckless President, but an arrogant and dangerous one.

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It has been raining for five days straight here.

But never mind: what matters is that October 5th marks the date in 2017 when the New York Times blew the whistle on Hollywood mega-producer and major Clinton money source Harvey Weinstein, setting in motion all sorts of cultural. legal, political and societal forces no one could have predicted, as well as providing many depressing ethics lessons. For example, virtually everyone who pretended horror at Weinstein’s predations knew about what he was doing long before, but said and did nothing, and yes, this almost certainly included powerful Democrats as well as alleged Hollywood feminists. Yecchh. The sudden awareness of sexual harassment in high places—as if Bill Clinton hadn’t been enough to make it obvious—was quickly weaponized to take down powerful men in business, the arts, news media, politics and more, some deservedly (Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer…) some not so much (Al Franken). The Weinstein movements #MeToo and Time’s Up also catalyzed the effort to smear Brett Kavanaugh out of his Supreme Court nomination, though they went oddly mute when Joe Biden was accused of doing privately the kind of thing he had been photographed doing to hapless girls and women for years. How and why this happened was neatly illustrated when the co-founder and COB of “Time’s Up” was revealed to have helped Andrew Cuomo discredit his multiple sexual harassment accusers.

Despite its ugly partisanship, hypocrisy and cynicism, the Harvey Weinstein Ethics Train Wreck, documented here, has still had its salutary effects. Bill Clinton’s reign as a Democratic rock star finally ended. Woody Allen was at last shunned in Hollywood. 

Best of all, the double standards and empty virtue-signaling of feminists and progressives were impossible to miss. Good.

1. Remember, Karine Jean-Pierre, the President’s paid liar, says that “If you are not with where the majority of Americans are, that is extreme.” A new poll by the Trafalgar Group, taken September 17-20 and including more than 1,000 likely 2022 election voters, showed that 1.4% of voters “believe eliminating gas-powered cars and moving to electric vehicles is the best solution.” Just thought it was worth mentioning…Speaking of Karine, it has been fascinating watching her claim that when the still-high gasoline prices edge down, it is President Biden’s brilliant work paying off, but when it goes up, it’s everybody else’s fault. Now gas is going up again, and OPEC has voted to cut production, probably meaning that it will start rising sharply. Ultimately, her re-flip-flop will pose another “Just how gullible is the American public?” test. The results of the earlier ones have not been encouraging. Continue reading →

Icky, unethical, or just remarkable devotion to an agenda? Whatever it is, I’m sort of impressed. When most people say, “I’ll piss on your grave!” they are just indulging in wishful thinking.

Dean Eichler, 68, of Bergenfield, N.J. was finally secretly recorded on video pulling into the Tappan Reformed Church Cemetery in his SUV for his daily ritual. As he leaves the motor running, Eichner slowly walks towards Linda Torello’s grave while unzipping his fly. Eichner urinates vigorously on her final resting place, then returns to his SUV and drives away.

43-year-old Michael Murphy used hidden cameras to catch the performance after finding traces of urine along with plastic bags with feces whenever he visited his mother’s grave in Orangetown, New York. The elderly man visits almost every day at around 6:00 am. He is, as you might guess, Linda’s ex-husband whom she divorced 48 years ago. Michael got permission to set up the cameras; apparently this ritual has been going on for a long, long time. Interestingly a woman, assumed to be Eichner’s spouse, accompanies him on his morning visits.

Murphy says that his mother’s brief marriage to the guy ended when she became pregnant and he didn’t want to be a father. (There’s got to be more to the story than that!) “How he found my mother’s grave site we are not sure. But this stems back to a problem almost 50 years ago,” Michael wrote on Facebook. He says the family has had no contact with him since 1976.

Police say there is nothing they can (or will) do about routine grave-pissing, but Linda Torello’s son is trying to determine if a complaint for grave desecration will prompt some action.

You know, the late Stephen Sondheim could have written a musical about this.

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Pointer: Oddity Central