Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

In a development that should have surprised no one, (well, perhaps Merrick Garland,) United States District judge David Carter opined that Donald Trump and John Eastman more likely than not committed multiple felonies reflected in Eastman's e-mails of January 4-7, 2016, such that attorney-client and work product privileges did not apply to those e-mails. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840.260.0.pdf

It may be time for Professor Eastman to seek a cooperation agreement with the Department of Justice to implicate Trump. Perhaps an agreement to plead guilty to violating 18 U.S.C. 371 (conspiracy to defraud the United States), for which the maximum penalty is five years' confinement, thus avoiding a charge of attempting to obstruct, influence or impede an official proceeding under 18 U.S.C. 1512(C)(2) (which carries a potential twenty year sentence).

[santamonica811]

Why? I see very little indication that the Justice Dept is really trying to prosecute even very apparent crimes related to President Trump. Now, maybe that's a good idea, and would pay off in terms of future Republican administrations declining to prosecute scores of Dem criminals. Or maybe it's a bad idea, and ignoring lawful legal processes leads to an even lower public perception of justice in America.

But I suspect that Donald Trump and most of his minions are laughing at the prospect of prosecution . . . or, if not laughing; they are at least minimizing the seriousness of that risk.

[not guilty]

Well, it looks like Alvin Bragg has weenied out in Manhattan. I am hopeful that Merrick Garland will show some fortitude, but I am not optimistic.

[Bob from Ohio]

" I am hopeful that Merrick Garland will show some fortitude"

Its not "fortitude", its politics.

Biden and his advisors want to run against Trump in 2024 because they [probably correctly] think he's the weakest opposition.

So prepare to be disappointed.

[Brett Bellmore]

Hillary wanted to run against him in 2016 for the same reason.

I tend to think Biden would fare worse in a rematch because now people can judge the two of them in action as President, not just the real Trump vs an idealized notion of how Biden might be.

[Queen Amalthea]

You literally concede that Trump was wrong to try to overturn the election via Pence and yet you think Trump fares well?

JFC.

[John F. Carr]

You're mixing up qualification with popularity. Trump's reaction to losing is one more reason he _should not_ be president. Trump's reaction to losing does not mean he will fare badly in 2024. I do think it will cost him some votes, seeing as how the people who approve of his election-related efforts were going to vote for him anyway and a lot of moderates disapprove. Against somebody who could be painted as a radical, not boring old white guy Biden, I give him a decent shot.

[Brett Bellmore]

I literally think Biden has done many things he shouldn't have, too.

[Sarcastr0]

Bad policy is not the same as trying to end our Republic, Brett.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, and contesting an election outcome, even beyond the point where you should have stopped, is not trying to end our Republic, either. The demand wasn't that Pence install Trump as President, remember. It was that the certification of the EC result be delayed while the results in certain states could be audited.

[James Pollock]

"contesting an election outcome, even beyond the point where you should have stopped, is not trying to end our Republic, either."

It is when you try sending an armed mob to go stop the vote counting, because you know it isn't going to come out your way.

[James Pollock]

Is Trump expecting the Supreme Court to rule that the two-term limit doesn't apply to people named "Donald", or is running in 2024 a concession that he didn't win in 2020?

[Kazinski]

Yes. I think Trump almost completely disqualified himself from running again in 2024. I say almost, because he isn't legally disqualified, but there certainly is a good case that however effective Trumpism is as a governing platform, he isn't the person to implement it.

I won't vote for Trump no matter who his opposition is, in the primaries. But I can't think of any possible democratic candidate that could get my vote, so if he does win the primaries, well I'm stuck pulling the lever for him again.

The country can't take 2 1/2 more years of a democratic president, let alone re-up them for another 4.

[Jjh_Esq]

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Kazinski. If Trump wins the primaries, it’s flight 92 all over again. Just like 2016.

[Martinned]

Imagine thinking that any plausible candidate is worse than Trump...

[Martinned]

Actually, I take that back. If you're going to have a president who is actively evil, it's better to have them be incompetent like Trump than passibly competent like Ted Cruz or Ron DeSantis.

[Ben_]

Because who wants prosperity at home and peace around the world if it means the President saying words that cause elites to frown.

[James Pollock]

What prosperity at home? And peace around the world? It sounds like somebody has forgotten that we were at war in Afghanistan during the entirety of the Trump regime.

[AmosArch]

maybe because there is no crime openly shopping around an idea just because your opponents say its crazy or illegal or even many ideas that really would be illegal or impossible if carried out under certain circumstances. If it was than the entire democrat party should be in jail 1000x over.

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't know; That's why an ethical prosecutor wouldn't do it, but that still leaves unresolved why the DOJ won't.

[AmosArch]

it sets a bad precedent. The head prosecutor may have been experienced enough to realize that the Dems might not remain in power forever to protect them for starting a blatantly political prosecution unlike his underlings whose twitter training overrode their more meager legal educations.

[Martinned]

Hang on, so you think that (by now) 7 years of Trumpists shouting "lock her up!" isn't a sign that Trumpists would start trying to lock people up if they were back in power, regardless of what the DOJ does in the meantime?

[Sarcastr0]

Bad faith again, eh, Brett?

What a simple moral world you live in, where everything you disagree with is actually a lie by the liberals.

[Don Nico]

S_0,
"where everything you disagree with is actually a lie by the liberals."

Maybe you can see secret words that i can't, but your reply to Brett is bizarre. Are your referring to a different post? You frequently respond to Brett in this fashion. Maybe it's a private game that the two of you play.

[Queen Amalthea]

"That's why an ethical prosecutor wouldn't do it, but that still leaves unresolved why the DOJ won't."

That's a pretty plain statement that the current DOG might not operate on ethical grounds.

[Brett Bellmore]

The DoJ frequently doesn't operate on ethical grounds. Is this somehow news to you, or is it just something you develop amnesia about during Democratic administrations?

[James Pollock]

"The DoJ frequently doesn't operate on ethical grounds"

Indeed. Sometimes it's run by sycophants like Bill Barr.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Bad faith again, eh, Brett?"

I seem to remember a lot of assumptions of bad faith from you regarding the prior AG, Sarcastro.

[bernard11]

With Brett, everything anyone he dislikes does is done in bad faith.

He cannot even conceive of the idea that they may have just made an honest mistake or misjudgment. It's all a nefarious conspiracy of some sort.

[Martinned]

I don't think it's an assumption when a politician says the quiet bit out loud.

[James Pollock]

Unless the quiet bit is "let's just ignore the election results if things don't go our way." In that case, it's just an assumption that the politicians who go along with that are evil, corrupt, or stupid. (or some combination of two or more of these things.)

[not guilty]

"maybe because there is no crime openly shopping around an idea just because your opponents say its crazy or illegal or even many ideas that really would be illegal or impossible if carried out under certain circumstances."

I am curious. Have you read Judge Carter's opinion? What about his treatment of 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2) and 18 U.S.C. 371 do you dispute?

IOKIYAR is not a maxim of statutory construction.

[Brett Bellmore]

More or less the part where he mind-reads Trump and declares that Trump must have intended for Pence to act illegally because he couldn't have believed it was legal for Pence to do as he asked.

[Krychek_2]

Actually, that's the charitable interpretation of Trump's actions. There are far less charitable alternative theories.

[ah....Clem]

Does anybody actually think, Trump included, that a sitting Vice President can unilaterally throw out election results and seat herself and the current president for another term?

If you think it would have been legal for Pence to do it, then you must think would be legal for Harris to do it. The Venn diagram of people who think both are true is the empty set.

[Krychek_2]

And the Venn diagram of people who honestly think neither is true isn't a complete circle but it's probably close.

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't think that, but I think it's possible Trump might think that. Wrongly.

I've said before that a good deal of modern constitutional precedent isn't any less stupid. That's not an endorsement of the idea, just think that the Overton window here is more of huge hole blasted through the wall, by now.

[Queen Amalthea]

There's stupid or wrong and then there's 'the sitting and running VP can just decide which electoral votes for him are valid.'

[James Pollock]

Back in 2000, we learned that the person in charge of counting votes in a contested state can be the person running one of the campaigns in that state.

[James Pollock]

Trump knew that he didn't win more votes the first time, but was somehow declared the winner of the election. If he didn't understand how that happened, which seems eminently possible, it's also possible that he thought it could be done on command.

He also thinks he's my favorite President, when he doesn't even make the top 50.

[Kazinski]

Yeah I agree it was quite stupid of an argument, and I've said before proposing Pence has that authority is proposing Harris has it too, which they can't really mean.

But as loopy as the idea is, it is based on the text of the 12th amendment:
"the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;"

It doesn't appear to give him any discretion, but making the argument that he has that authority can't really be criminalized, and that's all they did is make the argument.

If that's criminal, any politician who has made the argument that "the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" doesn't really protect the right to own and carry a gun is also a criminal.

[not guilty]

Your analogy fails miserably. The only crime defined in the Constitution is treason. A federal crime requires a statute prohibiting certain conduct. The crime here is corruptly attempting to obstruct, influence or impede an official proceeding of the Congress. That has nothing to do with discussion of what the Second Amendment permits or prohibits.

[Brett Bellmore]

Your own argument fails to comprehend what he's saying.

You can argue that the VP has this authority, but it's a stupid argument. That doesn't make openly asking him to exercise it into 'corruptly attempting to obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding'. It's just openly making a stupid argument.

Similarly, you can argue that the 2nd amendment doesn't protect the right of the people to actually keep and bear arms, but it's a stupid argument. That doesn't make advocating gun control laws into a criminal conspiracy to violate 18 U.S. Code § 242, "Deprivation of rights under color of law".

The fact that treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution has no relevance to this comparison, NEITHER act is relevant to treason.

The bottom line is that making stupid legal arguments, even if somebody (Pence, in this case.) actually acting on them might be a crime, isn't itself a crime.

What the judge here did was to assert that Trump must not have believed the stupid argument, and so must have known at the time he was advocating this action by Pence that it wasn't legal, that the argument was, even in Trump's mind, just pretense for committing a crime. That provides the "corruptly" element that would have otherwise required a threat or bribe or something similar.

But we don't interpret "corruptly" in this way, or we'd be prosecuting the gun control movement under 18 U.S. Code § 242. THAT is his argument.

[NOVA Lawyer]

So it's possible, in your world, for the President of the United States, who is seeking a second term, to non-corruptly pressure the Vice President to violate the Constitution during his duty as President of the Senate to open the certificates and allow them to be counted accurately?

Pull the other one.

Throw out a legal theory. Okay. Actually apply pressure (which pretty much any request by a sitting President involves)? Not okay. Trump pressured Pence. It was corrupt, not some esoteric legal theorizing.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Your gun crime analogy is stupid.

First, as the entire history of the United States shows, the prevailing (Heller) interpretation of the Second Amendment hasn't always resulted in guns anywhere and everywhere.

Second, Heller and it's progeny (and Heller's advocates) acknowledge that reasonable regulations are okay. Hence, no guns in a federal courthouse is fine. I am not aware anyone finds laws against guns in federal courtrooms even mildly controversial.

Third, even setting aside that how much gun control is too much under the Constitution is very reasonably debates, you'd have to get beyond someone advocating for the legislature to pass a law imposing what you think are unreasonable restrictions on gun ownership or possession, to, say, advocating that, in the absence of a validly enacted law, police arrest people for carrying a gun when they know the statutes currently written don't allow for that.

And yes, the latter happens, but then I hope we agree that police officers who knowingly arrest someone on a pretext that isn't a crime (whether carrying a gun they know was legal for the person to carry or calling them a pejorative term or simply not being sufficiently obsequious) should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

And if someone, say the mayor, demands that a police officer arrest a person on such a pretext, yes, they should be prosecuted too. Absolutely.

[NOVA Lawyer]

Interesting that your theory is that Trump is so dumb, he actually believed that the Constitution provides that the Vice President can select the next President, regardless of what the electors, chosen by voters for that task, think.

[JasonT20]

maybe because there is no crime openly shopping around an idea...

They didn't just "shop around" an idea. Trump used that idea in the days leading up to Jan. 6 and on that day. Trump and his people actively tried to get Pence to do something he had no power to do. When he wouldn't, Trump told his supporters that "Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution." Last November, he defended his supporters chanting "Hang Mike Pence" as if their anger that Pence didn't do Trump's bidding was justified.

[Brett Bellmore]

Trying to get somebody to act on an idea IS "shopping it around".

[JasonT20]

I depends on what you do to 'try' to get them to act on the idea. If you use nothing but sweet reason, then perhaps that wording would seem reasonable. But you are ignoring the "Hang Mike Pence" chants and everything else that transpired that day to frame it that way. And, of course, it can't be said to be "shopped around", when only one person was the target of the idea that needed to act on it.

[Ben_]

This makes sense in the world where Mike Pence was hanged.

[JasonT20]

I'll remember that the next time whip up a crowd protesting something you are not doing to march to your house, work, or place of business. If they do so chanting to hang you for not doing what I want you to do, there is no harm as long as they don't actually do that. I mean, a threat isn't really wrong unless it's carried out, right?

[Ben_]

Crowds say shit. Guys like you pretend it’s meaningful sometimes and acknowledge it’s meaningless other times depending on how you can advance your personal cause. There’s no need for anyone listening to play along with that game.

Pence was always 100% safe and everyone (including you) knew it at the time and still knows it. You’re not persuading anyone that up is down. It’s weird that you’re even going through the motions.

[David Nieporent]

Pence was always 100% safe and everyone (including you) knew it at the time and still knows it.

Uh huh. Except of course the Secret Service, who rushed him away.

[James Pollock]

"Trying to get somebody to act on an idea IS "shopping it around"."

Nah. Trying to get somebody to agree with your idea is "shopping it around". trying to get somebody to act on it, if it isillegal, is incitement.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't see the DoJ following up on this, but Amos sticking to old talking points when there is a judicial opinion actually walking through the crime (and Brett backing him up) is pretty unsurprising.

[AmosArch]

I'm sure judges wrote pieces in support of Dredd Scott and for/against DOMA and many other high profile cases. Doesn't mean its right or binding. If experienced rabidly antiTrump far left prosecutors don't think theres enough there to go after trump, I'd defer to them over some internet commentators.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, judges can be wrong.

But you generally want to read what they say and deal with that, rather than just pretend it's last week.

[James Pollock]

It's easier to just pretend anything, literally anything , that you want to reject for purely partisan grounds, is just partisan nonsense. That's way easier than reading anything written by a judge.

[Michael Ejercito]

In fsirmess to kudges upholding DOMA, they were following what was precedent at the time.

[James Pollock]

It was easier to say "no state has ever authorized same-sex marriages, therefore not state ever should", before the gay cat got out of the bag. Turns out that allowing gay people to marry someone of the same sex is no big deal, and having the state recognize the marriage is also no big deal, and society didn't crumble away. In short, if your religion teaches you that gay people can't be married to each other, then don't marry a gay person. If making a cake that might be eaten by gay people at a gay wedding offends your religion, then don't open a business where you offer to make cakes for people in exchange for money.

[Commenter_XY]

sm811, may I add something to your second paragraph? Not being a smartass, either. My take on the prospect of DOJ prosecution, and how that would be received/interpreted: I believe those very same people (who you call minions) would stand up and clap if the DOJ attempted a prosecution (they would be clapping in contempt and derision).

A DOJ prosecution sounds like a very tough row to hoe, legally.

[James Pollock]

"A DOJ prosecution sounds like a very tough row to hoe, legally."

Sure, but when Trump declines to participate and instead files spurious counterclaims, only the most partisan 99% of his base will buy in.

Trump doesn't really want to be President, he wants to be King.

[OtisAH]

Events such as The Hunt for Bill’s Dick, Benghazi!, Buttery Emails, and the like have really confused folks. The DOJ is not actually supposed to conduct its investigations through hourly press releases, leaks, and breathless coverage in Rightwing (or even the alleged Liberal) Media.

Also, the president isn’t supposed to be involved in DOJ operations at all. So if you’re inclined to insist potus fire or otherwise harangue the AG because the investigations and/or indictments aren’t flying quickly enough for your tastes, don’t.

[James Pollock]

Part of the President's oath of office is to promise to see that the laws are properly enforced. This is part of why there is so much "lock X up" chanting at rallies.

[NOVA Lawyer]

"lock X up" chants are a pox on democracy and completely misunderstand the separation of powers, the presumption of innocence, and the right to trial by jury, among other things.

Appoint a competent and vigilant AG? Yes. Have that AG present appropriate charges to have a fair trial? Sure. Direct the AG to lock people up who the President's supporters think did something? That's against basically everything for which the U.S. Constitution stands. People chanting that are profoundly unAmerican (whoever's rally they are attending).

[bernard11]

It's a bad idea. Terrible.

The way to prevent future Republican administrations from prosecuting Democrats is for Democrats not to commit crimes.

[OtisAH]

If they can get a dem prosecuted, great, but it’s just a bonus. Whether the given target of the moment is actually guilty of anything is a tertiary concern at best.

[James Pollock]

This is why there is a "Deep State" of people who are dedicated to their jobs and not to the current officeholder(s).

[SimonP]

Right, this is what I have a hard time wrapping my head around. Rank-and-file Democrats are very frustrated by how their political machinery has been corrupted. If a federal prosecutor can come along and toss out all the corrupt Democrats that control the levers of power in NYS and NYC, I say - let them! Get rid of the motherfuckers. I don’t care. Happy to vote for a competent, non-corrupt Republican (supposing such a thing is even possible) in a field cleared by an aggressive, principled DOJ.

So what’s this really about, for conservatives? Is the truth maybe that they don’t think that the Democrats are more corrupt than Republicans, and believe/expect/want turnabout for punishing Trump’s criminality to be a lot of politically-motivated and spurious prosecutions of prominent Democrats?

[Brett Bellmore]

Look, I'm not a Republican because I think the GOP is less corrupt than the Democratic party. Differently corrupt, maybe, not less.

I'm just a Republican because I think the GOP's aspirations, corruption aside, are less dangerous than the Democratic party's.

[Queen Amalthea]

You're just a Republican. Period. And a highly partisan one at that.

[SimonP]

Brett, you are delusional and probably shouldn't be allowed out of the house, much less vote.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Brett, you are delusional and probably shouldn't be allowed out of the house, much less vote."

Hmmm. I wonder why he thinks you guys are more dangerous than Republicans?

[Brett Bellmore]

I think Republicans are less dangerous than Democrats for a number of reasons.

1) They're not into political censorship.
2) They don't want the public disarmed and defenseless.
3) They don't think their political foes should be cut off from financial services.
4) They don't think the government's power is boundless.

Basically, the Republicans are authoritarian, but the Democrats are totalitarian. They don't recognize any LIMITS to what they can do to pursue their ends.

[Sarcastr0]

Screw our Republic, the libs got Brett too scared to worry about our system of government.

1) is a laugh - you just like the censorship on the right
2) is a strawman if you look at any polling of Democratic lawmakers (but I assume you think they're lying)
3) is your paranoia again - generalizing based on anecdotes and supposition
4) is absolutely a strawman

[Brett Bellmore]

1) I don't see where Republicans are pushing political censorship, which is the most dangerous form of censorship in a democracy. Democrats still are pissed off about the CU decision, and have vowed to overturn it, and are continually pressuring online platforms to censor their opponents, with frightening success.

2) Not a strawman, virtually all the push for gun control comes from the left these days, and the Democratic party has never made peace with either the Heller or McDonald decisions. If you can't say that DC's gun laws were properly overturned, you are taking the position that the 2nd amendment is totally moot.

3) Operation Choke Point wasn't fiction, and financial deplatforming is a real thing. And the Biden administration has been reviving Choke Point.

4) When have you ever seen the Democratic party acknowledge that ANYTHING they wanted to do was outside the government's power?

I've given my rationale for preferring the Republican party. It's awful, but the Democratic party is worse. On basically every metric I care about.

[Harvey Mosley]

Sarcastr0:
2) is a strawman if you look at any polling of Democratic lawmakers (but I assume you think they're lying)

Wow. You really are just a partisan hack aren't you? Over the years I've given you the benefit of the doubt because you do occasionally post something intelligent. But to say that Democrats in power are not trying to ban every gun they can and make it as difficult as possible for law abiding gun owners to stay law abiding removes any doubt whatsoever.

