Democratic Socialist or Social Democrat?

If anyone is paying attention to American politics at this time, it would be difficult to miss the fact that we are in a presidential election year. Donald Trump, currently serving as the 45th President of the United States, is running for his second term against a winnowing field of Democratic hopefuls. Trump, despite the deep loathing of approximately 50% of the electorate, is still a powerful adversary, carrying with him not only the sycophantic support of his own party members (with some notable exceptions), but he is also brandishing one of the most effective weapons available — incumbency in…

Why The Left Attacks the Left

In November, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. This event was viewed as a cataclysm of biblical proportions to people around the world, most notably by Americans who identify as rational human beings. In fact, absent the approximately 65 million voters who voted for Trump, virtually everyone in the developed world considered the election of Donald Trump a grave tragedy, at worst, to a comedic farce, at best. Rising out of the toxic fallout of the 2016 election, was an emboldened faction of belligerent bigotry on the American right, and an equally aggressive faction of defiant…

A White Privilege?

I actually wrote an article about this a few years ago, on a now-defunct website that I can no longer access. But I recently read about the police shooting of Terry Tillman in St. Louis in September, and it reminded me that this issue still persists in America. St. Louis is an “open carry” jurisdiction, and Mr. Tillman was carrying a pistol in a holster when he entered the Galleria Mall in Richmond Heights. Apparently, according to officers, the Galleria mall had recently changed its firearm policy, and when officers approached Tillman to kindly remind him of the new ‘no-guns…

The date is June 16, 2019, and it is officially Father’s Day here in the United States. The first known Father’s Day celebration in America occurred in 1910, in Spokane, Washington, though it didn’t really catch on. In fact, there were numerous failed attempts to revive the holiday for several decades, including attempts by national leaders like Calvin Coolidge and Woodrow Wilson. However, while Mother’s Day has been celebrated since the 1870’s, and has been a declared national holiday since 1913, Father’s Day did not gain that distinction until 1972, when President Nixon signed it into law.

Its not hard…

I have noticed over the course of my legal career that criminal defendants with money (or who have supportive families with money), fare better than those who are poor. We see it play out in several distinct ways within the criminal justice system. It has been pointed out how poor people pay astronomically higher fines and fees in traffic and misdemeanor courts, such as Municipal Courts. People with money get a traffic ticket, or some other minor municipal offense, like Disturbing the Peace, or Public Intoxication, and they simply pay the fine with a single check. These monied offenders are…

In the United States, every year tens of millions of people are charged with traffic offenses, misdemeanors and/or felonies. Approximately 95% of those cases resolve either through guilty pleas or other pre-trial devices. In other words, only about 5% of criminal cases actually go to trial. So prevalent is the guilty plea — almost always by means of a plea bargain — that a rather large body of caselaw and precedent has developed around just this concept. …

Bernie Sanders was cheated in 2016. I don’t mean to suggest that I know he would have won the nomination if not for cheating, but there is no doubt that he was cheated. The DNC has practically admitted that it purposely shut Sanders out. Superdelegates — unelected party insiders — flat out ignored voters in supporting Clinton, even in states that overwhelmingly supported Sanders. For example, in Washington and Colorado, where Sanders won the primary by a substantial margin, he received the support of ZERO superdelegates. In fact Sanders won at least 45% of the popular vote in the primaries…

It is no secret that America is the Incarceration Capital of the world. Not only does the U.S. have the highest percentage of prison inmates, we also have the highest absolute number of citizens behind bars. In fact, while the U.S. population makes up only 5% of the world’s population, we boast nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners. There are more than two million people in state and federal prisons, and another half-million in local jails. Additionally, there are another 5 million or so people on probation or parole, bringing the total number of Americans under correctional supervision to more…