Osler's Razor

Recently, I read two books at the same time and after awhile I saw something wonderful: that they fit together in a striking way. Both were written by people I know, and both books are compelling, important, and timely. Alice Marie Johnson's "After Life: My Journey From Incarceration to Freedom" is an engrossing story that will convince you that our criminal justice system has gone terribly awry as it reveals how one woman became enmeshed in--and survived--a grossly disproportionate sentence. Rachel Elise Barkow's "Prisoners of Politics," in turn, offers a comprehensive description of how that system became so dysfunctional and (perhaps more importantly) describes a path to fixing the problem.

After Life: My Journey from Incarceration to Freedom
Alice Marie Johnson 

As I promised last week, I'm going to take every Wednesday to explore the career paths of some of my law school classmates, a particularly interesting bunch.

For my first profile, I've selected Kathleen Clark, a law professor and expert on government, ethics, and national security. When we were in law school, Kathleen was kind to me when I was clueless, something I have always been grateful for. She was one of the sharpest people in the group, and when she raised her hand you knew something compelling and true was about to be said.  She was a double Yalie-- undergrad and law school-- so she knew her way around, too. I've been lucky enough to see her occasionally since school, too, most recently when she was kind enough to come hear Nkechi Taifa and I talk about reparations with Dr. Joanne Braxton earlier this month.

After law school, Kathleen clerked for Judge Harold Greene, and then served as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee. As a professor, she got tenure at Washington University in St. Louis, and has also taught at Cornell, Michigan, Utrecht University, and the National University of Vietnam.

One of Kathleen's great gifts is to take complicated ethical issues and explain them with both clarity and moral purpose. That's one reason that her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post and many other publications, challenging the powerful with principle. More than once, I've been watching television and Kathleen has appeared, making sense with simple and irrefutable points. I stifle the urge to point and say "I know her!" excitedly when this happens at the gym. She is actually able to explain things like the Emoluments Clause, and has been a leading voice on that and other issues. Here is a sample of her making sense of our current world:



In a nation with a critical need for experts in government ethics, we all are lucky to have Kathleen amongst us.

Wow! Lot's of great lunch-themed haikus last week.

First we had this from the Spanish Medievalist:

Menu del día 
Gazpacho, filete, y
Arroz con leche.

[Translation:
Today's menu
Gazpacho filleted with
Real Human milk]

Tim brought the Michigan angle:

Oh, Buddys pizza
You have moved to Grand Rapids
What took you so long?

And Susan Stabile offered something close to my own heart:

Christine offered up a common conundrum:

Chicken salad, chips...
An unremarkable meal
Need inspiration.

Amy gave us a great picture:

Italian Alps, home
of distant family, June:
Long tables loaded,

wild boar stew, fresh -- Love -- 
polenta gorgonzola -- 
Surprise -- tomatoes,

greens -- Warmth -- pasta, new
peas, new family, fizzy
water, wine and wine -- 

Flowers -- Laughter --
chocolate, pears, parmesan.
Cannot recreate . . .

And Gavin, as always, gave us something worthy of thought:

I eat at my desk
Bland food from a cardboard box
Blank stare, my mind drifts

To another lunch
Meat, cheese, bread, wine, and my love
In the Tuscan sun. 

We laughed and dined there
Time was no concern of ours
Just in the moment

I'm finding it hard not to notice empty or abandoned churches wherever I go. Sometimes they have been converted into apartments. Recently, in DC, I had dinner with Joanne Braxton and some others in a restaurant/hotel that was built out of a former church. More often, they are just boarded up.

It's especially striking in rural areas, where the old church is just falling apart under the elements.

In many European cities, you can find a church every few blocks. If you are there on a Sunday, it is easy to find a seat as they are almost empty during services.

Christianity is fading as a moral force in this world.

There have, of course, been a number of self-inflicted wounds that have led to this fate. Almost any terrible act that you can think of-- supporting the Nazis, massive sexual abuse of children, taking the money of the impoverished--- has been committed by Christian churches and their authorities.

Some will blame a shift in culture, of course: that new media and entertainment have distracted people from the life of the church. Others will point to an affluence that makes God irrelevant, noting that Christianity is thriving, not dying, in less affluent countries.

Probably all of this is right to some degree.

If we accept the truth that Christianity is fading from view, or at least prominence, what are we Christians to do?

Two things, I think.

