Tag Archives: law

Letitia James, the Cornell Seven, and Rule of Law

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New York’s Progressive-Democrat governor Kathy Hochul has appointed fellow Progressive-Democrat State Attorney General Letitia James to oversee the reopened criminal investigation of a Cornell University seven then-student frat boys and their…encounter…with a then-student young woman. The frat boys’ behavior was utterly despicable, whether or not it was criminal. The case already has been opened and closed once, though, and there are obvious problems with James’ appointment apart from the problems of the reopening.

One such is James’ commentary on social media in the days just prior to her appointment.

What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and in my prayers. To her, and to all survivors: you’re not alone. We stand with you.

As lawyers for two of the potential defendants noted,

Her own words indisputably establish that Attorney General James is not and cannot remain neutral in investigating this matter and determining whether to prosecute[.]

This commentary comes in the aftermath of the young woman’s own statement to the police that her participation was voluntary, conscious, and consensual. Her use of the term “rape” also in her statement raises questions, but it’s hard to take the usage dispositively in light of her voluntary, conscious, and consensual participation. The idea of a woman getting off on being ravished is the stuff of 18th century fiction. The decision of the local prosecutor to not prosecute on the basis of those two items has been widely bruited, but his assessment that there was no conviction possible based on the totality of her statement is legitimate.

But James wasn’t done, and this is the other obvious problem, although not so much bruited. She said in response to the hooraw over her post,

Those comments demonstrate empathy, and what we need now more than ever in our body politic is more empathy[.]

In the body politic, certainly. But in enforcement of our laws and in court, no. What is needed there, for the for both the defendant’s and accuser’s safety’s sake, is hard objectivity and adherence to the cold facts of the matter. James is justifying her decision to bring emoting into the courtroom at least on par with facts.

Letitia James is unfit to oversee this case.

Some Crime Statistics

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Here are some crime statistics, courtesy of the WSJ‘s James Freeman. These are national level, and it’s true that there are distinct local pockets of crime that are significantly higher than these national numbers. The national numbers tell the larger tale, though.

  • violent crime excluding simple assault declined 25%, from 9.9 per 1,000 persons age 12 or older in 2024 to 7.4 per 1,000 in 2025
  • aggravated assault rate declined 31% in 2025 from 2024
  • property victimization rate declined 19% in 2025 from 2024
  • burglary or trespassing rates declined 25% in 2025 from 2024
  • motor vehicle theft declined 30% in 2025 from 2024
  • other types of household theft declined 19% in 2025 from 2024

2025 is the first year of Trump II’s administration. 2024 is the Progressive-Democrat ex-President Joe Biden’s last year. Nor were those declines a continuation of any trend. Over the four years of Biden’s reign,

  • felony violent crime rose 59%
  • violent crime, including misdemeanor simple assault, increased 42%

These are the improvements that the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to undo with its midterm candidates’ avowals to abolish ICE and throw open our borders; reduce funding for, if not defund, our city and State police forces; empty our prisons; let those accused of violent crimes freely walk our streets on bail; and threats to “investigate” young folks contemplating jobs in the Trump administration.

There is No Difference

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Nathan Diament, Orthodox Union Advocacy Center Executive Director, wrote eloquently of the importance of St Mary Catholic Parish v Roy, Colorado’s effort to force Catholic schools to accept as students those who reject, or whose parents reject, the school’s religious mission. He also asked a couple of questions:

What if the state doesn’t explicitly exclude religious schools? What if it attaches conditions that force religious schools to choose between accessing public benefits and compromising their values?

The answer to these seems crystalline to me.

Applying criteria as a condition of participating in a program with which an institution cannot comply and maintain its character and mission is precisely the same as explicitly excluding that institution.

That’s OK, if not necessarily good, if the conditions are applied to private enterprise. No business has an intrinsic right to any particular business model or practice.

It’s entirely different, though, when the conditions are applied to religious institutions. Churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, whathaveyou have precisely that intrinsic right to operate under their specific practice. That inalienable right is clearly acknowledged in our Constitution’s First Amendment bars against government interference with an institution’s and its members’ right freely to exercise their religion (or lack of such) and the equally explicit bar against government establishing a government-devised or -run religion or religious entity, whether to compete with or to supplant other religious or areligious establishments.

An Unjustifiable Delay

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It’s unconscionable, too. Utah District Court Judge Tony Graf is looking at setting a 2029 trial date, even as late as the end of January 2028, for Tyler Robinson’s trial, the man accused of murdering Turning Point USA‘s Charlie Kirk. This is absurd, as his widow, Erika Kirk, has said.

The defense attorneys are claiming that they

have to sift through tens of thousands of files the prosecution turned over to them. They will need to conduct extensive investigations into Robison’s life to seek mitigating factors that could influence his sentence if he is convicted, and they also need to devote “substantial time” to issues such as jury selection…[,]

and they need those three(!) years to get ready.

Leave aside that seek[ing] mitigating factors that could influence his sentence if he is convicted is strictly and solely a matter for the sentencing phase if he is convicted. Any time spent on that, were he acquitted, would be a blatant waste of time and of the State’s money, and it does not need to be spent at all during trial prep and trial. The defense lawyers are just nakedly stalling.

If Graf is to take the defense’s move seriously, he needs first to demand to see those defense attorneys’ and their staffs’ time sheets in the 10-minute increments that law firms typically use to accumulate their billable hours. What else are these worthies working on besides Robinson’s case that would take up so much time that they actually need three years or more years just to get into jury selection?

We have these doofers commonly known as computers, have had them for some decades. We’ve also got these software packages, AI apps, many of which are tailored for the needs of lawyers and their research. Whatever happened to the general push for a speedy trial for defendants? Aside from that, does not the victim/victim’s survivor also deserve a speedy trial?

Kirk’s lawyers are much closer to the mark with their push for an October 2027 trial date. Graf should set the trial for that October and sanction those defense lawyers for their evident indolence and rule further that their behavior lays no ground for an ineffective assistance of counsel appeal.

Featherbedding in Trucking

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It’s coming. In fact, it’s already being pushed for in California.

Driverless trucks have been operating for some time in Texas and other States across the south, moving the middle mile—the travel from warehouse/depot to warehouse/depot. Human drivers handle the first and last mile, loading and hooking up/unhooking and parking and unloading freight trailers at the start and destination sites. Especially at the destination, since driverless trucks still can’t back up (that’s skill that’s much harder to teach a computer to do).

With this empirically demonstrated capability and safety as backdrop, California enacted state regulations that removed a ban on driverless trucks weighing 10,001 pounds or more, and allowed testing and deployment of such vehicles through a permit process. Naturally, unions don’t like that, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in California sued the State’s DMV over those regulations. The Teamsters’ plaint:

The deployment of Self-Driving Trucks, authorized by the regulatory changes, has the potential to eventually wipe out the jobs of more than 200,000 employee semi-truck drivers working across California[.]

The union doesn’t care that there is no intrinsic right for anyone to drive a truck for a company or for himself. Hiring, or not, truck drivers is strictly a business decision as companies seek to hold down the cost of their delivery operations, and as customer companies seek to hold down costs of getting deliveries. Driverless trucks are cheaper to operate than driver-ed trucks: as recently as 2025, roughly 44% of the cost of operating a truck was in driver wages and benefits. Robots don’t have much need for those.

Peter Finn, the Teamsters’ Vice President At-Large, added that communities want to see investments in people and middle-class jobs against the broader backdrop of artificial-intelligence growth. Again, this is a business decision, not an inherent right to any particular job in the pursuit of those investments.

If the union succeeds in scotching those California regulations, its next move will be to push for literal featherbedding: a human in the driverless tractor pulling those freight trailers, even though they’re not needed for any reason other than fueling union coffers. And artificially elevating costs to trucking companies, companies receiving truckers’ deliveries, and us American consumers as the end buyer of the trucked goods.