Yesterday hiking in Nevada and California took me from the sweet to the bittersweet. The Sagehen trail can only be described as a “sweet” trail. Trails have personalities. Some played with you and make you earn the summit. Some are just sweetheart, girl-next-door trails. That is the Sagehen trail. A lovely 5 miles there-and-back to a lake with added side trails available. I then did the Donner Summit and Mount Judas trails. That one is not sweet but gorgeous. Think of Mary Ann and Ginger. It was a great combination on a spectacular day.
My wife and I went for a drive and happened along an abandoned nuclear power plant along the side of the road. As this was a bit out of the ordinary, I took a few pictures.
I have the pleasure this morning of giving the closing keynote at the 37th Annual Eastern District Conference in California. The conference is being held at the Ritz-Carlton Lake Tahoe resort. My keynote will address the erosion of free speech protections in West and will be held in the closing plenary session from 9:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
My wife discovered whilst travelling on vacation that perhaps the support base of certain political candidates might actually be of greater nuance than our pigeonholing media frequently portrays.
I am in California to speak among the judges and attorneys of the Eastern District in Lake Tahoe on Sunday. As many on this blog know, I am an avid hiker and often take the opportunity of these trips to explore the local trails and forests. Yesterday, I hiked the Tahoe Rim Trail and then the Mt. Rose Trail. These trails take you along the Nevada and California border. The latter is quite difficult as you work your way up the summit of the highest point in the area. At roughly 9000 feet, it is the highest peak of the greater Sierra Nevada range. It is a gorgeous though strenuous hike.
A citizen of Washington who was falsely accused and incarcerated for an alleged arson received a one hundred thousand dollar settlement in exchange for dismissal of her Section 1983 case against the investigating officer who withheld exculpable evidence from her defense, including information identifying a possible suspect.
The sixty-six-year-old Plaintiff was held in jail for a month and subjected to eight months of house arrest after being charged with Arson in the First Degree after a fire at a Dollar Tree Store in Kent.
Apparently to the investigating officer it was a righteous case that a sixty-six year old disabled woman with no criminal history was an arsonist but that information from another investigator who received a tip the day of the fire that a gang-banger and convicted arsonist with multiple prior convictions had bragged that he torched the store as a diversion to cover his shoplifting was not worthwhile enough to provide the prosecutor’s office or her defense.
Had it not been for the efforts of her criminal defense attorney, her potential legal jeopardy could have become much worse.
Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the recent controversy over President Donald Trump’s use of “lynching” and what it portends for any Senate impeachment trial.
There is an interesting defamation lawsuit filed this week by Major League Baseball Umpire Joe West. According to USA Today, West is suing former catcher Paul Lo Duca after Lo Duca suggested that West took loans of a hot car in exchange for a more generous strike zone. This could be a new meaning to the term “strike suit.”
Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born business associate of Rudy Giuliani, has told a court that he may raise executive privilege in the criminal case against him. His counsel, Ed MacMahon, said that his client was told to invoke executive privilege in a letter that was submitted on Parnas’ behalf by John Dowd to a congressional committee conducting the impeachment inquiry. Dowd previously represented the President. Parnas is shown here (left) with his associate Igor Fruman (who also worked with Giuliani and was arrested with Parnas at the airport).
President Donald Trump famously bragged that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?” Now, the judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit have pressed his counsel if that is true from a legal perspective. Trump counsel William Consovoy astonished the court by answering in the affirmative. Trump could commit murder and could not be even charged until after he left office. It is an extreme and in my view unsupportable claim based on a misreading of the Constitution.
Pundits had a field day after President Donald Trump announced at the Shale Insight Conference in Pittsburgh that “We’re building a wall in Colorado” when talking about border wall progress on Wednesday afternoon. The best zinger came from Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette who simply asked “Is NEW Mexico going to pay for it?”
The Ukraine scandal racketed up further with the testimony of Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor who testified that President Donald Trump held up military aid until the Ukrainians agreed to investigate election interference and Hunter Biden’s business dealings. While Taylor was the headliner this week, another figure appears to be emerging as the matinee star: John Bolton. When the Ukraine story broke, I stated that the likely key for Congress would be Bolton who had only recently been fired. Taylor reaffirmed earlier reports that Bolton spotted the serious danger of the Ukraine call and worked to prevent it as a “disaster” in the making.
We have been discussing the disastrous decision of President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from the Turkish border with virtually no warning to his own agencies and allies. While some of us support the effort to remove troops from these countries, there is overwhelming condemnation from Republicans and Democrats in how this was done. The Turks have been accused of war crimes and ethnic cleansing as Russia occupies former U.S. bases in the area. Worse yet, Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s Ambassador to the EU, has warned our other allies that the United States cannot be trusted and that they must now look to Moscow for a reliable friend: “We warned the Kurds that the Americans would abandon them. And here in Rhodes, I can personally warn the Greeks to think about whether a similar fate awaits them.”
Emory University University is now the focus of the national debate over the conflict between academic freedom and university rules against the use of racial slurs, even as part of academic work. Professor Paul Zwier is currently on suspension over he was accused of using the “n-word” in the course of a class and later in a meeting about the controversy. He first used the word to discuss who the word “negro” was likely used in a case as a sanitized version of the slur. Students complained and charges were brought, including an allegation that Zwier used the word again in an office discussion with a student on the incident. This month, a report from the Office of Equity and Inclusion that recommended Zwier be suspended for up to two more years due to his usage of the racial slur.
Below is my column the Hill newspaper on the recent accusation of Hillary Clinton that presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is a “Russian asset.” What is most astonishing is the silence of virtually all of the other presidential candidates. Only Yang and Williamson came out quickly to support Gabbard. For presidential candidates denouncing Donald Trump for his personal attacks and reckless hyperbole, it is the height of hypocrisy to remain silent unless they believe that Gabbard is indeed a Russian asset. If so, they should have the courage to say so, particularly front runner Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren.