[David Nieporent]

I think Republicans are less dangerous than Democrats for a number of reasons.

1) They're not into political censorship.

"When Republicans get back into power, Apple and Disney need to understand one thing: Everything will be on the table – your copyright and trademark protection, your special status within certain states, and even your corporate structure itself," Ingraham said.

[SimonP]

I was being hyperbolic, obviously. I am generally in favor of people being able to participate freely in elections, as broadly and as easily as possible, even if that means "my side" (whatever you take that to mean) doesn't win. Unlike Republicans.

Which doesn't change, of course, whether Brett is delusional. Which he very much is.

[James Pollock]

"I'm just a Republican because I think the GOP's aspirations, corruption aside, are less dangerous than the Democratic party's."

The only aspirations of the current Republican party that are visible from outside is to be as anti-Democratic as possible. "If we can't win elections by having more people vote for us, we'll win elections by finding reasons to not count the votes of people who didn't vote for us." is the current party motto.

[James Pollock]

Oops. I forgot about "how can we scare old people?"

Let's talk about how the schools are talking about installing litter boxes in the bathrooms for the schoolkids who "identify as cats".

[Kazinski]

We saw what happens when politicians are prosecuted not because they broke the law, but because a democrat wanted them out with Kay Bailey Hutchison, Tom Delay, and Rick Perry. None of the charges had any merit, but he did get 1 out of the 3 out of office.

Don't pretend it can't happen unless there is actually corruption.

[Sarcastr0]

The right is literally threatening pretextual prosecutions if they get back in power.

[Ben_]

Dems normalize evil behavior and then are surprised when someone else behaves according to those new norms. "It was only supposed to work out for us!", they lament.

[James Pollock]

You mis-spelled "Republicans".

[Sarcastr0]

Here’s how this works: you can’t control Democrats. Hell, you can’t control your anger enough the have an objective sense of what they do.

You can control yourself. And letting you hate of some third party allow you to rationalize doing evil shit changes Dems not at all, but is a choice that makes you a bad person.

You do this over and over. You choose to let you partisans spite make you immoral.

[Ben_]

In other words, people who are attacked should just let themselves be victimized over and over and over.

And if the victims defend themselves or respond in any way, the allies of the attackers will condemn the victims as immoral. Also the attackers and their PR apologist enablers are The Good Guys.

[Ben_]

Ted Stevens, Eric Greitens

[James Pollock]

"So what’s this really about, for conservatives? Is the truth maybe that they don’t think that the Democrats are more corrupt than Republicans, and believe/expect/want turnabout for punishing Trump’s criminality to be a lot of politically-motivated and spurious prosecutions of prominent Democrats?"

These prescients wanted Hillary locked up because they knew how criminal the Donald would turn out to be?

[FivebySixThree]

They just need to stall until later in 2023 where they can keep Trump under criminal investigation with sufficient leaks to damage any Republican associated with him.

Prosecuting Trump during mid terms is a waste of good election fodder

[James Pollock]

"But I suspect that Donald Trump and most of his minions are laughing at the prospect of prosecution . . . or, if not laughing; they are at least minimizing the seriousness of that risk."

They know that the President of the US is immune from prosecution by the United States, and that Donald Trump is 'really" the President.

the curious question is whether or not the Constitution precludes Uncle Donnie from running for a third term in 2024.

[AmosArch]

Wow...you really do spend every waking minute of your life obsessing over fat cheetoman don't you....thats....sad...

[Armchair Lawyer]

aye

[Jason Cavanaugh]

So what you're saying, is that you have nothing of substance to refute the 12 pages of facts?

[James Pollock]

facts are not binding on Republicans.

[John F. Carr]

The judge ruled it's legal to ask a judicial body to do something wrong but not to ask a legislative body to do something wrong. I don't agree. Trump or any of us has a right to petition Congress for a redress of grievances, even for an act that the Supreme Court would shoot down 9-0. If you want to accuse Trump of inciting a riot that's another story ("peaceably to assemble"). It's not part of Eastman's story.

[not guilty]

Trump and Eastman had no right to corruptly importune Pence to unilaterally act contrary to the plain requirements of the Electoral Count Act. 18 U.S.C. prohibits attempt to obstruct, influence or impede official proceedings just as it does successful endeavors to do so.

[not guilty]

That should be 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2). I wish we had an edit feature.

[Brett Bellmore]

Kind of tautological there, aren't you? To be sure, they had no right to corruptly do this or that. But it's the "corruptly" itself that's being questioned!

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, there are powerpoints, Brett.

[not guilty]

We've been over this before. Pence's lack of lawful authority evinced that Trump's means were unlawful. The scheme depended on the fraudulent submission of bogus slates of electors (further illegality coordinated by Giuliani). The factual premise was a rank falsehood -- that Trump had in fact won the election. Scores of judicial proceedings put all parties on notice of the falsity of Trump's claim. The objective was to obtain for Trump a benefit to which he was not entitled, a second term in office.

Trump's conduct was corrupt from topside to bottom.

[John F. Carr]

If the judge had found a conspiracy to submit fraudulent slates of electors I would consider that to fit well within precedent on obstruction. Or if there had been a conspiracy to give Pence something of value as a reward for counting the way Trump wants. What the judge found is more like a plan to ask a judge to order specific performance of a personal services contract, despite knowing the law does not allow specific performance. Asking a judge to exceed his authority is not obstruction of justice.

[Brett Bellmore]

Exactly. There are certainly scenarios under which you could call the effort criminal. But not just making legal arguments, even if they're goofy. The number of people in government you could put in jail on THAT pretext is vast.

Basically the left is trying to turn disagreeing with them about something into the "corruptly" predicate.

[Sarcastr0]

Just a minor violation of the law, eh?

[Michael Ejercito]

Think about asking a judge to order the issuance of a marriage license to a same-sex couple before 2015, despite state law.

[OtisAH]

You can go over as many times as you like, it won’t keep Brett from being Brett.

[OtisAH]

Eastman literally implored Pence to commit a “minor violation of law.” Literally.

[bernard11]

Trump or any of us has a right to petition Congress for a redress of grievances,

And the appropriate way to do that is to send an angry mob to use force to get Congress to "redress the grievance?"

Is that what you think? Because that's what Trump did.

[Kazinski]

I didn't see any quote that could reasonably be interpreted as advocating force.

If a politician got thrown in jail for every time he beseeched his supporters to 'fight like hell' the jails would be full.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski, you seem to be advocating there is no such thing as a political crime. The 1A covers every kind of political advocacy, no matter how otherwise unlawful the objective—or the result. It's all just speech—empty speech, not conduct. In this instance there is a giant pile of stinking conduct on the way to getting ready, and an insurrection at the crux of it.

[Brett Bellmore]

And if you could actually demonstrate that Trump told somebody to bust into the Capitol building, you'd have something.

Instead, all you've got is that he planned and executed a perfectly ordinary political rally on one end of the Mall, and while he was at it, somebody else executed a pre-planned assault on the Capitol. And you claim his not rolling over and playing dead after the election "incited" it, though nothing he did met the legal standards for incitement.

If you could prove he was in on the planning of the break in, you'd have him dead to rights, toss him in the clink. But you can't, or you would have already.

[Armchair Lawyer]

David Carter seems to want Biden to appoint him to a new job...

[not guilty]

Virginia Thomas's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results have drawn critical attention to her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas. The justice should plainly have recused himself from participating in the lawsuit whereby White House records were ordered to be turned over to the House January 6 investigating committee, in that those records included Mrs. Thomas's communications with the White House.

I am more concerned, however, with Mrs. Thomas holding herself as a lobbyist/influencer for hire, without regard to whether her clients have interests before SCOTUS. That doesn't pass the smell test, especially since Clarence Thomas repeatedly filed false financial disclosures omitting his wife's employment. By comparison, Martin Ginsburg and Jane Roberts withdrew from the active practice of law when their spouses joined the Supreme Court.

Justice Thomas has previously recused himself from cases involving his son's educational institution and the son's employer. He has never recused, though, based on his wife's activities. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clarence-thomas-recuse-jan-6_n_6243372ee4b03516d4288d1a I guess that makes sense. The son was not the Thomas family bagwoman.

[David Nieporent]

1) We can feel pretty certain that the records at issue in the case did not include her communications, or we'd have heard about it. (The text messages released were from Mark Meadows, not from the archives.)

2) The whole hoopla makes no sense; Thomas knew that his 1-8 vote was not going to delay the release of the documents, so the notion that he participated in order to conceal his wife's involvement is bizarre.

3) It "makes sense" because recusal is about parties, not "interests." Famously activist 9th Circuit judge Stephen Reinhardt's wife was the head of the southern California chapter of the ACLU. He recused himself when the ACLU was actually involved in the case — but not merely when the ACLU's political positions were at issue.

[Commenter_XY]

Re: #3 - Great point = parties, not interests. Had not really thought about that.

[Stephen Lathrop]

The whole hoopla makes no sense; Thomas knew that his 1-8 vote was not going to delay the release of the documents, so the notion that he participated in order to conceal his wife's involvement is bizarre.

Bizarre only if your nose is stopped against the stench. Recusal would have been bad business. Before they pay, business customers need reassurance. They count on delivery. It does the customer no good to pay the Ginny Thomas fee if Justice Thomas will pocket the money and recuse.

Your objection about parties instead of issues is shaky. Do you suppose a thorough investigation of the Ginny Thomas political business will not turn up clients with interests before the Court? If you think that questionable, do you suppose the Ginny Thomas messages to the criminal Eastman are insufficient probable cause to seek a warrant to settle the question?

Leaving that aside, Ginny Thomas shows herself in those messages to be a mentally incompetent loon. Assuming no party interest, on what premise except issue influence would anyone pay someone like her a political fee? Is it really your view Nieporent that so long as politically interested people will not themselves be named parties to a case, issue-related bribery without limit of a Supreme Court Justice becomes permissible?

I was astounded yesterday to listen to an NPR piece by Nina Totenberg. In it she went on at length about the modern consensus that spouses of political figures are entitled to their own opinions. Totenberg did that without any mention that Ginny Thomas runs a business premised on taking money for political influence.

It seems like many people in the Democratic Party establishment resist creating legal precedent in favor of the prosecution of political crimes. That puts even their supporters at a disadvantage, by depriving them of opportunity to say, "Yes, this ought to apply to Democrats too. If Democrats can be shown to practice corruption for which some Republicans should now be charged, why shouldn't Republicans prosecute them?"

[Krayt]

It does the customer no good to pay the Ginny Thomas fee if Justice Thomas will pocket the money and recuse.

Hunter Biden was paid $60,000 a month. Nothing wrong here and no reason to suspect it was paid access much less influence.

[James Pollock]

"Hunter Biden was paid $60,000 a month. Nothing wrong here and no reason to suspect it was paid access much less influence."

If someone was stupid enough to pay $60,000 per month to have access OR influence to Hunter Biden, I have to doubt they got their money's worth.

[Kazinski]

Well it worked for Burisma Executive Vadym Pozharskyi to get a face to face meeting with Joe Biden in 2015 when he was vice-president.

Despite the denial that 'Vadym Pozharskyi' could have met with Biden because he wasn't on the guest list, the guest list actually does list "Vadym" on it, but I suppose that's a pretty common name.

[James Pollock]

When did Hunter Biden take over setting appointments for the Office of the Vice President?

[Ridgeway]

You are not that dense -- that is what influence peddling is.

[David Nieporent]

Bizarre only if your nose is stopped against the stench. Recusal would have been bad business. Before they pay, business customers need reassurance. They count on delivery. It does the customer no good to pay the Ginny Thomas fee if Justice Thomas will pocket the money and recuse.

Setting aside your confusion about what Ginni (note the spelling, by the way) Thomas is doing, this makes no sense. If this were actually what was happening, then said business customers would want results for their money, not futile gestures. An 8-1 decision against you is worth the same amount as an 8-0 decision against you: nothing.

If you think that questionable, do you suppose the Ginny Thomas messages to the criminal Eastman are insufficient probable cause to seek a warrant to settle the question?

I do not think that the text messages we have seen constitute probable cause to get a search warrant against Ginni Thomas, no. (Maybe to get her institutionalized, but not probable cause that she has committed a crime.)

Is it really your view Nieporent that so long as politically interested people will not themselves be named parties to a case, issue-related bribery without limit of a Supreme Court Justice becomes permissible?

We are discussing recusal for potential conflicts of interest, not bribery.

[not guilty]

The Court does not always divide 8-1. Mrs. Thomas's role for hire poses the danger that she serves as a conduit for persons with business before SCOTUS to put biscuits on the Thomas family breakfast table. It stinks to high heaven.

[Kleppe]

"It stinks to high heaven."

Conservative justice married to conservative activist must recuse because conservative. That's all that is being alleged here. There is no evidence of any real wrongdoing, just liberals whining that conservatives exist.

[Moderation4ever]

Regarding point #3. Mrs. Thomas could be seen as a party of interest in that here communications could have been in the documents. There is no current information to suggest that her communications were in the released materials, but there is no way of knowing that prior to the release. The fact is that Ginni Thomas was involved in the attempt to overturn the election and her high level of access to Whitehouse made her a party of interest.

An 8 to 1 decision is pretty strong and leave the impression that more than the law was at stake for the lone dissenter. I think it is important that Justice Thomas recuse himself forward on cases related to the January 6th election.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Did Thomas even know about his wife’s texts at the time of the decision? My wife and I have been together for 38 years and the only texts of hers that I read (or even know about) are those that are sent to me.

So my inclination is to believe that he had no idea those texts existed. Which means this whole kerfuffle is about nothing.

Going forward he certainly knows now and can decide to recuse when appropriate. Like he’s done multiple times in cases involving his son.

[Sarcastr0]

I think it's a safe assumption married couples share stuff with each other.

But I've been through enough 'appearance of conflict' SCOTUS recusal rides to not get too invested. Ginny seems pretty nuts, but so is Thomas, albeit in a different way.

SCOTUS is as SCOTUS does on these things.

[Bob from Ohio]

"safe assumption married couples share stuff with each other. "

Spoken like someone who has never been married.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Spoken like someone who has never been married."

Yup. Another important question: If she did tell him about it, was he listening?

[John F. Carr]

See John Prine, "The Other Side of Town".

[James Pollock]

"

"safe assumption married couples share stuff with each other. "

Spoken like someone who has never been married."

If your business is selling access to a Supreme Court Justice, you might need to discuss things with at least one Supreme Court Justice.

[Don Nico]

"safe assumption married couples share stuff with each other."

As you use it, this statement implies that they share all stuff. My goodness, you cannot be that naive.
Of course they share some limited stuff. What the range varies from couple to couple

[Sarcastr0]

Not all stuff, but stuff that's really important to her, which this seemed to be.

Rebuttable presumption, but a fair one I think.

[bernard11]

So if he knew she was involved in the whole thing, but didn't actually read the texts, it's all good?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Did he know? You have evidence of this? I'm sure he knew her opinions, but did he actually know she was taking an active part? Should judges everywhere (not just SCOTUS) start recusing every time a case runs up against the opinions of a spouse?

Thomas has apparently had no problems recusing in cases in which his son had some involvement. I'd bet money that in future cases involving this stuff he'll sit out. He's not my fav justice either, but I'm not seeing a huge problem here. Nothing was changed by his decision.

Sarcastro - Texts? Like I said, I have my text conversations and my wife has hers, and neither see the other's. It's as if we're having conversations outside the presence of each other. I doubt Thomas was reading Ginni's texts.

Yeah, she sure seems nuttier than a fruitcake. Gotta question the connection to reality of anybody who fervently believes Trump's 2020 bullshit.

[bernard11]

Did he know? You have evidence of this?

I have no recordings of their conversations. Possibly he never said, "Hi Ginni. How was your day," and if he did it's possible he got some vague answer. Possible.

I'm sure he knew her opinions, but did he actually know she was taking an active part?

IMO, he had to know. Maybe not every little thing, but what she did all day, that she was actively pro-Trump, etc. I mean, if you and I know, how did he not? The latest kerfuffle is not the first.

Should judges everywhere (not just SCOTUS) start recusing every time a case runs up against the opinions of a spouse?

As I pointed out the last time you raised this "opinion" question, the answer is "no." She can have all the opinions she wants. Here we are talking about being an activist, and not just participating in a march or something but acting at a high level to overturn the election, (and I suppose get Biden sent to Guantanamo - these people are nuts).

The opinion issue is a red herring.

[Kazinski]

This a seems pretty sexist to me. As someone who was married for 35 years to someone that had diametrically opposite political opinions, I can tell you wives can be pretty hard to control.

And a lot of topics are better off undiscussed.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Should judges everywhere (not just SCOTUS) start recusing every time a case runs up against the opinions of a spouse?

I quote bevis to you because it bears on what you are saying. This ain't about opinions, it's about taking money—money which we are entitled to presume benefits Justice Thomas.

[Sarcastr0]

Stuff may have been facile, but this was pretty clearly top of Ms. Thomas' mind for quite a while.

[James Pollock]

" Should judges everywhere (not just SCOTUS) start recusing every time a case runs up against the opinions of a spouse?"

I suppose that might depend on whether or not the phone records were going to come out. If you can keep a lid on those, then there isn't any reason to recuse.

[Bob from Ohio]

" think it is important that Justice Thomas recuse himself forward on cases related to the January 6th election."

Prepare to be disappointed.

[bernard11]

No one is going to be disappointed when Thomas acts unethically. It's expected.

[santamonica811]

Well, I'll be disappointed. On the other hand, of course I will not be *surprised* by his unethical (IMO) behavior. But yes; when the scorpion lies and proceeds to sting the frog, I am still disappointed...even though things progressed exactly as I had expected/feared.

[James Pollock]

"1) We can feel pretty certain that the records at issue in the case did not include her communications, or we'd have heard about it. (The text messages released were from Mark Meadows, not from the archives.)"

No, we can't. we don't know whether or not she was calling one of those burner phones that Trump has never heard of.

[gdanning]

Re #3, 28 U.S. Code § 455(b)(5)(iii) literally refers to a spouse whose "interests" might be affected by the case. Political opinions, of course, are not what "interests" refers to.

[James Pollock]

Of course not. "interests" means money in that usage. What's the point of being married to an important person if you can't monetize the relationship? Isn't that the fundamental assumption in attacking Hunter Biden?

[Jerry B.]

What family members do has no impact on what a person in a position of power does. See, for example, Hunter Biden.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I’m more concerned that someone who has access to the highest echelons of power in the United States appears to believe in QAnon. And is talking to them about it. The only way you could possibly believe that the entire Biden family is going to be on barges outside of Gitmo is if you believe the Great Awakenjng or the Storm or whatever is going to happen. And if you believe that that means you believe that there’s going to be a successful coup where Trump obtains total power and every single constitutional and other legal rule gets disregarded. Which is a huge problem if you’re married to someone who is part of the final legal authority in the US.

[David Bremer]

This is more where I am. As others have pointed out, its very common for federal judges, particularly high-ranking federal judges (e.g., circuit court judges), to be married to other people of prominence. Part of that is because successful people marry their peers; part of that may be because being married to a federal judge gives one a leg up. Those judges aren't expected to recuse themselves just because their spouse's organization/politics like a certain outcome.

And the idea that people are hiring Ginny to sway her husband seems a bit far fetched, since everyone knows he's going to come down on the conservative side of any issue. Frankly, I'd be a much bigger red flag if he were to suddenly be on the liberal side.

But the fact that the wife of one of the nine people who decide major constitutional questions of law has got herself twisted up into this QAnon madness.... Well, that's what is truly frightening.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I mean on the one hand, we know he doesn’t vote for things Ginny clearly wants. Most recent ACA suit is a great example of this. Obviously Ginny wants to destroy ACA, but the Justice recognized that the Texas initiated/Blackman supported lawsuit was just way too dumb, even though Gorsuch/Alito bought into it, and actually voted to dismiss on standing grounds noting his regrets.

But on the other hand, if you’re talking QAnon with your husband…we probably need to know whether he believes any of it at all. Cause even if you believe a bit of it, that’s really not good.

[bevis the lumberjack]

"He's apparently making legal decisions regardless of her crazy bullshit, but it's still problematic for, well, reasons".

You know, it's quite possible that he thinks her political opinions are extreme? You think Thomas actually believes that Trump won in 2020? He was on the side of a couple of votes shutting Trump lawsuits down, wasn't he?

