In The Mailbox: 03.24.26

Posted on | March 25, 2026 | No Comments

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Illegal Alien Executes Loyola Student, also Good Guys 1, Bad Guys 0
EBL: The Breakfast Club, Breaking Down Bluefin, “Take Me To Church”, Wuthering Heights, and Soccer Time
Twitchy: Retired USAF Colonel Grumps “America Is A Joke” After Mullin Confirmed As SecDHS, Gov. Hairgel Asks X If He Resembles A Famous Movie Character & Gets Rekt, and NYC Mayor Tells Federal Agents Where They Don’t Belong
Louder With Crowder: LAPD Plants Fake Pedestrian To Trick Drivers, Maryland Dems fight for “appropriately sized” feminine hygiene products in all public men’s bathrooms, Dallas man gets arrested attempting to repaint a rainbow Pride mural, Gov. Tubby lashes out, says it’s Trump’s fault an illegal murdered a female college student in Chicago, and Democrat calls out his party being too “afraid of the base” to care another illegal killed another woman in another sanctuary city
Vox Popoli: The Ultimatum That Wasn’t, SANSHIR? by Natsume S?seki, Arkhaven Goes Wide, The Blame Game Begins, and Schrödinger’s Airport
Incensepunk Magazine: Interview with Andrew D. Meredith
Weird Catholic: Mary’s Way of the Cross
Mazelit Airaksinen: Atlanta “Anti-Racist” Therapist Says “White Jews” Have No Right to Israel
Stoic Observations: A Job Aggregator for You

