Author: Tod Kelly

Behold the VP nominee’s alter ego, Law School Daze

From: Mike Pence Cartoons—The Vice-Presidential Candidate’s Law School Drawings

Twitter suspended high-profile accounts associated with the alt-right movement, the same day the social media service said it would crack down on hate speech.

Among those suspended was Richard Spencer, who runs an alt-right think tank and had a verified account on Twitter.

The alt-right, a loosely organized group that espouses white nationalism, emerged as a counterpoint to mainstream conservatism and has flourished online. Spencer has said he wants blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Jews removed from the U.S.

Twitter on Tuesday removed Spencer’s verified account, @RichardBSpencer, that of his think tank, the National Policy Institute @npiamerica, and his online magazine @radixjournal.

From: Twitter suspends alt-right accounts

“Woman like Donald Trump because safety and security is important to them,” she tells me later, after the convention. For Morgan, the true threat to America isn’t Muslim extremism, it’s Islam itself. “What do you say about a religion where, if you’re devout enough, you want to kill people? Islam isn’t a religion. It’s a theocracy, and it has no place in America.”

Like some other notable Trump supporters, Morgan hopes to use this “Islam is not a religion” argument as a Hail Mary legal strategy to thread the religious liberty needle. If the very act of being Muslim is cleaved from any notions of faith, they reason, then there can be no first amendment protections. If Islam is not a religion, then a Muslim family living in your neighborhood is no different than a crack house or strip club. They’re just a seductive, pernicious danger to be legislated away by the God-fearing. To most registered women voters, these views are beyond extreme. But to most of the women passionate about the Donald, Morgan is preaching to the choir.

“The women who support Donald Trump care first and foremost about their family’s safety,” Melissa Deckman explained to me the week before I left for Cleveland. Deckman is Chair of the Political Science Department at Washington College, and the author of the book Tea Party Women: Mama Grizzlies, Grassroots Leaders, and the Changing Face of the American Right. “They see immigrants and Muslims extremists as very real threats, and they’re looking for someone to protect them. What’s more, they correctly perceive that there their country is changing, and they see that as a threat.”

Source: Stars, Stripes, & Selfies: The Women Who Love Donald Trump – R. Tod Kelly

Twenty-one years ago, the day O.J. Simpson was acquitted, I began my career as a federal prosecutor. I was 26—a young 26 at that—on the cusp of extraordinary power over the lives of my fellow citizens. After years of internships with federal and state prosecutors, I knew to expect camaraderie and sense of mission. I didn’t expect it to influence how I thought about constitutional rights. But it did.

Three types of culture—the culture of the prosecutor’s office, American popular culture, and the culture created by the modern legal norms of criminal justice—shaped how I saw the rights of the people I prosecuted. If you had asked me, I would have said that it was my job to protect constitutional rights and strike only what the Supreme Court once called “hard blows, not foul ones.” But in my heart, and in my approach to law, I saw rights as a challenge, as something to be overcome to win a conviction. Nobody taught me that explicitly—nobody had to.

When I left the U.S. Attorney’s office after more than five years, my disenchantment with the criminal justice system had begun to set in. Now, decades later, my criminal defense career has lasted three times as long as my term as a prosecutor. I’m a defense-side true believer—the very sort of true believer that used to annoy me as a young prosecutor.

From: Confessions of an Ex-Prosecutor – Reason.com