[LawTalkingGuy]

I don’t know what he believes. But if his wife believes that there is a satanic cabal of democratic pedophiles secretly running the country and that Trump is going to suspend the constitution to take them to Gimto and he’s just like: “uh yes dear” that’s a huge problem. People who have had Q-freaks in their family have had to cut ties because these people are so batshit they made interactions unbearable. And if Thomas is just okay with this shit…well that’s not good!

[Kazinski]

Maybe he handles it better than you.

There are people all over the country that are married to people that are mentally ill or delusional, and manage to both maintain a good relationship and not buy in to their delusional thinking.

I know about such things, my brother is a communist.

[Stephen Lathrop]

And he tolerates your delusions?

[Sarcastr0]

It's a pretty big story a Supreme Court Justice is married to a lunatic, and that their politics seem to align.

[David Nieporent]

And the idea that people are hiring Ginny to sway her husband seems a bit far fetched, since everyone knows he's going to come down on the conservative side of any issue. Frankly, I'd be a much bigger red flag if he were to suddenly be on the liberal side.

Yeah, this seems like liberal fan fic.

I know we all grew up hearing the phrase "follow the money," but that's actually a really lazy way of analyzing most things the government does. Sure, if someone approves putting a housing development in a national forest, or grants a defense contract to a particular company — quintessential business decisions — then, yes, it makes sense to look at whether money changed hands. But when something is political in nature, it can virtually always be explained by ideology, not cash. It makes no sense to bribe someone to do exactly what everyone already knew he or she was going to do.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nieporent, does it make sense to legalize bribing someone to do what everyone knew he was going to do? I ask, because a lot of that has been going around in both parties for a long time. Bucks for our guys who are doing such a good job look like routine precautions, lest ordinary penniless constituents gain influence footholds with mere entreaties.

[David Nieporent]

Why do you keep talking about bribery? That's not what this is about.

[Brett Bellmore]

Right, if anything, the money follows the ideology: You donate to people who already agree with you, to help them retain their position and rise in prominence.

Buying politicians is risky, the best you can do is rent them, and then when you need them half the time you find the rental agreement has been terminated.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nieporent, suppose that on whatever evidence it has, the House subpoenas Ginni Thomas's business records. She goes to court to quash the subpoena. If that goes to the Supreme Court, must Clarence Thomas recuse?

Same deal again, but with the Justice Department, which issues a search warrant for the Ginni Thomas records. Can Clarence Thomas sit for that decision?

If in either case Thomas participates in the decision, and casts the deciding vote to quash the subpoena or void the warrant, what happens long-term to the Court's legitimacy?

I presume that in either case of Justice Thomas's participation, Democrats in the House would have no choice but to impeach. As we have learned by experience, Thomas would be acquitted by the Senate. What then for the Court?

[David Nieporent]

Nieporent, suppose that on whatever evidence it has, the House subpoenas Ginni Thomas's business records. She goes to court to quash the subpoena. If that goes to the Supreme Court, must Clarence Thomas recuse?

Same deal again, but with the Justice Department, which issues a search warrant for the Ginni Thomas records. Can Clarence Thomas sit for that decision?

Yes, if Ginni Thomas is a party, which she would be in those cases, then Clarence Thomas would be required to recuse. (There is no enforcement mechanism other than impeachment, but that does not change the fact that he'd be required to do so.)

If in either case Thomas participates in the decision, and casts the deciding vote to quash the subpoena or void the warrant, what happens long-term to the Court's legitimacy?

It would be bad. The other justices would presumably realize this, and not let this situation arise.

[James Pollock]

"And the idea that people are hiring Ginny to sway her husband seems a bit far fetched, since everyone knows he's going to come down on the conservative side of any issue."

There was a time when the assumption that a judge would reliably land one one political side or the other would be considered a disqualifying factor.

[CocoN8]

Depends on what you mean by "political." Judges should not be partisan, but they are expected to be ideological. A judge coming down consistently for one ideology over another is not a problem.

Unfortunately, in modern U.S. politics, our parties have become more ideologically aligned, so it's harder to distinguish between a judge who is ideological and one who is partisan.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

For me, Scalia was ideological, and Alito is partisan.

[AmosArch]

Everytime a feminist complains about the rules and restrictions and complicated etiquette that women face in society I'm reminded that ironically it was probably a woman that formulated those rules and restrictions and complex etiquette in the first place.

[David Bremer]

Yeah, but don't you know that it was just a manifestation of internalized misogyny? So it's a double indictment on men.

[AmosArch]

How's market for law degrees these days? Nobody expects all the newly minted JDs to make Volokh phat professor money of course but last I heard it was really bad to the point where you shouldn't even bother if you can't get into a T1/T2. Is it ever going to get better in the foreseeable future?

[LawTalkingGuy]

I think it really depends on your expectations and what you want to do. People kind of have this narrow conception of law as big law/fed clerks/prosecutors and maybe some other high profile gigs. Because that’s what’s in the news. But the reality is, most practitioners are solos or part of small outfits. And if you go to a “low ranked” school but pretty much all the practicing lawyers in the town you want to stay in are from there, then you will probably be okay. Will you be making close to a quarter million right out of school? No. Will it maybe be worth the cost of school? Possibly. Sure it’s a gamble, but so are lots of things, and the market probably has too many JDs, but I also don’t think it’s as dire as it was 10 years ago post-recession. And I don’t think obsessing over rankings is the way to think about it. If you just generally want to be a lawyer look for a school in the geographic area you want to practice in with a good bar pass rate/decent employment rate that’s got reasonable tuition. Or part-time. Part-time is underrated.

[jb]

Part time seems the way to do it. Takes only one extra year, you can keep working to not only keep debt under control but avoid the opportunity cost of no income, and potentially continue to develop a parallel skillset alongside your legal qualifications.

[Commenter_XY]

Did you do that jb? The part-time route? I have thought about it (seriously), but think I am too old now (mid fifties).

[jb]

No. I'm not a lawyer. I know a couple of people who did, though, and it seemed like the right path in both cases!

[ragebot]

I would be curious to know how many peeps with a JD are actually members of a state bar and actually work as a lawyer. As an undergrad I spent the month long Christmas holiday driving a cab in Miami and made enough money to pay for school for the rest of the year working 18 hour single shifts and never taking a day off. I knew at least half a dozen UM law school grads driving cabs.

But as a student in the FSU DURP dual degree program I got an MS in urban planning and a JD. Thing was I also was what was called a work study student at FSU (I assume most universities have similar programs) writing DRIs (Development of Regional Impact statements) for a private consulting firm after working for the FDOT pre reviewing DRIs for the higher ups. Also did a small amount of testifying at hearings for DRIs. By the time I graduated consulting firms all over Florida were offering me jobs sans passing the Florida Bar. Of course I was lucky in that I was an early adapter of Word Perfect on a PC and could type 80 words a minute of decent legal analysis for DRIs, PUDs, and understood Florida's concurrency law. My employers could care less if I had a bar ticket or not. Not to mention I was paid by the job, not by the hour and was saving money on not needing services of the typing pool.

Had some classmates who went the drug dealer defense lawyer route of class action suits and did well; but some simply got out of the legal game. Would also point the hottest babe classmate wound up marrying a medical doctor and wound up a trophy wife.
Not trying to dis what I will call real trial lawyers but the question still remains how many law school grads wound up never passing the bar and wind up in a job that does not require a law degree?

[James Pollock]

"How's market for law degrees these days? Nobody expects all the newly minted JDs to make Volokh phat professor money of course but last I heard it was really bad to the point where you shouldn't even bother if you can't get into a T1/T2. Is it ever going to get better in the foreseeable future?"

Spend $100K or more to qualify for a job that pays $30K/year? Lawyers are notoriously bad at math.

[not guilty]

We have now learned that the January 6, 2021 White House call logs produced to the House investigating committee include a gap of seven hours and 37 minutes -- the entire duration of the Capitol insurrection.

Was the ghost of Rose Mary Woods haunting the White House?

[Stephen Lathrop]

In fairness, evidence is already in that Trump's acolytes and supporters were crudely accustomed to bypassing legal requirements for messaging records. It was customary to use private cell phones—the phones of Trump aides sometimes—maybe even burner phones—for ingoing and outgoing calls. I say, "crudely," because in a few instances would-be calls intended for one private phone would go astray, with voice messages left for a different recipient. That gave the game away.

[Brett Bellmore]

To be fair, after the last decade or so, they could have simply believed that burner phones, second email addresses with fake names, and taking a hammer to your hard drive is standard, accepted practice in Washington.

See, for instance, DOJ FOIA Release: Members of Mueller Team Repeatedly ‘Wiped’ phones as Watchdog Sought Records

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page used burner phones and email accounts on a regular basis to conduct business. Did they get in trouble over it?

During the IRS targeting scandal, one crucial hard drive after another mysteriously crashed, and we found out that the IRS's data retention policy was more of an evidence destruction policy, they had strict rules requiring backups to be periodically destroyed. And, of course, this was accepted as "these things happen", not spoliation of evidence.

Really, the Trump administration would be pretty unusual in this environment if they'd preserved all the data they were supposed to.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, strict rules that backups be destroyed on schedule is information management 101, practiced by corporations across the nation. There is nothing suspicious about it. It is a standard security measure. Ignoring it is business malpractice.

Exceptions in government apply to specifically designated classes of information. See if your IRS complaint falls into one of those classes.

[DaveM]

What in the world are you talking about? It was suspicious as hell! I remember the episode perfectly. There was nothing "standard" about it. 7 drives, all from different devices with totally different lifecycles, all destroyed at exactly same time. Bah.

[Brett Bellmore]

Stephen, the IRS actually had a contract with a data preservation firm prior to the targeting scandal leaking, which firm WAS preserving the data. They terminated it, and switched to a policy of swiftly destroying backups.

The IRS's backup management is nothing like that at any company I've worked at.

[John F. Carr]

Strict rules about backup destruction sound to me like reputation management. Arthur Andersen got in trouble for only starting to take data destruction policies seriously when investigators got curious about Enron. A few years after that my employer was aggressively culling 90 day old email to keep it out of the hands of litigation opponents. Deleting all old data makes lawyers happy. Deleting it based on the whims of the moment makes lawyers unhappy.

[James Pollock]

" taking a hammer to your hard drive is standard, accepted practice in Washington."

It's commonly-accepted data-security practice everywhere. Back in the day, Intel used a drill press, not a hammer.

[Gospace]

And private servers to conduct official state department business, along with private email addresses to avoid public records acts.

Oh, wait, was Hillary a Republican?

[James Pollock]

Wait, where did Hillary get the idea of running a private email server? After all, Republicans were so united in complaining about it when it was W's team running everything off-the-books on private servers...

[BillyG]

In fairness, evidence is already in that Trump's acolytes and supporters were crudely accustomed to bypassing legal requirements for messaging records.

Hillary Clinton. Private Email Server for Official Business.

[James Pollock]

Short memory. Hillary was using the same approach as the W administration.

[ThePublius]

What insurrection?

[not guilty]

Still not paying attention?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Dude, you’re on a freakin’ jihad, aren’t you?

[Bob from Ohio]

Some retired guys garden, his hobby is being a lunatic obsessed person.

[James Pollock]

...and you object to people horning in on your thing?

[TwelveInchPianist]

The speech is clearly protected by the first amendment, but I don't think that's relevant in this case. The judge issued a gun-violence restraining order based on a finding that there was a danger that this guy would hurt people in the future. The judge can use protected speech for that purpose.

The troubling aspect here is the pre-crime nature of such restraining orders. They restrict people's liberty based on the fact that they might do something wrong, not because they have done something wrong.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sigh. Wrong comment.

[Life of Brian]

We have now learned that the January 6, 2021 White House call logs produced to the House investigating committee include a gap of seven hours and 37 minutes

No, no we haven't.

We've been instructed (without showing the actual logs) that there's a period of 7 hours and 37 minutes in TRUMP'S call logs where he himself made no calls. You know, during the time period he made multiple speeches and was dealing with the riot.

And we've been given absolutely zero baseline against other days to be able to evaluate whether 7:37 is a long, short, or average period during which no Presidential calls would be logged.

If you have some, I'm all ears. But there are so many cut-and-paste breathless headlines about the single contextless measure that I'm not seeing anything more helpful.

[not guilty]

We know from other sources that Trump was on the telephone during the time in question. The phone logs do not include either outgoing or incoming calls.

Don't play dumb.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

He's not playing.

[Brett Bellmore]

But it's not a gap, because the phone logs don't cover all calls, just land line calls to and from the White House.

[Life of Brian]

As I suspected but didn't have time to run down yesterday, you're the one playing dumb with your context-free "something's fishy" yammering. From TiP's CNN article:

According to multiple sources familiar with Trump's phone behavior and the White House switchboard records, the January 6 log reflects Trump's typical phone habits. He mainly placed calls through the switchboard when he was in the residence but rarely used it when he was in the Oval Office. The fact the log does not show calls on January 6, 2021, from the Oval Office is not unusual, said the sources, because Trump typically had staff either place calls directly for him on landlines or cell phones. Those calls would not be noted on the switchboard log.

The six pages of White House switchboard logs for January 6, 2021, are complete based on an official review of White House records, according to a source familiar with the matter. There are no missing pages and the seven-hour gap is likely explained by use of White House landlines, White House cell phones and personal cell phones that do not go through the switchboard.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sounds like somebody's been getting their news from fake news CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/31/politics/mystery-call-gap-trump-jan-6-white-house-phone-logs/index.html

[James Pollock]

" You know, during the time period he made multiple speeches and was dealing with the riot."

Using the burner phones.

[Cal Cetín]

During the discussion of Germany's laws against advocating for wars of aggression, I recalled some interesting circumstances I thought I'd ask others about.

Article 20(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says: "Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law."

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/ccpr.pdf

When ratifying, the U. S. attached a reservation in favor of the First Amendment, so we can allow any alleged war propaganda which is protected by that amendment.

But what about those countries which ratified without making any free-speech reservations?

https://indicators.ohchr.org/

And how does one interpret 20(1) anyway? Can you be punished for supporting any war? What if your country is involved in the war already? What if it's some other country waging a purely defensive war?

Germany's law bans propaganda for wars of aggression.

Oh, and then there's Article 20(2) of the Civil and Political Rights Treaty: "Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law."

[BillyG]

Article 20(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights says: "Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law."

Under that, all information about the Russia-Ukraine war is prohibited. It's all propaganda.

[Kazinski]

I just got back in the states from Serbia, yesterday there was a pro-Russia Pro-Putin rally downtown that blocked traffic for 5-6 hours, with a few thousand people marching.

I actually had to search what they were demonstrating about because I couldn't read the signs, they obviously weren't targeting a US or western European audience.

I did see a large portrait mural of Putin labeled "брат" ("Brother", in Serbian).

[apedad]

‘Liberal Terminator’ Says His Disgusting Rants Are Protected Free Speech. Judge Says Hell No.

“A California judge didn’t buy a San Diego man’s argument that his violent online tirades against people of color are protected under the First Amendment.

And now, Timothy Caruthers won’t be eligible to purchase or own a handgun for at least two years, San Diego County Superior Court Judge Richard Whitney ruled last week.”

Not sure about this one.

“In one post, Caruthers allegedly said, ‘All n—--s need to die. I don’t know how much longer I can contain my anger. I want a race war to start, so I can kill Black people. …I’m not even joking.’

According to court minutes, in another post, Caruthers wrote, "‘I want to kill anything n—--s. I want to torture them and beat them to death and watch them gurgle and spit on their own blood. …You gotta always keep your strap ready when in a 10 mile radius of a n—-r.’”

I don’t think it reaches the imminent threat speech threshold and I disagree with the judge.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/san-diego-judge-rules-timothy-caruthers-racist-rants-are-not-protected-free-speech

[John F. Carr]

If the Second Amendment were a rule the judge would be wrong. In modern law it is more of a guideline. A century ago it was not even that.

[Sarcastr0]

The issue as laid out by apedad is more 1A than 2A.

[Ed Grinberg]

Wrong. This court order violates both.

[TwelveInchPianist]

The speech is clearly protected by the first amendment, but I don't think that's relevant in this case. The judge issued a gun-violence restraining order based on a finding that there was a danger that this guy would hurt people in the future. The judge can use protected speech for that purpose.

The troubling aspect here is the pre-crime nature of such restraining orders. They restrict people's liberty based on the fact that they might do something wrong, not because they have done something wrong.

[bernard11]

they might do something wrong,

Well, you can minimize the threat by saying it's a threat to do "something wrong," or you can address what the "something wrong" actually is - killing and torturing people.

I like the part about his mother, also his lawyer, claiming it was all OK because "there were no identifiable victims." Sounds like there were many millions.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Well, you can minimize the threat by saying it's a threat to do "something wrong,""

Sigh. I'm not minimizing the threat in this particular case, I'm making a general comment about these "red-flag" restraining orders.

"I like the part about his mother, also his lawyer, claiming it was all OK because "there were no identifiable victims." Sounds like there were many millions."

She's not saying it was "all OK" she was saying that it's not a true threat and therefore his speech was protected under the 1A. And she is correct, his speech is protected under the 1A, but as I explain above, that doesn't matter.

[TwelveInchPianist]

The quote from the court in the article isn't particularily coherent:

"The Court concludes the purchase of a semi-automatic handgun, combined with the evidence of very egregious racial threats, advocacy of violence towards minority groups, vulgar speech, speech that promotes killing other minority groups are not considered constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution..."

Of course the purchase of a handgun isn't protected speech under the 1A, so it wouldn't be protected when combined with any speech. It's a strange thing to say.

But if the Court meant that the speech itself isn't protected, then apedad is correct and the court is dead wrong.

But I don't see how that matters for purposes of the restraining order.

[apedad]

Widow of NYPD officer slain over 50 years ago objects to SUNY Brockport's plan to host speech by paroled killer

“The widow of a murdered NYPD officer joined police unions Sunday at a rally against a planned speech by the man convicted of the killing.

Demonstrators in Deer Park on Long Island called for SUNY Brockport to cancel plans to host a virtual speech by Anthony Bottom.

Bottom spent nearly 50 years in prison for the ambush-shooting of NYPD officers Waverley Jones and Joseph Piagentini in 1971.
Piagentini's widow is outraged by the plans.

‘I had to read that email over at least five times. I couldn't believe what I was reading, that he was going to give a lecture. When he joined the Black Liberation Army, he knew what he was doing. He knew what he was doing that night,’ Diane Piagentini said.

Bottom was granted parole in 2020. After weeks of controversy, SUNY Brockport decided to move the event to a virtual format. The school says faculty is free to invite guests to address students and is citing the First Amendment as a reason to keep the speech.”

Hmmm. . . .

OK free-speech people.

Let’s see how we all support this speech.

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/widow-of-nypd-officer-slain-over-50-years-ago-objects-to-suny-brockports-plan-to-host-speech-by-paroled-killer/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h

[John F. Carr]

The title of the speech is "History of Black Resistance, U.S. Political Prisoners and Genocide: A Conversation with Jalil Muntaqim".

Let him talk. Better that cries of "victim!" be heard in state colleges than in primary schools.

[Cal Cetín]

Perhaps the police union protesters can be advised that the university has a three-warning policy against disruption, that even if they leave the room where the speech is being heard they can still pound on walls and yell, disrupting other academic events - and be assured that the administration will issue a stern warning without attempting to punish anyone? And that the administration will also be critical of the speaker?

[Queen Amalthea]

Pretty messed up to give this fellow a platform here.

[David Bremer]

Depends on the format and nature of his speech. If he's going to use the time to boast about his acts, say he had no remorse, and encourage others to act, then, yeah, it's a problem. If he's going to talk about what motivated him to act, what similarities/differences he sees between then and now, and how he's come to reflect on his time now 50 years ago, I bet it would be a pretty interesting, and worthwhile, lecture to attend.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, who knows, he may even be remorseful. And if he's not?

Then the parole board has been granted useful information.

[Queen Amalthea]

You still have to think about things like the victim's family (who live nearby!). Bet they never considered it.

[GreenLanternCorps]

You can criticize the invitation, you can protest the speech. You cannot prevent people from attending, or disrupt the event while it is occurring.

[Ed Grinberg]

OK free-speech people.