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Trump Says Iran is ‘Wiped Out;’ U.S. Has ‘Won This War’, House Republicans Launch Probe Into California’s ‘Rampant’ Hospice Fraud, Supreme Court May Restrict States with Mail-In Ballot Laws Ahead of November Midterms, Senate Confirms Sen. Markwayne Mullin as DHS Secretary, and Civics War
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 80 – Double Feature
BattleSwarm: This Day Eaten By Dogs, “The Shocking State Of Britain’s Navy In 2026”, Iran Strikes: Day 25, and Has Microsoft Finally Gotten The MicroSlop Message?
Behind The Black: Lunar Gateway dead as NASA announces major changes to its plans, Satellite repair startup Katalyst awards Arianespace and its Ariane-6 rocket a launch contract, Russia launches the first 16 satellites in its own internet satellite constellation, Progress docks with ISS, and The battle of Gettysburg as seen by those who lived it
Cafe Hayek: Protectionists Need No Further Flimsy Excuses, Price Ceilings Are Unhealthy, StatisNostics, and What About the “Farm-mechanization Shock”?
CDR Salamander: A Sober Royal Navy Update
Da Tech Guy: Voices of the 2026 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference: Adam, enrolled in OCIA, Voices of the 2026 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference: Dennis of “Adopt a Student”, and Voices of the 2026 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference: Evangeline Brennan of EMERGE
Don Surber: Iran, the headless chicken
First Street Journal: You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!
Gates Of Vienna: We Love Our Prophet, Ramadan in Turin, Expect Delays Part III, Geert Wilders: “Our Country is Unrecognizable”, and Happy Vernal Equinox!
The Geller Report: Mamdani’s Garbage Wife’s Use of “N*gga, F*ggot” and Praise for “Suicide Bombers and Plane Hijackers” Hailed as Art By CNN, Pounding Iran, Starmer Calls for More Muslims to Become MP, SCOTUS Poised to CRUSH Late Ballots—No More Counting After Election Day, and President Trump Restoring Idea of the American Hero
Glenn Reynolds: A Coda to the “Big Arch” Review
Hollywood In Toto: Hollywood Media Sinks to Predictable New Low, A Scanner Darkly Predicted Our Paranoid Age, 5 Burning Questions Tied to Spade/Von Comedy Busboys, 15 Days Will Make You Furious at Teachers Unions, and Carell’s Rooster Mocks Woke College Students (Or Does It?)
Legal Insurrection: From TED Talk to Total Flop – The Rise and Fall of the Insect Farming Boom, House Oversight Investigating California Hospice Fraud, Claims Newsom Knew for Years, Arizona State U. Has Paid More Than $100,000 to an Anti-Trump News Site, Abortionist /Convicted Murderer Kermit Gosnell, Dies in Prison at 85, and SAVE America Act Fearmongering vs. Reality: Woman Replaced 3 Key Documents in 5 Days for $19
Nebraska Energy Observer: Westphalia Restored, Sunday Matinee, Telephony – New and Old, and Anatomy of a Train Wreck
Outkick: ‘Good Riddance’: Landon Donovan Goes Off On Dual-National Star For Hesitating On US Soccer, Puka Nacua Lands In More Trouble With Biting Allegations, New Antisemitism Accusation, Elizabeth Eddy Knew Speaking Out Could Cost Her Soccer Career, But She Did It Anyway, The Rockies Have To Be Better Than Last Year, Right? Not So Fast, and Molly Sims Adds To Her Bikini Model Legacy As She Returns To SI Swimsuit For The Eighth Time
Power Line: AfD gains in state election, There’s Something Happening Here, Naked Anti-Semitism, The People They Care About the Most, and Has Britain already fallen?
Racket News: Go Outside
Shark Tank: Nathan Upsets Tomkow In SD-14 Election
Shot In The Dark: Bring Me The Head of Diego Garcia
The Political Hat: California Legislature Trying To Legalize Discrimination…Yet Again
This Ain’t Hell: Eating their own, Iran targets Diego Garcia, A gun topic or two, Virtue Signalers Arrive in Cuba, and NIMBY NATO?
Transterrestrial Musings: The Bond Between Civilians And Military, also, X Troubles?
Victory Girls: The SAVE Act Is Indispensable For The Future of the U.S., Tone-Deaf Leftist Activists Party In Cuba During Power Grid Collapse, and The Curious Case of Dress Codes and Narratives
Watts Up With That: New York Approaches The Green Energy Cliff With Morons In Charge, Wyoming wind power needs a Programmatic Environmental Impact Assessment, The Strait of Hormuz Crisis Shows the World Still Runs on Fossil Fuels, There’s Nothing “Voluntary” About a Smart Meter, and Is Public Stupidity Behind Climate Change Apathy?
The Federalist: Democrats’ Fraud-Friendly Election Rules Destroy Public Trust, Cleveland – Jack Smith And His Lawfare Team ‘Must Be Held Accountable’, Republicans’ Vision For America Won’t Win Unless They Show Voters Why It Should, Left-Wing Propagandists Send Virginians Fake ‘Newspaper’ Promoting Democrat Gerrymander, and James Talarico Is Just The Latest Of The Media’s Pathetic Cardboard Heroes
Mark Steyn: On the Town – A Quiet Thing, Life at the Bottom – Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most”, The Deadline Looms, and Who’s Calling Whom?

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Category: Linkagery

Why Is Lindy West Getting Cancelled?

Posted on | March 24, 2026 | No Comments

Most people — even people who follow politics closely — never figured out that the Great Feminist Boom of 2014-2017 was not a coincidence. All the institutions of academia and media did not suddenly decide to the embrace and promote #feminist brand by accident. No, that cultural moment was organized to support the Right Side of History™ crusade to make Hillary Clinton America’s First Female President.

Having examined the reasons for the failure of her 2008 presidential bid, Team Hillary recognized that being identified as a feminist was a net negative for her and, in war-gaming her 2016 campaign — a process that began as soon was Obama got reelected in 2012 — they saw the importance of creating an “Astroturf” project to make it seem as if feminism was a mainstream grassroots movement. Young women who were targeted by this effort were generally too naïve to comprehend the cynical partisan calculatIons behind it, and sincerely believed that they were part of a spontaneous emergence of feminist consciousness, a belief that was much more flattering to their egos than to recognize they were pawns of a multimillion-dollar P.R. operation in service to the selfish political ambitions of one very wealthy and powerful woman.

All of which is to say that only a fool would have thought it was a coincidence when, in September 2015, Guardian columnist Lindy West “encouraged other women to share positive abortion experiences online using the hashtag #ShoutYourAbortion in order to ‘denounce the stigma surrounding abortion.'” Nor was any intelligent person surprised when, a few months later in May 2016, Lindy West published Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, which was universally praised in the liberal media and immediately became a bestseller. The TV rights to Shrill were then bought by Hulu, which turned it into a 22-episode series.

