Texas Tech fans are known for their finger-gun salutes and “Wreck’em slogan.” It appears however that the TSA training does not include such common displays. When Diana Durkin recently returned to the University, she spotted another fan in line at the airport security for William P. Hobby airport in Houston and gave him the Texas Tech salute. She was immediately pulled out of the line by alarmed TSA personnel but after being delayed and questioned, she was allowed (this time) to leave with only a warning.
Sandra Louis Garner, 55, is 
Michael Persaud, 30, appears to have finally merged art and life. The rapper known for his song “Sell Drugsz” has been sentenced to three years in prison for selling drugs.
The erosion of free speech in Russia under Vladimir Putin has been an unfolding tragedy for Russia. As is often the case, the loss of freedom of speech often goes hand-in-hand with the loss of academic freedom. However, the arrest of a Russian historian, Yuri Dmitriev, 61, is particularly chilling and raises legitimate comparisons with the Stalinist period. That is fitting given the fact that Dmitriev is being forced into psychiatric testing after writing about the discovery of thousands of bodies from the 1930s — victims of Joe Stalin. Putin has ordered a revisionist history on Stalin to glorify his reign and downplay the millions killed by the bloodsoaked dictator.
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the filing by Paul Manafort challenging the scope of the Special Counsel investigation. Manafort’s filing of a civil action is quite telling in this circumstance. As a criminal defendant, he can challenge the basis for the charges. This seems like an effort to make a public case with little likelihood of legal success. However, the public tends not to be particularly sympathetic with accused felons complaining that they were arrested by the wrong cop. It is true that Manafort would likely not have been charged absent the Special Counsel investigation. However, that is like complaining about the weather in Washington.
Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is back in the news and it could not be more bizarre. This week Spitzer was 
Adam Hettig, 32, may not have thought out his latest crime with very far. Hettig is accused of robbing a Subway in North Chili, New York while wearing his ankle monitor from the parole office.
Another major case has been thrown out due to prosecutorial abuse by the United States Department of Justice. 
We have been discussing how Germany has led the West in the criminalization of speech, an anti-free speech trend that is now raging in England, France, Canada and other Western nations. Germany has continued its plunge into censorship and criminalization despite the failure of its speech laws to curtail extremism. The most recent case involves a 32-year-old German neo-Nazi who has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for incitement after posting picture of a miniature of the Auschwitz death camp on Facebook with an offensive caption.
Tosten Walsh Lommen, 30, was looking at a serious series of charges after driving drunk and taking South Dakota police on a high-speed chase. However, it became far, far worse when the arresting officers opened his trunk and found a dead woman wrapped in a blanket. The initial charges included a charge that may not be familiar to many on the blog: aggravated eluding.
The New York Times is reporting that Special counsel Robert Mueller has confirmed that President Donald Trump took the extraordinary step of ordering White House counsel Don McGahn to Attorney general Jeff Sessions to prevent him from recusing himself in the Russian investigation. I was one of the earliest voices calling for Sessions to recuse himself and continue to believe that he made the right decision not only for himself and the Justice Department but Trump. The account in the Times states that Trump was irate at hearing that Sessions would follow the advice of his ethics advisors and recuse himself. He allegedly asked why he does not have an Eric Holder or Roy Cohen to protect his interests. If true, it was a grossly inappropriate decision and an even more worrisome analogy. I have been a long critic of Holder and his highly political tenure at the Justice Department. As for Roy Cohen, he is one of the most reviled and disreputable figures in history. It would be akin to a CEO asking where is his Bernie Madoff to protect profits. The accounts is based on two sources that are anonymous and we have not heard from the President. Obviously, McGahn could also deny the truth of the story but we have not heard from either McGahn or Trump’s personal counsel.
I have 
This may be the single most challenging defense that I have seen in years. Counsel for Edwin Greco Wylie-Biggs argued that the police had failed to prove that drugs seized in the state prison at Fayette, Pennsylvania belonged to Wylie-Biggs. The problem is that the drugs were found in his rectum.