Victoria Bassetti

All about our crazy, messy, exciting American voting system. Working at States United Democracy Center. Co-hosting Yahoo News' Skullduggery podcast. Author Electoral Dysfunction. Contributo to This is What Democracy Looked Like. Former Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice.

[vbass1]

Donald Trump's contempt for women assumes many forms. Here is one:

Read the post at the American Constitution Society blog here

Out of Trump's 29 U.S. Attorney Nominees, 28 Are Men

by Dan Froomkin and Victoria Bassetti, Brennan Center Contributor

Donald Trump's contempt for women assumes many forms. His selection of nominees to serve as U.S. attorneys around the country has proven to be one of them: Of the 29 people he has nominated for U.S. attorney positions, 28 are men.

Fully 25 are white men. There's one Asian-American woman, one African-American man, one Asian-American man and one Native American man.

By contrast, at a similar point in his presidency, Barack Obama had nominated 20 U.S. attorneys, 11 of whom were white men. There were five women – four white and one Asian-American — as well as three African-American men and one Asian-American man.

Trump's U.S. attorney nominees are an even less diverse bunch than his other top-level nominees -- although they, too, are an overwhelmingly white and male group. The Partnership for Public Service, which tracks 570 key positions that require Senate confirmation (not including the 93 U.S. Attorney positions), calculates that of the 213 people Trump has nominated so far, 169 – or 80 percent -- are men. The Partnership doesn't track race.

The extraordinary statistics for Trump's U.S. attorney nominees – 97 percent male, 86 percent while male – hearken back to a much earlier era of U.S. history, and are raising serious concerns.

“There has been a striking lack of diversity so far in President Trump's nominations for federal prosecutors," said Vanita Gupta, the former acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, who is now president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

"U.S. attorneys are the lead federal law enforcement position in communities across the country and they have an enormous impact on communities of color. Our diversity is part of what makes America great, and our government should reflect the communities it serves,” Gupta said.

In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was widely mocked for insisting that he consulted "binders full of women" before making key hires. "Trump has binders full of men," said Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society. "You don't nominate 97 percent men if your candidate pool isn't essentially all male."

"The more diversity of views you have when these decisions are made, the more justice you can deliver," said Joyce White Vance, a career federal prosecutor who was one of the first five U.S. attorneys Obama nominated. She served until the eve of Trump's inauguration.

"The idea is that you're selecting the most qualified person in each community for this position," she said. "I'm sure in many of these communities there were highly qualified women as well as people from other diverse communities."

Vance noted that the decision-making about U.S. attorney nominees typically involves the state's U.S. senators, the attorney general and the deputy attorney general.

"One possible takeaway from these numbers is that women aren't being viewed as leaders in law enforcement," she said.

Vance said she treasured a picture taken at Loretta Lynch's swearing-in as the second female U.S. attorney general in April 2015. Lynch is surrounded by 20 women U.S. attorneys and acting U.S. attorneys – "and that wasn't even all of us," Vance said.

U.S. attorneys will have a major role in executing the new priorities of the Trump administration which, as we understand them so far, include tougher drug sentencing, more civil asset forfeiture and searching for nearly nonexistent voter fraud.

Although Trump is moving at a vastly slower pace in nominations in general than Obama – Obama had sent a total of 373 nominations to the Senate by this point, compared to 226 for Trump --  he is going at a faster pace when it comes to U.S. attorneys. That is likely because Trump in March demanded that the 46 remaining U. S. attorneys who had been appointed under President Obama resign effective immediately.

The Obama administration, by contrast, eased out Bush appointees over the course of the first year.

Trump's massive purge notably included Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, who was fired after he refused to quit. Bharara had earlier been assured by Trump that he would stay on, but one day before the purge had declined a personal phone call from the president as an inappropriate breach of protocol.

ProPublica reported in June that Marc Kasowitz, then Trump’s personal lawyer in the Russia investigation, took credit for getting Bharara fired.