Pro-abortion hashtag, book contract, TV deal — all these things occurred in the span of a few short months that just happened to coincide with the presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. While I am not prepared to claim that Lindy West’s sudden ascent to fame and fortune was funded by the Clinton campaign (or perhaps that it was a clandestine CIA agitprop operation), neither do I think it was coincidental.

All of that is preamble to the latest turn of events, in which Lindy West has published a new book, and liberal women are trashing it.

Like everything Lindy West has ever written, Adult Braces is an exercise in solipsism, a song with one note — “Me! Me! Me!” — and while she was able to get a New York Times bestseller and a TV series out of this shtick 10 years ago, her target audience doesn’t seem eager to consume another installment of the “my-life-as-feminist-metaphor” saga.

West’s new book got completely dismantled in The Atlantic, with English feminist Helen Lewis calling it “the tombstone for Millennial Feminism.”

What killed Millennial Feminism was the gap between what its high priestesses demanded and what they were able to endure themselves. If you insist that accepting polyamory is the price of being a good person, and then write a book about your throuple where the front cover shows you with mascara-streaked tears running down your face, people will spot the dissonance. . . .
It isn’t social conservatism that has seen so many readers disbelieve West’s rapid-onset bisexuality. Millennial Feminism failed because it was suffocating, immiserating, and often at odds with observable facts about human nature.
Today, very few traces of it remain. Jezebel was sold off and closed. Tumblr has withered. The viral internet no longer reliably delivers traffic to epic takedowns of problematic figures, so hungry young freelancers have largely stopped pitching them. The publishing industry’s lust for jeremiads about “white feminism” is over. No one has used the word girlboss unironically in years. A key feminist legal precedent, Roe v. Wade, fell in part because Ruth Bader Ginsburg refused to retire, a fact that makes me wince every time I remember that one of the most-lauded books of Millennial Feminism was Irin Carmon’s Notorious RBG.

What she is saying is that, in retrospect, maybe the kind of feminism Lindy West represented wasn’t good feminism, i.e., the kind of feminism that is consistent with Democrats winning elections. Anyone could see at the time that, for example, Lindy West’s beliefs were “often at odds with observable facts about human nature,” but feminists (including Helen Lewis) were willing to tolerate that until it resulted in Donald Trump twice being elected to the White House. Lindy West was a highly praised bestselling author, and then Trump beat Hillary. Four tumultuous years later, the elderly white man Joe Biden managed to “win” the 2020 election, but was compelled by the terms under which he obtained the Democratic nomination to make Kamala Harris his running mate. Then when Joe’s brain short-circuited in a June 2024 debate, he got kicked off the ticket and Harris was anointed as the Democratic standard-bearer — losing to Trump even worse than Hillary lost to Trump.

Liberals judge everything by whether or not it helps Democrats win elections, and the experience of the past 10 years is such that we might say feminism has been “weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

Did the decade-long failure of feminism — in terms of its utility as a partisan weapon for Democrats — result in this sudden outburst of criticism directed at Lindy West? It’s hard to say, but Helen Lewis’s takedown in The Atlantic set off a tsunami wave of Subtackers denouncing West’s brand of feminism. The bisexual “throuple” angle in West’s new book got Phoebe Maltz Bovy’s dander up:

For the last decade or so, there’s been a crossing of wires of sorts, wherein queer liberation and feminism are meant to be the same project. More specifically: the idea is that if women could simply abandon straightness, there, right there, is the feminist future. Abandon cisheteroland, and the feminism manifests.

As she explains, this is at the very least short-sighted, and results in harms that are perhaps not intended, but are entirely predictable.

