Today, I will have a debate with Berkeley Professor and former Bush Administration lawyer John Yoo at Christopher Newport University’s Center for American Studies (CAS). The debate will cover Free Speech in War and Peace Time. However, the focus will be on the constitutionality and use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This is part of the Constitution Day events at the university.
Continue reading “Turley And Yoo To Debate Surveillance Laws At Constitution Day Event”
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the recent demand by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of material in over a dozen different areas. The most intriguing is likely to be the two documents referenced by Trump personal counsel Ty Cobb in an overheard conversation at a popular D.C. restaurant. The conversation has many in the Beltway scratching their heads and a few smirking. Cobb is an experienced lawyer who sees this investigation as unlikely to produce any compelling basis for a criminal charge. Conversely, White House Counsel Don McGahn is properly concerned with the danger of establishing precedent in the area of executive privilege that could undermine future presidents. Cobb is a bit too experienced in this town to make such an amateurish mistake as discussing loudly an internal fight over the documents in McGahn’s safe — a previously undisclosed dispute. It would certainly be intriguing if the reporter was told to have lunch at BLT and bring his notebook (Technically Cobb did not leak anything in being overheard). It would have been a truly Machiavellian move against McGahn. However, there is no evidence supporting such a theory. Ifthat were the case, the reporter’s story would be highly misleading since he clearly conveyed that this was a pure coincidence and a surprise. Moreover, such an arrangement would be unethical in my view even if Cobb thought it in the best interest of the President. These remain documents under a claim of privilege and presumably there was a decision not to make the disclosure. I am inclined to give Cobb the benefit of the doubt, though that means assuming that he committed a rather rookie error.
Continue reading “The Mystery of Don McGahn’s Safe: The Special Counsel Demand Could Shed Light On Two Mysterious Documents”
Rachel Myrick may not have had the ideal dining experience but she may have the good lawsuit against the Longhorn Steakhouse in Fredericksburg Virginia after being bitten by a highly venomous copperhead snake while walking into the restauraunt.
Continue reading “Longhorn Snakehouse: Virginia Woman Bitten By Venomous Copperhead In Restaurant”
Saudi Sheikh Saad al-Hajari has reportedly come out strongly against the movement to allow women in the Kingdom to drive. Sheikh Saad al-Hajari said that the ban should remain because women possess a “lack of intellect” compared to men. He explained that they have only half the brainpower of males.
Continue reading “Saudi Cleric Declares That Women Lack the Intelligence To Drive”
While the world did not end as announced on Saturday (which has proven an incredible inconvenience for those of us having to teach next week), the Trump travel ban did end on Sunday. When the Supreme Court lifted a significant part of the injunctions imposed on the bans by lower courts, there was a surprising footnote in the short order that I discussed at the time. The Court indicated that the Trump Administration had not asked for an expedited hearing before October. That set the travel ban up for what I described as “planned obsolescence” to expire shortly before the scheduled oral argument.
For years, we have been discussing how airlines have repeatedly misled Congress and the public about baggage fees, which were always an avenue to bilk customers of billions. Now a new report confirms again that this is not about fuel costs or falling revenues. The airlines are continuing to cut space for passengers, add charges for simple comforts, and raising baggage fees as they hit record profits. The U.S. airlines alone pulled in a record $1.2 billion in bag fees and another $737.5 million in reservation change fees in just the second quarter of 2017.
We will be suspending blogging today due to the end of the world as predicted by Christian writer David Meade. While Meade is reportedly now hedging his bets on whether we may survive on September 23rd, I have already told my classes that they may disregard the remainder of the term syllabus. I know that the end may come as something of a bummer for many. However, as stated in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, “if life seems jolly rotten, there is something you’ve forgotten.” There are ten good reasons to welcome the apocalypse.