One small consolation to progressive observers of Trump's U.S. attorney picks is that although the nominees are overwhelmingly white and male, most don't appear to be the kind of partisan extremists some had feared Trump would select.

"I'm glad to see that many of the nominees are people with career experience in the Justice Department. That's always very reassuring," Vance said.

Barbara McQuade is a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan – and was one of the 46 forced out by Trump in March.

"It is concerning that only one out of nearly a third of the 93 U.S. attorney nominees is a woman, but this administration has 65 U.S. attorney nominations to go, so I will reserve judgment," McQuade wrote in an email.

"Still, one wonders what might be behind the numbers. Are fewer women seeking to serve as U.S. attorney in this administration?   Does the administration favor candidates with a philosophy about criminal and immigration law that is skewing toward male candidates?  I am not sure how to explain it, but will be curious to see how the numbers shake out when all 93 are nominated."

Indeed, two thirds of the nominees are yet to come.

"What you would hope is that there would be an internal correction by the administration," Vance said.

"If you have just a little bit of self-awareness, people who don't look like you start to look more qualified."

Trump's one woman U.S. attorney nominee is also the only one that, in an unusual break with protocol, he insisted on meeting personally: Jessie K. Liu, who would serve as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

But Trump's insistence on meeting with her face to face likely had more to do with the fact that she might be in a position to prosecute him and his staff someday, rather than her gender.

[vbass1]

A Consumer’s Guide to the Trump-Russia Investigations

My latest for the Brennan Center for Justice.

With five investigations underway into ties between Trump associates and the Russians, it's difficult to know what each committee is doing. I created a guide to help you understand what each of the Trump probes is looking for and how.

Rarely has the phrase “you can’t tell your players without a scorecard” rung more true than in the multiple investigations of ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

There are now five investigations into the relationships between Trump associates and the Russians. Two committees in the Senate are conducting probes, as are two committees in the House, as well as special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller, whose power is like that of a U.S. Attorney, is likely to say little unless he indicts someone.

The Congressional committees are a different story. Some or all of them will conduct public hearings, and there likely will be no shortage of committee members willing to opine about their investigation. Yet, the average person probably does not know which committee is doing what, which committee has issued which subpoenas for what reason, and which committee has held which hearings when.

We’ve compiled five tables that lay out what each investigation is looking at, what they’ve done so far, and critically in the case of the Congressional committees, each panel’s rules for issuing subpoenas. These tables make it easy to penetrate the thicket of inquiries. They will be updated periodically, so while one committee may be grabbing all the headlines, there might be another committee that has issued a wave of subpoenas that may indicate where an investigation is headed.

Keep reading here to get the charts etc:

 http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/trump-russia-investigations

[vbass1]

Follow the Money on Senate Russian Investigations

To special counsel, independent prosecute, special commission, select committee, or regular investigate, that is the question.

As the constitutional crisis deepens in the wake of Tuesday’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, the quest to assure the public that Russian interference in the 2016 elections is being investigated properly is heating up. Some form of inquiry is in order. But which kind?

To hear GOP Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the status quo is just fine. "Today we'll no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, which could only serve to impede the current work being done,” he said on the Senate floor the morning after Comey was sacked.

Yet, virtually every government watchdog group, including the Brennan Center, has called for the appointment of a special counsel, concerned that Comey’s firing has compromised the FBI and that the involvement of the purportedly recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the dismissal suggests continual meddling.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wants a select committee. “I have long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election,” McCain said. “The president’s decision to remove the F.B.I. director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee.” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) wants a special commission.

Given all the different forms of investigation being proposed, The Washington Post, published this helpful lexicon to all the animals in the investigative zoo.  

For the most part, however, the GOP is standing fast. “Republicans are putting their faith in the Senate Intelligence Committee and career FBI investigators to conduct investigations that they say will not be partisan in nature,” Politico reported.

