Judge Alex Kozinski, and his fellow judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, have made it their mission to counteract prosecutorial misconduct through creative means. Lara Bazelon looks at Kozinski’s crusade, writing, in one example, of his badgering of prosecutors involved with cases he finds suspect: “Shame has long played a role in criminal cases in the United States, but it is a history of shaming offenders, not the supposedly righteous people who accuse them. … In deploying this ages-old shaming sanction, Kozinski was taking a familiar judicial tactic and giving it a wholly unexpected twist.”
If Democrats have been worried about the effects of new voter ID laws, writes Jamelle Bouie, they have only to look at this week’s Wisconsin primary, where many voters waited in long lines to cast their ballots, to see that they were right. “Voter ID laws in Wisconsin and beyond are a direct attack on democracy, an attempt to rig the game by blocking whole groups of Americans from the polls,” Bouie writes. “In what appears to be a strong cycle for their party, Democrats should take what happened in Wisconsin as a siren for action.”
Barbara Spindel writes about the group Women for Judge Thomas, a collective of defenders of Clarence Thomas, formed during his 1991 confirmation hearings, which later morphed into the Independent Women’s Forum. “The IWF, whose current mission is to ‘improve the lives of Americans by increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty,’ has ties to Thomas that are not merely personal but philosophical as well,” writes Spindel.
Why don’t more meteorologists believe in human-driven climate change? (A recent survey of members of the American Meteorological Society puts the percentage of believers at 67 percent; the general public is at 65 percent, and actively publishing climate scientists are at more than 97 percent.) Eric Holthaus writes that the number can be explained a few ways: level of scientific education in the AMS respondent pool; fear of pushback from viewing audiences; and the respondents’ own politics.
“Many meteorologists may be less willing to accept climate change’s cause based on their own ideological inclinations,” Holthaus writes. “Political ideology is a leading indicator of whether or not AMS members accept mainstream climate science.”
Singer Merle Haggard died on Tuesday, at age 79. “He was singular, a terse and potent poet of good times and bad ones, misery and gin, prison and grievances, love and reconciliation,” writes Alan Scherstuhl in his remembrance of Haggard. “No song of his contains all that he was, just as no tribute this week does, either.” Scherstuhl links to this 2013 playlist put together for Slate by Haggard biographer David Cantwell, for people who want a beginner’s survey of the singer’s long career.
For fun: Here’s the first teaser trailer for the next Star Wars movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Excellent use of a blaring alarm, sound people!
Feeling tense and excited, right on cue,
Rebecca
