The arrest of Stormy Daniels at an Ohio strip club in Columbus raises a credible question of selective enforcement of a 2007 state law called the Community Defense Act. The law prohibits dancers from touching customers and vice versa. It is a law honored mainly in the breach in strip clubs. However, the police appeared ready to pounce on any touch by Daniels and she was taken to the Franklin County Ohio Sheriff’s Office and charged with misdemeanor sex offenses. Update: Charges have now been dropped, though without an explanation of why the string operation and original charges.
Continue reading “Stormy Daniels Arrested Under Rarely Enforced Ohio Law [Updated]”
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Attorneys for former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort have asked a federal judge for a venue change on the rather dubious grounds that Alexandria Virginia is simply too liberal. Manafort wants a jury in Roanoke where there are more Republicans. It is an exceptionally weak motion and would be unprecedented to shift jurisdiction based on the political views of the local electorate as opposed to using voir dire to spot bias. Attorneys Kevin Downing, Thomas Zehnle and Jay Nanavati told the “It is not a stretch to expect that voters who supported Secretary Clinton would be predisposed against Mr. Manafort or that voters who supported President Donald Trump would be less inclined toward the Special Counsel.” If it is “not a stretch” politically, it is a stretch legally. In fairness to the defense time, however, it was Judge T.S. Ellis III who raised the possibility of a venue change to Roanoke or Richmond. Ellis however has a reputation for making controversial statements from the bench. In most courts, I would expect this motion to be denied fairly quickly.
We have often discussed the rising incivility and anger in our political discourse. That derangement was on display at a Whataburger in San Antonio when an unidentified man assaulted a teenager for wearing a Make America Great again hat. It was fortunately caught on tape and hopefully the culprit will be apprehended. However, a 
Talent agent Ken Kaplan has a curious way of celebrating the Fourth of July. According to James Wood, Kaplan used the holiday celebrating a nation committed to free speech and self-determination by publicly dropping the actor for his conservative views. He said dropping an artist for his political views makes him feel “patriotic.” Notably, none of the artists represented by Kaplan protested the discrimination against a fellow artists for political reasons. 
Below is my column in the Washington Post on the implications of the resignation of Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy and his own decisions setting aside prior precedent. Indeed, Kennedy’s last week before announcing his resignation reenforced the very arguments that could be used by a new conservative majority to strip away his legacy. Indeed, Kennedy spent the last week eagerly sawing away on the branch on which he and his legacy rests.
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When Che Abdul Karim Che Abdul Hamid decided to marry his third wife in Thailand, he chose an 11-year-old girl who was handed over by her Malaysian family. The problem however was that this particular marriage to a child of eleven is that it was not approved by the local Shariah court. Besides being a rubber scrap dealer, Che Abdul Karim is an imam. The girl’s father works for him as poor rubber tappers. His third wife will not attend school now that she is an 11-year-old bride.
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the recent reports of how Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was angry over his treatment by the Trump White House and wants Mueller to “vindicate” him. I have said for over a year that Rosenstein should recuse himself if Mueller is seriously investigating the firing of former FBI Director James Comey as an act of obstruction or some other crime. These reports magnify, in my view, those conflict concerns.
Contradictions in the statements coming from the Trump White House have become an increasingly difficult subject for the White House briefings where Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is often tasked with denying obviously false statements. Sanders has developed a maddening cadence where she simply repeats an answer to another question or restates an obviously unresponsive answer. That pattern was on display Monday where Sanders simply said that President Donald Trump was speaking truthfully when he made two demonstrably contradicting statements about supporting one of the immigration bills in Congress. 
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