They might be the only ones who still have faith.

Here’s the rub: The Senate has not allocated a single penny to investigate the issue....

Keep reading here at the Brennan Center for Justice.

[vbass1]

Trump’ Twitter Pulpit

The President’s twitter account has reached its Robert’s Rules of Orders phase. Sad.

Having gone after the Fourth Estate and the Judiciary, Trump is now directing his twitter rants at the Senate.

The President’s pivot to parliamentary procedure began last Friday during his 100-day press tour. Speaking to Fox News, Trump complained: "The filibuster concept is not a good concept to start off with.”

“You look at the rules of the Senate…There are archaic rules and maybe at some point we're going to have to take those rules on, because, for the good of the nation, things are going to have to be different,” he said. “You can't go through a process like this. It's not fair, It forces you to make bad decisions.” He then made the same point two days later on “Face the Nation.” And he was at it again Tuesday, somehow creating a linkage between a government shutdown and a change in Senate rules.

Given Trump’s short attention span, his remarks represent a sustained campaign to kill the filibuster. It is likely to be as successful as his efforts to date to repeal and replace (or whatever it is) Obamacare. For one thing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) is dead set against the idea. “That will not happen,” he said hours after Trump’s early-morning Tweet tantrum. As I have noted before, McConnell’s loyalty to the filibuster is not out of some dewy-eyed sentiment to Senate rules, but out of a cold political calculation that, in the long run, the filibuster serves the interests of Republicans more than Democrats.....

Read the whole piece here at the Brennan Center.

[vbass1]

Opinion | The Guesstimator: Predict the Gorsuch nomination vote and win a prize!

How many votes will Trump's first Supreme Court nominee receive?

Play along if you want...you’ll see my prediction in the piece. Do we agree?

[vbass1]

Gorsuch Kabuki

From my latest piece for the Brennan Center for Justice. Read the whole piece here.

Quick question: what do Supreme Court nominations hearings and a 400-year-old Japanese theatrical genre have in common? Answer: Not much, except pundits like to mention them together.

“The confirmation process has become an elaborate kabuki play in which the senators try to get the nominee to tell them how he’s going to vote so that they can oppose him even though he’s qualified,” opined New York Post columnist Seth Lipsky, dismissing the last week’s Senate Judiciary committee hearings on Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination. Lipsky dismissed the hearings as all style and no substance, “a waste of time.”  

But this commentary, and others like it, not only unfairly maligns a venerable Japanese art form; it misses the import and impact of the hearings.

In fact, the hearings did matter. When Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) announced last Thursday that the Democrats would filibuster Gorsuch, he was not following a script that had been written weeks beforehand. According to aides to four different Senators familiar with the party’s thinking, Democrats basically were split into three groups about filibustering Gorsuch before he testified.

Remember that filibustering Gorsuch is not without a price. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to change Senate rules to allow Supreme Court justices to be approved with a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 needed to avoid a filibuster. Before the Gorsuch hearings began, Democrats were divided into three groups. A few Democrats, such as Sens. Joe Manchin (W. Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (ND), both of whom face tough re-election fights in 2018, were inclined to perhaps support Gorsuch. Another faction opposed Gorsuch, but were reluctant to use the filibuster and risk a showdown with McConnell. And the third group believed using the filibuster – even if it provoked a reaction from McConnell -- was the proper course, especially given the Republican blockade of Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland.

Many Democrats were waiting for the hearing before making a decision. They needed to see Gorsuch in action. But after watching 20 hours of testimony from the nominee, they were convinced to support a filibuster. As of this writing, only Manchin and Heitkamp have said they will not join the filibuster. (Tellingly, neither has said whether they will ultimately vote for Gorsuch.)  

There were four turning points in Gorsuch’s testimony, according Senate staffers, one of which involved the thorny question of whether to use wet or dry flies when fishing.

