Michael Brown And The Conservative Inconsistency
Imagine that you’re a judge and two men, a shoemaker and a soldier, come before you to have a dispute settled. The shoemaker accuses the soldier of assaulting him. The solider maintains his innocence,...
View ArticleThe Ferguson-9/11 Nexus
As the riots and unrest in Ferguson recede, the Obama administration has embarked on a new adventure in Iraq, this time against the Islamic State (ISIS), hitting the terrorist enclave in Iraq with a...
View ArticleHere’s How Americans Can Find Common Ground On The Ferguson Affair
It’s hard to find an uplifting angle on the events in Ferguson. Conservatives have drawn many familiar morals: that the media is ravenous for manufactured controversy, and will shamelessly exploit any...
View ArticleHands Up, Don’t Choke: Eric Garner Was Killed By Police For No Reason
On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was choked to death by a New York City policeman. On December 3, 2014, a grand jury chose not to indict the officer who killed him. And unlike the Michael Brown case in...
View ArticleEric Garner’s Widow Is Right To Reject The Race Card
Stephen Colbert parodied conservative calls for colorblind government policies by claiming, “I don’t see race.” He took that statement to its unintended and ridiculous conclusion for laughs. Colbert...
View ArticleWhy Ta-Nehisi Coates Is Wrong About The Baltimore Riots
Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an article that does not quite praise the Baltimore riots, but cannot quite find a way to condemn them. It makes a compelling case for why people are angry. It discusses all of...
View ArticleWhy Isn’t The Right Defending Freddie Gray?
Watching the Right’s reaction to the Freddie Gray case, I’ve had a horrible nightmare: Aliens from a distant planet—big-government, statist aliens from Planet Obama, perhaps—have snatched millions of...
View ArticleWhy Are Conservatives Soft On Police Brutality?
Conor Friedersdorf is upset with conservatives. Specifically, he’s infuriated by their blasé attitude towards police brutality. What will it take, he wonders, to persuade them that our justice system...
View ArticleWhy We Need Police Reform
In the United States there is perhaps no public service sector more hostile to criticism than our police forces. At even the mildest criticism, the response from the police is almost universally one of...
View ArticleNo, Black Lives Matter Isn’t About Hurting Cops
Remember when the media punditry swore the Tea Party was driven by secret racism? Remember how people reported racist signs at Tea Party rallies and protests? Remember how the punditry tried to connect...
View ArticleHow Wesleyan’s Attempt To Stamp Out Words Inflames Them
For anyone interested in freedom of the press, October 18, 2015 is a day that deserves to live in infamy. That night, for what may be the first time in the United States, the student government of an...
View ArticleBernie Sanders Voted For Criminal-Justice Measures He’s Denouncing
Bernie Sanders has made ending “mass incarceration” a big part of his campaign. We have too many people in prison, he says, and we don’t invest enough in communities. On July 15, Sanders spoke in...
View ArticleQuentin Tarantino Remains Defiant About Calling Cops Murderers
Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is known neither for subtle dialogue nor sedate films, so when he attended the Rise Up rally against police brutality in New York in October, of course he went “Super Fly...
View ArticleTamir Rice’s Family Should Sue The Police Officers Who Shot Him
Based on the facts about the Tamir Rice shooting in Cleveland, here is how the incident appears to this retired, 30-year police lieutenant from near San Antonio who has trained more than a thousand...
View ArticleIn The Tamir Rice Case, Cleveland Was A Police Disaster Waiting To Happen
Michael Brown was (plausibly) lunging for an officer’s weapon when Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed him. Eric Garner didn’t pose much of a threat, but he was resisting arrest, and the tactics used...
View ArticleYou Can Simultaneously Support The Police And Racial Justice
Is it rational for black men to fear they may be killed by police? The Washington Post has just released a new, groundbreaking study on police violence that may help answer that question. It...
View ArticleHow To Stop Police Problems Before They Become Shootings
Rahm Emanuel is a liar who is eyeball-deep in corruption. He almost certainly used $5 million of taxpayers’ money to pay off the family of a murdered teenager, for the sake of preserving his political...
View ArticleThe Latest ‘Batman’ Doesn’t Depict Police Brutality
Last fall “Batman #44” hit the comic book stands, and a number of voices, including its authors Scott Snyder and Brian Azzarello, claimed it was an attempt to address the intersection of police...
View ArticleHeather MacDonald On Discretionary Policing, Violent Crime, And Black Lives...
Heather MacDonald, fellow at the Manhattan Institute, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss her new book, “The War on Cops.” MacDonald addressed the motives of movements like BlackLivesMatter and...
View ArticleYou Don’t Have To Be Black Lives Matter To Support Police Accountability
This has been a tough week for American police. They’re learning the hard way that in today’s world, the cell phone is mightier than the gun. Someone Is Always Watching First, there was Alton Sterling....
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