The confluence of a few unfortunate circumstances resulted in the Virginia Supreme Court holding that the state constitutional amendment to allow the redistricting plan as a counterbalance to other states’ legislative redistricting plans to eliminate congressional districts deemed “safely” Democratic was unconstitutional. Wags and cynics will imagine this ruling to be the product of radical rightist activists. It was not.

Unlike a state like Texas, which can redraw its districts by legislative fiat, Virginia’s Constitution required that congressional district be fairly drawn by commission to avoid the plague of gerrymandering. It further required that any change to the Constitution span an election, so that two legislative votes, one before the election and one after, be required to prevent whimsical changes, enabling voters to decide whether to vote for, or against, legislators based on their position toward the change. Its purpose was to create a process so that the state constitutional amendments would only be approved after “deliberate consideration and careful scrutiny that they deserve.” Continue reading →

Prefatory Note: My son is eleven. He is awesome in ways that would fill up this post describing. He’s also the reason I carry a notebook around as he’s prone to spouting off some very…interesting…statements. Enjoy a few—CLS

ON STAR WARS
“I feel like if Darth Vader held up a sign that said ‘Come to the Dark Side: We Have Free Cake and Pie,’ it would get him more attention than him talking about it all the time.”

ON BRUSHING TEETH
Excitedly “Daddy, look! I’m cleaning my skeleton!” Continue reading →

As a general concept, historic preservation is a good thing. After all, once an historic structure is gone, it’s gone forever, and so is the history it embodies. For reasons both aesthetic and, as expressed by George Santayana, practical, remembering history matters. That said, it can also be subject to dumb abuse and be used to unfairly damage unwitting homeowners who are trapped by proponents who demand that historic structures be maintained, but refuse to shoulder the burden of their convictions.

Ilya Somin relates the story of what is very generously claimed to be the Marilyn Monroe house in Los Angeles.

The case began in 2023, when a California couple bought an unoccupied, deteriorating property on a dead-end residential street, intending to demolish and redevelop it after purchase. They applied for the appropriate permits, which the City of Los Angeles granted without objection after a standard 30-day hold. One day later, a local government official filed paperwork to designate the property a historic monument. The City then revoked the permits and approved the historic designation, rendering the property untouchable to its new owners, Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank. Continue reading →

In the relative scheme of things facing the United States, is a ballroom really that big a deal? After all, “Patriots” still have immigrants, illegal or otherwise, to expel and then there are prices, gas, food, housing and health care, and those darn Iranians who desperately want a deal but keep telling Trump to suck eggs as he begs for an exit ramp from his adventure in warmongering. With all that, who cares about a ballroom?

It started as a $200 million boondoggle. Then $250, $300,  and then $400. We know this because Trump talks about the ballroom incessantly, whether anyone asks or not. What about Iran? Ballroom. Gas prices? Ballroom. Physical fitness for children? Ballroom. Continue reading →

It’s not exactly unusual for criminal defendants to ask their lawyers to dissemble to the court. There are facts that the government may not possess, or at least not be capable of proving, in the absence of the defense lawyer conceding them in court, and the defendant, understandably, strongly prefers that his lawyer, the person he’s paying to stand between him and a criminal conviction, not provide the government with the evidence it lacks. Maybe it involves withholding information. Maybe it involves denying information. Either way, by omission or commission, our clients might want us to lie to the court for their benefit.

Yet, we don’t. We shouldn’t. We can’t. While our duty is to provide our client with a zealous defense, to pursue every non-frivolous argument possible if, in our professional judgment, it furthers their cause, we also have a duty of candor to the court. We can spin it. We can rationalize it. What we cannot do is lie about it, no matter how much our client would wants us to do so. We just can’t. Continue reading →

Willie Sutton was famously asked why he robbed banks. His answer was illuminating: Because that’s where  the money is. And that lesson has been taken to heart by New York City’s new Democratic Socialist Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, whose plan to fund his initiatives and  close the budget gap is to tax the rich. Why? Because that’s where the money is.

State lawmakers in New York are considering several proposals to tax the rich, including a tax on luxury second homes and changes to a tax credit favored by the wealthy.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s preferred option — raising personal income taxes for millionaires — has support in the State Assembly and Senate, and is backed by more than 60 percent of New York City voters. But Gov. Kathy Hochul firmly opposes the idea.

For the egalitarian, the propriety of taxing the rich is obvious. They can afford it. Their good fortune, rather than sacrifice and effort, is the primary root of their wealth. Others are suffering for lack of funds and critical resources, so why shouldn’t the wealthy pony up a bit more so that life can be better for “everyone”?

The mayor’s plan is simple: increase the city income tax rate by two percentage points for those who earn $1 million per year or more, from 3.88 percent to 5.88 percent — the equivalent of a 51 percent increase. Doing so could raise an additional $3 billion in revenue annually.

A household that earns $1 million per year would pay $20,000 more in city taxes, while one earning $10 million per year would pay $200,000 more. The plan would affect about 34,000 households, a group that is small but important to the city budget.