1.  Brown vs. Board of Education and Griswold vs. Connecticut:

More than eight hours into the first day of questioning, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) got his first chance to ask questions. When Blumenthal asked Gorsuch agreed with the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Gorsuch took his time, eventually winding around to something like approval. Brown, he opined, “corrected an erroneous decision” and was a “a correct application of the law of precedent.” It was a proper originalist decision he told the panel.

Keep reading here.

[vbass1]

Is Sessions ready to say no to Trump?

From my piece in today’s Washington Post, with Caroline Fredrickson.

The Justice Department under Jeff Sessions, if he is confirmed as President Trump’s attorney general, will be free to prioritize marijuana prosecutions over civil rights investigations of police departments, or to focus more on voting fraud than environmental crimes. Elections have consequences. Changed law enforcement priorities are among them. That’s politics.

It is not, however, “politicization” of the Department of Justice. That’s an altogether different — and more dangerous — phenomenon. It’s what happens when an attorney general or president employs the enormous power of the department, with its 10,000 lawyers and 13,000 FBI agents, to pursue personal or partisan goals. It happens when impartiality is thrown out the window and vindictiveness and vendetta take over.

Is Sessions the man to ensure this does not happen? This week’s showdown between President Trump and acting attorney general Sally Yates changes the equation. The independence of the department is under threat. Protecting it must be Sessions’s top priority. Yet thus far he has offered little more than bland assurances of fairness — combined with worrying hints of blindness to the gravity of the situation.....

Keep reading here

[vbass1]

Jeff Sessions, Campaign Contributions, and The Administration of Justice

This is not normally what I post about, but I just finished this long report for the Project on Government Oversight. So I thought I might just post it here.

Here’s what the press release said:

For more than 20 years, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Attorney General of the United States, has actively sought and accepted campaign contributions from many of the very companies he will be called upon to investigate or prosecute should he be confirmed, according to a report published today by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

Today’s report finds that 286 corporations, trade associations, lobbying or law firms, PACs, and their employees were responsible for more than $4 million of contributions to Senator Sessions’ campaign committee and leadership PAC in the last decade. Of those, one-third (97) have known matters involving the Department of Justice (DOJ):

56 have a lawsuit, active consent decree/settlement, or public investigation pending before DOJ; 

20 are large lobbying firms that tout their access to and ability to lobby DOJ; 

12 are major trade associations that represent members who are being sued or investigated by DOJ; and 

9 are companies that are government contractors with current or recent contracts with DOJ.

You can check out the report here.

[vbass1]

ELECTORAL COLLEGE COUNTDOWN: ONE WEEK TO GO

With the Electoral College due to meet and elect the President next Monday, it's time to take a closer look at how to reform it. I got to do that when I sat down with The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg for the latest edition of the Brennan Center podcast, The Line.

Go to iTunes or Soundcloud and have a listen. The podcast runs about 26 minutes.  

After this year’s traumatic presidential election, the College is under the microscope as tens of millions of Americans have fixed on the mysterious institution. Like many a teenager in science class gazing upon a protozoan for the first time, they’re seeing all sorts of creepy things, not least that sometimes the winner of the popular vote doesn’t get to be President because of the Electoral College.

Almost five million people have signed a petition asking the Electors to vote for Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump. Others have swamped the federal agency that helps coordinate the College with calls and emails. And members of the College, normally minor political figures who perform a ceremonial role, have gotten more attention than they ever bargained for.

These are all Hail Mary efforts to change the outcome of the election, which is to say they are extremely unlikely to succeed. The Electoral College has survived more efforts to reform or abolish it than any other American political institution.

It may surprise you to learn, however, that there is one Electoral College reform initiative that still has a shot — better at least than any other effort undertaken in the last half century: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. (Before you get excited, it wouldn’t have any impact on this year’s election).

Simply put, under the Compact, states would agree to award their electoral votes to the candidate that wins the popular vote. Ten states and D.C. have passed the Compact, comprising 165 electoral votes. The Compact will take effect if and when states representing a majority of electoral votes, which is 270, pass it.