In the context of analyzing Lindy West’s fat-feminist shtick, Kat Rosenfeld remarks about how “the same liberal communities which prided themselves on openness and tolerance also harbored an absolutely staggering contempt for the sensibilities and cultural practices of red America, and especially of the white working class, which they mocked mercilessly for being backwards and unenlightened . . . And one thing about the rural white working class: not always, but often, they’re fat.” Lindy West grew up as fat in deep-blue Seattle, where her size was socially coded as working-class, and the anti-fat prejudice she complains of is widespread among liberal snobs. However, as I explained in 2018, “Preferences Are Not Oppression”:

How is it that America (evidently unique among all nations) stands accused of a “monomanical fixation” with being thin, while at the same time we’re experiencing an obesity epidemic? And does Lindy West actually believe this “warps every single woman’s life”?
My daughters are not fat. My two daughters-in-law are not fat. My teenage sons’ girlfriends are not fat. If their lives are being “warped” by a “monomanical fixation,” they haven’t mentioned it. Some people are just naturally thin, more or less, and thus suffer no hardship because of the general preference for thinness. “Fat feminism” is a movement organized to convince us that our normal preferences are wrong. If you think a skinny woman is more attractive than Lindy West, your preference oppresses Lindy West, in much the same way (and for much the same reason) that she considers “stigma” against abortion oppressive.

The slow-motion approach to totalitarianism means that most people don’t realize how we have gone, in the space of about 40 or 50 years, from prohibiting certain beliefs as “racist,” to now attempting to prohibit other beliefs, attitudes and opinions for no reason except that some people’s feelings are hurt. The taboo on “racism” (which must be put in quotation marks because its definition has become increasingly vague) was based on the understanding that such attitudes motivated actual harm to black people. In the context of Jim Crow, lynching, etc., these harms were quite a bit more serious than mere hurt feelings, OK? But now the Left is trying to stifle free speech on the basis of a need to “de-stigmatize” various behaviors. What this means is that, for example, the practitioners of polyamory demand that they should be exempt from criticism, in the same way that Lindy West by denouncing “the stigma surrounding abortion” means that she should be exempt from criticism.

The Thought Police aspect of all this is what disturbs me most. I am fully capable of examining evidence and listening to arguments and making up my own mind without any external guidance, and I do not wish to prohibit people from publishing bad books full of wrong ideas, which is what Lindy West does. So long as we are free to criticize these bad ideas, without the Thought Police suppressing our criticism, other people are free to make up their own minds, just as I am. The totalitarian tendencies of those whom Helen Lewis calls the “high priestesses” of Millennial Feminism were obvious enough 10 years ago, but it wasn’t until Trump got elected and reelected that liberals began to have second thoughts about this movement. Lindy West getting cancelled is yet another reason I am proud that I voted for Donald Trump. So much winning . . .

Category: Feminism, Liberals

In The Mailbox: 3.23.26

Posted on | March 24, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Iran Dossier – How Barack Obama Helped Build A Nuclear Terror State, The 20 Most Advanced Weapons Systems Fielded In 2026, and The Day Lewis & Clark Reached The Pacific (1805)
EBL: Baked Fish With Creamy Lemon Sauce, Getting Rid of Visceral Fat, The Politburo Five, MAGA Airport ICE, and Beef Wellington
Twitchy: Debut of The Rock’s Live-Action “Maui” Has Trailer Viewers Curling Up In Laughter, Rachel Zegler Finally Speaks Out on the Failure of Snow White (It’s Your Fault), and Ms. Rachel Fights To Close ICE Facility for Children
Louder With Crowder: “The View” Claims Putting ICE In Airports Is Good Because They Won’t Be Deporting Illegals That Way, Democrat victim-blames woman murdered by illegal in Chicago, Joe Rogan unloads on Gavin Newsom’s pathetic attack on independent journalist uncovering fraud in California, Taylor Lorenz has a new group of people she’s lecturing people to mask up, and Lesbian sociology professor rants about how many girlfriends she’s had “with male genitalia”
Vox Popoli: A Longer Reach, Iran Makes Its Demands, A Library, Unlimited, Scratch and Claw, and The Lost America
Cedar Sanderson: A Writer’s Christmas Eve, Blood Orange Meringue Pie, and My Hands Remembered
The Bugscuffle Gazette: The Right to Be Let Alone, also, Bachelor Chow
Stoic Observations: When Everybody Knows That Everybody Knows AI, Discovery – Rene Girard & Sacrifice, also, The CTA Problem
Mazelit Airaksinen: I converted – now what? also, Hospital Worker Who Said “Israelis Have A Repulsive Culture” FIRED
Upstream Reviews: Lord of a Shattered Land
Draw & Talk Comics: The One Question that Changed my Life
Defending The Wood Perilous: Starquest Book Eight Is Live, also, Kickstarting Joy

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Baldilocks: Stripe Issues
CDR Salamander: March Midrats Podcast Free-For-All, also, Europe’s “Say vs. Do” Issue
Don Surber: Bad war coverage > bad ratings
Elizabeth Nickson: The Fabian Sneer – How American Sexuality Was Ruined By Repellent Aristocrats & The Rockefeller Family
Glenn Reynolds: Answering The Important Questions
Racket News: The Swamp Log
STUMP: Paul Ehrlich & The Murder-Suicide of Expertise, also, This Week In Meep – After DST, The Deluge

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Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday: Late Night With Daisy Dukes

Posted on | March 23, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to @kbdabear.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, “The Happening”, Let’s Make Pizza, Rickshaw Girls, Irish Women (1967), Maureen O’Hara, The Madison, and MAGA Ides of March

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Rule 5 Saturday – Claire Muzic, Fish Pic Friday- Summer Mae, Thursday Tanlines, The Wednesday Wetness, Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Blue Catfish Too Good For Dog Food, Did Tucker Set Up The Ayatollahs? The Monday Morning Stimulus, and Palm Sunday

BACON TIME: Rule Five Red Hot

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: On An Even Keel

Posted on | March 23, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

If you’re the sort of person who prays for others when they’re facing the Reflector Heads, please do so for Fritz, who blogs at A View For The Beach. He has been rendered humorless.
We started the week going 2-1 against Pete’s Brewers and ended it losing two out of three to the Royals, who have a tough rotation. So we’re still in second place in our division at 63-67, seven games behind the Twins and five ahead of the Brewers. I can’t remember offhand how Pete has the playoff brackets set up, but since there are two teams in the other division with better records, there’s a chance I’ll miss the playoffs – but I’ll have plenty of keepers for next year and some early draft picks to mend the holes in our pitching.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
FMJRA 2.0: Holding Our Own
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule Five Sunday: Ersatz Gingermageddon
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.16.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 03.17.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 03.18.26
EBL
357 Magnum

Gavin Newsom’s ‘Cougar Crossing’ Is the Perfect Symbol of Californication
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 03.19.26
EBL
357 Magnum

There Is a Reason Why Taboos Exist
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.20.26
EBL
357 Magnum

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

Scandal-Plagued Former FBI Chief Robert Mueller Dies in Disagrace at Age 81

Posted on | March 22, 2026 | No Comments

Robert Mueller, tainted by controversy.

De mortuis nil nisi bonum is always wise policy, which Democrats never follow whenever one of their enemies die. Democrats hate without apology, but become indignant if Republicans return the favor.

Readers might notice that the headline of this obituary is perhaps not a model of journalistic objectivity, but that’s the whole point. You see, I spent a decade at the Washington Times, which gave me a chance to study how our liberal competitor, the Washington Post, always slanted everything, including obituaries. Liberal journalists find ways to sneak in tendentious words and phrases like controversial and scandal-plagued when writing about their chosen enemies, and I think this is as good an occasion as any to repay the favor in the case of Bob Mueller.

It is worth pointing out that, prior to 2017, few liberals would have thought of Mueller as a hero. He had a long career as a federal prosecutor before becoming Assistant Attorney General in the first Bush administration, and was subsequent chosen in 2001 by Bush the Younger to be FBI Director. His reputation was as a conservative Republican, and he remained in the job until 2013, when Obama named James Comey as his successor. Four years later, after Trump had fired Comey (after learning that the FBI had illegally spied on his campaign), Attorney General Bill Barr recused himself from the case and appointed Mueller as special counsel, tasked with investigating the whole matter of “Russian collusion.” Mueller was 73 years old at the time and appears to have functioned as a figurehead for a witch-hunt conducted by his underlings.

