Sex crimes prosecutors pressing on

March 2, 2020

Kudos to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and particularly to lead prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon and her team, on getting a guilty verdict in the Harvey Weinstein case. As we all recognize, the case was a major challenge. Placing this verdict in historical perspective makes it even more significant. Until the early 1970s, virtually no sex crimes case could be prosecuted because of onerous legal roadblocks, specifically corroboration requirements. Three elements — identity, force and penetration — had to be corroborated by additional evidence. I prosecuted my first rape ...

Tale of two flags over Iwo Jima

February 28, 2020

By Paul M. McCardell The Baltimore Sun “The most beautiful scene in all the blue Pacific today is an American Flag whipping the breeze on the top of the Suribachi volcano.” — From the Feb. 24, 1945, Evening Sun Seventy-five years ago this month, the United States military forces were fighting the bloodiest battle in their history. And a Baltimore Sun foreign correspondent was there to catch the scoop of a lifetime. Iwo Jima, an island covered in volcanic ash, about 5 miles long and 2.5 miles wide at its broadest, sat roughly 600 miles east of Japan’s main islands. It had ...

How Trumpcare 2020 could lower medical costs

February 26, 2020

In 2016, candidate Donald Trump promised to repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something terrific.” The replacement never materialized. The repeal, however, had been making progress in a piece-by-piece fashion. President Trump has made a frontal assault on the Affordable Care Act by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike it down altogether. As it happens, Obamacare has become popular, and so, with the next election approaching, Trump badly needs a replacement. Let me offer ideas. Some elements of my Trumpcare 2020 plan may sound heartless and extreme. But several fit ...

Mike didn’t get it done at last week’s debate

February 25, 2020

The only thing that can be said about former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s first appearance with his fellow Democratic presidential candidates in Las Vegas Wednesday night was that Mike did not get it done, as his campaign ads promise he will if he becomes president. He was boring, expressionless and could not defend himself against past racist, sexist and misogynistic comments, including one mentioned by Elizabeth Warren, who said Bloomberg once referred to women as “fat broads” and “horse-faced lesbians.” During the debate he also refused to release women who ...

Barr was right, left was wrong

February 25, 2020

It is a sign of our times that Attorney General William Barr tried to do something right and some illiberal liberals, including not a few in the media, decided that it was wrong on the basis of mindless presidential squawks, factual ignorance and in some cases political opportunity. What it adds up to is that the illiberal liberals are doing what they accuse Barr of doing, namely going to war with justice and other basic democratic principles, but at least Judge Amy Berman Jackson saw the light. What she did was sentence Roger Stone to three years and four months in prison instead of ...

We’re living in post-integrity America

February 24, 2020

Back during the scandal over his sexual exploitation of an intern, Bill Clinton was pilloried in this space for his moral defects. To which many liberals responded with derision. Morality? What did that matter? The economy was good, we were at peace and Clinton was hardly the first man to fool around and lie about it. As one reader put it, he was hired to be a president, not a pope. At the time, that felt like a rationalization. A generation later, it feels like a portent. Indeed, it’s often said we’re living in Post-Fact America but truth is, we are also living in Post-Integrity ...