In a painful flex, Volokh Conspirator Steven Calabresi makes a bold constitutional argument in defense of Donald Trump in the “hush money” case.

Every day breathless articles appear in the New York Times, and through-out the liberal media, about Donald Trump’s allegedly lawless payment of hush money to help out his 2016 presidential campaign. In fact, Donald Trump has a First Amendment right to spend money, as does the Trump Organization, to further his electoral ambitions. In Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court wrongly upheld expenditure limits on how much non-candidates could spend on elections, but it rightly held that wealthy individuals like Donald Trump could spend as much as they wanted to spend of their own money on election campaigns. And, they can spend their money on hush money payments, television or radio advertisements, or in any other legal way that would further their own campaigns or electoral ambitions.

The indictment doesn’t charge Trump with a crime for paying out hush money. He’s free to pay porn stars as much as he wants to keep them silent. This is America, after all. Continue reading →

Make sure you sit in the middle of the roller coaster when possible. This avoids the “oh shit” views from the front of the roller coaster and spares you the “whiplash effect” one notices when sitting in the back of the coaster.

Expect to wait around 30-45 minutes in line for about a 2-2:30 minute experience. It’s a theme park; what did you expect? Yes, you can buy one of those stupid “Time saver” passes if you want to be a complete douchebag about your trip.

Wooden coasters are loud and fast. Metal coasters are quieter but come with the added “benefits” of loops and steeper drops. Assess your tolerance level for such experiences before riding. Continue reading →

When I was asked to beta test its AI research bot, I informed a major legal research provider that it worse than sucked. It was dangerous. Not only did it hallucinate, which could be ascertained with minimal fact checking, but it conflated almost all the critical distinctions that make law work. It failed to distinguish between jurisdictions, both states and state and federal, as well as majority, concurrences and dissents. To AI, it was all the same, words about law, all of which melded into one amorphous mass of misbegotten but seemingly accurate “law.”

It will improve, I was told. Perhaps, but enough that it can be relied upon to tell us who wins and loses? Continue reading →

In anticipation of the police coming to eject their encampment, pro-Palestinian protesters put up barricades. Then, pro-Israel counter-protesters, wielding bats, pipes and boards, attacked.

Just before midnight, a large group, wearing black outfits and white masks, arrived on campus and tried to tear down the barricades surrounding the encampment.

Campers, some holding lumber and wearing goggles and helmets, rallied to defend the site’s perimeter.

Over several hours, counterdemonstrators hurled objects, including wood and a metal barrier, at the camp and those inside. Fights repeatedly broke out. Some tried to force their way into the camp, and the pro-Palestinian side used pepper spray to defend themselves. Fireworks were also launched into the camp.

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To no one’s surprise, Justice Juan Merchan found Trump in contempt of his gag order.

This Court rejects Defendant’s arguments and finds that the People have established the elements of criminal contempt beyond a reasonable doubt as to Exhibits 2-10. This Court’s Expanded Order is lawful and unambiguous. Defendant violated the Order by making social  media posts about known witnesses pertaining to their participation in this criminal  proceeding and by making public statements about jurors in this criminal proceeding.

“Reposting,” as the court characterized it, or “Retruthing” as Trump would prefer since that will trick everyone into believing that makes it truthy, is no different than saying it sui generis. Continue reading →

After the 2 pm deadline for students to leave the Columbia University encampment passed, not much happened. President Shafik’s negotiations over the previous few days (since the last deadline) came to naught. Eventually, Columbia began suspending some students who refused to abide the university’s rules.

The alternative to bad is not necessarily good. It can always get worse.

–Scott Greenfield

You’ll never guess what happened next. Continue reading →

There was a time when an organization was formed for a purpose, usually one that transcended partisanship and stood for a principle. Think ACLU, the one that backed the right of neo-Nazis marching in Skokie despite deploring what they stood for, before it became the ACLU that supported only free speech when it supported the content of the speech. Or think PEN America.

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

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There was an infamous line employed by the terminally insipid Nancy Grace, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” It was her way of saying that evidence of wrongdoing wasn’t necessary when the smell was bad.  In the New York Times, gender columnist Jessica Bennett does Grace one better.

Until Thursday, it seemed that we had entered a new age of accountability, legal and social, not just for Mr. Weinstein but also for the abusers who’d come after him. Even as the #MeToo movement fell short in some ways, the Weinstein case felt like a cultural marker — an Arthur’s sword in the stone moment, in which something irreversible happened. The monster of #MeToo had been vanquished, and it changed something about the way we understood vulnerability and power. Continue reading →

Lina Khan was a controversial choice to head the Federal Trade Commission, and she’s shown that the controversy was justified. While the historical role of the FTC was to police the marketplace, she’s now taken the affirmative step, by a 3-2 vote of the commissioners, to ban essentially all non-compete clauses. There are two rationales for this action.

The easy prong of the ban for the F.T.C. to justify is the one that applies to nurses, hairdressers, truck drivers — actually, every kind of worker except for senior executives. For 99 percent of the American work force, the F.T.C. said, requiring workers to sign noncompete agreements as a condition of employment is “coercive and exploitative conduct.”The agency’s 570-page ruling cites articles in The Times and The Wall Street Journal in which workers came forward to say, in the F.T.C.’s words, that noncompete agreements “derailed their careers, destroyed their finances, and upended their lives.”

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Mostly peaceful protests had come to Driftwood County. At least that’s what the six o’ clock news called them. Sheriff Roy Templeton, the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the county, wasn’t sure he agreed with that assessment.

It started when Shelly Silverberg got into an argument with Fatima Brooks during a lecture on “Ethnic hairstyles of the Middle East” at the Kendall Jenner School of Cosmetology. The simple spat over whether split ends were “halal” quickly escalated into name calling and reached a crescendo when Fatima started yelling obscenities at Shelly in Farsi.

One word Fatima uttered set the entire campus off in a fit. Continue reading →