For nearly two years, the Mueller investigation dragged on, ruining the lives of various Trump allies entangled in the case, as the witch-hunters tried to bring pressure on them to implicate Trump in something — anything — illegal. All that while, the talking heads on MSNBC were gleefully cheerleading Mueller, telling their Trump-hating audiences that “the walls are closing in” on the Bad Orange Man. Ultimately, however, these sadistic fantasies were disappointed: Mueller’s final report failed to find any evidence of “collusion” between the Russians and the Trump campaign. It was all a hoax from start to finish. And when Mueller was called to testify before Congress, it became apparent that he was well down the path to becoming completely senile.

? ? Watch John Ratcliffe expose Robert Mueller’s “Russia Investigation” from 2019.

“It was not the special counsels job to conclusively determine Donald Trump’s innocence or to exonerate him. Because the bedrock principle of our justice system is the presumption of innocence.… pic.twitter.com/r2S2V6QVnU

— J (@JayTC53) March 21, 2026

It is an objective fact that Mueller was disgraced by his participation in the “Russian collusion” witch-hunt. However, because his phony investigation was useful to Democrats — it disrupted Trump’s first term and arguably helped Democrats win control of Congress in the 2018 midterm elections — all the usual suspects in journalism are now obligated to praise him as a hero. They get paid to lie.

As bad as the “Russian collusion” witch-hunt was, however, it perhaps wasn’t the worst stain on Mueller’s record. As FBI director, Mueller authorized the Bureau to use informants to organize neo-Nazi rallies:

In 2007, Orlando residents were furious to discover that an FBI informant had organized a neo-Nazi rally through one of the city’s mostly black neighborhoods a year earlier.
“To come into a predominantly black community, which could have resulted in great harm to the black community? I would hate to be part of a game,” Orlando City Councilwoman Daisy Lynum said at the time, calling for a “full-scale investigation” into the matter.
However, an FBI agent testified that his informant participated in the event, but didn’t organize it. The city’s uproar passed without a public investigation, full-scale or otherwise — until now.
Thanks to a trove of previously unpublicized law enforcement records and interviews with several players involved, Headline USA can reveal that the Orlando neo-Nazi rally was indeed organized by the FBI. The Orlando event also seems to have been part of a larger program to hold Nazi rallies across the country. And according to FBI records, the bureau sponsored those events despite knowing they led to an increase in the number of card-carrying Nazis in America. . . .

You can read the rest of that, and also read Part II of Ken Silva’s investigative report on this shady episode from Mueller’s career.

OK I've been promising docs that ties then-FBI Director Robert Mueller to these post-9/11 PATCON-like ops.

Here's a performance review of an undercover FBI officer in Primitive Affliction, which was centered around a neo-Nazi motorcycle front group.

Mueller was 'briefed daily' pic.twitter.com/dR92lcY9Qm

— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) June 30, 2024

Former NSM member and prison inmate Bill White describes how law enforcement failed to keep the Nazi demonstrators separate from the counterprotestors at an FBI-sponsored 2005 Toledo rally

Toledo was one of the worse race riots in Ohio history pic.twitter.com/DD8NBUh9Xt

— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) June 26, 2024

Category: Corruption, Crime, Media Bias, Scandal

D.E.I. + A.I. = O.M.G.!

Posted on | March 22, 2026 | No Comments

Clayton County prosecutor Deborah Leslie

One of my sons is a lawyer, and the youngest is currently a first-year law student, and the stories they tell me about the use of AI (artificial intelligence) by both law students and practicing lawyers are disturbing. You may think “fake news” is bad, but fake law is much worse. Last year, I wrote about Stanford Professor Jeff Hancock who calls himself a “misinformation expert,” who was enlisted as an expert witness by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in a case about so-called “deep fake” videos. Hancock was disqualified after his AI fakery was discovered:

Attorney General Ellison concedes that Professor Hancock included citations to two non-existent academic articles and incorrectly cited the authors of a third article. Professor Hancock admits that he used GPT-4o to assist him in drafting his declaration but, in reviewing the declaration, failed to discern that GPT-4o generated fake citations to academic articles.
The irony. Professor Hancock, a credentialed expert on the dangers of AI and misinformation, has fallen victim to the siren call of relying too heavily on AI — in a case that revolves around the dangers of AI, no less.