Continue reading “Notice: Programming Interruption On Saturday For End Of World”
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has become an icon for the left in her unrelenting calls for impeachment of President Donald Trump and tapping into the blind rage across the country. That appeal to the base however took a worrisome turn this week as Waters rallied supporters around the assurance that impeachment is anything they want to say it is. As I stated recently to the Rolling Stones, this view was made popular by Gerald Ford and has been uniformly condemned by constitutional experts. Waters is dismissing the constitutional obligation to find “high crimes and misdemeanors” in assuring supporters that they can simply get rid of Trump on a muscle vote. Political convenience has long been the enemy of constitutional principle, but this effort is highly dangerous for our country as a whole. We are living in an age of rage and Waters’ approach would create an channel to direct that lethal rage into the heart of our political system.
Continue reading “Maxine Waters: “Impeachment Is . . . Whatever The Congress Says It Is””
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has shocked the world with his blood-soaked reign including his orders to police to murder drug suspects and his bragging about his own murders. Thousands of suspected drug dealers have been killed under Duterte. Duterte has mocked those who object to the extrajudicial murders, including teenagers found dead. Now Duterte is telling police to kill his son (who has been implicated in drugs and corruption) is he is found to be involved in the drug trade.
We have been discussing how discrimination and speech regulation have become acceptable in the cause of diversity or equality for many activists. The latest example was seen at the premiere of a new documentary about comedians called “Building the Room.” The director is Sharaz Higgins who implemented “justice pricing” which originally planned to charge cis white men $20 and everyone else $10. After an outcry, he dropped the “privilege price” to $15. He and his colleagues obviously missed the point. The problem was not the price but the discrimination. To make matters worse, Higgins did interviews under a false name, Sid Mohammed, to avoid being attacked for his discriminatory policy.
Johnson & Johnson heiress Jazz Johnson-Merton is unlikely to be on the PETA holiday card list. The 36-year-old heiress shocked onlookers at theHampton Classic Horse Show when she kicked her horse Joe Cool after she was thrown during an exhibition. She is the author of the tongue-in-cheek “Social Climber’s Bible” which will now likely be followed by the “Social Exile’s Bible.”
Ryan Flores, 30, is reportedly planning a tort action against Cregg Jerri, 58, for stabbing him in a California Starbuck. Such a battery lawsuit would make perfect sense after being stabbed 17 times. The problem is that he was stabbed in the course of an armed robbery and Jerri was credited as the hero who ran forward to protect the staff from the gun-touting Flores. The filing would presumably not contest the right to use the privilege of self-defense but argue that Jerri somehow exceeded that authority.
White supremacist Dylann Roof says that he has something of a problem on his hands: he has court-appointed counsel who happen to be Jewish and Indian. He has asked the court to replace Alexandra Yates and Sapna Mirchandani in his appeal of his death sentence for the massacre of nine people in the Emmanuel AME Church during a Bible study in 2015. Roof appears to believe that the right of counsel includes the right to white counsel. It doesn’t. The court should not be a vehicle for racial or religious discrimination to cater to the wishes of a homicidal fanatic. More importantly, that is the view of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Sometimes being a supporter of free speech can be really really really hard. A leading expert of “comparative jurisprudence” and Sunni cleric at al-Azhar University, Dr. Sabri Abdel Raouf, has been placed under review by his university (and ordered by the state media regulator to stay off the air) after dispensing some rather chilling advice on Sharia law and Islamic values. Abdel Raouf had told viewers that it is is permissible under Islamic law for a husband to have sex with his dead wife in what is called “goodbye intercourse.” The action taken by the university and the government highlights the curious line drawn over the discussion of Islam in Egypt. Moreover, it is a rather bizarre example of the debate that we are having in this country over the right of academics to engage in free (and controversial) speech outside of their schools. In this case, both the university and the government have moved to prevent anyone from airing these views as an insult to Islam.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has reinstated the defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone by the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. The decision by Judge Katherine Forrest is an interesting application of the rarely successful “group defamation” claim. The decision comes as the Rolling Stone magazine itself has been put up for sale. As I have previously written, the editors failed on almost every level in the scandal, including failing to fire author Sabrina Erdely for the article alleging the gang rape of a freshman identified as “Jackie” at the University of Virginia. The panel in Elias v. Rolling Stone, 16-2465-cv, consisted of U.S. Circuit Judges José Alberto Cabranes and Raymond Lohier Jr., with U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York sitting by designation. The vote was 2-1.