So, what does that make you?

[Bob from Ohio]

"Let’s see how we all support this speech."

He should have been executed so it would be moot.

[Commenter_XY]

Well yes = He should have been executed

[Harvey Mosley]

I think Evelyn Beatrice Hall said it best:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes also said it well.

[ragebot]

Fairly easy to make the argument that while the bozo on parole has 1A rights to blab about anything he wants there is no reason a university supported by tax payer dollars should provide a venue for him to blab about anything.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Of course he should be allowed to give the speech, whether he's remorseful or not. The educational value of hearing such a perspective should be obvious.

[John F. Carr]

25 years ago I picked up the Ithaca Journal, turned to the weather forecast, saw snow flurries in Upstate New York and rain in Massachusetts, and decided to drive to Boston. I chose... poorly. Made it home, though. Burst through the snowbank at the end of my driveway like a marathon runner breaking the tape.

[ThePublius]

Yes, that was the April 1, 1997 blizzard. We got 36" of snow in one day, here just East of Worcester.

[OtisAH]

Evening news, March 31, 1997: So far this year we have had around 2 inches of snow. We average 38 inches per year.

Morning news, April 1, 1997: Thirty six inches of snowpocalypse fell overnight. Everything is closed.

[Brett Bellmore]

So, anyone noticed the new law in Maryland?

Basically legalizes infanticide within the first month after birth.

Now, NY a couple years back passed a law that de facto legalized infanticide the same day as the birth, by abolishing all protections against people getting away with it, but Maryland has gone further: They've made it a legal right.

"(H) THIS SECTION MAY NOT BE CONSTRUED TO AUTHORIZE ANY FORM OF INVESTIGATION OR PENALTY FOR A PERSON:
(2) EXPERIENCING A MISCARRIAGE, PERINATAL DEATH RELATED TO A FAILURE TO ACT, OR STILLBIRTH."

Keep in mind that "perinatal" doesn't mean the period just before birth. It means the period around birth, and is considered to last as long as 4 weeks after a live birth.

So, mom: You want to leave your baby in a snowbank, refuse to feed him or her, or otherwise kill the infant by neglect? Have at it, legally protected!

"(J) A PERSON MAY BRING A CAUSE OF ACTION FOR DAMAGES IF THE PERSON WAS SUBJECT TO UNLAWFUL ARREST OR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION FOR A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION AS A RESULT OF:
(2) EXPERIENCING A MISCARRIAGE, STILLBIRTH, OR PERINATAL DEATH; OR"

So, it's illegal to initiate a criminal investigation if the mom starves her kid to death. But wait, THIS clause omits the "negligent" language. So it may even apply if the police inquire into why your infant turned up with a broken neck.

People, if you starved puppies to death in Maryland, it wouldn't be protected. But starving an infant to death? A human right!

[John F. Carr]

It's a bill, not a law, as far as I can tell. https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/legislation/details/sb0669

First impression on reading the bill, Maryland drank the "pregnant person" Kool-Aid.

Second thought, the bill does not prohibit investigations of infanticide. It says one particular section of law (Crimianl Law §2–103) does not authorize investigation. A prosecution for killing a newborn would be based on a different law.

[Brett Bellmore]

OK, legislation passed overwhelmingly, veto likely to be sustained, but not yet law.

OK, that's the sort of thing I wanted to hear, does some other law still apply to starving your kid to death? I guess we'll find out once it passes.

And, yeah, full on "pregnant person", like anybody but a woman gets pregnant in real life.

[Sarcastr0]

You are doing exactly what you accuse the Democrats of doing on the CRT and don't say gay bills.

[Illocust]

No, he's not, because the second someone pointed out a different interpretation to him. He immediately showed relief that things were not as bad as his first reading of the law looked. His follow up question is also genuine, as can be seen from the fact he's accepted the premise that the previous posters comment must be at least partially true.

[Sarcastr0]

'I guess we'll find out once it passes' is not exactly a relieved backing down.

[Michael P]

There is perhaps a difference between a right that is explicitly protected by the Constitution, and recognized as useful by the New York Times (at least useful for Ukrainians)... and killing babies.

[Michael P]

Argh, that was a draft that I had decided not to post elsewhere in this thread, and was trying to delete.

Anyway, they have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it. Or so some legislator said who we are theoretically supposed to take seriously.

[OtisAH]

If that’s how you interpret Brett’s response, you don’t know Brett very well.

[Nelson]

That he thought that decent, reasonable people would write and pass a law that made it legal to starve a newborn or leave them in a snowbank doesn't seem like an irrational assumption to jump to?

This is where the anti-abortion movement is today. Anything that even brushes lightly up against individual liberty is met with overwrought and baseless accusations of murder.

The fact that someone had to say, "killing is still against the law" is a sign of the irrationality of cultural conservatives. That's about the most "master of the obvious" statement ever.

Rational people start and end with the assumption that killing is still against the law. Rational people wouldn't need to be talked off the ledge.

[Brett Bellmore]

"That he thought that decent, reasonable people would write and pass a law that made it legal to starve a newborn or leave them in a snowbank doesn't seem like an irrational assumption to jump to?"

I didn't think that. I don't think that pro-abortion activists are decent, reasonable people.

[Sarcastr0]

Funny way to spell lawmakers.

[David Nieporent]

OK, legislation passed overwhelmingly,

It hasn't even gotten out of committee, Brett, but you do you.

[JasonT20]

Second thought, the bill does not prohibit investigations of infanticide. It says one particular section of law (Crimianl Law §2–103) does not authorize investigation. A prosecution for killing a newborn would be based on a different law.

We should never let how the law actually works get in the way of saying that Democrats are baby killers.

[Michael P]

How do you think Kermit Gosnell got away with what he did for so long?

Why have Democrats repeatedly blocked Micah's Law, rather than protect other babies from doctors like Gosnell?

[Queen Amalthea]

Uh, this law?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain-Capable_Unborn_Child_Protection_Act

[Krychek_2]

Because abortion regulation is to Democrats what gun regulation is to Republicans: We don't trust your side to stop at reasonable regulation, we think you're going to use any regulation as a first step in the direction of a total ban, and we've got the Texas abortion law as Exhibit A.

[Nelson]

More like exhibit # 6327. They have been trying this shit since Roe. They've just gotten worse as more relgious zealots and cultural conservatives have been appointed to the Supreme Court. We're one or two Amy Coney Barretts away from having all medical treatment during pregnancy dictated by the government. Hell, without zealots they got unnecessary ultrasounds and unnecessary waiting periods. What happens when anti-liberty conservatives have a 7-2 or 8-1 majority?

[John F. Carr]

Certificate of need for abortion facilities. Wouldn't want to have too many and saturate the market.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, sure, with the difference that the 2nd amendment actually exists. But, yes, we both reasonably suppose that if the opposition were able to, they'd basically get rid of the right entirely, and reasonably suppose that any purported 'reasonable regulation' is a pretext to attack the right.

Really, the only substantive differences are that abortion involves a lot more deaths, and the 2nd amendment actually IS in the Constitution.

[David Nieporent]

How do you think Kermit Gosnell got away with what he did for so long?

Due to Maryland Senate Bill 669, obviously.

[Queen Amalthea]

This is so classic Brett.

Hey, what about this law that does this [hyperbolic charge?]

Uh, it's not a law it's a bill.

OK, but what about this bill that does [hyperbolic charge]?

Uh, it doesn't seem to operate the way you think?

OK, but what about this bill that does [hyperbolic charge]?

Rush, rush, leap to judgement and conclusions. Never let carefulness get in the way of a quick 1 minute hate!

[Michael P]

The Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign were fined for lying about the Russia collision hoax, to the extent of less than 10% of what they misreported. No word on whether the DOJ will adopt a very broad reading of various federal criminal laws, repeatedly advocated by some in this comment section, and prosecute the principals for seditious conspiracy.

[Sarcastr0]

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee have agreed to pay $113,000 to settle a Federal Election Commission investigation

Literally the first sentence. A settlement is not a fine.

[Michael P]

So you are that the Biden Administration colluded with Democrats to avoid fining them. Not a good look for this famously corrupt regime.

[Queen Amalthea]

Lol, pathetic. You were wrong about the 'fine' part, fess up dude. And from there everyone can extrapolate what else you're fudging.

[Cal Cetín]

Checking the documents linked in the article, the parties agreed to pay "civil penalt[ies]," which the headline in the linked article referred to as fines.

It was an AP article. I suppose the next step is to investigate the headline writer and find out why such an obvious Trump operative snuck onto the Associated Press and wrote these awful lying headlines.

Or perhaps the blame rests with the AP itself, which everyone knows is a cats-paw for the Republicans.

[Queen Amalthea]

Nice try, but Mike's dodging is apparent (he didn't dispute the 'fine' thing he just went on to 'so you're fine with the DOJ collaborating with the Clinton campaign to avoid a fine).

[Cal Cetín]

By the law of non-contradiction, Mike P can't have been right both times. It either was a fine or it wasn't.

I acknowledged that the AP told an egregious lie by referring to the civil penalties as fines. I've even called for an investigation to root out the culprits in this appalling scandal. Look, I'm on *your* side.

[Michael P]

I would say that a civil penalty is a fine. A rose by any other name...

The second time, I was merely restating Sarc's argument, not asserting it as truth.

[Queen Amalthea]

Sure, cool story bro.

[Queen Amalthea]

You're missing the point, which is that Mike doesn't know/care whether they were fines or what's going on, he's carelessly just throwing something on the wall to see if it sticks because, well, Clinton. You can tell that by his immediate dodge/shift.

[Krayt]

Only lawyers care. People see the giant kaiju government standing over someone. Does it matter if they're merely threatening to stomp, placing their foot on you but not crushing you, or crushing you so money squirts out of your pocket?

In all cases you transfer your money to the kaiju.

[Sarcastr0]

Don't wrap your views in popular sentiment. The average American is not as paranoid about the government as you are.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=o-e3waxCNNs&list=RDAMVMo-e3waxCNNs

[Armchair Lawyer]

He wasn't wrong about the fine part.

Federal election regulators fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/30/politics/clinton-dnc-steele-dossier-fusion-gps/index.html

[Sarcastr0]

From the letter CNN links:

On February 17, 2022, signed conciliation agreements with the DNC and HFA were accepted by the Commission.

[Cal Cetín]

"Respondent will pay a civil penalty" etc.

See, this isn't a fine, and that's the most important takeaway from this story - they didn't pay a fine for their Russiagate shenanigans, they paid a civil penalty.

[Sarcastr0]

Come on, you know how settlements work, and what information about guilt you can gather from them.

Don't split hairs to get to a conclusion just because it appeals.

[Cal Cetín]

As opposed to getting all worked up about the difference between a fine and a civil penalty - that's not splitting hairs at all.

The important point is that, in settling a complaint, the Democrats showed their graciousness and their unwillingness to be be persecuted by a biased FEC, backed up by a biased AP and CNN.

If anything, this proves their innocence.

[Cal Cetín]

So...several comments about the difference between a fine and a civil penalty, but no replies when I try to start a thread about a treaty obligation to suppress prowar propaganda. (above)

Maybe if I said that it had something to do with the Punch and Judy show, I'd get more replies?

[Sarcastr0]

It's being used by the OP to imply guilt, so yeah, the distinction I'm making matters.

[Queen Amalthea]

"So...several comments about the difference between a fine and a civil penalty, but no replies when I try to start a thread about a treaty obligation to suppress prowar propaganda. "

You ride a horse but not my hobby horse? WTF!

[Cal Cetín]

This is the second time I mentioned the propaganda-for war issue. If that's a hobby horse, OK.

But, yes, it's interesting that they'd have a post about Germany's war-propaganda law without mentioning a highly-relevant treaty which Germany is a party to.

Still, chopping logic about the difference between a fine and a civil penalty is a much better use of the open thread.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Come on, you know how settlements work, and what information about guilt you can gather from them."

The same information you can gather from a no-contest plea, I suppose. IMO you can't gather any information from such a plea, but many people disagree.

[Sarcastr0]

That's a tendentious analogy - if anything this is more like a civil settlement than a criminal plea.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Also from the CNN article..

"FEC fines Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC over Trump-Russia dossier research"

"Federal election regulators fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign "

"The DNC was fined $105,000 and the Clinton campaign was fined $8,000, according to a letter sent by the Federal Election Commission to a conservative group that requested an inquiry."

"In the letter announcing the fines, the FEC also revealed "

"The Clinton campaign and the DNC never conceded that they violated campaign finance laws, but they agreed to drop their pushback and accept the civil fines"

That is "Fines" or "fined" Five separate times.

sometimes a fine is a fine.

[Sarcastr0]

CNN being wrong and also being consistent. Doesn't make it any more proof of guilt.

[TwelveInchPianist]

CNN being wrong is usually a safe assumption, but no in this case. A civil penalty is a fine, dude.

[Sarcastr0]

Again, I'm making an argument against the function the OP is using this for.

The Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign were fined for lying about the Russia collision hoax, to the extent of less than 10% of what they misreported. No word on whether the DOJ will adopt a very broad reading of various federal criminal laws, repeatedly advocated by some in this comment section, and prosecute the principals for seditious conspiracy.

This is a mischaracterization of what happened. Call it a fine if the semantics please you, but this implies a finding of guilt when there was none. It then gets dumber and dumber as it continues.

[Cal Cetín]

"Call it a fine if the semantics please you"

Then why were you so insistent that "[a] settlement is not a fine"?

Now the term "fine" is fine with you?

The DNC isn't some poor overcharged criminal defendant pressured by prosecutors and his own lawyer into copping a plea to avoid the risk of a harsher punishment.

It's not some small business harassed by an expensive lawsuit they can't afford which agrees to settle to minimize the financial and reputational costs of protracted litigation.

The DNC is a powerful organization with the means to defend itself against bogus charges - if the charges were in fact bogus.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"This is a mischaracterization of what happened. Call it a fine if the semantics please you, but this implies a finding of guilt when there was none. It then gets dumber and dumber as it continues."

How it implying a finding of guilt?

He's suggesting that we should infer that the campaign did something because they were fined for doing it, which is a fairly common inference people make.

[Cal Cetín]

And what an indictment of the system to say that even though someone paid the penalty for some illegal activity, that doesn't make them guilty, it could just mean the system pressured them into it, and that's completely normal.

The Dems and Republicans bear responsibility for a system in which such things are common. Where you can't infer guilt simply for the fact that the accused paid a penalty reserved for guilty people.

If some Democratic or Republican big-shots get caught up in the web they spun, then that would be poetic justice.

But I don't think that happened in this particular case, since if the charges were truly bogus the DNC would have the resources to fight them. The DNC isn't like the victims of its own policies - too weak and poor to resist false charges and obliged to work out a compromise where they pretend to be guilty in exchange for making at least some of the problems go away.

In short, if the DNC paid a [f-word], it's probably because they realized that stuff could be proven against them.

[Sarcastr0]

Seems like TiP and Cal may need to deconflict - both think my take is ridiculous for mutually contradictory reasons.

Does a settlement that results in a fine clearly imply guilt, or does clearly it not?

*discuss*

[Cal Cetín]

Click here to see my discussion of the subject:

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/03/31/thursday-open-thread-76/?comments=true#comment-9427503

Mr. Pianist can speak for himself, and generally does.

[Cal Cetín]

And some more comments of mine:

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/03/31/thursday-open-thread-76/?comments=true#comment-9427785

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Does a settlement that results in a fine clearly imply guilt, or does clearly it not?"

Sigh. As I've said elsewhere, it doesn't clearly imply guilt, but it could lead to an inference of guilt. And I don't see him saying anything different.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Actually people pay to settle a fine.

Here's CNN's take...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/30/politics/clinton-dnc-steele-dossier-fusion-gps/index.html

Federal election regulators fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign

[Sarcastr0]

CNN gets it wrong, looks like to me. The linked letter says they found probable cause, but did not investigate to conclusion due to a conciliation agreement signed by the parties.

This is not the conviction you think it is.

[Cal Cetín]

CNN, the Associated Press...the right-wing press is going all-in to smear the Democrats.

[Sarcastr0]

I didn't say bad faith, just that they got it wrong. And explained how.

I'm not some right-wing knee-jerk fake news tool.

[Cal Cetín]

When CNN and the AP err, it's usually not in the direction of making the DNC look worse than it is.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Other news organizations which call it a fine.

Fox, NBC, Politico, NY Post, Washington Post, US News......

When everyone calls it a fine, except Sarcastro, maybe it's actually a fine....

Or maybe everyone else is wrong, and only Sarcastro is right.

[Sarcastr0]

Here is the initial position: The Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clintons campaign were fined for lying about the Russia collision hoax.

The fact that it's a fine is being used as proof of guilt.

That's not correct.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"The fact that it's a fine is being used as proof of guilt."

No, it's being used to draw an inference of guilt, as civil and criminal penalties often are.

[Sarcastr0]

Not proof of guilt, but rather drawing an inference of guilt? And you ignore the shifting definition of fine used to get there.

This was a mischaracterization. You seem to know it, due to your tepid and cagey defense. And yet you still defend.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Not proof of guilt, but rather drawing an inference of guilt? And you ignore the shifting definition of fine used to get there."

Of course. Heck, even a legal finding of guilt isn't "proof" of guilt in a non-legal sense.

It's common for people to make inferences based not just on factual findings, but the levying of civil penalties or other punishment.

"And you ignore the shifting definition of fine used to get there."

Lol. Here's a link to Cornell LII's blurb on civil penalties, since you seem unclear on the concept:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/civil_penalties_(civil_fines)

[Sarcastr0]

A shifting definition isn't an incorrect definition, it's just moving between two different definitions for the same word.

Like fine as a penalty for wrongdoing versus fine as a non fee-for-service or tax payment to the government.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"A shifting definition isn't an incorrect definition, it's just moving between two different definitions for the same word."

What definitions? There's one definition of "fine" at play here:

fine [ fahyn ]
noun
a sum of money imposed as a penalty for an offense or dereliction

[Sarcastr0]

And the OP is absolutely treating this like a *finding* of guilt. Which this absolutely is not.

Standing on calling it a fine when the OP seems not to get your careful distinction seems like you are into indulging your side's flights of fancy if it helps own the libs.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Standing on calling it a fine..."

I'm calling it a fine because it is a fine. You said it wasn't a fine.

[Armchair Lawyer]

You could just admit you were wrong, and it is a fine.

That would require admitting you were wrong. Which you can never do

[Sarcastr0]

I made the functional case that this is being offered as proof of guilt, but as a settlement that's not what it is.

You lot are with a weak semantic point and confusion between one another whether you want to argue a settlement means you're guilty, versus the OP has nothing.

[Jimmy the Dane]

*Sarcastro looking at his hand of rhetorical playing cards in his parent's basement*

"Instead of 'gaslighting' I'm going to play the 'hair splitter' one today."

"Ha you rube, it was a SETTLEMENT not a fine. That means everything else you said is also false!"

"Hahahaha that will show them. I win the internet again today!"

[Sarcastr0]

You're weird.

[Jimmy the Dane]

So this is exactly what went through your head then....
I knew I nailed it.

[Sarcastr0]

No, it's the writing of Sarcastr0 fan fiction that's odd.

[Jimmy the Dane]

If you think that is fan fiction then you are the odd one....

[Sarcastr0]

Hatefic is fanfic.

[Harvey Mosley]

He's not a fan so it must not be fiction.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"A settlement is not a fine."

The settlement includes an agreement to pay a civil penalty, aka a fine.

[Sarcastr0]

Which does not imply a finding of guilt.

So the OP is wrong.

[TwelveInchPianist]

The OP didn't say they were found guilty.

He correctly said that they were fined, and linked to an article that cleared up any ambiguity in his comment.

You, OTOH, incorrectly said that they weren't fined.

So if I was you, I wouldn't be running around calling out people for being wrong in this thread.

[Queen Amalthea]

Clinton was fined!

S: no, it was a settlement.

So the Democrats colluded to protect Clinton from fines!

[TwelveInchPianist]

What?!?

The Clinton campaign agreed to a settlement where it paid a fine.

So if anybody colluded with anybody to protect Clinton from fines, they did it wrong.

[Sarcastr0]

That was the OP's response to my reply to him...

[not guilty]

Seditious conspiracy?? It is prudent to read statutes before commenting on their application.