What remains unspoken is that the wealthy, assuming you consider a million per year wealthy in New York, already pay far more than their share of the cost of running the Big Apple, paying 37% of NYC tax revenue. There are a lot of people in the city who fall below the income tax threshold, and somebody has to pay for their use of city facilities.

But there remain two questions. First, will it work? Taxes in New York are extremely high, closing in on confiscatory, and yet they aren’t enough to cover the ever-increasing nut. Raising taxes would be one thing if spending was either cut or, at the very least, remained the same. But neither New York history nor tradition suggests that’s going to happen. What seem far more likely is that taxes are raised, filling one gap, only to have new initiatives create the next gap requiring . . . more taxes!  And wealthy New Yorkers know something about taxes.

New York City already has the nation’s highest income taxes for the highest earners, with households that make more than $25 million per year paying a combined state and city rate of 14.78 percent. Some experts worry about the effects of raising taxes further.

Second, if taxes increase, will the wealthy reach their breaking point and call it quits? Will they move outside the city? Will they sell their pied-a-terre? While the city still offers many advantages in terms of food and culture, one can always visit and only pay the cost of a good meal, a museum donation and a Broadway show. But what of the other exodus?

Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has argued that millionaires can afford to pay more to improve New Yorkers’ quality of life. He said recently that he was more concerned about struggling families leaving the city because they could not afford to stay than he was about the possibility that rich New Yorkers would depart.

“For all of that conversation about this imagined exodus, we have to reckon with the very real exodus that we are seeing in this city: an exodus of working-class people,” Mr. Mamdani said.

He’s got a point. All the very expensive, very fancy, very enjoyable aspects of city life rely on workers who do the heavy lifting. Think of a restaurant without servers. That would suck, and those servers have to live somewhere, need daycare for their kids, need public transportation to get to work and need food because they’re human beings. If the wealthy want to enjoy the efforts of the working class, they need to do their part to keep the working class in New York. If the poor are priced out of the city, who will drive their limos to the Met Gala?

Is raising taxes, whether on income, second (or fifth) homes or both, the solution to New York City’s affordability woes, or is it the straw that breaks the city’s back? If it happens, will this be the end of it or the start of the next round of dreamworks? And much as there are few advocates for the poor, downtrodden wealthy, is there anything wrong with accumulating wealth and wanting to keep it? It’s no crime to be poor, but it’s no great honor either. Why pick on the wealthy for having managed, whether by effort or good fortune, to succeed? Isn’t that the American dream?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.

The wisdom of having the Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, do the Sunday morning talk shows was questionable to begin with. He’s not a media personality, like others favored by Trump, and there is little a prosecutor ought to do on television that wouldn’t be more appropriately done in the courtroom. But that didn’t stop Blanche from taking to the airwaves following his indictment of former director of the FBI and enemy of Trump, Jim Comey. It did not turn out well.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, on Sunday sought to contrast the Justice Department’s indictment of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey over a social media post with other instances in which people have shared the same message, saying that the department had gathered additional evidence during an 11-month investigation.

Continue reading →

This week I had to buy a new printer for my wife’s clinic as her old one bit the dust.

I’m not particularly upset about the loss of this printer. If we’re being completely honest, her staff tends to beat printers to death. It was repeatedly abused living in the back of an RV that regularly drove over bumpy roads. This is basically a ticking time bomb for printers. When they’re getting abused regularly, placed on inclines and doing shit that most household printers weren’t made for, then you’re probably going to see a high printer mortality rate.

Anyway, let me tell you what I had to do with this new printer. Continue reading →

In what can only charitably be called testimony, Secretary of War Defense Pete Hegseth responded to a question by Senator Tim Kaine as to the administration’s plans for today. Today is the 60th day after Trump’s notification to Congress that he started a war. According to the War Powers Resolution of 1973, this is that day when the Warfighter-in-Chief must act.

Except Hegseth’s response asserted otherwise.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argued Thursday that the Trump administration can continue the Iran war despite a Vietnam-era law that requires Congress’s approval after 60 days of fighting, in an apparent attempt to stave off the rapidly approaching deadline.

His comments came in a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee where Hegseth asserted that an ongoing ceasefire between Washington and Tehran “pauses” the countdown.

Continue reading →

Technically, Justice Sam Alito’s 6-3 majority opinion doesn’t kill the Voting Rights Act, as he allowed that Section 2, prohibiting the dilution of minority voting rights by gerrymandering to still be unlawful if it could be proven that the map was drawn with the intention of denying minority citizens opportunity on the basis of race.

To successfully challenge district maps under the Voting Rights Act now, Justice Alito wrote, challengers would need to show evidence supporting “a strong inference” that a state “intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.” A legal challenge that “cannot disentangle race from the state’s race-neutral considerations, including politics,” will fail.

But Alito, following Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Allen v. Milligan, found that times have changed, that distinctions based on race can’t go on forever, and that drawing district lines on the basis of race “collided” with the Constitution. Continue reading →