First, we should be able to thrive even as a minority in our societies. Faith does not rely on political power, after all, at least not this faith. And Jesus taught that we should expect oppression for our beliefs.

Second, there is an imperative to open doors to those who are not a part of the church. Too many individual churches really are social clubhouses; they (at least in part) exist to serve the beliefs and biases of the oldest and most powerful members of that church. Ministers avoid important topics to avoid offending those parishioners, even if those topics are the very ones that Jesus identified as most important.

If there is a third great awakening, I suspect it will not be lead by a silver-haired New England preacher. And wouldn't that be interesting to see?

The best song for the end of spin class? This one. Absolutely.

Yesterday, President Trump had a meeting at the White House with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. The topic was to be a new infrastructure initiative. It appears that the following things happened:

1) Pelosi and Schumer showed up, along with some other congressional leaders.
2) President Trump said that he wasn't going to deal with them until they concluded investigations into his administration.
3) Then President Trump left the room.
4) In the Rose Garden, Trump gave a press conference at a podium bearing the words "NO COLLUSION. NO OBSTRUCTION."
5) The press went nuts. Headlines blared things like "Dems react to Trump-Pelosi feud!"

So, really, nothing of substance happened here. They had a non-meeting.

The thing is, Donald Trump has learned how to control the narrative. And he controls it the way a reality show contestant does: by creating drama, and then letting others talk about it.

At some point, the press bears some responsibility for covering the show in exactly the way Trump intends.

Hearing no objections, starting next Wednesday I'm going to start profiling the people I went to law school with. I have begun to do some digging around, and the more I find the more intriguing the project becomes. There is a fascinating variety of stories, and an amazing array of paths that have been followed from that one point in place and time.

One thing I have found intriguing already is the different ways in which we seem to have defined and pursued success. Some, from the start, sought power. Others sought meaning, or to create social good. For some, probably, financial security was paramount, and it is clear that some chose family above everything else. And, of course, for a lot of us there is a mix of things. Seeking power and social good, for example, need not be mutually exclusive (though they do create tension if they are pursued simultaneously, I suspect).

And, of course, some people found success in a place or doing something that they did not intend to end up in. That happens, too.

As I start this project, I'm going to set some ground rules:

1) Only positive things and setbacks that have been surmounted will be part of what I describe. I have no interest in embarrassing anyone or writing about personal tragedies.

2) I'm only going to rely on and relate information that is already publicly available, preferably in bios that the people themselves have some control over. This isn't much of a limitation; I've found that for nearly everyone I have looked into there is a wealth of public information out there right now. I'll also rely on my own (positive) recollections for some people.

3)  I'm not going to go in any particular order-- it's going to be fairly random.

We'll start next week!

Not long ago, I was thinking about all the remarkable people I got to share law school with. Some of them are famous, a few are infamous, and all of them are fascinating. Over the past year, I've had the opportunity to re-connect with a number of them, and it reminded me of what an unusual crowd that was.

My idea is to pick one of those classmates to profile on, say, Wednesday of every week. What do you think?

I love what people did with this (though I thought more people would have bus stories!). We had all four directions of the country represented. First, from the West, this from DDR:

The school bus driver
Was a true alcoholic
And yet we lived.

CTL remembered a bus in the East (Philadelphia):

SEPTA buses are 
Zoos on wheels, but where people,
Not apes, throw feces.  

The Medievalist has a most Minnesota reflection:

Riding the school bus,
Going north to Grand Marais,
Lutherans canoeing.

And, probably my favorite, Christine rode the bus in the South:

Caught bus in Daytona
Moon lit skies, snow covered fields
A red-eye ride home.

Yesterday was commencement at UST law. Because the students chose me as the "Professor of the Year," I got the honor of being the person who puts the academic hood on each student as they cross the stage.

It is actually a tricky job. I'm not an especially tall guy, so it's a challenge to get it over the heads of some of the taller folks, and if you do it wrong it starts to look like a version of human ring toss. Those hats aren't too stable, either, and there is a real danger of knocking them off. And, of course, since the student is facing away from you, there is a good chance of putting the hood over their face instead of around their neck. At this commencement there was a special challenge, too: it was held at Westminster Presbyterian Church downtown, and the passageway by the pulpit where we did the hooding was very narrow, and fronted on a five-foot drop. There was a very low one-foot rail by the edge. There was a pretty good chance that if I messed up, some new grad was going to take a header over the edge.