18 U.S.C. 2384 provides:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

What evinces any arguable agreement to use force (for any purpose) or to levy war against the United States? Please be specific.

[Commenter_XY]

Isn't the easy out here to say that the execution of the law was hindered and delayed, so therefore they are guilty as hell? That is what the law literally says, no?

[Voize of Reazon]

"by force"?

[Ridgeway]

The "hindered and delayed by force" language is awfully overbroad. Basically any conspiracy to break a Federal law with violence would a "seditious conspiracy." That would include pretty much every drug conspiracy, bank robbery conspiracy etc. ever. But AFAIK, none of them is prosecuted under this section.

[Voize of Reazon]

No. Baldwin v. Franks (1887):

[prevent, hinder, or delay by force the execution of any law] evidently implies force against the government as a government. To constitute an offence under the first clause, the authority of the government must be opposed; that is to say, force must be brought to resist some positive assertion of authority by the government. A mere violation of law is not enough; there must be an attempt to prevent the actual exercise of authority.

[not guilty]

I have not commented about seditious conspiracy, which is prohibited by 18 U.S.C. 2384. I have frequently commented about conspiracy to obstruct, influence or impede an official proceeding, which is criminalized by 18 U.S.C. 1512(k).

As I pointed out, it is prudent to actually read statutes before blathering.

[not guilty]

On second thought, I think I have commented on Joshua James's guilty plea to seditious conspiracy, but that is a different matter. The applicability of the statute there was uncontested, and the stipulated statement of offense clearly included an agreement to use force.

[Michael P]

Those aren't the clauses that you always point to when you wave your "seditious conspiracy" theory around.

And Sarc wonders why sane people think your side is full of bad faith.

[Sarcastr0]

I leave the details to not_guilty, but it's not a double standard for a law to apply to one set of facts and not another. That's just how laws work.

[Michael P]

Sad. You used to at least be able to muster a remotely related attempt to distract from something that makes Democrats look bad. But lately you've lost the script and respond "fact patterns are sometimes different!" to defend someone moving the goalposts about what statutory text should apply.

[Sarcastr0]

...Aren't the fact patterns different, though?

[Michael P]

Fact patterns are always different in some respect -- sometimes relevant, often not. That's why courts can distinguish certain cases from precedent that many people would think determine the outcome. But that's not how guilty tried to answer my original observation.

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, the facts here are wildly different from what Trump tried to do with the vote count in 2020.
Arguing it's a distinction without a difference requires more work than handwaiving.

[Ben_]

Federal Election Commission should be ruled a 1st Amendment violation. No one should ever have to hear from them again.

[Queen Amalthea]

I do admire Ben's entirely predictable position: good government agencies are wrong even when they rule against my opponents!

[dwb68]

Seen in an email after a candidate did poorly during an interview: Don't expect the candidate to be able to technical questions, she was included by HR for diversity reasons.

Set aside how unfair this is to the candidate, I still expect someone with a PhD in physics to be able to answer technical questions.

[dwb68]

Also: As a white male with a technical background, I was told I am in a key "diversity" category because the department is trying to hire few Asian Males. Wish I were making this up. lmao.

Xerox should be a cautionary tale to every woke boardroom. Steve Jobs and Bills Gates stole most of their ideas from technology Xerox, whose board was simply not interested. Now Xerox is bankrupt. Today's companies are so focused on out-woking other companies, they are no longer interested in serving customers.

[Don Nico]

dwb,
In the areas that you refer to the number of qualified Asian males is generally quite large. Making that goal should be easy without HR adding rubes.

[dwb68]

sorry I was not clear: the department is trying to diversify AWAY from Asian males.

[Don Nico]

I was wondering about that. Those Asian males are as good as WHITE

[Don Nico]

Even the ones from India and Pakistan

[bernard11]

I don't think Xerox missed the boat because they were too focused on diversity, any more than diversity was the motivation behind the Edsel.

My guess is that they were fat, happy, lazy, and not paying attention. It's easy to get that way when you are in the position they enjoyed back then.

Indeed, think of DEC, another tragedy of corporate shortsightedness.

[Queen Amalthea]

"Don't expect the candidate to be able to technical questions, she was included by HR for diversity reasons."

Have to say I'm suspect of your story here if only because an agency would be crazy to have that be in writing.

[dwb68]

Not an agency. I was on the email and cringed. It was the lead interviewer (we do panels). Typically the lead interviewer selects some candidates and HR includes other "diversity candidates."

The lead hiring manager has several outstanding female candidates already working for him. He is not in any way sexist. But he is looking for good candidates, regardless of gender because gender is completely orthogonal to your ability to do the job (which is extremely technical, most of our candidates have physics, math, computational finance, or other higher degrees) .

The problem is that HR recruiters have no idea how to recruit or find good candidates. So they bully people into diversity initiatives, and the result is, predictably, worse than a complete waste of everyone's time, it's resentment and backlash. And its not fair to the candidate. There are probably other less senior jobs they are qualified for, but this one wasn't it.

[ducksalad]

Don't want to presume any details here, but any employee involved in the interview, not just HR, should have known not to put a statement like that in an e-mail. If the candidate did poorly in the interview, that's enough justification to make a decision, no need to add that particular explanation.

While it's certainly true that HR has less knowledge about the job qualifications, there's a lot of randomness when picking resumes prior to any contact, and sometimes they make a good pick. We've had many cases where resumes picked by the technical specialists turned out to complete losers at the interview, and a few cases where the candidate added to meet DEI goals ended up being the best one technically by a wide margin.

Overall, I don't see the "let HR add one" algorithm as terribly damaging. An unqualified candidate will survive being rejected (and maybe learn something) and the interviewers will survive listening to some bad answers. The main downside is a fractional increase in travel costs and time spent.

[John F. Carr]

"Should have known" or not, lots of people don't know.

[dwb68]

Hence my cringe when I saw it. I wish I were making it up.

First rule I learned out of graduate school: Just because you have a technical PhD, doesn't make you smart. Second rule, just because you are manager and should know better, doesn't mean you do.

Thankfully, I don't work directly for this guy. I am looking for a new job myself.

[Commenter_XY]

Really? = I am looking for a new job myself.

Data Scientist, perhaps? I need a few of them.

[Don Nico]

"fractional increase in travel costs"
Duck..,
The increased travel costs are generally trivial in comparison to the costs of wasted time by the interviewing team, admins, etc. It is generally not the low paid personnel doing the interviewing for technical and professional positions.

[Queen Amalthea]

I guess I have a hard time thinking anyone in a professional position would put that in writing.

I certainly won't defend everything HR departments do, but I will say that sometimes expanding diversity is a point of emphasis for an organization and so when they push for that as a factor they are 'recruiting good candidates' with good being defined as what the people running the company think is important in a candidate.

[Noscitur a sociis]

The smart money is certainly on dwb68 making it up, but people certainly do make comparably compromising statements in emails and text messages with depressing regularity.

[Don Nico]

N_a_S,
The smart money loses on this one. HR departments are usually the "cover your ass" departments. The best of them are actually good at retaliation without many fingerprints. Their staff aren't good enough to leave no forensic evidence.

[dwb68]

"smart money" never gambles lmao

[dwb68]

Math doesn't care who programmed the algorithm. The PDE grid you invented either converges, or it doesn't, and the speed of convergence does not depend on having a Y chromosome.

[Don Nico]

Sorry, QA.
In many years as a hiring manager, I have seen many outrageous statements in writing by people who ought to know better.

[David Bremer]

Obligatory: Orthogonal.

[bernard11]

We are not supposed to use that word around lawyers.

[Don Nico]

dwb,
In my 40 years of experience as a hiring manager, I must agree that your characterization of HR departments is more than 90% accurate.
The are a waste of employees time and talent and in the end are actually an insult to the diversity candidates put there as window dressing for the EEO.

[dwb68]

Sadly, people who dont have experience with corporate HR, think I make this shit up.

You are spot on above, the primary purpose of HR is cover the companies legal ass.

[Commenter_XY]

I second the both of you. I am also a hiring manager and have to work with HR. I've run into similar types of issues. HR is there for the company, period. Not the employee, no matter what they say.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"You are spot on above, the primary purpose of HR is cover the companies legal ass."

That's why companies pay them. If you want HR people that are on your side, you have to hire them.

[Don Nico]

That is hopeless 12". The General Counsel's office demands that HR is staffed with those with noses that are burnt umber and who will toady to the CEO's office

[Queen Amalthea]

Just finished Beyond This Horizon by Heinlein, quite enjoyed it. Seemed to be two novellas stitched together, thought the first half about a revolution against an eugenicist government a bit more than the second which explored issues of paranormal science.

[Queen Amalthea]

From what I understand it's the novel that originated the quote 'an armed society is a polite society.' I will say that the society they're describing seemed to be a pretty messed up one to me (akin to accounts of Southern society when dueling was common and accentuated politeness to avoid them accompanied it).

[Brett Bellmore]

In Heinlein's future history, Earth goes through a period called "the crazy years", which finally ends in a violent revolution, and the society afterwards is very, very different than ours, due to the violent rejection of values that had seemingly led to that mess.

I'm not sure you can take his writing of that society as a total approval of everything he was describing.

[Queen Amalthea]

Fair enough, he refers to some pretty bad preceding wars in this work.

[John F. Carr]

The reference to "crazy years" reminds me to read or re-read John Barnes' novels from the 1990s.

Step 1: Sort my shelves to see how many of his books I have.

[Brett Bellmore]

At one time I had over 5,000 books, mostly paperbacks. Kept track of them in RBase. Alas, had to sell most of them to a used book dealer for a few cents each back in '08, when I had to move down south, and was out of both money and room in the moving van.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I believe Beyond This Horizon was originally written by Heinlein (writing under the name Anson MacDonald) as two separate novellas, and was stitched together into one novel by John W. Campbell when he published it in two parts in Astounding. Heinlein wasn't crazy about this, and that was one of the reasons it wasn't published as a single novel for another six years.

[Commenter_XY]

Yale University is on my mind, Professor Volokh.

I am not sure what to make of the 1-A protest by Yale law students that you blogged about. Are they merely pupils who were overly boisterous in their protest, or is there really something more at play here? I want to cut as much slack as possible (they are after all, young adults with undeveloped brains) to the pupils, but cannot help but wonder that if it happens at Yale Law School (the pinnacle of legal academia), do we really have bigger problems that are going to surface over the next 2-3 decades. And how will that manifest itself in judicial ruling?

My question to VC Conspirators: Should the students be punished for their actions, and what form of punishment would you personally recommend? (note: You may not recommend crucifixion, LOL)

[Queen Amalthea]

From the students' perspective, and there's some evidence to support this, the ADF is an organization that wants to criminalize homosexuality, get rid of same sex marriages, re-introduce prayer in school, etc., a kind of theo-fascism. The LGBT ones and their allies don't want to 'debate' at an approved forum those kinds of folks anymore than Jews and their allies wanted to 'debate' Lincoln Rockwell at an approved forum.

I get that to some limited degree, but I don't think Yale can, consistent with its current policies, allow the behavior that went on. I think the warnings policy is fine but it seems like at seem some students went past that policy. For a first time violation I'd think entering a reprimand on their record would be appropriate, for second time violations things like suspensions might be.

[Brett Bellmore]

I can sort of "get" people who don't want to debate people whose views they really dislike. I guess it could be unpleasant, and maybe you've got this notion that they need you to debate them to be heard.

But that's not an accurate notion in a remotely free society. I think this sort of effort to cancel instead of debate stems from a, perhaps unacknowledged, fear that you'd lose such a debate. A lack of confidence that your own position is persuasive.

[Queen Amalthea]

"I can sort of "get" people who don't want to debate people whose views they really dislike. "

Yeah, you don't get what I said there at all. That's telling.

[Brett Bellmore]

So, where do we differ, then? I think we clearly agree that the QUERTY people really dislike ADF's views. And that this has something to do with their not wanting to debate them.

But nobody at Yale was demanding that they debate them. So this wasn't about not wanting to debate them, it was about wanting to silence them.

[Ed Grinberg]

If this had happened at a state college / university, I would've given you my standard reply: The solution is to shut down the school (along with all other public colleges / universities). (because running colleges / universities is not a proper function of government)
But Yale is a private school. Which means they should be free to run their school any way they want. They should be free to invite any speakers they want. If the speaking event is disrupted, they should be free to punish the disrupting students however they want (up to expulsion). On the other hand, if they don't want to punish such students, again, they should be free to do so.
I personally think that any student who disrupts a speaking event like these students did should be expelled.

[ducksalad]

IMO the Overton Window for a first offense would range from a general statement that this isn't acceptable and better not happen again (at the low end), to formal individual reprimands accompanied by stuff like a "reflective essay" or attendance at some "training" (at the high end).

Students are rarely suspended for a first offense unless it's the equivalent of a felony in the real world.

[Krychek_2]

What is the extent to which adultery is still stigmatized? I'm under the impression that the culture has shifted to where nobody much cares any more.

[Cal Cetín]

Only children and voters care about such things any more...everything else has a Gallic sophistication about such things.

[Krayt]

If not hold out hope for a leaked video.

[Queen Amalthea]

I certainly think poorly of someone who can't keep their promises and/or would do something that would hurt those closest to them. Everyone's human and falls short in some way so I wouldn't be about casting stones but I think the behavior is still wrong.

[Cal Cetín]

"I wouldn't be about casting stones"

Speaking of which -

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13054759

[Commenter_XY]

For children whose lives were diminished by a parent committing adultery, the stigma is great. My childhood ended at age 7 in the early 70's when my parents divorced in the aftermath of an affair. I spent years listening to my Mother's soft weeping, and stopping my Mom from killing herself on many occasions. She was never the same. I watched her slowly die over 25 years.

I have nothing but contempt for adulterers or adulteresses. For me, they are beneath contempt, they are the algal equivalent to smelly pond scum. My view of adultery will never, ever change. As an adult, I have a better understanding of why it happens, but the strength of my feelings has grown stronger over the years, not weaker. I see the 'latch-key' children as adults now, and I see the impact. I really wish that parents would consider their children more carefully before pulling the marital rip-cord (or better yet, not have that affair at all).

Adultery is a moral outrage. Many of us care very much, Krychek_2; for some of us, it is personal.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Oh I think plenty of people care, especially if you are sleeping with their wife.

[Michael P]

https://babylonbee.com/news/chris-rock-smooths-things-over-with-will-smith-by-sleeping-with-his-wife/ supports at least one answer to that question, but I'm not entirely sure which. It's casual but relatively mild (especially given that the Bee is explicitly Christian) mockery of the husband in an open relationship. That is arguably distinct from adultery, but certainly related to it.

But I'll echo the sentiment from others that we should still care about cheating on a partner, and critically judge both the cheater and their paramour. I no longer associate with someone who I knew since college because he cheated on, and then divorced, his wife with one of his (post-secondary, I think graduate) students.

[Krayt]

I thought a good comeback would have been, "Wow! Imagine what he'd have done if I had been like Pete Davidson and tweeted from her bed!"

[Illocust]

With how easy divorce is, there is no excuse for cheating. Your scum if you lead someone on when you've got someone else on the side. To quote a comedian. Cheating isn't one mistake. Cheating is a deliberate series of mistakes, that you could have cut off at any time.

I'm not going to fire you from a job for cheating, but someone who is cheating isn't going to end up my friend and are not going to get an ounce of sympathy during the break up.

[bevis the lumberjack]

My wife and I lose respect for people we know who do adultery. Just try to stay away from them and when we bump into them we’re polite but sort of curt. How can ordinary friends/acquaintances trust somebody if their spouse can’t?

[Ridgeway]

Personally, I don't see where people have the time or energy to have affairs.

[OtisAH]

If you’re looking for the go ahead, just go ahead. Cheat on your spouse or S.O. to your heart’s content.

[Bob from Ohio]

" I'm under the impression that the culture has shifted to where nobody much cares any more."

Elite culture has changed but large parts of normal people do still care. Ask Senator Cal Cunningham.

[Krychek_2]

Though it would be interesting to know how many of the people who are holding Cal Cunningham's affair against him did not hold Trump's sexual shenanigans against him. I've noticed people tend to be more forgiving of the sinners on their side of the aisle.

[Don Nico]

C'mon K_2.
We all remember and love Ted Kennedy, Defender of Women.

[Bob from Ohio]

Cunningham's affair was recent, Trump's were old news.

[Krychek_2]

So what? The Menendez brothers haven't killed anyone in going on 30 years either.

In the spring of 2020 I posted the following question on a right wing Christian conservative blog:

"If Pete Buttigieg is the Democratic nominee (which I do not expect to happen, but very little surprises me any more), will the same people here who are so willing to forgive Trump his sexual peccadilloes also be willing to overlook the fact that Pete Buttigieg is gay?" And it was hilarious as all get-out to watch them twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify overlooking the sings of a serial sexual predator (Trump) while at the same time disqualifying a married family man just because he's gay. Hypocrisy makes the world go round.

[Bob from Ohio]

"haven't killed anyone in going on 30 years "

Murder of parents is not adultery.

[Krychek_2]

No it's not, but wouldn't the same principle -- it was a long time ago -- apply?

[Bob from Ohio]

"old news" is a long time expression.

Murder is never "old news".

[Krychek_2]

I suppose one could make the argument that the voters have the right to decide for themselves if either a murder or serial adultery should disqualify someone from public office. Some people would agree that murder should permanently disqualify someone; others might not; I myself would want to know the circumstances of the murder and what the person has done since then before I commit myself. Moses and King David both committed murders, after all.

But I would require repentance as a condition of redemption, and there's no evidence Trump regrets a single thing he's ever done. There's pretty good evidence the Menendez brothers do. So from that standpoint, I would say they are morally superior to Trump because they have at least tried to make amends for their past.

[Bob from Ohio]

"others might not"

It would be a small minority. At best.

Stop comparing murder with things that are not murder.

[Moses never murdered anyone. Those taskmasters were harming people, he had a right to defend the slaves.]

[Krychek_2]

The question is not whether murder and not murder are the same thing. The question is whether the same principles apply to murder and not murder.

[Krychek_2]

And under Egyptian law at the time, Moses had committed a murder, as evidenced by his need to flee the country.

[LawTalkingGuy]

By old news you mean his entire life until he basically got too old to keep up affairs. Dude literally cheated on his multiple wives multiple times.

[Bob from Ohio]

No, I mean it was years prior, not while he was campaigning like Cunningham.

No evidence he ever cheated on his current wife either.

[LawTalkingGuy]

"No evidence he ever cheated on his current wife either."

Well that's simply false. There is a ton of evidence that's when he hooked up with Stormy. And yeah, he doesn't get a pass for a lifetime of philandering and being a dishonest and horrible husband simply because he stopped when he wanted to launch a political career.

[Bob from Ohio]

The Daniels affair was in 2006, marriage was in 2010.

I'm just explaining why people discounted it, as compared to an active affair like Cunningham's. No moral judgment, Trump was not a good husband the first two times.

Another reason [and you are going to really dislike this] is because many people think all New Yorker City residents are degenerates. If bad conduct is expected, it has less impact.

[not guilty]

Donald and Melania Trump were married on January 22, 2005. Is your claim that the marriage was in 2010 as true as everything else you have said?

[Bob from Ohio]

Well, my earlier google search said 2010. I guess I read the date of the article instead.

[not guilty]

There was also a reported affair of several months' duration during 2006 and 2007 between Trump and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.

[John F. Carr]

The Massachusetts Appeals Court threw out an order obtained by a lawyer on behalf of himself and his employees against an unhappy former client prohibiting her from "making Internet or social media posts that reference the plaintiff in any way". Aside from the free speech issue, "the proper vehicle for redress was not c. 258E, but an action for defamation."

https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2022/03/30/b21P0687.pdf

[apedad]

Democrats move closer to significantly altering their presidential nominating process

“Numerous members of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee expressed support during a virtual meeting on Monday for a draft proposal that would dramatically remake the party’s 2024 presidential nominating process, signaling that the committee could pass the measure when it meets again in April.

The draft proposal would end the Democratic Party’s current nominating process structure – where the Iowa caucuses go first, followed by primaries in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina – and instead implement a process that would prioritize more diverse battleground states that choose to hold primaries, not caucuses. The new structure would require states to apply to hold early nominating contests and the rules committee would select 'no more than five states to be allowed to hold the first determining stage in their presidential nominating process.'