What happens, of course, is that people get lazy, relying on computer programs to do their work for them. And this is causing all kind of problems in education, as well as in the actual practice of law. If you’re a lawyer using AI to help write your briefs, it’s important to double-check the results because AI programs are known to “hallucinate” fictitious cases sometimes — and it’s a disaster if you get caught using those:

There was turmoil in a Georgia courtroom on Wednesday as AI-generated deficiencies in the state’s legal filings threatened to upend proceedings in an appeal lodged by a woman convicted of murdering an older man in a citizen’s arrest gone horribly wrong.
In December 2023, Hannah Payne, 25, was convicted on two counts of felony murder, three counts of possession of a weapon during a crime, and one count each of malice murder, aggravated assault, and false imprisonment over the May 2019 death of Kenneth Herring, 62.
The defendant was subsequently sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after serving at least 43 years behind bars. . . .

Permit me to interrupt the narrative here to explain to anyone unfamiliar with Georgia: Clayton County is a Southside suburb of Atlanta. The population is 69% black and only 9% white. Needless to say, Clayton County is heavily Democratic. In 2024, Kamala Harris got 84% of the vote in the county, which is home to the Atlanta airport. And, in regard to this case, it is important to note that Hannah Payne is white, while the man she was convicted of murdering is black. Back to the narrative:

Payne quickly appealed her sentence and conviction citing ineffective assistance of counsel. After losing her motion for a new trial in late summer 2025, the appellate effort made its way before the Georgia Supreme Court this week.
During oral arguments, one of the justices noted that certain components of legal filings from the lower court did not appear to have legal justification.
“In reviewing the trial court’s order denying the motion for new trial, there are at least five citations to cases that don’t exist, and there’s at least five more citations to cases that do not support the proposition for which they’re cited, including three quotations that don’t exist,” Chief Justice Nels S.D. Peterson said.
An attorney for the state denied knowledge of the fabricated citations.
“I did prepare an order, that order was revised,” Deborah Leslie, representing the Clayton County District Attorney’s Office, said.
This answer received a quick riposte.
“Those nonexistent cases were cited in your initial brief opposing the motion for new trial,” the justice told the prosecutor.
To which Leslie replied: “Your Honor, I’m not aware of that, but I would be glad to research and provide the court with a supplement.”

WOW, what a public, national-level embarrassment! Some lawyers still do NOT get that AI cannot do law.

March 18, during oral argument, a Georgia S.ct Justice confronts the prosecutor about her legal writing. She fumbles through her papers trying to come up with a response. pic.twitter.com/zJqRSJVLBB

— Alison Motta (@AlilawMotta) March 21, 2026

Keep in mind that this is a high-profile murder case in Georgia, a case with an obvious racial angle in a state with a long history of difficult race relations, being argued in front of the state supreme court, and the D.A.’s office has just been caught using fake citations in its motion, and the prosecutor’s response is, “Your Honor, I’m not aware of that.” Good Lord!

Everybody on X immediately started shouting “DEI!” Far be it from me to accuse others of racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — but just because the lawyer is black doesn’t mean she’s a DEI hire, and plenty of white lawyers have similarly been caught using fake citations generated by AI.

While I was not able to locate background information on Deborah Leslie, I was able to find an organizational chart for the Clayton County District Attorney’s office, which shows that Leslie’s boss is Chief Assistant District Attorney Zina Pitts. who has been a lawyer in Georgia for the past 25 years. The fact that Pitts and Leslie are both black women, as is District Attorney Tasha Mosley, is not the result of “DEI” policy, it just reflects the demographics (and political leanings) of Clayton County.

Tasha Mosley was appointed DA of Clayton County in 2019 by Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. She is an alumna of SMU, got her law degree at John Marshall Law School in Atlanta, and has been practicing in Georgia for 30 years. She has been reelected to the office since her appointment seven years ago, and while I have no interest in praising her, this current brouhaha is the first time the Clayton County DA’s office has bungled anything so badly as to attract nationwide attention.