I sat down with Electoral College expert Hertzberg to talk about the institution. Hertzberg is no fan of the Electoral College and has written persuasively about its flaws. He’s a big supporter of the Compact.

The Electoral College “distorts and perverts democracy and participation,” he told me, “because the general election only happens in about a dozen states at most and the other 40 states are just spectators. It’s just outrageous when you examine the effect this has.”

If implemented, the Compact would transform American elections, he believes. “However, complicated it might seem at first glance…it’s an absolutely brilliant solution.”

Take a listen at The Line on iTunes or Soundcloud. And please subscribe!

PS Many thanks to Scripps Howard and the DecodeDC podcast team who helped produce the series. They included Dave Shaw and Jimmy Williams. And a particularly special thanks to David Schulman who produced the series.

Image: "The Illustrated Story of American Presidents,” a Classics Illustrated Comic, 1960.

[vbass1]

Let’s Give It the Old College Try

What is this Electoral College? The one that is going to elect Donald Trump president even though he did not win the popular vote? 

And what's the average SAT score needed for admission? 

Little did I know when I was interviewed for a podcast called Everything Explained with Patrick Garrett of WAMC radio that it was going to be so important this year. 

We talked about how the Electoral College works, who gets to go there, and its impact on politics. 

At 22 minutes long, it’s shorter than any college class I ever took. You can catch it on these sites:

WAMC

iTunes

Stitcher

Google Play

PS If you want to buy one of the t-shirts, go here.

[vbass1]

Why 100 million Americans won’t vote on Tuesday

Voter turnout in the US is way lower than almost any other developed country. Political scientists explain.

A great piece explaining it. But if you want to listen to a podcast on the issue—only 20 minutes long—that I did for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, check it out here on iTunes. 

[vbass1]

Is the Election Rigged?

Check out my podcast for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. It’s less than 30 minutes long. I talked to the head of the Brennan Center, Michael Waldman, a Tammany Hall historian, and a prosecutor who deals with voting fraud.

On iTunes here

[vbass1]

The last time the Cubs won the World Series, women couldn't vote.

[vbass1]

A Podcast About Voting and Vote Rigging

So I did a podcast about voter fraud claims. Got to talk to the head of the Brennan Center, a Tammany Hall historian, and a guy who prosecutes voting fraud.

Check it out:

On iTunes

On Soundcloud

[vbass1]

Wrapping Your Head Around All Those Vote Rigging Claims

I recently sat down with the host of the podcast DecodeDC to talk about voter fraud and vote rigging claims. It told him: “It’s like saying because you’ve got a pimple on your arm it means you’ve got cancer running throughout your entire system.” We talk about Tammany Hall, voter ID, and the real vulnerabilities in our system....not the boogeymen.

You can catch the podcast on Soundcloud or at iTunes

[vbass1]

How to Succeed at Business Without Really Trying - Supreme Court Edition

My piece on the fall prospects for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland just got published at The Washington Monthly.  Check it out.

More than 150 days ago, Merrick Garland walked into the Rose Garden, straight out of central casting, ready for his role as the next Supreme Court Justice. When President Obama nominated him on March 16 to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s vacant seat, he praised Garland as the very epitome of a judge. Plus, he’s so likable. Who wouldn’t buy a ticket to something starring that guy?

But asking Garland to play the lead in the Senate confirmation drama turned out to be a lot like casting Charlie Chaplin, in his baggy suit and bowler, to save the planet from certain destruction by laser-eyed aliens.

One hour after news of Scalia’s death—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moved to threat level apocalypse. He lined up his caucus to block any Obama appointee, before even knowing his or her name. Today, with the Senate’s August recess drawing to a close, would-be Justice Garland is still twisting in the wind. People have been shocked, shocked at McConnell’s belligerence. They shouldn’t have been.