If passed, the proposal would represent the most serious threat to Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status, given the largely White state is no longer a battleground and is legally required to hold caucuses.”

I like that they’re at least willing to consider new processes.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/28/politics/dnc-nomination-process/index.html

[John F. Carr]

There are two reasons to hold early contests in small, centrist states. Small states allow cheaper campaigning. Centrist states may choose more electable candidates. Neither reason is likely to be persuasive to those choosing the schedule. The DNC may want a well funded liberal insider to be the nominee and the RNC may want Trump to be the nominee.

[ducksalad]

Don't mix up centrist state with centrist voters.

A centrist state could be one with a 40/40 balance of hardcore partisans, each choosing fringe candidates in their own primaries/caucuses.

[Krayt]

I cannot conceive of this as doing anything other than empowering the backroom power brokers.

Several elections back, various states advanced their primaries ahead of Iowa into December, including Michigan. The national party wanted nothing to do witb blue collar union auto workers having oversized influence on who the Democrats selected.

Who's that guy with a show tracing chains of related influences through history? He'd end this show with, "And 12 years later, Donald Trump was elected president."

[Brett Bellmore]

"and the RNC may want Trump to be the nominee."

I can pretty much guarantee that the RNC does not want Trump to be the nominee. They may be resigned to him being the nominee, or afraid to openly oppose him, but they don't want him.

[Absaroka]

That's interesting.

I remember when the process was that candidates ran around trying to look viable by winning primaries and whatnot, then the party bosses picked a candidate in smoke filled back rooms at the convention.

I applauded when that was changed to a more open process, reducing the power of the party bosses. Who wants candidates picked in smoke filled rooms, after all?

Over time, I have come to think the previous system was better. It seemed like it resulted in more centrist candidates - Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, etc. Extremely unsuitable candidates got filtered out. I liked choosing from candidates that were slightly on either side of center, either of whom were acceptable, more than holding my nose and voting for the marginally lesser evil candidate.

It's better to steer the country gradually one direction or the other, rather than zigzagging wildly as the fringes alternately elect their favorite.

[Commenter_XY]

I agree Absaroka....bring back the smoke-filled rooms.

[John F. Carr]

The smoke will smell different this time.

[Commenter_XY]

ROTFLMAO! 🙂

[BillyG]

Seconded

[Cal Cetín]

"Nelson Rockefeller"

...kept losing the nomination, until he got appointed Vice-President under the 25th Amendment, not a convention.

(Personal motto: "If you gotta go, go with a smile.")

The convention process produced Goldwater, back when he was an extremist and before he was discovered to be a harmless elder statesman.

The convention process produced Woodrow Wilson, not a centrist but a self-centrist.

[OtisAH]

Nobody but Iowa and Our Liberal Media cares about Iowa’s “first in the nation” status.

[OtisAH]

And caucuses are ass.

[apedad]

Column: That big tech exodus out of California turns out to be a bust

“Wannabe innovation hubs from coast to coast have been slavering over the prospect that the work-from-home revolution triggered by the COVID pandemic would finally break the stranglehold that California and Silicon Valley have had on high-tech jobs.

Here’s the latest picture on this expectation: Not happening.

They found that although the pandemic brought about some changes in the trend toward the concentration of tech jobs in a handful of metropolitan areas, the largest established hubs as a group ‘slightly increased their share’ of national high-tech employment from 2019 through 2020. (Emphasis theirs.)

There are the superstar metro areas: Silicon Valley and San Francisco; New York; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Seattle-Tacoma; Los Angeles; and Austin. Next come ‘rising stars’: Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, San Diego, Miami, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Orlando. Finally, everywhere else.

The superstars increased their share of total tech employment by 0.3% during the pandemic — less than the increase of 1.4% they experienced in 2015-2019, but still positive. The rising stars as a group increased their share by 0.1%, down from 0.5% in the earlier period. Both gains came at the expense of other would-be hubs.

Actually, California’s property taxes are the 36th-highest in the nation; Texas, Vranich’s home state, ranks seventh, with an effective rate more than twice California’s. Thanks to Proposition 13, California is notorious for, if anything, having low real estate taxes.”

So bottom line, while tech folks might have permanently moved out of the office, they still stayed in their communities where all the urban amenities one can find in San Francisco, New York, Boston, etc.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-23/california-tech-exodus-was-a-bust

[wreckinball]

Except actual moving statistics say otherwise. Maybe look at something other than the LA Times

[apedad]

This was specific to techies.

[Michael P]

I'm not sure that stopping that data series at the end of 2020 gives the full picture. That was about when "the great separation" stories started really stepping up, and more companies were formalizing policies on remote work.

[Krayt]

Don't Google "Which state has the highest income taxes."

Tbh property taxes are a bigger chunk of change than state income taxes usually.

But California toys with an exit tax, to punisb people for the temerity of fleeing them and their Good Works.

[BillyG]

How many techies are actually benefiting from Prop 13? Last I checked, they were too new to their rented apartments to benefit.

[BillyG]

Sorry, did I say apartments? I meant tents.
https://www.inman.com/2015/06/30/silicon-valley-airbnb-host-successfully-rents-backyard-tent-for-46night/

[wreckinball]

We are approaching 14 months of indefinite detainment of the J6 political prisoners and still not a word out of Professor Volokh.

We just had an article about how the defendant using racial slurs effects their justice but nothing about political view point

Does Nick forbid it? Really strange

[Sarcastr0]

I'll bet SOROS is the one forbidding it.

[LawTalkingGuy]

The Venn diagram between people who say January 6th defendants in pretrial detention are political prisoners and people loudly opposed to bail reform or other criminal law reform is a perfect circle.

[Ben_]

Thanks for making it 100% clear to everyone that you guys aren’t serious when you pretend to care about criminal defendants or anyone mistreated by the criminal justice system.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Story time: there once was a woman who was arrested by police on an outstanding traffic warrant from another state, even though the police were actually called on a simple welfare check. She was taken to jail strapped into a restraint chair even though she wasn’t resisting, and then pepper-sprayed right in the face. All right on video. Do you know what the tenor of the comments on the online news story were like? “Guess she shouldn’t have committed a crime.” And it’s not an isolated incident. We hear it all the time.

This is the system that was created prior to January 6th. And is still continuing. People being brutalized all across the nation in pretrial detention for some bullshit….and citizens either being indifferent or actually supportive of it!

Are there pro-carceral democrats and liberals? Yes. They suck and I can’t stand them. But there are still plenty who aren’t including me. I’m just noting that people on the right have spent years and years creating, supporting, and enforcing this type of system! And now they’re complaining because it finally bit people they liked on the ass. Hedging on future dangerousness in bail decisions? That’s pure “law and order” crap. Prosecutors Over-charging felonies for things that are at best minor misdemeanors? Law and order crowd again. Crazy long federal sentencing guidelines? Law and order. Putting judges in power who had to be “tough on crime.” Law and order. Endless delays for trial while the prosecutors get to engage in discovery games and defense attorneys are overworked? It’s the law and order system. Bad conditions in pretrial detention? Law and order again. Like my story from earlier: “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” is the refrain when someone raises bad conditions in a jail.

And are the conservatives suddenly awaken to the possibility the system they created sucked? NO! They’re claiming these people are special, they’re “political prisoners.” The system isn’t supposed to hurt people like THEM! So I’m sorry if I’m gonna scoff a little at people crying about January 6th who haven’t ever and won’t ever engage with broader structural issues.

[Queen Amalthea]

Self-awareness is not something Ben has to to worry about!

[Bob from Ohio]

The Venn diagram between people who say January 6th was an insurrection and people loudly supporting bail reform or other criminal law reform are two circles that don't overlap.

[LawTalkingGuy]

So you’re saying that true criminal justice reform proponents don’t call January 6th an insurrection? Is that right? That seems like not something you would want to say.

[Sarcastr0]

LOL, Bob, those two are not in tension. Unlike the reverse, which is special pleading.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I think there actually is a case to be made that criminal justice reform proponents are too quick to go into "carceral liberalism" when it comes to January 6th, and are thus hypocritical. But if he wanted to say that he should have said: the Venn diagram of bail reform proponents and people calling January 6th an insurrection that must be harshly punished is a perfect circle. Instead his attempt to do a clever reversal resulted in a misunderstanding of Venn diagrams and negated his point. You hate to see it.

[Bob from Ohio]

Yes, I screwed up my diagrams.

[Sarcastr0]

Oh yeah, IMO the proper position is that there should be no exceptions for the Jan 06 people, but that the outrages are legit, and cry out for systemic reform.

No special pleading, that diverts energy away from general reform.

[John F. Carr]

I support bail reform and I don't call January 6 an insurrection. However, I am smaller than one pixel on your diagram and you won't notice the difference.

[Bored Lawyer]

Question -- what happened to the right to a speedy trial, and the Speedy Trial Act?

Their lawyers should demand an immediate trial, every working day.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Answer: the last 50 years of case law and criminal trial practice all across the country got rid of it. Also these defendants are certainly signing time-waivers as happens in lots and lots of cases.

[Sarcastr0]

As LTG said, Crim Pro tells a pretty sad tale on this front.

[Moderation4ever]

Clearly you were not listening to the KJB confirmation hearings. Criminals need to be locked up. How many Republicans Senators made this case? Most if not all.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"Criminals" actually need a trial

[Moderation4ever]

I hope you include those in Guantanamo Bay. Because Linsey Graham seem happy enough to let those people stay there till, they die. Trial or no trial.

[Bob from Ohio]

All they deserve is a bullet.

[Sarcastr0]

Once again Bob shows he doesn't care about fact-finding or due process.

[Bob from Ohio]

Its been 20 years. No facts left to find.

I do care about due process. A bullet is the process they are due.

[LawTalkingGuy]

It's been twenty years because the federal government has insisted on using a conflict ridden kangaroo military court system instead of a federal courtroom like they could of. Oh they also tortured people, including through sexual abuse, and that is why they wanted it out of normal process.

If the Bush admin and Congress had respected due process in the first place: these trials would be over, the guilty would be in a supermax, and KSM and other likely would have been executed.

But they just had to put children in indefinite detention and sexually abuse and torture the adult inmates. (You lucked out that there was less credible evidence of torture and sexual abuse of the minors detained by the US, although something tells me you would not care a lick how many children were forcibly sodomized as long as you considered them enemies). Sadism was put ahead of justice and we all paid the price.

"I do care about due process. A bullet is the process they are due."

Once again, I am asking you to resign your law license. You have zero respect for the law or this profession and you bring disrepute to us all.

[Bob from Ohio]

Whatever.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Zero response because you know I’m right. Classic Bob.

[Bob from Ohio]

"because you know I’m right."

No, its because I don't care what you think.

Get over yourself. You are just a nag.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“You are just a nag.”

If nag is the worst you can come up with in response to a clear indictment of your character then I’d say it’s pretty clear you know I’m right. Like saying your spouse is nagging you to do some chores. You know the chores need done and can only come up with stop nagging in response.

In any event better to be a “nag” than an immoral person and a disgrace to the legal profession.

[Bob from Ohio]

I just decline to address your freshman dorm level rants.

[LawTalkingGuy]

You decline because you know you can’t. You hate that someone has finally made pointed destructions of your self-image as a moral person and a good lawyer: you are neither and it grates on you that someone has finally called you out on it. You’re just lucky I’m not a judge or disciplinary counsel.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Oh. And at least freshmen know how Venn diagrams work. You aren’t even good at insults.

[Bob from Ohio]

"You’re just lucky I’m not a judge or disciplinary counsel."

Everyone is.

[LawTalkingGuy]

If by everyone you me awful and immoral people who don’t believe in basic fairness and believe lying is a morally acceptable way to achieve results, then sure.

[Moderation4ever]

You are so right here. These cases should have been processed and closed long ago. These defendants should be in prisons and tax payers should not be paying for the Cuba facilities. But for politicians this would have happened.

[Sarcastr0]

That's not how facts work.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Once again Bob shows he doesn't care about fact-finding or due process..."

You think we should let them go?

[LawTalkingGuy]

No. They should have normal federal trials like we’ve done with terrorists before and since. They should be confident in the strength of their cases even if evidence obtained using torture or other illegal methods is excluded.

[Sarcastr0]

What bullshit false choice is that? Let them go or shoot them?!

I expect that shit from Bob, but come on TiP, don't suck quite so hard.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Lol. They've been locked up for like 20 years without trial. Due process is kind of moot at this point.

And I'm not sure why you're shitting on Bob when your guy in the White House is giving them the same amount of Due Process Bob is.

So again, should we let them go?

[Sarcastr0]

Again, your false choice is false.

And yeah, Biden should get the process moving on them; it's a black eye on America.

Did you think I'd flip because I didn't want to criticize Biden? That may be how you roll with Trump, but that's not really how I work.

[TwelveInchPianist]

KSM have been held for about 20 years with no trial. Do you think a trial now would cure the last 20 years?

We don't appear to be capable of giving many of them due process, do we? So again, if we're not going to give them due process, should we let them go?

[not guilty]

The January 6 pretrial detainees are not political prisoners, nor are they indefinitely detained. A small fraction of those charged are being detained pending trial. Each has had an adversarial hearing with a panoply of procedural rights, resulting in a finding of risk of flight or threat to public safety.

Speedy trial issues are in play. Those who are confined have a higher priority for trial than those who have been released pending trial. I suspect that some would rather have a determination that a speedy trial has not been afforded than to have a trial.

[Queen Amalthea]

Looks like there's going to be a formal Academy investigation into the Will Smith slap. I think he should have been escorted from the building immediately following it. Whether he should be kicked out of the Academy or lose his Oscar I don't know.

https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/will-smith-slap-incident-under-review-by-academy-after-oscars-2022/

[Illocust]

He should not lose his Oscar. He won it based on acting ability, not being a good person. He should have probably been escorted out by security. But I'm not shocked a powerful A lister wasn't.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Looked pretty fake to me. But I take it that if the whole thing was staged probably would have come out by now.

These are the same people that give child rapists awards though and hang out with pedophiles so what do you expect. Hardly the moral barometer America needs.

[Queen Amalthea]

Ever the conspiracy theorist...

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yeah, imagine actors acting. Pshaw...

[Sarcastr0]

You appear to be conflating movies and reality to make a tepid own.

Skeptical? Sure, Hollywood does some weird stuff.

Being certain it's fake? That is indeed some truther nonsense.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sarcastro:
"Skeptical? Sure, Hollywood does some weird stuff.
Being certain it's fake? That is indeed some truther nonsense."

Jimmy:
"Looked pretty fake to me. But I take it that if the whole thing was staged probably would have come out by now."

That reads a lot more like skepticism than certainty to me, Sarcastro.

Two tepid owns in one thread! Does it get any better?

[Brett Bellmore]

I was a lot more inclined to think he might have faked it, before he resigned from the academy.

[Bored Lawyer]

What's the investigation going to be? He slapped him after he insulted his wife. Unless they think it's fake, there is not much to investigate.

[Voize of Reazon]

To stop this before it becomes a trend the Oscars should encourage open carry.

[John F. Carr]

...of prop guns. Is it loaded? Only the armorer knows for sure. Strike that, even the armorer doesn't know. Do you feel lucky?

[Jimmy the Dane]

Seems to work of Alec Baldwin.....

[Sarcastr0]

Reading 'FDR' by Jean Edward Smith.

Seeing a bunch of well reviewed biographies, I went with the longest one that had over 4.5 stars.

Well, that was not the best idea. It's interesting enough, but more a collection of set pieces connected by long lists of people or recitation of exact vote counts.
No interstitial tissue, no how or why analysis. So you get FDR's new deal ideas springing up from nowhere when he's governor of NY, and the Democratic opposition to him in the 1932 primary has no explanation.

Doesn't hold a candle to the Caro Johnson bios or the Teddy trilogy by Edmund Morris.

Still, it's interesting enough I'll finish it. But in a year I'll probably need to read another. H.W. Brands's looks good.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

A while ago I read James McGregor Burns two-volume biography, which was okay but not great. I haven't read Brands' bio yet, but I've read other Jean Edward Smith biographies and wasn't impressed. The Doris Kearns Goodwin book isn't a complete biography, but it's very good. You've probably read it already.

[apedad]

Public Service Announcement for Forced-Reset Trigger Owners

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) recently examined devices commonly known as “forced reset triggers” (FRTs) and has determined that some of them are
“firearms” and “machineguns” as defined in the National Firearms Act (NFA), and “machineguns” as defined in the Gun Control Act (GCA).

https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/open-letter/all-ffls-mar-2022-open-letter-forced-reset-triggers-frts/download

I'm not taking a position on this but just giving you owners a heads up.

One comment I read said, even though the ATF letter says to contact them if you have questions, that you should NOT contact them because it's possible/likely you would be admitting to a crime if you do indeed own one.

[Brett Bellmore]

A predictable next step after they were shocked by the bump stock ban being upheld. Once the actual text of the law doesn't matter, an agency like the BATF is going to push things until they meet push back from the courts, which has been absent so far.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I do not own any, but thank you for the notice.

[Brett Bellmore]

Normally triggers are spring loaded to the reset position; If you continue to apply pressure after pulling the trigger, it does not reset until you release that pressure.

Forced reset triggers override that finger pressure, and *force* the trigger back to the reset position against your finger's force. So that, in theory, you could apply continuous pressure, and get the repeated movements of the trigger that cause continuing firing.

Your finger would still have to repeatedly move to actuate the trigger, which is why no prior administration tried to argue this position.

But they were shocked by the courts actually buying into their bump stock argument, and have reevaluated how goofy they can get with their legal interpretations and still get away with it. So, under the radically anti-gun Biden administration, they're going to start issuing one stupid ruling after another to administratively enact gun controls the legislature didn't enact.

And it will continue until the courts push back. Which is not, regrettably, something the courts are typically interested in doing when it comes to guns.

[apedad]

Selecting your Gender Marker on US Passports

You can select the gender marker you would like printed on your U.S. passport. The gender you select does not need to match the gender on your supporting documentation such as a birth certificate, previous passport, or state ID. We no longer require medical documentation to change the gender marker on your U.S. passport.

Beginning April 11, 2022, you can select male (M), female (F), or unspecified or another gender identity (X) as your gender marker if you are applying for a U.S. passport book and selecting routine service. Beginning in late 2023, you will be able to select X as a marker if you are seeking a passport card or selecting expedited service.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-passport/selecting-your-gender-marker.html

[Krayt]

"It is your responsibility to obey local laws corresponding to your gender, such as burkas and not leaving the house without a male relative escort. Keep in mind your declared gender may not be recognized. This is not a game."

[TwelveInchPianist]

I'm not sure why we need to mark how people feel about themselves in relation to the gender roles of our society on their passports.

They should simply drop the "sex" category.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I think "sex" should exist, but "gender" should not. A passport is used to identify, and one of those is still typically useful for identification.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sure. But if it's not "sex", there's no reason to have it.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Looking forward to the next glut of articles about how intolerant countries are deporting or not admitting aliens who have either an obviously wrong sex or that don't recognize sex "X"....

[Bored Lawyer]

It has become apparent that the current president's ability to function as president is compromised. Or at least there are serious questions about it. The 25th Amendment does not seem to be working, probably because it requires the VP and either (a) the majority of the cabinet or (b) the majority of a body created by Congress. Not even sure Congress has done that.

Not sure what mechanism would be better that would not be captured by partisan interests. But if there is an issue that needs addressing, likely by Constitutional amendment, this is it.

[OtisAH]

We’re going to table this discussion until he starts eating paper.

[Bored Lawyer]

OK. So bringing us to the brink of nuclear war with loose talk is not enough. You need paper eating.

[Ben_]

Dems care about stories.

Trump was going to cause nuclear holocaust in the Dems' storytelling, and they took that story seriously and ignored the actual, overwhelmingly positive international policy events that happened for four years.

Now they want to talk about stories about Trump eating paper so they can ignore the overwhelmingly negative international policy events happening in the last year or so.

It will always be stories with them.

[Queen Amalthea]

Remember after the insurrection when Ben posted so much about divisive talk?

He was and is never serious.

[OtisAH]

We’re on the brink of nuclear war, are we? And you say it’s the potus who brought us here? Fascinating.

