There is a controversy developing in North and South Dakota where The Standing Rock Sioux tribe is prioritizing speakers of its native languages for its COVID-19 vaccine distribution. The tribe insists that it wants to protect those who can preserve its language. However, that is the imposition of a language criterion over those categories set out by the CDC for health workers, the elderly and most at risk individuals. The clear import is that prioritized individuals under the CDC guidelines could become infected and die because of the desire to protect those viewed as greater “assets” to the tribe. Continue reading “Sioux Tribe Imposes Language Criterion For Priority Vaccinations”
Judge David Bernhard is a jurist in Fairfax County (where I reside) has issued a controversial order that the portraits of white judges must be removed from a courtroom because their presence would deny a black defendant a fair trial. In a decision applauded in the Washington Post, Bernhard declared that a fair trial is threatened in “a courtroom gilded with … white individuals peering down on an African American defendant.” Continue reading ““Symbols . . . Of Subtle Oppression”: Virginia Judge Orders Removal Of Portraits Of White Judges”
Napoleon once said “treason is a matter of dates.” The Democrats seem to have taken Napoleon’s words to heart in declaring Republicans traitors or anti-Democratic in their planned challenge the certification of electoral votes next week. Both the media and Democratic members have advanced this narrative despite Democratic members repeatedly raising such challenges in the past. In the few acknowledgments of that history, Democrats seem to be advancing a simple and familiar defense: Trump. Once again, open hypocrisy is negated by Trumpunity. After all, they cannot be anti-Democratic because they are Democrats. That conclusory position was evident in the spin this week on CNN by former California Sen. Barbara Boxer who led such a challenge to the 2004 election results. Continue reading ““Treason Is A Matter Of Dates”: Democrats Denounce Republicans For The Same Challenge They Previously Made To Republican Presidents”
Happy New Year to all of our blog community from around the world. As has been our tradition on this blog, with the start of 2020, I thought I would share our annual “State of The Blog” statistics from the last year. It has been a great year for the blog with the highest traffic in the history of our blog. We continued our expansion internationally. While we post a separate blog when we pass each million mark (and we are close to another such update), we use New Year’s day to take stock — and to celebrate — our blog. This year was not just the best year in terms of traffic on the blog, it was over twice the traffic of prior years with over 10 million views and tens of thousands of regular readers following us on Twitter and email. It is an astonishing growth for a humble blog with no budget and no revenue. But we still have an abundance passion and apparently an increasing number of other people looking for a civil forum to discuss the legal, political, and social issues of our time. Continue reading “STATE OF THE BLOG (2020)”
Happy New Year to everyone on our blog! We rang in 2021 at home in McLean, Virginia. New Year’s eve is also my wedding anniversary. Twenty-three years ago, Leslie and I eloped in Old Town Alexandria after dating eight years. Once again, we will celebrate two anniversary dates. I count the anniversary as our 31th while Leslie insists on counting this year as our 23nd anniversary. We will toast our anniversary and the New Year (as we did 23 years ago and every year since) with a bottle of Schramsburg Cremant. Continue reading “HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!”
U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner attracted considerable criticism when she declined to recuse herself from a challenge over voter eligibility. Gardner is the sister of Stacey Abrams who has led the effort to register voters in the state. Many felt it was inappropriate for Gardner to rule on the case, a concern that was magnified by her quick rejection of a purging of the rolls of roughly 4000 inactive voters. Now, it appears that Gardner has not recused herself but did reverse herself. A new order has issued upholding the purge in the face of an appeal.
This has been an awful year for New Yorkers in dealing with the massive costs of the pandemic. Adding to those costs is the increase in violent crime under Mayor Bill di Blasio with a 41 percent increase in homicides. Now, the city is focused on an attack on a driver on Fifth Avenue by a mob of bicyclists. The attack in broad daylight on a car captures a sense of lawlessness for many in the city. Continue reading “NYPD Search For Teens Responsible For Attack On Car On Fifth Avenue”
We have been discussing curious Covid-related offenses this year, but a Wisconsin controversy raises a particularly challenging such question. Advocate Aurora Health has admitted that an employee intentionally removed 57 vials of the Moderna vaccine from refrigeration. The intentional act, originally claimed to be accidental, resulted in the destruction of 500 doses of the potentially life-saying vaccine. Advocate Aurora Health said the employee was fired. However, an intentional destruction of the doses would seem the ultimate product tampering case: either compromised vaccines would be given patients or 500 people will have to wait longer for the protection from Covid-19.