For more than forty years, free enterprise and social conservative groups have used every tool at their disposal —grass roots activism, campaign spending, lobbying, scholarship, high impact litigation—to create the Supreme Court they wanted. And they’ve mostly succeeded.

Keep reading here.

[vbass1]

Labor Day Reading List

Labor Day weekend is fast approaching. And that means time to stock up on reading material. I asked some friends and colleagues what they suggested. Here’s what they told me.

Senator Chris Murphy: The freshman Senator from Connecticut captured national attention earlier this summer with his overnight filibuster in the Senate demanding action on gun safety proposals in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida.

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Scott Anderson: A fascinating story of both T.E. Lawrence but also the making of the modern Middle East during the World War I period. A great starting point for those who want to understand how long western hands have been at the center of screwing up the Middle East.

Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, Jill Leovy: This book helped me reset my head on the epidemic of urban gun violence. Leovy makes a compelling case that the vast numbers of unsolved murders in our cities leave behind a wake of disbelief in the legal system and the replacement of it by an informal, off-the-books system of justice. She tells the story of one dogged and determined Los Angeles detective to make the case that it's simply our choice to let so many crimes go unsolved.

Michael Waldman: Waldman is the President of the Brennan Center for Justice. His latest book, The Fight to Vote, came out earlier this year. His book The Second Amendment: A Biography is now out in paperback.

The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Robert Gordon:  It's a fascinating economic history that argues we are in for slower growth (and, by implication, nastier and more polarized politics). Dense for the beach, but you'll learn a lot about the rise of electric toasters, etc.

Linda Greenhouse: The New York Times’ Supreme Court correspondent for more than thirty years, Greenhouse is now a columnist for the paper and teaches at Yale Law School. Her book, The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right, co-authored with Michael Graetz, came out earlier this summer.

Lulu in Babylon, Allison Silver: I am currently reading Lulu in Babylon, a hilarious newly published roman a clef of the movie business by Allison Silver, a former op ed editor of the Los Angeles Times who knows all the secrets. 

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Atul Gawande: Even though Atul Gawande's fascinating Being Mortal has been on the best seller list for more than a year, I just got around to reading it. I found it extremely enlightening and have been recommending it to everyone.

Purity, Jonathan Franzen: I just started reading Jonathan Franzen's Purity as an audio book, and I'm finding it intriguing.

Dahlia Lithwick: Slate’s Senior Editor, Lithwick writes about the courts and law. She has won the National Magazine Award and is on the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

 Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, Rebecca Solnit: This has been about the most depressing, immobilizing and terrifying summer I can recall.  The choice seems to be between a steady diet of alt-right hate speech, threats of vote suppression, and a spiral of xenophobia, or tuning out under the bedclothes with the Hamilton soundtrack.  The curative for me came with Rebecca Solnit’s wonderful Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. Originally published in 2004, and re-released this year, this is a slim jewel of a meditation on what political hope can do for us, or more urgently what we can do for hope. Hopelessness is a choice to do nothing.

Solnit reminds us that it is also a choice to believe in nothing: "It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings.”

This is a book about basic human goodness, human agency, social change, and a sharp renunciation of the “everything sucks so I will watch movies instead” mode so many of us have fallen into of late. She reminds us of the amazing political successes of the last decades, achieved by environmental, feminist, LGBTQ, and peace activists, and recalls us to the reality that the world is immeasurably better in so many ways because so many people had hope in the face of ugliness. Read this book by moonlight, dance a little, think about the goodness in your neighbors. And then get back to work

David Feige: Earlier this year, Feige won the Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. His documentary film, Untouchable, deals with sex offender laws. One reviewer said it “presents a complicated issue in all its complexity…. It is urgent without becoming alarmist, and it points to a possible changing of hearts and minds without propagandizing.” Feige was the Trial Chief at Bronx Defenders and helped found the organization.

