“Let’s start at the very beginning – a very good place to start”[1] and for this newsletter that means HL 1 on November 15, 2016, where we reported that Sidney Poitier was a motivator and influencer for the entire Hopelessly Liberal endeavor.  We said: “By 1992 ‘liberal’ had already become a term of derision for many on the right and far left.  Wimpy liberals abandoned it.  But that same year I heard Sidney Poitier thank Hollywood Director Stanley Kramer for his lifelong efforts as an old-fashioned liberal, acknowledging the worth of people like Kramer, who eschewed the radicalism of the left and right but tenaciously and often hopelessly, pursued pluralism, egalitarianism and the perfection of America through peaceful means sanctioned and protected by our constitution.” [...]

Blog posts are made by fools like we, but only God can so perfectly juxtapose the Women’s Tennis Association’s and the Association of Tennis Professionals’ (men’s ATP) responses last week to allegations of sexual abuse and domestic violence involving star players. Zhang Gaoli & Peng Shuai In response to Peng Shuai’s allegation that she (former World #1 doubles and former #14 singles) had been sexually attacked by a top 5 Chinese government official, former Senior Vice-Premier, Zhang Gaoli, resulting in her immediate disappearance, the WTA quickly threatened China with disappearance of several major tournaments held in Chinese cities.  That immediate and powerful threat sent shock waves through the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that is scheduled to hold its Winter Games in Beijing in [...]

On October 28, 2021, Amanda Terkel, the 39-year-old Washington Bureau Chief of HuffPost declared open season on septuagenarians with her lead column headlined “74-year-old Man Blocks Universal Paid Leave.”  Terkel’s column is about Joe Manchin’s resistance to including even four weeks of paid family leave in the “Build Back Better” reconciliation package being negotiated by the Democratic caucuses in both houses.  We mark this as the date when 70 or older became an acceptable derogatory epithet for progressives, who will protest saying “some of our best friends are over 70” while quickly remembering to name “Bernie” but failing to acknowledge that much of what they espouse was taught to them by him when he was already over 70, and what they learned is less than Bernie has already forgotten about truly liberal principles and policies. […]

Though hardly “free” it may soon be get out of “jail” day for two actual and would be presidential assassins.  The forgetful and sloppy press coverage of the liberations proposed for Sirhan Sirhan and John Hinckley, Jr. is a profound disservice to the American public.  The cases are being analyzed and reported as very similar.  They were not and are not. Jodie Foster & John Hinckley, Jr. The important differences involve basic principles and goals of criminal justice.  Starting there, and contrary to what right and left fielders tell us – criminal justice aims to deter, punish and rehabilitate.  Not just one or two of those three. Hinckley was not only not found guilty of the attempted murder of actual President Ronald Reagan, [...]

He’s melting, but from a base not nearly as insubstantial as we said in HL 98 of March 24, 2020, an “ice cube.”  And going on to say that “[t]hose of us who have closely watched as time ravaged the once sharp or even brilliant minds of loved ones and colleagues, recognize what is happening to the good soldier Joe.”  He proved our metaphor wrong, though not necessarily the diagnosis, rallying, winning both the primary and general, transitioning to power despite the November 3 to January 20 insurrection and taking charge in a manner that had many calling his presidency “transformative” during the first few months. […]

Put yourself at the table with Andrew Cuomo.  You are his most trusted advisor.  The one he might listen to attentively, with some power of persuasion.  And your objective is not primarily to help Andrew survive but help New York first and foremost or hurt it least. We envision this because once we were such eminence grise, having been told “as of now  you are my counsel” and directed to leave home upstate at 4 am and arrive at the governor’s NYC residence at 7 am to give counsel.  We did, but only delayed by 52 hours an unnecessary resignation, with continuing disastrous consequences for the state, that included Andrew becoming its governor. […]

United States District Judge James Boasberg covered 120 pages explaining why he completely threw out an antitrust case by 46 states against Facebook and capsized the Federal Trade Commission’s companion case, while tossing it a flimsy life jacket.  But on page one of each dismissal Boasberg prominently referenced the governments’ blockbuster antitrust cases against Microsoft two decades earlier in the same courthouse.  Those first paragraph allusions to Microsoft made it clear “crystal” that he was going to throw both cases out and play heads and tails you lose with precedent and doctrine for the remaining 119 pages.  And that’s what he did. […]

It was said that bosses in Soviet Union industries pretended to pay workers who pretended to work.  Similarly, during this millennium and much of the last century, the roughly 130 NCAA Division I-A schools pretended their major sports athletes were “student-athletes” and most of those players went along with the pretense.  In recent decades, the NCAA, always an accomplice in this fiction, has pushed back some.  In part because of a fit of conscience, but mostly to avoid the Soviet’s fate and protect the major sports money machine.  […]

Extravagant power about to be exercised or smoke and mirrors?  More the latter but some of the former with some real ability to do things, but other than what is hoped for and promised of her: Lina Khan, the new 32-year-old chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Lina Khan Unlike the still unnominated Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, who unilaterally can get stuff done, the FTC chair (“Chairman” by statute) has one of five votes.  Khan may soon have on vote of four, when and if Rohit Chopra departs to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The fun bunch in the Senate’s Republican caucus may then try to block filling the fifth FTC seat, resulting in 2 [...]

Jack Weinstein one of the greatest American judges in history, and the greatest in “this boy’s life” died on June 15, two months shy of his 100th birthday. [1]  When he retired from the federal bench at 98, after 53 years, he was carrying a full load of cases – and a lucky load it was – for the litigants and their champions.  How was Jack Weinstein great?  Let others count the thousands of ways (and they are) but HL will mention a few personal and idiosyncratic. Thurgood Marshall Weinstein was already a role model when and where HL grew up on THE ISLAND.  Weinstein got there by way of Kansas, then Brooklyn and its Lincoln High School, where HL’s dad taught and [...]