Michael Cohen seemed to morph into J. Wellington Wimpy this week when he asked for yet another delay in going to jail. Wimpy famously promised “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Cohen is promising the same after declaring that he has suddenly discovered 14 million new files with evidence, including the promise of possible damaging information on President Trump. However, he explains, it will take him time to work through the material. Notably, the discovery seems to have occurred one month before he was to report to prison — one month almost to the day.
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on an overlooked issue from the letter of Attorney General Bill Barr to Congress on the Special Counsel report. Whatever happens to the allegations and evidence facing President Trump, there remains the question of what to do with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
We have previously discussed the issue of when it is appropriate to punishment people for conduct outside of the work place. We have followed cases where people have been fired after boorish or insulting conduct once their names and employers are made known. (here andhere and here and here and here). There is another such case out of California with a twist. Rebecca Mankey created a scene at a Starbucks by screaming at s 74-year-old man wearing a “Make American Great Again” hat in support of President Trump. Mankey posted the instant and said that she wanted to get him kicked out of every club and make his life a living hell. Instead, she was fired by her own employer for her rude and intolerant conduct.
President Donald Trump left many scratching their heads again this week with the repeated claim that his father was born in Germany (he was born in the Bronx). However, the most curious moment came with this statement to the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual spring dinner: “If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer.” The basis for this claim remains a mystery.
We just hit another milestone last night with over 36,000,000 views. With roughly 60,000 followers on Twitter, we continue to gradually expand our base of followers with the addition of new voices. We have tried to maintain this blog as a place for civil but passionate discourse on legal and policy issues of our time (and perhaps a few wacky stories).
We often use these milestones to look at the current profile of the blog and its supporters around the world. As always, I want to offer special thanks to Darren Smith who continues help up with periodic technical problems and our many regular commentators and readers. We try to keep this blog as an open forum with as little interference or monitoring of the comments as possible. Given our free speech orientation, we try not to delete comments and, for that reason, we are deeply appreciative of how most people avoid personal or offensive comments in debating these issues. Obviously, our open forum allows trolls and others to spew comments that are at times offensive and obnoxious but we continue to believe that civil and balanced comments will prevail. Thank you for voluntarily assuming restraint over the tenor and content of your comments.
There was a time when deadlines had a real bite. The term originated from the Civil War when a line was laid out around the notorious Andersonville prison camp. If Union prisoners crossed the line, they were dead.
There was a chilling moment on CNN this week in an interview of former FBI Director James Comey, by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. In the middle of the interview, Amanpour asked Comey if he had wished the FBI “shut down” President Donald Trump’s “hate speech” during the 2016 presidential election. Next week I will be debating an advocate of such speech codes and the criminalization of hate speech at Rice University. This was a particularly revealing moment as one of the top personalities at CNN pressed the former head of the FBI on why he did not simply shutdown Trump’s speeches as hate speech. Amanpour has been an outspoken critic of Trump but this reflect more of the diminishing European view of free speech.
I will be speaking today at the University of Texas at Arlington on “The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in The West” at the University Hall at 7 pm. Next week I will be returning to Texas for a debate with NYU Professor Jeremy Waldron on hate speech and speech codes on April 9th at Rice University in Houston.
In a major 5-4 ruling on Monday, the United States Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a “painless death” in capital punishment. The opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, returned to the origins of the amendment and concluded that Russell Bucklew’s rare medical condition raising the danger of hemorrhage and choking does not constitute a constitutional barrier to execution. The opinion is Bucklew v. Precythe.
Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on the decision of President Donald Trump to waive executive privilege and the announcement of Attorney General Bill Barr that he has no intention to even give the White House an early look at the report. While Trump has not received any praise for that decision, it would (if true) represent a significant departure from past presidents and a major advance for transparency in government. Indeed, as discussed below, despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to be the most transparent president in history, Trump could have a greater claim to that distinction.
Like most Americans, my family continues to be deluged with robo calls despite being on the “no call list” for years. The most reason annoying repeat offender has been an “Affordable Healthcare” number that calls repeatedly each day. I have previously written that I fail to see how the federal government cannot stop such companies. The fact is that they can and a recent report explains why they are not. According to the Wall Street Journal, it turns out that under Telephone Consumer Protection Act the Federal Communications Commission has imposed $208.4 million in fines. How much has the government collected? $6,790. You read that right. $6,790. That is just 0.003 percent of the fines.
I recently wrote about the absurd decision by the Cook County State’s Attorney to drop 16 criminal counts against actor Jussie Smollett for his hoax hate crime in Chicago. The decision was an utter travesty of justice and, as I discussed, the reasons cited by the prosecutors make little sense from a prosecutorial standpoint. Now the Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association (representing 1000 line prosecutors in the state) has taken the rare step of publicly denouncing the handling of the case. The letter below describes the handling of the case as “abnormal and unfamiliar.” That is putting it lightly. There is a federal investigation but it is not clear what if anything can be done to hold Smollett — or these prosecutors — accountable for their actions in this scandal. However, there is also Smollett’s alleged hoax involving mail that could trigger federal charges. It is a disgrace that the only hope for accountability in Chicago will have to come from the federal government and not the Cook County State’s Attorney.
This beautiful picture of a hot air balloon was posted recently by the Marion County Sheriff’s office on Facebook in an effort to solve a crime. The huge balloon was stolen from Indiana and the sheriff asked people to keep an eye out for it at the The Villages Hot Air Balloon Festival being held at the Florida Horse Park. It worked. Raising into the air, the hot hot-air balloon was spotted and eventually recovered.