Continue reading “FBI Investigating The Destruction of 500 Doses Of The Moderna Vaccine”
Montreal’s McGill University is the latest school facing an attack on free speech and academic freedom. We have followed efforts to fire professors who hold opposing views on police abuse or the Black Lives Matter organization. At McGill, eight student groups have gone further. They want to rescind the emeritus status of a retired professor to retroactively punish him for opposing their views. Professor Philip Carl Salzman is a well-known anthropologist with an impressive record of publications and recognitions. However, students are demanding the rare action to “protect and legitimize racist and Islamophobic dialogues.” They further declare in an open letter that free speech “does not exist outside of its social context” and that it has been shown to be “dictated by whiteness.” Continue reading ““Free Speech Does Not Exist Outside Of Its Social Context”: McGill Student Groups Seek To Strip Professor Of Emeritus Status”
We have previously discussed attorneys arrested in attacks with Molotov cocktails during protests. One of the individuals charged in the firebombing of police cars during Black Lives Matter protests in Arkansas turns out to be a former public radio reporter, Renea Goddard, 22. She is one of four charged in the slashing of police car tires and burning them with Molotov cocktails.
President Donald Trump has been criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike for his recent spate of pardons, including corrupt ex-congressmen and the father of Jared Kushner. I was one of those who immediately criticized those pardons as manifestly unjustified and inimical to our legal system. However, none of that makes the comments of senior U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of the Southern District of Iowa any less troubling. Judge Pratt gave an interview slamming the pardons in a departure from judicial ethics rules barring jurists from engaging in such political commentary.
The New York Times is under fire for its coverage of how an incoming Tennessee cheerleader was dumped from the team after the release of a three-second video in which she used a racial epithet. Times reporter Dan Levin gave a strikingly positive account of how Jimmy Galligan waited for years to release the video to do the most harm to Mimi Groves. The article “A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning,” is being cited as the ultimate celebration of the cancel culture in its tenor and lack of balance. Everyone agrees that the use of the n-word was a terrible thing. However, the same standard does not seem to apply to professors who use racist and insensitive comments. It would seem that, even if students are not accorded the same protections for faculty, universities should offer them the same opportunity for redemptive change. After all, college is meant as place for personal growth for students.
Michael Cohen is now a prisoner rights advocate. As someone who has run a prisoner project for decades, it came as something of a surprise to me but Cohen is now a reformer . . . just ask Tony Meatballs. The reference came up in an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber in which Cohen explained that he only filed for early release under the First Step Act (Trump’s much touted criminal justice reform bill) because he promised “my buddies Tony Meatballs and Big Minty, that I wasn’t going to stop once I got out” in seeking to reform our prisons. You see, it is really not for Mike Cohen. It is for Tony Meatballs.
Below is my column in the Hill on claims by former Deputy Special Counsel Andrew Weissmann that the recent pardons by President Donald Trump reinforce a possible obstruction of justice case against him. We have previously discussed how Weissmann has proven critics correct in their description of his animosity and bias toward Trump. For my part, his book and recent statements reinforce the view of an abusive prosecutor, particularly in his untethered view of obstruction. Indeed, Weissmann seems intent on making the best case for Trump to grant himself a self-pardon. He is calling for prosecutors to use grand juries to pursue Trump and others in an unrelenting campaign based on unfounded legal theories.
Here is the column:
Continue reading “Law’s Ahab: Weissmann Makes The Case For A Trump Self-Pardon”
Zhang Zhan, 37, is a citizen journalist who reported on the early evidence of a pandemic in Wuhan. In its latest abuse of basic human rights, the Chinese regime has sentenced Zhang to four years in prison for her courageous reporting. She was reportedly convicted under the absurd criminal allegation that she was “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”