But, none of that happened.

Instead, it was this series of really wonderful moments. As you do the hooding, all eyes are on you, of course. And yet, there is this intimacy to it, too, standing there with these people we have known for three years. As they came up, I knew many of their stories-- what their challenges were, their hopes, the context of all this fuss-- and it was hard not to get choked up. As I slipped the hood over their cap, I whispered something in their ear, some little bit of encouragement or thanks.

At my own graduation, 29 years ago, Dean Guido Calabresi did just that as I graduated. And I can still hear his voice.

I heard a short presentation today about new electric buses coming into service here in Minneapolis-- $1.5 million buses!

Sometimes I'll take the bus to work, and in the past I have taken some longer trips on the bus (as have most people... and isn't it weird that we refer to any kind of bus in the simple singular, ie "the bus?").

We all have a bus story. Let's make them into haiku. Here, I will go first:

I sat with Fournier
All the way to Iowa
Epic adventure.

Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 formula, and have some fun!

I love when haiku reflect the writer; the kind of thing that no one else could have done. And there were two like that last week, on the subject of rain. First, there was this from Christine:


I smell it, nearing...
Slight breezes ruffle the leaves
Raindrops hit my cheeks.

And then there is this from (naturally) the Spanish Medievalist:

The rain in Spain falls
On the just and unjust alike,
Just made this one up.

It's a weird holiday, isn't it?

Here is why: I don't think we ever fully realize what it is that our mothers have given us. We see the obvious stuff--advice, the provisions of life-- but there is always something deeper in play, too. Our moms, in a million different ways, crafted who we become. Sometimes it was intentional, and sometimes it was not.

For me, that is all to the good. One thing about my mom that is remarkable is that she always tries to see the best in everyone; she takes no pleasure in anyone's tragedies. That is such a rare quality today.  When I am tempted to do otherwise (a temptation I sometimes succumb to), I hear her voice urging the better way.

There is no one thing that can be said about all mothers, other than this: they mattered.

Clemency in the form of a commutation (shortening of sentence) is, in a way, a delicate social pact between the executive and someone in prison. The president is counting on the person receiving the commutation to hold up their end of the deal and take advantage of the mercy they have been shown.

That's why it is discouraging to read things like this piece in the Waco paper, which describes Ricky Lamont Garrett's commutation, re-arrest, and conviction. I'm surprised he got clemency under the Obama program, given its supposed limits, and saddened by his poor choices once he received that gift of freedom. He evaded police and was found with three bags of ecstasy.

One incident, though, does not indict the entire project. The truer metric will be to compare redivism rates of those who received clemency with those who served a full term. That work hasn't been done yet, and I won't go beyond discouragement based on one case until we see that.

If you live in or around DC, I hope you will be able to come to something I have been looking forward to for weeks. Tonight, Dr. Joanne Braxton will moderate a discussion between Nkechi Taifa and I about the idea of reparations for African-American communities. It's a complicated and important issue-- just the type I love to talk about. We'll get things going at 6, and it's all happening at the Potter's House in Adams-Morgan. You can get all the details here.

Ah, summer! And the wacky travel it can bring. There were some wonderful haiku on the subject this week. For example, we had this from the Spanish Medievalist (which I suppose makes sense, right?):

Madrid summer sun,
Old medieval monuments,
Steaming paella.

Jill Scoggins has a dream-- like, a real nighttime dream-- about this:

From my dreams last night:
A Portuguese jewel hued
sun soaked palace. Why?

And I loved this evocative poem by CTL:

Salty ocean breeze 
Fills the lungs, soaks up troubles,
Carries them away. 

Over the course of my life, I have failed to achieve many things I really desired in that moment. Sometimes, it hurt a lot to have failed. In my early 20's, having graduated from college, I really struggled to find my footing. I tried very hard to get a job as a copywriter at an ad agency, and got nowhere. A few place asked for more information; I provided it and then never heard from them again.

After a while, I tried to get almost any decent-paying job that would allow me some financial independence. Again and again, I was turned down.  When I tried to get a job with Northwest Airlines as a gate agent or flight attendant, I didn't make it past the first round. My self-esteem was dragging.

Eventually, I took a low-paying, no-status job doing menial jobs for a law firm, including working as a process server.  Probably, I wasn't that good at it, in part because I read over everything I was handling, fascinated. Which, of course, led to law school.