[Commenter_XY]

OtisAH, several of POTUS Biden's comments about removing Putin from power were extremely ill-advised. It is one thing to say something like that regarding the leader of some small, pissant country that does not have nukes. Quite another to say that regarding a leader of a country with lots of nukes.

Misunderstandings create miscalculations. I would not say we are at the brink, but I would say several of the cuff comments from POTUS Biden were notably unhelpful.

[Sarcastr0]

This is a far cry from Bored Lawyer 'UnPresident this man for bringing us to the brink due to his incapacity!'

[Bored Lawyer]

Several of his comments are the equivalent of waiving around a lit torch at a gasoline station. Sorry, his comments have been reckless. As CommenterXY said, it would be one thing if this was about some minor power. It's not. No matter how much we despise Putin, his country is still a force to be reckoned with.

[Sarcastr0]

No, your threat assessment is on the fritz; the risk of nuclear war did not perceptibly increase with this statement, inconvenient though the statement was.

[Sarcastr0]

Meanwhile what's the leader of the GOP doing?

But that's fine, lets reelect that guy!

[John F. Carr]

According to a recent headline, Trump has denied calling Putin a genius.

[bernard11]

Eminently credible.

To some.

[bernard11]

Several of his comments are the equivalent of waiving around a lit torch at a gasoline station.

Almost as bad as calling the USSR an "evil empire," I'd say.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I'm torn, because both Biden and the commenters here criticizing him seem equally idiotic to me.

[OtisAH]

He made two such comments. He said Putin is a war criminal, which, yes, Putin is a war criminal. And he said Putin should be removed from power, which, yes, Putin should be removed from power.

I also note that about three weeks ago poor sweet innocent, yet still manly macho alpha Putin, put his forces on elevated nuclear status. Big Mean Biden and our NATO allies refused to take the bait. I only mention it as another example of Ol’ President Weaky McGrampa’s unstable warmongering and his No Fair! treatment of the non aggressive Russian despot.

[dwb68]

If I were a cabinet member or chief of staff, would I rather do my own thing with little to no oversight, or vote to remove Biden and thereby be controlled by Harris (who is likely to exercise a lot more oversight).

The whole 25th amendment argument for Biden (and before that, Trump) is grossly exaggerated. People get what they vote for. They knew Biden had cognitive issues and was gaffe-prone. He spend the entire campaign in a Bunker for a reason. Let them live with him for 3 more years and reap the fruits of their bad choice.

[Queen Amalthea]

"They knew Biden had cognitive issues"

What's it like being a total tool?

[Brett Bellmore]

What's your point? Literally everybody is aware Biden has had cognitive issues for a long time. The guy has a history of brain bleeds, for crying out loud! Heck, just being his AGE is a cognitive issue, which is the reason I don't think Trump should run in 2024.

It's not for nothing he refuses to take any kind of cognitive test. It's because he either knows or fears what the result would be.

[Krayt]

The 25th Amendment does not seem to be working, probably because it requires the VP and either (a) the majority of the cabinet or (b) the majority of a body created by Congress. Not even sure Congress has done that.

That is the 25th Amendment working...exactly as intended.

Forced removal of the president is a drastic thing, and should only be done if he is truly wonky, which means his supporters agree, not just his political opponents.

[dwb68]

Right. "Save me from voters bad choices" is not a proper use of the 25th amendment. Biden has not changed since the general election. People simply have buyers remorse. Too bad, so sad.

[Krayt]

Of course that ignores this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=k6u3YvvvgjQ

[Krychek_2]

That Trump wasn't removed pursuant to the 25th Amendment indicates just how high a bar there is.

[Brett Bellmore]

All it shows is that Democrats never had a case against him that persuaded anybody who wasn't already hostile to him. And "the opposing party hates him" isn't a cause for removal under the 25th amendment.

[Sarcastr0]

It has become apparent that the current president's ability to function as president is compromised

Well, if FOX News says so...

[Bored Lawyer]

Which I never watch. Try again.

[apedad]

Tell us BL where you get your factual, amazing news so we can all be enlightened.

Or is it simply your brilliant analysis of available information that puts you above everyone else?

[Bored Lawyer]

Did Biden say that Putin must be removed, or not?

Yes, I know it was walked back a few minutes later (or blamed on his being Irish, guess ethnic slurs are back in vogue), but it was a reckless act.

[John F. Carr]

That was about the only time I liked him as President. He's right. We could negotiate away "Putin hanged for war crimes" in a peace deal but that should be our starting offer.

[Sarcastr0]

The issue is not with that fact, it's with your interpolation to 'Biden must be removed from the Presidency.'

Fainting couch nonsense.

[Bored Lawyer]

So that means your reference to Fox News (which I don't watch anyway) was utterly irrelevant snark.

[Sarcastr0]

It was a reference to your take being more partisan than factual.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yeah. What could he possibly have been thinking when he told the 82nd Airborn that they were going to Ukraine?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

It has become apparent that the current president's ability to function as president is compromised. Or at least there are serious questions about it.

Apparent to whom?

[Longtobefree]

Of course, there is the obvious fact that Joe Biden is not functioning as president.
We have no idea who is running the country, but it is not Basement Bunker Biden.
Here is the fun part; Kamala would replace ol' Joe and become president, next in line is that great thinker and orator Petulant Pelosi, next we have the statesman known as Chuckles, followed by the cabinet in no particular order. From Nattering Nancy on down, they would be acting president, not president of the USA.
Think that through.
The 25th is working because no one wants to sign a piece of paper saying they want to put any of those people in charge instead of the one the voters elected. They will leave mumbles in there and blame the voters for the disasters.

[ragebot]

Getting rid of Biden via 25A is not a real option given who would wind up replacing. It is not out or the realm of possibilities that Harris would ask for a meeting with Putin and break out the knee pads; and don't get me started about Nancy.

Truth be told same goes for Putin. Not saying Putin always acts like he has enough tacos to make a combo platter but from what I have seen the favorite to replace him is a long term KBG guy who has an even bigger distrust of the West than Putin does.

Like they say about the big dance; dance with who brung you.

[Ben_]

Kamala is ridiculous and there are more and more indications that Joe won’t be able to continue until 2025. Who is the respectable Democrat that would replace Kamala to be President when Joe's day comes?

Howard Schultz is respectable and was exploring a run in 2020. He’s the best one I can think of. Jared Polis of Colorado might not be completely nuts. Any thoughts?

Any Dem leaders from solid blue states are more-or-less completely untested seat-fillers like Kamala was in 2020. We can see the results of that choice.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Delusional, bigoted wingnuts are among my favorite culture war casualties.

Many Volokh Conspiracy fans get extra points for being autistic incels.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I'm very happy that Dems have begun using "autistic" as an insult. Even if it is just the retarded Dems like Kirkland.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

It explains some of the social awkwardness and general disaffectedness of white right-wing males. Should we ignore the number of IT desk jockeys among the right-wingers who aren't half-educated hayseeds?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"It explains some of the social awkwardness and general disaffectedness of white right-wing males."

Of course. Just like you being retarded explains most of your comments.

[Sarcastr0]

Not surprised you'd generalize based on one comment to Dems generally.

You really seem to enjoy that fallacy.

[TwelveInchPianist]

It's Queen Amalthea too. And it's repeated, not just one comment.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I repeat it because a substantial volume of the comments at this white, male, grievance-consumed blog are contributed by autistic, antisocial right-wingers this blog attracts.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Always interesting to hear the retarded perspective.

[Sarcastr0]

Damn, well then you'd better generalize even harder!

[John F. Carr]

As a serving Vice President, setting aside the "heartbeat away" problem, what's wrong with Kamala Harris? She is seen in public often enough to remind us she is alive. Her husband makes the news occasionally, and not in an embarrassing way. She has no policy input that I can see. Her voting record in the Senate is the same as any other Democratic Vice President's would have been.

[Longtobefree]

The biggest thing in her favor is that she could not then break senate ties.

[BillyG]

My bet is CA Gov Gavin Newsom. We'll see how he does in this years election against Michael Shellenberger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger

[Ben_]

Newsom is a solid blue state leader. He doesn’t seem like as much of an airhead as Kamala, but getting elected in a solid blue state isn’t much of a test of anything.

That’s why Hillary ran in New York: no political talent needed and a friendly press means all she had to do was make some deals and not make any career-ending blunders.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

" getting elected in a solid blue state isn’t much of a test of anything "
Getting elected in many red states is like becoming class president at a relatively large high school -- the key is attracting votes from a relatively small population of people who have a long way to go before they could be considered educated and mature.

[ragebot]

One reason Trump did as well as he did the first time around is like him or not everyone knew his name. To some extent this is what keeps him at the head of the pack for 2024.

Problem for the dems is all the names of dems everyone knows are not really in contention. AOC and Bernie are like Trump in that like them or not everyone knows their name. Hilary may be the best of the bunch in that respect but her baggage weighs more than Stacy Abrams.

I have seen some Hollywood types like the Rock mentioned but doubt he has the political horsepower to be a serious contender.

Bottom line is that the dems have a very weak bench to pick from.

[Ben_]

Agreed. The Dems have almost no one with any chance to appeal to even 50% of the country.

But it’s not about an election yet. It’s about filling out Biden's term with someone with a shred of credibility. That excludes Kamala. Pelosi is ancient and won’t be speaker in 2023.

[Brett Bellmore]

The current geriatric leadership at the federal level basically fratricided the next generation of up and coming Democrats, to secure their positions against challenge. The result was this big age/experience gap, a missing cohort of politicians.

Compounding this is that leftward lurch of the party has taken the obvious candidates, Democratic governors of moderate states, and thrown them into political purgatory. None of them really pass ideological muster with the party anymore.

For better or worse the GOP didn't do the same thing, so they have a full bench.

[Ben_]

Leftists continue to complain loudly about not being able to teach very young children about sex in government schools. Is this an indication that:

A. Dems somehow think this is a winning issue for them?
B. Dems have given up on all near future elections?
C. Dems think that elections are won at the counting table and their power is assured despite actual voting?
D. Dems have poor message discipline on this topic?
E. Something else?

[Ben_]

Maybe the answer is F for fundraise and forget. Dems need to fundraise from Silicon Valley and entertainment industry people who don’t care about children right now. And Dems think they can get the public to forget about the issue before the election.

[Josh R]

E. Almost no one wants to teach very young children about sex in government schools. The right has erected a straw man in the hope it will drive a wedge into the left. It might just work.

[Ben_]

Hmm. G for Gaslighting.

If it’s really something that never happens then all the complaints about the law make no sense at all. And continuing to complain over and over communicates to the public the exact opposite of what you’re saying.

If that were actually true and Dems actually fall for this stuff that hard then Republicans should pass a law making it illegal to serve dog meat in school cafeterias. Dems can spend months wailing about how unfair the dog meat prohibition is.

[bernard11]

Actually, it's the business about "age-appropriate," which is not in any way restricted by age or defined that is a major concern.

It's an open invitation to persecute teachers who who dare to mention subjects the theocrats don't like.

[Ben_]

Schools don’t exist for the benefit of teachers so that concern seems beside the point.

I’ve seen several complaints that were focused on the under-8-years-old part of the law.

Either way though, the point was that it seems like a huge loser issue for Dems and I wonder why they keep bringing it up.

[Bob from Ohio]

"I wonder why they keep bringing it up."

Their staffs are filled with radicals. They also think social media reflects reality.

[Ben_]

So that would be choice D, bad message discipline.

[BillyG]

I've seen videos of teachers referring to students as their children. Depending on interpretation, they could be treating the students as the teachers having taken over the parenting responsibility. Look at the actions of a number teachers in certain cases and this makes sense.

[Commenter_XY]

Josh R....are you referring to the recent FL law? = Almost no one wants to teach very young children about sex in government schools. The right has erected a straw man in the hope it will drive a wedge into the left.

[Josh R]

Yes, I am. The complaints over the law are because it is hopelessly vague and as such almost certainly outlaws far more than teaching about sex. For example, does the law prohibit a teacher from using a children's book that features a same-sex couple raising a child?

[Commenter_XY]

Yeah, I get what you're saying. At what point does 'sexualizing children' actually begin? And what exactly is sexualizing children? Those are tough questions, no easy answers.

I gravitate to the Potter Stewart standard: I know it when I see it. 🙂

As a parent, I also know that I do not want schools teaching sexual content of any kind in grades K-2 (ages 5-7). That seems totally out of bounds, and really it is the job of the parent to address that kind of question; not the school (at least, for young children aged 5-7).

[Sarcastr0]

If only the law provided such a bright line...seems to me the only reason it would not would be if it wanted to make mischief.

[Bob from Ohio]

"law provided such a bright line"

The law in fact does provide a bright line for K-3.

[Sarcastr0]

'For K-3'...other than that, how was the show Ms. Lincoln?

[Bob from Ohio]

XY said:

"As a parent, I also know that I do not want schools teaching sexual content of any kind in grades K-2 (ages 5-7). That seems totally out of bounds, and really it is the job of the parent to address that kind of question; not the school (at least, for young children aged 5-7)."

Your response was "If only the law provided such a bright line". It does so your response was nonsensical.

Leave Mrs. Lincoln out of it.

[Sarcastr0]

Bob, drawing a line, and then saying other stuff that seems on the other side might be over that line is not actually drawing a bright line.

You know this. You play semantic games because you'd rather be right than correct.

[Bob from Ohio]

"saying other stuff that seems on the other side might be over that line is not actually drawing a bright line."

Huh?

Law forbids certain type of instruction in certain grades. Its perfectly clear.

[Sarcastr0]

Josh showed how that type of instruction is itself ambiguous.

But as to my point, the law may or may not forbid that instruction for other grades than the ones it specifies. So the law is not drawing a bright line.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Josh showed how that type of instruction is itself ambiguous."

No he didn't. Why would showing a same-sex couple be a discussion of sexual orientation but showing a mom and dad not be?

[Josh R]

At what point does 'sexualizing children' actually begin?

I hope you realize the crafters of this law don't care. They only wanted a faux issue (can anyone give examples of Florida schools "sexualizing children") for political gain.

[Commenter_XY]

You know Josh R, it could be a legitimate concern expressed by millions of Floridians.

Are there some politics involved? Hell yes.
Is the law complete bullshit? Hell no.

[Josh R]

Can you please provide an example that is a legitimate concern which justifies this law?

[TwelveInchPianist]

One concern is that teachers will not provide complete and accurate instruction about the various views and issues surrounding sex and gender identity, and instead teach a controversial approach invented by activists to achieve a particular result.

Since K-12 instruction is government speech, it would be perfectly appropriate to require teachers to instruct children that boys have penises, women have vaginas, and that's the end of the matter.

This bill seems like a compromise.

[Josh R]

it would be perfectly appropriate to require teachers to instruct children that boys have penises, women have vaginas, and that's the end of the matter.

That strikes me as indoctrination, as opposed to properly teaching "the various views and issues surrounding sex and gender identity." I can't see how this law does anything to achieve this laudable latter goal.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"That strikes me as indoctrination..."

You can certainly argue that, although it's the traditional way we've viewed sex and not a theory invented by activists to achieve ends (the deconstruction of gender) that they consider socially desirable.

But for better or worse, the public gets to decide how to indoctrinate public school students.

And K-3 kids are too young for a comprehensive view of all the gender stuff, so if you don't want to do anything that might be considered indoctrination, you may as well just wait.

[Josh R]

But for better or worse, the public gets to decide how to indoctrinate public school students.

Of course, that's true. However, the advocates for this law ought to be honest and say that's what they are doing.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Of course, that's true. However, the advocates for this law ought to be honest and say that's what they are doing."

But that's not what they're doing. They're telling teachers they can't teach it, at least to K-3 kids.

[Josh R]

I asked for an example that is a legitimate concern which justifies this law. Your reply was to advance anti-trans indoctrination in grades 4-12, which doesn't strike me as legitimate.

That being said, please provide an example that is a legitimate concern in K-3 which justifies this law. A citation to actual teaching would be a good idea.

[Ben_]

A legitimate concern is that if 5-year-olds start talking about sexual topics, that’s at least a yellow flag that a 5-year-old might be getting abused. Then you’d want to investigate to make sure the kid isn’t being mistreated.

Anyone who wants to introduce sexual topics to a 5-year-old doesn’t have the kids' best interest in mind.

If it never, ever happens then the law has zero effect and there’s nothing to complain about.

[Brett Bellmore]

"That strikes me as indoctrination, as opposed to properly teaching"

We wouldn't even HAVE public schools if the government weren't determined to indoctrinate kids. All we're discussing here is whether they get indoctrinated in mainstream views or fringe views.

[Josh R]

All we're discussing here is whether they get indoctrinated in mainstream views or fringe views.

That's not what proponents of the law say they are doing.

[Josh R]

If it never, ever happens then the law has zero effect and there’s nothing to complain about.

Even though no one can come up with any examples of K-3 kids being taught sexual topics, the law doesn't have a zero effect as my book example shows. I would think libertarians would be skeptical of laws that purport to address problems that don't exist.

[Brett Bellmore]

"I would think libertarians would be skeptical of laws that purport to address problems that don't exist."

I become skeptical that problems don't exist when people vociferously and dishonestly oppose laws that purport to address them.

[Bob from Ohio]

"political gain."

Unpopular laws do not provide political gain.

[Josh R]

Whether this law is popular depends on how people interpret it.

[Ben_]

Not really. Mostly it depends on who cares, in what numbers, and how much do they care.

Parents tend to be very protective of their children. "Interpret" isn't a word that fits such protective impulses very well.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Yup. If people interpret in as a ban on saying the word "gay" people don't like it.

If they interpret as bill that prevents public school teachers from age-inappropriate sex talk, they like it.

[Sarcastr0]

You just outlined a textbook case of void for vagueness, leading to a chilling effect.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"You just outlined a textbook case of void for vagueness, leading to a chilling effect."

Except that only one of those things is what the law actually says, the other is left-wing propaganda.

And the government can chill its own speech if it wants.

[Bob from Ohio]

Nobody, and I mean literally nobody, actually thinks its a ban on saying the word "gay". Its just a bad faith BS argument aimed at conning people.

[Sarcastr0]

Two comments in a row just saying 'nuh-uh' and not much else.

[Ben_]

There's no right to teach young children in a government school. "chilling effect" is a non sequitur in this context.

[Sarcastr0]

Ah yes, the old 'it's not illegal, so it must be okay' dodge.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Ah yes, the old 'it's not illegal, so it must be okay' dodge."

Huh? If teachers are chilled from discussing sex with children because they're concerned that their comments might not be age appropriate, that's both legal and okay.

The law is no more ambiguous than sexual harassment law, which certainly chills a lot of expression in the workplace, and that's expression that's actually protected.

[Ben_]

It "must be ok" because protecting very young children is good.

[Sarcastr0]

Unpopular laws do not provide political gain.

Which is not the issue. Populist bullshit has made for many an awful law in service outrage based on nothing real.

[Ben_]

It's only "awful" if teachers matter and parents and children don't.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"For example, does the law prohibit a teacher from using a children's book that features a same-sex couple raising a child?"

Why would the law prohibit a children's book that features a same-sex couple raising a child any more than it would prohibit using a children's book that features an opposite-sex couple raising a child?

It appears that the dishonest "don't say gay" framing has really colored people's perception of this bill.

[Josh R]

I can't tell whether "Classroom instruction [...] on sexual orientation or gender identity" includes my book, and don't see how you can tell either.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I don't see why it would. Why do you think it might?

Who has ever described a depiction of a married couple in a children's book as a discussion of sexual orientation?

Would the depiction of a single person in a children's book be a discussion of masturbation?

[Josh R]

The norm is an opposite-sex couple raising a child without any consideration of sexual orientation. A depiction of a same-sex couple raising a child raises the question as to why are they doing so. The answer is that gay people get married and raise kids just like straight people do which in turn raises the question of what gay and straight are.

[TwelveInchPianist]

This was hashed out several years ago, when opponents of gay marriage complained that they wouldn't be able to explain to their children that a kid had two dads without discussing butt stuff.

The correct answer was "Just say, 'That kid has two dads.'"

[Sarcastr0]

As Josh pointed out, it is is not clear that would be legal under this law.

[TwelveInchPianist]

People keep saying that, but nobody had supported the claim that it might not be legal.

