There is one very simple truth about education that we somehow manage to overlook while drowning ourselves in tuition bills, student loans, and academic nonsense dressed up like enlightenment. First, people need to read, write, speak clearly, and understand their own language. Radical stuff, I know. That should be accomplished during the first twelve years of school, assuming the system is doing something besides producing graduates who need spellcheck to order lunch. After that, education should serve two basic purposes: helping people compete in the job market and helping them earn a living. That is not complicated. Education should put skills in the brain and money in the pocket. Everything else should at least have the decency to admit it is a hobby with a campus bookstore. Real education means useful training. Science. Engineering. Computers. Medicine. Law. Government. Business. Skilled trades. These are the fields that keep civilization from collapsing into a committee mee...

  This is not an attack on Black actors. Not even close. Talented Black actors have earned great roles for decades, and nobody with a working brain should object to that. The problem is not the actors. The problem is the Hollywood executives, producers, casting departments, and political activists who use and abuse casting as a social engineering tool. They are not telling stories anymore. They are trying to reshape society through forced casting, fantasy demographics, and ideological box-checking. Characters are no longer created because they serve the plot. They are inserted because somebody in a boardroom wants applause from people who do not buy tickets. That is the fraud. Black actors deserve real characters, real villains, real heroes, real flaws, real complexity, and real drama. What they do not need is Hollywood turning them into political props to prove how morally enlightened some studio executive thinks he is. The audience can smell this nonsense from the cheap seats...

In the early days of this country, legitimate law enforcement was often scarce, weak, or simply nonexistent. In that vacuum came the so-called vigilance committees, a polite name for mobs with ropes, bad tempers, and an allergy to due process. They held kangaroo court “trials” that usually ended the same way: some poor soul swinging from a tree while the crowd congratulated itself for delivering justice. Swift. Satisfying. Primitive. The kind of justice you get when the loudest man in the mob also appoints himself judge, jury, and executioner. Today, of course, we like to pretend we are civilized. We arrest suspects. We file charges. We hold hearings. We allow lawyers to argue, judges to rule, witnesses to testify, and juries to deliberate. The process can take years. Felony cases often crawl through the courts at the speed of an arthritic mule. Appeals can last decades. That is simply too slow for the modern bloodthirsty crowd. They do not want evidence. They do not want nuance. T...

Mark Fuhrman, the disgraced LAPD detective who may have done more damage to the O.J. Simpson murder prosecution than the defense team could have dreamed of doing on its best day, has died at 74 from an advanced form of throat cancer. Apparently, he refused treatment and passed away. During the Simpson trial, Fuhrman was asked whether he had ever used the N-word when describing Black people. He denied it under oath. That was a bold move, in the same way jumping into a wood chipper is bold. A Marine Corps recruiter in Arizona had a recording that proved Fuhrman had lied. He claimed that he found the infamous bloody glove on Simpson’s property while Simpson was in Chicago. From there, speculation exploded that Fuhrman had planted the glove, conveniently manufacturing probable cause and helping drag the case into the legal swamp where it drowned. The tragic comedy is that Fuhrman could have survived the question by telling the truth. He could have said, “I am embarrassed to admit that d...

The History: On September 29, 2020, in Westlake Village, a horrible and deadly accident happened. Its seriousness demanded a full and uncompromising investigation by police. Mark Iskander, 11, and Jacob Iskander, 8, were killed while crossing the street at night. They were not quietly walking shoulder-to-shoulder with their parents. They were on a skateboard and rollerblades, moving across a dark roadway under difficult conditions that mattered then and matter even more now. Rebecca Grossman, who, with her husband Peter Grossman, MD, was every bit of a wealthy philanthropist. She was administering the Grossman Burn Center, which has famously helped countless people suffering ghastly injuries return to normal lives. Rebecca Grossman had consumed alcohol, but she was not charged or convicted as a DUI driver. The prosecution’s speed theory rested heavily on reconstruction opinions and guesswork. Those are not fingerprints. They are educated conclusions built from assumptions, measureme...

Let me begin with the boring little detail that ruins everybody’s fun: there is no known ongoing police investigation. That means we are left with the usual American pastime, trying to separate actual facts from gossip, hysteria, and the kind of eyewitness drama normally reserved for UFO landings. The Blue Dog is a small but popular restaurant near Sepulveda and Ventura in Sherman Oaks. It serves very decent burgers, which I can say because I’ve eaten there several times and somehow managed to survive without becoming part of a national incident. Apparently, Britney Spears was there with her personal assistant and bodyguard. The story, as it has been served up, medium rare and heavily seasoned, is that Britney was telling a story, perhaps a little loudly, about a barking dog. At some point, she was also cutting her burger with a table knife. Yes, a table knife. At a restaurant. Near a burger.  Call the FBI!. Now, anyone familiar with the Blue Dog knows the tables are packed to...