Let’s talk about the facts of the case:

On May 7, 2019, Payne and a semi-truck had a green light when Herring breezed through a red light in his Dodge Dakota pickup truck, causing a minor crash with the semi-truck. Testimony at an earlier hearing suggested that Herring stayed at the scene of the crash for roughly 15 to 20 minutes before ultimately getting back in his truck and driving away.
Payne, who was not involved in the initial crash, pulled over and called 911, she testified on Monday.
A witness — a state corrections officer with medic training — also saw the crash and came up to speak to Herring, a detective previously testified. Based on his training, the witness suggested Herring was having a medical emergency — a diabetic shock or something of that nature. For example, Herring was disoriented, displayed red-orange eyes, and had walked around his truck several times.
But Payne thought Herring was drunk — toxicology tests would later show Herring had no drugs or alcohol in his system.
“He’s OK, but he’s definitely inebriated,” the officer said at one point, according to Payne. This alleged claim prompted her and the semi-truck driver to ask at the same time: “Do you mean he’s drunk?”
After Herring left the initial crash site, however, Payne had settled on the idea that he was drunk. She got back into her Jeep and pursued Herring despite being told at least once by 911 not to do so.
“I saw him stopped in the turning lane, so I turned as well,” Payne testified. “When I stopped, I was under the impression, with having 911 on the phone, that I could be a messenger.”
Payne said she initially only intended to get the driver’s license plate information, which she said the 911 dispatcher had asked of her.
Prosecutors argued the audio from the 911 call shows the dispatcher was adamant that Payne not pursue Herring. The audio is also clear the defendant was adamant she was going to go after him.
“He is drunk. I’m not,” Payne told the dispatcher before the fatal confrontation. “I’m sorry, but I’m here to tell you I’m not not going to follow him because he is going to cause an accident.”
After the two shouted at one another for a few moments, Herring reached out of his truck and grabbed her, Payne testified on Monday. She claimed he ripped her shirt with the grab and eventually “mashed the gas,” briefly dragging her forward with his car.
Payne said she never stopped trying to pull away from Herring and eventually announced that she had a gun to try and get her alleged assailant to let her go. That’s when Payne admittedly drew the gun.
“I pulled it out and immediately started trying to just continue to push against the door with it — like push it away from him” she testified. Then, she said: “He grabbed my hand with the gun in it.”
All the while, the defendant said, she screamed for Herring to stop.
“As he’s pulling it is when it — the trigger went off,” she testified. “After it went off, my entire body kind of fell backwards.”
The state, on the other hand, proved during the trial, relying on witness testimony and recordings, that Payne actually cut Herring off with her car, then jumped out and “very aggressively” ran up to Herring’s car, cursed at him, immediately started punching the confused man through his window, took out her gun, threatened to shoot him twice, and “immediately” shot him.

The facts are disputed, but what is clear is that Payne believed that Herring, who ran a red light causing an accident and then left the scene of the accident, was a danger to other motorists. She claims she fired in self-defense during a struggle over the gun. But even if the jury didn’t buy that explanation, Georgia law still recognizes the right to use deadly violence in defense of others. Payne’s appeal argues that her defense attorney failed to get the court to instruct the jury properly on that, as well as on Georgia’s “citizen’s arrest” statute, which was still in effect in 2019, although it was repealed in 2021 after the Ahmaud Arbery case.

It’s worth noting that the NAACP called upon its supporters to “pack the courtroom” for Payne’s sentencing hearing.

Did Hannah Payne receive a fair trial? Considering the basic demographic and political facts about Clayton County, is it possible that any white defendant in such a situation — claiming self-defense in an interaction with a black person — could receive a fair trial?

Perhaps others are not concerned about this, and certainly I would not “play the race card” were it not for the fact that the NAACP already played it. Let the authorities in Clayton County reflect on what it might mean to their community if it were nationally regarded as a “no-go zone” for white people (as many locals already do). Now add to that the embarrassment of the District Attorney’s office using non-existent citations in an appeal of the case, and it’s not a good look for Clayton County. The state Supreme Court is not very happy.

Update: Today, the Georgia Supreme Court issued an order directing counsel for the state to file a sworn affidavit providing a “complete explanation” for the filings that included non-existent cases and other errors. https://t.co/ua7TMYvON3 pic.twitter.com/7oahBUqxVn

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) March 20, 2026

Category: Crime, Georgia, Racism

In The Mailbox: 03.20.26

Posted on | March 21, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Wow, an entire week without skipped/compacted posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.