Supreme Court case reveals Scalia’s race problem

Our national discourse is packed with so many outlandish and offensive bigoted comments at the highest levels I sometimes have to check the calendar to be sure I’m in the twenty-first century. Leading GOP contender Ben Carson would not want a Muslim president. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump would ban all Muslims from entering the US, and has

How to stop online sexual harassment

By suspending his account recently, Twitter has now punished George Zimmerman more than any arm of our justice system. George Zimmerman, infamous for his 2013 acquittal for the shooting death of unarmed African American minor Trayvon Martin, is no longer welcome on the social media site because he revealed personal information and posted intimate photographs

Nobody is innocent in the death of Laquan McDonald

In the Chicago shooting death of Laquan McDonald, the behavior of everyone—the police shooter, his fellow officers that night, the police spokesman, the attorney general, the city council, the mayor, and most of the media—now appears to range from incompetence to outright lies and coverup. This is what we mean when we speak of systemic

Syrian refugees, George Zimmerman, and the logic of fear

  Many bad arguments are being made in the profoundly misguided effort to keep Syrian refugees from coming to the US. We have made this xenophobic mistake before, turning away ships filled with desperate Jews fleeing Hitler and rounding up Japanese-Americans during World War II. Currently, we take only tiny numbers of refugees in general

Eight-year-old boy charged with murder? Really?

  Baby Kelci was crying. The one-year-old’s mom was out at a club late at night, and an eight-year-old boy was left in charge. According to police, the boy “got extremely agitated” that the baby would not stop crying, and he beat her to death. The baby’s mother, Katerra Lewis, 26 and her roommate, a

Bathroom bogeymen swing Houston election

The nation’s fourth largest city has rolled back civil rights in a campaign based on lies. In last week’s elections, Houston, Texas overturned its antidiscrimination ordinance in a referendum. The law had prohibited discrimination based on fifteen protected categories. While thirteen of the fifteen were protected under federal law (sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin,

Debtor’s prisons: An attack on the poor

Most of us have committed a petty legal infraction like walking a dog without a leash, making an illegal left turn or drinking in public. You don’t go to jail for these offenses. You’re just hit with an annoying ticket and fine. But in many states you go to jail if you can’t pay those