New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing, Ted Connover & Failure to Protect: America's Sexual Predator Laws and the Rise of the Preventive State, Eric Janus: My criminal justice reading lately has been a mix of old and new.  On the old side, it’s been New Jack, Ted Connover’s chronicle of life as a prison guard. It’s an interesting introduction to a perspective I’m not used to hearing about—that of the (very literate) prison guard. On the newer side is Eric Janus’s terrific book Failure to Protect chronicles many of the ways in which our current sex offender policies have failed to deliver on their promises, and in fact have been counter-productive. It’s an eye-opening look at a very hot button issue.

James Solomon: Solomon’s directorial debut, The Witness, explores the myth, memory and fact that surround Kitty Genovese’s sensationalized murder more than 50 years ago. Genovese’s brother grapples with his sister’s death and the media sensation that followed. "The movie is as gripping as true-crime procedurals “Serial” and “Making a Murderer,” but with more intimacy and heartache," according to the Washington Post. Solomon was the screenwriter for The Conspirator, the Robert Redford-directed feature film about the Lincoln assassination.

Seven American Deaths and Disasters, Kenneth Goldsmith: For my birthday in August, my wife gifted me Seven American Deaths and Disasters by Kenneth Goldsmith. It might seem atypical birthday fare. But, as a filmmaker, I am drawn to stories we think we know from the Lincoln Assassination (The Conspirator) to George Steinbrenner's Yankees (The Bronx is Burning) to the murder of Kitty Genovese (The Witness). Goldsmith's compilation is history's proverbial "first draft." Employing TV and radio accounts, he chronicles seven seminal tragedies as they unfolded—from the JFK and RFK assassinations to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and Columbine shooting. Normal programming is interrupted with a bulletin (or "breaking news", depending on the era). Of particular interest is what was (or was not) known at the time—and, in some cases, how little we still know about these narratives.

Coach: 25 Writers Reflect on People Who Made a Difference, Andrew Blauner: An August read that I can't recommend highly enough is Andrew Blauner's soulful anthology, Coach: 25 Writers Reflect on People Who Made a Difference. Few have as indelible an impact on our lives as coaches. These evocations will inspire and resonate for any entrusted with another. In fact, as a coach and father, I am committed to re-reading it again next August.

Walter Shapiro: A Brennan Center fellow, Shapiro’s latest book Hustling Hitler: The Jewish Vaudevillian Who Hustled Hitler tells the true life story of how his great-uncle—a vaudeville impresario and exuberant con man—managed to cheat Hitler’s agents in the run-up to WWII.

A Great Reckoning, Louise Penny: All of us have a mythical realm, we wish were real. For me, it is Three Pines, the tiny Quebec village near the Vermont border that is home turf for the Louise Penny mysteries. Her latest Inspector Gamache saga A Great Reckoning will be published on August 30—and consider me incommunicado until I finish it.

 John Yoo: Yoo is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. In a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times he argued that Supreme Court appointments should not justify voting for Donald Trump.

The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Ulysses Grant: Grant's memoirs, which only cover the Civil War and not Reconstruction or his presidency, are fascinating for their account of the  Northern victory on the battlefield. But they are more than that. They are an outstanding example, perhaps the first of their kind, of a uniquely spare style of American writing.  

I asked Yoo for a contemporary book. He replied: “Does Ford Maddox Ford's Parade's End count as contemporary?  I'm reading it as we recall the 100th anniversary of the events of World War I.”

As for me, I’ve got a few books written by our above contributors to read. And I’m also planning on taking Jeffrey Toobin’s American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst with me on my Labor Day vacation. I was a young child when Hearst was kidnapped but remember well the anxiety and fascination I felt about the events surrounding her abduction by the Symbionese Liberation Army and her eventual participation in their crime spree. I haven’t really thought about it in the intervening years and am looking forward to bouncing my hazy childhood memories off Toobin’s sure-to-be lucid prose.