When we fail, we often think God has failed us. But... perhaps there is something larger going on, as always.

Like many others, I have recently learned how to pronounce Pete Buttigieg's last name ("Boot Edge-edge)") and a handful of other things about him.

Will he be the Democratic nominee for president? It seems pretty unlikely. But, of course, at this point in the campaign it seemed pretty unlikely that Donald Trump would be the nominee of the Republicans in 2016. 

I am glad to see a Democrat talk openly and comfortably about faith. A lot of Democratic candidates and elected officials seem to have faith lives that are important to them, but few ever talk about that-- which cedes the field to Republicans and their allies like Jerry Falwell, Jr.

Of course, a lot of people would prefer that politicians never talk about religion, but that's short-sighted. Given that many Americans are still guided by faith in their values and (sometimes) their actions, if we don't talk about this we won't know the true beliefs of our public officials.

We all have fantasies of going someplace amazing this summer-- I know that I do. Whether it is something spectacular (Africa, Australia) or more mundane (camping in a quiet wood), let's haiku about that this week!

Here, I will go first:

At a cabin, on
An island, with some good folks
And Pink Unicorn. 

Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable formula, and have some fun!

After a period of seemingly just hoping all this would go away (and who can blame him), James Comey decided to opine on current events in the New York Times. It's a pretty remarkable piece, which you can read here.

Focusing on William Barr, whose testimony yesterday in the Senate was probably hailed within the White House and has been subject to much debate outside of it, is the primary target of Comey's op-ed, though he also loops in Rod Rosenstein and (more generously) Jim Mattis. His question, verbatim, is this: "What happened to these people?"

His conclusion is pretty stunning, and not just because he slips into the second person perspective. Let's face it-- eating souls is a fairly out-there allegation! Here is the ending, the uncoiling of the snake, where Comey includes himself among those who have gone along with it all:

I get a lot of mail at work. It breaks down about like this:

75%: Mail from people in prison
10%: Magazines, junk mail, and catalogues
10%: Letters from people I know
5%: Hate mail

Invariably, the letters from people in prison are polite. Even the people with loopy legal theories or unfortunate ideas of what my work entails are nice about it. So are the letters from people I know. Even the catalogues seem to have good intent.

As for hate mail, the internet has largely taken that business away from the postal service. Most of the nasty-grams I get are emails now, which is kind of sad in its own way. I get a lot of those after I have written something on a controversial topic. It's not a big deal; it comes with the territory. Of course, they often don't send them to me but to my Dean or others, thinking that perhaps upon hearing that I am part of the "Lib Scum Army" that the Dean's hair will stand straight up and I will be fired. The most caustic emails came in response to my support of same-sex marriage (check out the comments here for an example of typical verbiage, often arguing that I should be cast into a "lake of sulfur"), but there is a steady stream most of the time, usually asserting that I am a traitor to the race, or to the law, or to DOJ, or (for a while) Brett Kavanaugh.

Of course, email carries with it a certain accountability, since there is almost always a way to find out who wrote the email, and it is possible to write back. Anonymous letters, archaic as they are, are one of the last refuges (along with comment sections) of true cowards.

Yesterday I got one of the funnier bits of hate mail I have received in a while. It came in the exact type of envelope that prisoners use, but it had no return address (and was, as is typical, unsigned).  He appears to have been responding to my piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last week about the Mueller Report. Inexplicably, he included a copy of the article I had written.

Here is how he began:

What a HACK you are- one of the major issues I have is that you claim to 'train future prosecutors'- oh, you mean like Andrew Weismann? 

It is very worrisome that the legal system has dedicated partisans such as yourself involved in it.

It all emanates from "The One"-- your boy-- OBAMA- trust me on this.

I goes on like this for a while. But just to unpack that opening...

First of all, I would be very proud if I had a role in training legendary prosecutor Andrew Weismann. For one thing, I'd be working at Columbia Law School, which would be pretty cool (at least for a few months). Also, I'd have played a role in educating the guy who led the successful prosecution of mob boss Vincent Gigante and headed up the DOJ's fraud section. I'd be pleased as punch if one of my students has a career like that-- and some of them very well might.

Then, of course, we have the reference to our first black president as "boy," and all that goes with that term. It seems this particular coward has some other issues as well.

If nothing else, this gives me an appreciation for those in prison, and the better envelopes I get from them which always include a name, a return address, and a cogent point or request.