A recent story involving Boston Latin School recently caught my attention. First, I attended Latin School in Chicago, which like its Boston cousin is an elite private school. Second, the story confirmed my rising concern over the trend in elementary and high schools to instill a hyper-sensitive culture. At issue is something that many of us experienced in our childhood: dress codes. The students of Latin Boston however, have risen up in disgust over such dress codes as sexist attacks on women and even a cause for a rape culture.
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As our presidential campaign de-evolves into petty name calling and calls for prosecution, the French are having a quintessentially French scandal of their own. French presidential hopeful Jean-François Copé has found himself in deep fondue after admitting that he did not know the price of pain au chocolat and then radically understated the price. Sacre Bleu. The French have not been so incensed since “The Terrors” and many have denounced Copé as an out-of-touch elitist.
Continue reading “Let Them Eat Pain Au Chocolat: French Presidential Candidate Triggers Controversy Over The Price of Pastries”
I left this morning from San Diego after a spectacular stay as part of my speech to the federal administrative judges at their conference. Besides the visit to the USS Midway that we discussed earlier, two of the greatest highlights was a visit to the San Diego Maritime Museum and a long hike along the Pacific Ocean near Del Mar.
There is a major news development with the release of a letter from FBI Director James B. Comey that the Bureau has decided that new evidence requires further investigation into the Clinton emails. It was a surprising change just days before the election. After all, as recently as September 27, 2016, Comey rejected the idea that the bureau would reopen its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Comey wrote in a letter to top members of Congress that the bureau has “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” UPDATE: There are accounts suggesting that the information came from an investigation of Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Huma Abedin, and that the emails were not authored by Hillary Clinton. This is still unfolding and there are calls to confirm this information. If the author is Huma Abedin, the investigation would hit one of the most senior aides. If it contained classified information, that is a stand only offense under federal law. Human Abedin was interviewed previously by the FBI — raising the risk that she will be called in for additional questioning. However, the new development could also prove insignificant for a criminal investigation and, if these were communications between Abedin and her estranged husband, it may not implicate Clinton personally or have any serious impact on the prior conclusions of the FBI investigation.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte seems to be on a campaign to prove to the world that he is demonstrably insane. In his latest news grabbing headline, Duterte claims God spoke to him during a flight from Japan on Thursday and warned him the plane would crash if he kept using bad language. That’s right. The Almighty will not kill Duterte for ordering the murdering of thousands of criminal suspects, but he would not only kill Duterte but everyone on his plane because he really, really, really does not like swearing.
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Miranda Kay Rader, 19, picked a uniquely bad moment for a selfie . . .
Continue reading “Can You Guess What This Person Was Charged With?”
Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner is triggering a minor dust up over comments made at a bookstore appearance highlighting a new Posner biography written by William Domnarski. Posner blasted the current members of the Court as unqualified and the Court itself as “awful” in terms of the low quality of its work.
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One of the highlights of my trip to speak to federal judges in San Diego was the ability to finally visit the Midway aircraft carrier, which is now a floating museum. As many on the blog know, I am a military history nut so a visit to the Midway was a true “book list” item. It did not disappoint. I spent hours walking about the carrier and listening to both the audio tour and live tours.
The Wikileaks disclosures continue to hound the Clintons and the recent release implicates the relationship between Bill Clinton and for-profit educational company, Laureate International. I previously wrote about the huge payments given to Bill Clinton by Laureate, a controversial global educational company that gave Clinton millions while his wife was Secretary of State. Now, emails reveal that one of Clinton’s closest aides, Doug Band, describes Bill Clinton’s use of the Clinton Foundation as a mean to secure personal windfalls as “Bill Clinton, Inc.”
Today I will have the distinct honor of speaking at the 25th anniversary conference of the Association of Administrative Law Judges (AALJ) in San Diego. The AALJ is an assemblage of 1300 Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) employed by the Social Security Administration. They handle hundreds of thousands of cases each year in a critical adjudicatory role in our federal system. I will be speaking about the rise of the Fourth Branch of federal agencies in our tripartite system and the dangers that it presents to our constitutional system. I will also be discussing how this massive shift of power to the agencies has presented serious ethical and practical problems for our ALJs who are faced with ever rising dockets with limited resources. I will be speaking at the Windham Bayside at 9:00am.
Continue reading “Turley Speaks To Federal Administrative Judges At 25th AALJ Conference”
Newly released emails from Wikileaks show that aides became alarmed when President Barack Obama assured the public that he had learned about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state “the same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.” Cheryl D. Mills, a top aide who featured prominently in the email scandal and insisted on immunity before turning over a laptop with classified information, flagged the issue to say that Obama sent emails to Clinton’s private email. There is also an exchange of campaign officials complaining that close Clinton aides withheld the information of the email scandal because “they wanted to get away with it.” As I discussed in a recent column, these Wikileaks memos have confirmed the worst assumptions of voters about the dishonesty and evasion of their government. It has turned this into America’s Game of Thrones election.
In a surprise Vatican ruling for many Catholics, the Church has declared at Catholic are forbidden from keeping the ashes of cremated loved ones at home, scattering them, or dividing them between family members. This widespread practice has been deemed one of the “new ideas contrary to the church’s faith”.
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Below is my column in USA Today on the start of the World Series today and specifically a few historical disagreements involving the Chicago Cubs. In a true nightmare for a lifelong Cubs fan, I have to fly to San Diego today for a speech Wednesday to federal administrative law judges at their 25th anniversary conference. I am counting on in-flight entertainment to avoid hyperventilating at 25,000 feet. I am however moving ahead with plans to rent goats to help break the infamous curse that has plagued our team since 1945. On Sunday (assuming we do not have a sweep!), we will make these goats the happiest bovidae in the world. In the meantime, my students are allowed to claim “Cubbies” in class to decline to answer any question from me in celebration of the rise of the Cubbies. While the Ottoman Empire may have disappeared since our last World Series win, the Cubbies have lived to rise again.
Here is the column:
One of the least pursued stories in the mainstream media has been the denial of Donna Brazile that she sent the controversial email leaking a question to Hillary Clinton that would be asked at the CNN presidential downhill. Of course the easiest way to confirm that story is to ask the recipient campaign adviser Jennifer Palmieri who is readily available to the media. However, reporters have not pressed Palmieri. In the meantime, Brazile gave a rambling denial of the story that would normally trigger a feeding frenzy. In addition, some techies have posted a research that they say strongly support claims of authenticity, but the response of the media has been crickets.
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We previously discussed the ridiculous case of prominent Jordanian writer, Nahed Hattar, 56, who was charged with blasphemy for merely sharing this cartoon. The charge was a disgrace for a nation that long prided itself on being a moderate Arab nation. It is increasingly succumbing to extreme Islamic voices and the charges against this writer were a worrisome development. Now he is dead. A man dressed in traditional Islamic garb shot and killed Hattar as he walked outside of the court in Amman.
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