Paul Mirengoff is a retired attorney who, for almost twenty years, wrote for the conservative blog Power Line.
Bill Otis is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center following a career as federal prosecutor. He served in White House Counsel's Office under President George H.W. Bush and as Counselor to the Administrator of the DEA under President George W. Bush.
He was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve on the U.S. Sentencing Commission but the Senate adjourned without taking a confirmation vote. He writes about criminal law issues on the blog Crime and Consequences.
"Ringside at the Reckoning" will provide independent-minded conservative commentary. Paul will write the kind of posts he produced for Power Line -- mostly about politics and public policy, but with the occasional quirky sports bit (e.g., soccer and 1970s baseball) mixed in. Bill will write about crime and criminal law, of course, but will be able to branch out into the wider world of conservative concerns.
Both authors are dismayed by the left's assault on norms and standards. Paul started writing about this at least a decade ago in a series called "the war on standards." Back then, the war was a series of occasional guerilla operations. The idea was to pick off and water down a standard here and there -- school disciplinary rules for example -- because members of some racial groups were being disproportionately affected.
Today, the war on standards is an all-out, multi-front attack. The hard left deems racist any standard that disproportionately affects a minority group. Such standards must be overthrown in the name of "equity." And the war now has widespread backing by bureaucrats, corporate executives, and, of course, the mainstream media.
A nation is only as strong as the sensible standards it sets and enforces. And a society is only equitable if it applies these standards to everyone.
The left considers its assault on standards to be part of a reckoning. However, leftist overreach is producing its own reckoning.
Because we'll be writing about politics, we will be writing, though not obsessing, about Donald Trump. Neither of us is "Never Trump" and Bill was a Trump nominee.
We both believe that Trump got things mostly right as president. Since election day 2020, we believe Trump has gotten things mostly wrong, due to his substantial personal flaws.
The two authors met more than 50 years ago as Stanford Law students arguing about politics. Bill was a Barry Goldwater conservative. Paul was a Marxist.
Though we're both conservatives now, we expect to disagree about particular issues from time to time. But unlike the high-octane arguments with which our friendship began, we trust that any disagreements that appear in this newsletter will be ones readers find enjoyable and perhaps even enlightening.