You guys realize that it doesn't really ban saying "gay" right?

[Sarcastr0]

'Carol has 2 dads' is absolutely something some parents may think is classroom instruction on sexual orientation.

This is not a hard ambiguity to see. Nor is the chilling effect that comes along with.
You're either willfully blind or trolling.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"'Carol has 2 dads' is absolutely something some parents may think is classroom instruction on sexual orientation."

Why would "Carol has 2 dads" be instruction on sexual orientation, but not "Carol has a mom and a dad?"

I think you've internalized too much of the "Don't say gay" propaganda.

[Sarcastr0]

Why would "Carol has 2 dads" be instruction on sexual orientation, but not "Carol has a mom and a dad?"

Because (to these offended parents) heterosexuality is the norm, and schools talking about that isn't teaching anything.
But revealing the existence of homosexuality is instruction about sexual orientation.

Do you really think the consternation among Florida teachers is all bad faith? Because listen to them for a moment before you go off certain this is a cool and good law that cannot go wrong.

[Bob from Ohio]

"(to these offended parents) heterosexuality is the norm"

heterosexuality is the norm, its not an opinion confined to the "offended", its a fact.

norm
noun
1. something that is usual, typical, or standard.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Do you really think the consternation among Florida teachers is all bad faith? Because listen to them for a moment before you go off certain this is a cool and good law that cannot go wrong."

Its bad faith for some, its ignorance because of the bad faith "don't say gay" for most.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Because (to these offended parents) heterosexuality is the norm, and schools talking about that isn't teaching anything."

You get that that's a non-sequitur, right?

[Sarcastr0]

No, TiP.
It explains why the law can forbid one and not the other, because nothing is being instructed about heterosexuality, but many kids may not know homosexuality exists.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"but many kids may not know homosexuality exists."

And if you say "Carol has two dads," the kids still won't know that homosexuality exists. So relax.

[Josh R]

And if you say "Carol has two dads," the kids still won't know that homosexuality exists.

A child asks "why does Carol have two dads?" What is the teacher supposed to say?

[Ben_]

A child asks "why does Carol have two dads?" What is the teacher supposed to say?

Answer: because there are two of them. Kids have people they call their parents. Dad and Mom. It’s often one of each and sometimes only one and sometimes different numbers of one or either. Families vary.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"A child asks "why does Carol have two dads?" What is the teacher supposed to say?"

She can say, "because some kids have two Dads. She can say, "ask your parents." She can say lots of things.

What she can't do is provide classroom instruction about sexual orientation until the 4th grade.

[Josh R]

So, she can't say because they are gay. And this possibility is what the law is designed to prevent?

[Ben_]

How does the teacher know the two dads are gay?

Maybe Carol's mom got divorced and remarried and has a dad and a stepdad. Or Carol was adopted and then her biological father showed up and everyone was cool with him. Why would the teacher want to tell the kids that there’s only one way to get two dads?

[Sarcastr0]

LOL, Ben.

This is where your argument takes you - insisting that two dads may not be gay in some edge case so it's all good.

Not a sign of a robust argument when you need to do that kind of pedantic nonsense.

[OtisAH]

Look at Ben normalizing homosexuality! Good for you, Ben. You go girl!

[Ben_]

They’re all edge cases. The only non edge cases are one mom one dad and a single parent. Every other arrangement is rare.

You guys have a weird fixation on homosexuality for some reason. Stop congratulating people about their life choices or their notions and stop pushing your agenda on innocent kids and their families. Others' lives or views are not a toy for you to manipulate like little kids playing with toy soldiers (before you get bored of it and throw them in the trash).

[M L]

Super common for kids to have and to say that they have two dads when it's a dad and a stepdad.

[M L]

A lot of the objection to the Florida law is in good faith because they want to sexualize children and indoctrinate them on loony gender ideology and the like, and this law prohibits them from doing that. Go on Tik Tok and see these weirdos.

[Josh R]

they want to sexualize children and indoctrinate them on loony gender ideology

Please provide citations for such teachings in Florida schools.

[M L]

"The answer is that gay people get married and raise kids just like straight people do"

Well, not just like straight people do.

"which in turn raises the question of what gay and straight are."

So maybe the depiction of gay couples inherently implicates teaching about graphic sexual matters, is that what you're saying?

[Josh R]

Nothing graphic needed, just that two men or two women can love each other.

[M L]

Well obviously, like brothers and sisters.

[Josh R]

The teacher can say they love each other in the same way a father and mother love each other.

[Brett Bellmore]

" For example, does the law prohibit a teacher from using a children's book that features a same-sex couple raising a child?"

Why would there be a problem if it did? It's not like the teacher has some kind of legal right to do that.

[Sarcastr0]

You know how all these private schools and private social media organizations are doing stuff and you call it censorship even if it's legal?

You're back to the 'it's legal so it's fine' nonsense when defending this bullshit.

[Brett Bellmore]

You know how it's "censorship" if you control other people's speech, and it's only unconstitutional if the government does it, but still objectionable if somebody else does?

But in the case of public school teachers, it's not censorship, because it's not somebody else's speech that's being restricted. It's the government's own speech that the government itself is dictating.

[Josh R]

Why would there be a problem if [the law prohibited a child's book that depicted same-sex parents raising a child]

The law would then be anti-gay, and likely very unpopular.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY

This white, male, right-wing
"legal" blog has operated for

47 DAYS ! ! ! !

without using a vile
racial slur and for

TWO (2) YEARS

without imposing
partisan, hypocritical,
viewpoint-driven censorship.

CONGRATULATIONS, CLINGERS!

[TwelveInchPianist]

I don't know how you'd know that without using the vile racial slur yourself, Arthur.

I always knew you were a closet racist!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You contend that one must use a vile racial slur to read it (repeatedly) at a white, male, bigot-friendly blog?

[TwelveInchPianist]

I contend that you don't read every word posted on the blog, and therefore can't know that it's been 47 days since somebody mentioned the word nigger just by reading.

Face it, Arthur, you are a frequent user of the word "nigger" but you complain about other people using it.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You are lying, you bigoted, half-educated, gape-jawed Republican loser.

I do not use that term. I observe Prof. Volokh and his carefully cultivated collection of right-wing bigots use it regularly, however. I ascribe this to poor judgment, low character, Republican gang-signaling, and seething resentment toward better Americans.

You are right about one thing: I might not catch every vile racial slur published at this downscale clinger blog.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"You are lying, you bigoted, half-educated, gape-jawed Republican loser."

Yeah? How do you know how many days it's been since somebody posted it?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Your lie was the assertion I regularly use a vile racial slur.

Carry on, bitter, bigoted clinger.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Your lie was the assertion I regularly use a vile racial slur."

You use it when you type it into the search box.

I don't believe for a second that you visually scan every word on the blog to make your count.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

This was posted too soon. This white, male blog featured ample publication of a vile racial slur today -- thanks to Nisiiko, the Volokh Conspiracy is largely keeping pace with the 15-times-a-year frequency observed during 2021.

Carry on, clingers.

[TwelveInchPianist]

It was also used in the opinion in the post that Nisiiko was responded to. Posted hours before your 47 days comment.

What gives, Arthur? You're slipping.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

It is difficult to keep up with this white, male, bigoted (or, at least, bigot-friendly) blog's frequent and often gratuitous publication of a vile racial slur.

I wonder whether the UCLA law dean is maintaining a separate log, or merely relying on my count.

Carry on, bitter, bigoted, vanquished clingers.

[Jimmy the Dane]

Was the Will Smith move an Alpha or Beta one? Discuss.

Feminists seem to think it was Smith trying to "re-establish" his Alpha credentials with his wife.

Others think it is "Beta" because only a chump would white knight like that for a woman who is getting pounded by other dudes in an "open relationship".

[Cal Cetín]

He got in one fight and the media got scared.

[Longtobefree]

A sucker punch of a guy smaller than you is not a "fight".
A fight would have been Chris kneeing him in the crotch and throwing him off the stage.
I didn't even know they still did that show, so I kind of missed all but the incessant headlines and the unavoidable clips on all the shows that used to be news. But why did I never see any kind of security trying to move in? By what logic did Will just return to his seat and shout insults? I think the attention whores had a bad year and wanted to be sure there was "chatter" the next day.

[Cal Cetín]

I was paraphrasing the opening song from Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

As for security, I would presume that if one of the hoi polloi started making trouble, security would take them down in a heartbeat.

But invited celebrities, especially prizewinning ones - if I absolutely had to guess, I'd say security has to be very cautious around them.

Tackling Bob, the smelly homeless person who tries to crash the party? No problem.

A security guard messing with a multimillion-dollar superstar? That's more risky.

[Jimmy the Dane]

FYI...it is sort of hard to find in any corporate media report because those all refer to the recent Florida bill merely as the "Don't Say Gay" law but it is actually called House Bill (HB) 1557, Parental Rights in Education.

Also if you wondered how insidious left wing media has become, do a search for this bill name in Google News.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Anyone who figures superstition-laced gay-bashing is going to be a winning political issue in America -- especially in educated, modern, successful, advanced communities -- is probably gullible enough to believe that fairy tales are true.

[Jimmy the Dane]

How is making up things like fake genders not its own form of superstition?

[Longtobefree]

https://babylonbee.com/news/under-florida-law-bengay-forced-to-rebrand-as-benstraight

[Commenter_XY]

Professor David Post

Today is March 31. Who has won our friendly wager? 🙂

[Commenter_XY]

David Post
March.2.2022 at 4:22 pm
Flag Comment Mute User
OK, Commentator_XY, you're on. And celebrating with a consolation drink paid from the winnings for the loser - whoever that may be - sounds like a good idea to me.
I realize there is a definitional problem in defining precisely what "in Ukraine" might mean. I'm happy to leave that somewhat ambiguous for now. By April 1, the Russians will either, by common understanding, have lost - in which case I win - or not, in which case you win. They will have lost if they've pulled their troops back beyond the internationally-recognized border of Ukraine (which does not, at this point, include Crimea) - back, in short, to where they were last Wednesday. We might have to call in an arbitrator in the event that they've pulled *most* (but not all) of their troops out of the eastern provinces; but quite honestly, if that is where we are on April 1, I'll be happy enough to declare you the winner and to pick up the tab for a few glasses of a nice Ukrainian red ...

Professor Post, you make the call and declare a winner

Either way, I'll be honored to share a bottle of red with you. 🙂

[TwelveInchPianist]

"They will have lost if they've pulled their troops back beyond the internationally-recognized border of Ukraine (which does not, at this point, include Crimea) - back, in short, to where they were last Wednesday."

Not that it's related to the bet, but who, other than Russia and maybe a few client states, doesn't recognize Crimea as part of Ukraine?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Older people, like me, who kind of put, "The Charge of the Light Brigade," together with Soviet territorial facts, and always expected Ukraine to struggle against that much weight of history.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Fair enough, but I'm not sure that that's enough to make the Russian annexation "internationally recognized".

[Bob from Ohio]

"They will have lost if they've pulled their troops back beyond the internationally-recognized border of Ukraine (which does not, at this point, include Crimea) - back, in short, to where they were last Wednesday."

He actually though that? Wow. He had no chance of winning the bet.

[Commenter_XY]

🙂

[jb]

It's actually April1! As a neutral observer, I declare Commenter_XY the winner. While Russia has pulled back in a few places, they definitely haven't pulled out of Ukraine's recognized territorial boundaries (including Crimea or otherwise) and don't seem to show any current inclination to do so.

[Commenter_XY]

And that wasn't an April Fool's joke? LOL

Professor Post has to be the guy to declare the winner.

[The Turtle Dove]

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.

Mr. D.

[Commenter_XY]

Nobody entering VC is abandoning hope. 🙂

[Cal Cetín]

Ooh, that's Italian, isn't it? It's probably a tasty pasta dish.

[bernard11]

Sort of like pasta diving Jeter.

Used to be popular in NY.

[not guilty]

The New York Times reports that a grand jury has issued subpoenas that reflect inquiry into, inter alia, whether those who submitted bogus slates of electors to the National Archives committed a crime. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/us/politics/justice-dept-widens-jan-6-inquiry.html

That is encouraging news. It appears to me to be a slam dunk according to 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(3).

[Cal Cetín]

Not the National Archives! This time the Trump people have gone too far!

[Cal Cetín]

Who stores the votes by the Tilden slates of electors from Louisiana, Florida and South Carolina, back in 1876? It's time to make some arrests.

The phony electors may be hard to prosecute right now, technically speaking, but at least we can dig up their graves and incinerate their bones.

[David Nieporent]

That is encouraging news. It appears to me to be a slam dunk according to 18 U.S.C. 1001(a)(3).

Yes, and it's the core of the 1/6 scheme.

[not guilty]

Some false statement prosecutions (or the threat thereof) may develop evidence of Rudy Giuliani's role in promoting a section 1512(k) conspiracy to obstruct, influence or impede the electoral count certification.

[Krayt]

That's really the key. Did they feel they were being honest with their efforts, or did they know the election fraud claim was itself fraud, and just tried to stay inside clever but legally arguable lines in response?

[John F. Carr]

The Pennsylvania folks might get off because their document was explicitly conditional on their being legally chosen in the future. The others wrote without qualification "being the duly elected and qualified Electors."

I'll guess that prosecutors are waiting to build a bigger conspiracy case instead of a plain old false statements case that they could have brought last year.

[not guilty]

Yes, Pennsylvania and I think New Mexico included some kind of disclaimer. I doubt that anyone there will be charged.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Some clingers are lesser than others.

But they're all downscale culture war casualties.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, a while back I cited an election law prof who pointed this out: At least some of the 'fake' electors had legal precedent on their side; Not for being counted, but for not having committed any sort of crime.

But not all of them.

[Cal Cetín]

So what do you think...30 years' imprisonment at hard labor, or would that be too lenient?

[not guilty]

Subject to exceptions not here relevant, the statutory maximum for a section 1001 violation is five years imprisonment. I don't know what the sentencing guidelines range is.

The in terrorem effect of an actual or threatened prosecution may help develop evidence against Giuliani or others in Trump's inner circle of more serious offenses.

[Cal Cetín]

Banish them all to Gyaros, that'll teach them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyaros#Exile_island_during_the_early_Roman_Empire

[Sarcastr0]

LOL you tried a flippant remark, and ng came back with a factual response. So you are going back to the flippancy well again.

[Cal Cetín]

No, he said if they were guilty they could get five years. No facts about why they're guilty, or why prosecute them *now.* You may recall that Biden took office on Jan. 20 of last year, so why the urgency of prosecuting people who claimed to be electors.

Congress considered the rival slates of electors and decided the issue in Biden's favor.

If the putative electors are prosecuted for not being real electors, does the jury have to defer to Congress on that issue? If so, what happened to the right to trial by jury, if Congress can issue binding rulings on facts essential to guilt?

Or is the jury to examine the issue de novo, with the right of deciding whether they were real electors?

[not guilty]

Obviously the prosecution would have the burden of proving every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt, including the falsity of the statement and the culpable mental state. And a jury does have the right of nullification (although they can't be instructed to that effect). There is no such thing as a frivolous criminal defense.

But that having been said, (most) jurors are not stupid.

[Cal Cetín]

I thought Congress had the exclusive authority to count the electoral votes and certify the results.

Yet you would allow juries to second-guess Congress - of course no jury would ever do something so foolish, but the mere fact that you would *authorize* them to do so strikes me as unconstitutional.

Your theoretical framework allows for the possibility of Congress certifying one person as the winner, while one or more juries cast doubt, by their verdicts, on the votes by which victory was achieved.

But if you grasp the other horn of the dilemma, then Congressional factfinding is binding on juries, a result you understandably reject.

Fortunately, in this case (accepting your analysis) guilt is obvious and juries would self-evidently agree with Congress. But what about *other* disputed Presidential elections?

Presumably, we're not operating under some "orange man bad" exception to the Constitution.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Nothing yet from any Volokh Conspirator about the Ginni Thomas revelations and debates?

Too busy flattering bigots and lathering rubes to form an opinion?

Too cowardly to risk riling the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and Justice Thomas?

Maybe it's time to change the subject -- perhaps nip at the ankles of a liberal-libertarian mainstream school for being insufficiently deferential to wingnuts, or whine about how strong, mainstream law schools don't engage in enough affirmative action for movement conservative faculty candidates.

#ConservativeCourage

[Cal Cetín]

She could always have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.

[not guilty]

Martin Ginsburg went into teaching when his wife was appointed to SCOTUS. Jane Roberts retired from practicing law when her husband was appointed Chief Justice of the United States.

Virginia Thomas elected to serve as the Thomas family bagwoman.

[Cal Cetín]

You transphobe, a woman can be a bagman.

[Krayt]

Bagperson

[Krayt]

Bart: Here comes the femail man!
Lisa: Femail person

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

She prefers the letter Q rather than T.

American law schools will teach that Clarence Thomas was an unethical, extremist clinger married to a QAnon-addled, unethical Court profiteer. (A few wingnutty law schools will teach hayseeds that the Thomases were hero warriors for Jesus.)

[Cal Cetín]

Do law schools teach that Taney, McReynolds and Fortas were bad and unethical people? Or will they just single out the black justice?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I recall more than one excoriation of Taney during law school; at least one was detailed, extended, and intense.

It appears Republicans do not have the votes they would need to keep another Black justice off the Court. Another bad day for Republican bigots in modern America.

[Cal Cetín]

What do you think of Taney's Republican replacement?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

People these days don't name kids Salmon enough.

[mydisplayname]

Even the Washington Post now gets it, today penning the headline "Despite Western sanctions, Russian ruble and banks are recovering."

"After tumbling from the shock of sanctions, the Russian ruble has recovered nearly all its value, thanks to oil and natural gas sales."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/31/ruble-recovery-sanctions-russia/

[jb]

Hello Russian bot! It is good that you have time to grace this board.

Of course, the goal of the sanctions isn't to crash the ruble. So while this is interesting news it doesn't really tell us anything about whether they're likely to have their intended effect.

P.S. It's weird that the "quote" that you include does not actually appear in the article.

[Michael P]

Seen on interstate billboard in North Carolina: "EXIT HERE FOR GUNS, AMMO & FREEDOM."

Ah, America, you bring a tear to my eye.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Seen on a local road billboard in North Carolina, "Vote Porcius Crank."

A long time ago, but a true story. I looked it up. Turns out the Crank family enjoyed a storied history along the Virginia/North Carolina border region.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Still pockets of uneducated, superstitious, bigoted, can't-keep-up clingers in backwater North Carolina (and other traitor states).

[Stephen Lathrop]

How many buy the notion that Russia is moving troops because it wants to use them elsewhere? How many think Russia is retreating because it is getting licked? How many think it would be a good idea for Ukrainian forces to advance in pursuit of, "retreating," Russians?

I have two concerns.

The first is for the quality of the news reporting. It could not be more obvious that essentially none of the TV figures with confident-sounding narratives to explain (whatever is happening) has any first-hand knowledge about events, let alone any accurate insight into Russian tactics to account for it. Those confident-sounding narratives are being repeated on air, on behalf of motivated sources who may know more, but probably cannot be counted on to share everything. And who may be mistaken themselves.

The second concern is that I heard somewhere that Russian military doctrine to stop an enemy breakthrough is to use tactical nukes at the nose of the breakthrough, and on the flanks. It is not hard to imagine that a minor withdrawal would precede any such attack.

Of course I hope that second concern proves to be wild speculation. To make that more likely, maybe don't rush to pursue, "retreating," Russians.

[ThePublius]

First, I propose we keep the Thursday Open Thread going until next Thursday, and so on.

Wow, I had not considered that. It would be a world-changing event for the Russians to use nukes of any kind.

[Krayt]

We had to kill the Ukranians to save them from the Nazis!

[ThePublius]

I sincerely don't get that. Please elaborate.

[M L]

I'm not a huge Wordle guy but discovered this in case anyone didn't know:

https://www.antiwordle.com/

[Voize of Reazon]

Neat. I scored 9 guesses today. Any competition out there?

[Stephen Lathrop]

According to the NYT, Russia has put a lot of oil at sea, in tankers apparently looking for markets. If they can find them, are those tankers fair game for Ukrainian attackers? How about refineries—wherever they may be—which accept Russian oil?

[ThePublius]

Anyone still watching this thread?

[ThePublius]

Bummer!