"Any law is only as good as the people that are enforcing it. Does it make sense we took away the gun because he’s too dangerous to have one, but we didn’t take the step to prevent him from going out and buying one the next day?"

Said Brad Banks, a former prosecutor in Marion County (location of Indianapolis), quoted in "In Indianapolis Shooting, a Red Flag That Never Flew/Red flag laws are supposed to keep guns away from people who should not have them. That did not happen with the gunman who killed eight people in Indianapolis." 

The headline is obfuscatory. Why can't they say it straight, in a way that challenges the people who cry out for more laws? The Indianapolis Shooter Was Legally Barred From Purchasing a Gun, But the Seller Sold One to Him Anyway. 

But is my proposed clear headline correct? I had to comb through the article trying to find the answer. It wasn't easy!

"On Friday, West Point officials said in a statement that the [second-chance] program had 'not met its intended purpose' of increasing the self-reporting of honor code violations and reducing cadets’ tolerance for them...."

"'The tenets of honorable living remain immutable, and the outcomes of our leader development system remain the same, to graduate Army officers that live honorably, lead honorably and demonstrate excellence,' General Williams said in a statement. 'West Point must be the gold standard for developing Army officers. We demand nothing less than impeccable character from our graduates.'... Tim Bakken, a professor of law at West Point, said the involvement of so many athletes in a cheating scandal was a recurring theme at the academy and he called for greater scrutiny of the issue and more transparency on the part of the institution’s leaders. 'We have to ask the question of whether there is something about the culture of athletics that is at odds with the academy’s mission with regard to honor,' he said... Echoing Professor Bakken, C. Richard Nelson, a 1960 West Point graduate... noted that the 1976 scandal, like last year’s and another in 1951, was concentrated among athletes at the academy, in that case the football team. Mr. Nelson said that in his day, there was 'no slack' given and that 'any violation meant separation' — the academy’s term for expulsion. He also said he could see how the second-chance program that was being discontinued, known as the Willful Admission Process, might have fallen short of its goals. 'You’re asking an awful lot of these young people to turn somebody else in,' he said."

From "West Point Scraps Second-Chance Program After Major Cheating Scandal/Some graduates criticized the program as too lenient after the U.S. Military Academy disclosed its biggest academic scandal in decades" (NYT). 

I'd like to see the NYT go more deeply into the question of athletics and cheating — something more than quoting 2 professors on the subject. The question that arose in my mind — and I have no idea of the race of the various accused cheaters — is whether an honor code is a manifestation of white supremacy. The NYT has been weaving Critical Race Theory throughout so many of its articles that we ought to take note of its failure to include that dimension.

FROM THE EMAIL: Robin writes: 

"Mr. Jacobs’s parody of the Great American Songbook prompted Irving Berlin and a group of song publishers representing the work of Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein and others to sue..."

"... Mad’s parent company, E.C. Publications, for copyright infringement. At issue was 'Sing Along With Mad,' a pullout section published in 1961 that consisted entirely of song parodies by Mr. Jacobs and Larry Siegel. Among them were 'Louella Schwartz Describes Her Malady' (a lampoon of Berlin’s 'A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody') and 'The First Time I Saw Maris' (a spoof of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s 'The Last Time I Saw Paris'), about the commercialization of the Yankee slugger Roger Maris during the season he hit a record-breaking 61 home runs.... In his opinion, [2d Circuit] Judge Irving R. Kaufman (most famous for presiding over Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s espionage trial) wrote, 'The fact that defendants’ parodies were written in the same meter as plaintiffs’ compositions would seem inevitable if the original was to be recognized, but such a justification is not even necessary; we doubt that even so eminent a composer as plaintiff Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a property interest in iambic pentameter.'"

From "Frank Jacobs, Mad Magazine Writer With a Lyrical Touch, Dies at 91/He deftly mocked pop culture, politics and more for 57 years/He also wrote new lyrics for familiar songs, which led to a lawsuit from Irving Berlin and others" (NYT).

1961 — I think that's about when I discovered Mad. I was 10! It was the first thing I ever subscribed to. The writings of Frank Jacobs played such an important role in the development of my young mind.

(To comment, you need to email me — here.)

FROM THE EMAIL: Retail Lawyer:

"If a government agent has knowledge that a minor under its care or supervision has exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria, gender nonconformity, or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor’s sex..."

"... the government agent or entity with knowledge of that circumstance shall immediately notify, in writing, each of the minor’s parents, guardians, or custodians. The notice shall describe all of the relevant circumstances with reasonable specificity."

That's a proposed law in North Carolina (S.B. 514). It's quoted and mocked in "I am trying to report gender infractions in my kindergarten but don’t know what counts!" by Alexandra Petri (in WaPo).

What does it mean for a school kid to "desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor’s sex." The school shouldn't be treating their children differently based on their sex in the first place. The child's desire should be meaningless. There should be only one kind of treatment. Unless you're talking about the bathrooms....

Petri writes: 

Who is the person in this state who understands gender well enough to feel that this was something worth enshrining in law and not just arbitrary and hurtful and a sledgehammer looking for a nail?... 

ADDED: Here's the whole text of the bill. The quoted subsection — truly puzzling taken out of context — fits under the heading "Protection of parental rights." The idea is that parents have a right to make decisions about their child's mental health care and about any gender treatments that might be offered to a child with gender dysphoria. 

A reader named Robert emails: