Friends, next week we’ll return to Sheriff Roy’s latest adventures. This week? We’re celebrating one of the three best holidays of the year! That’s right, kids of all ages: TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!

My family and I love Halloween. What’s not to like about a day when ghouls, ghosts, long-legged beasties and things that go “bump” in the night roam our streets in search of candy? Our kids get to dress up, the adults load up cartoonishly large adult beverages in Yeti tumblers and we walk the streets soaking in the fall atmosphere.

It’s a good time. Continue reading →

The Ninth Circuit was faced with a very tough conflict. California’s law, SB 399, prohibited employers from forcing their employees to listen to religious or political speech upon pain of adverse job consequences.

[a]n employer, [with exceptions not relevant here], shall not subject, or threaten to subject, an employee to discharge, discrimination, retaliation, or any other adverse action because the employee declines to attend an employer-sponsored meeting or affirmatively declines to participate in, receive, or listen to any communications with the employer or its agents or representatives, the purpose of which is to communicate the employer’s opinion about religious or political matters. An employee who is working at the time of the meeting and elects not to attend a meeting described in this subdivision shall continue to be paid while the meeting is held.

Much of the opinion addresses a fairly obvious conclusion, that this is a content-based law that implicates the First Amendment as to the employer’s free speech rights. California argued that this law prohibited conduct, not speech. The panel wasn’t buying. Continue reading →

The New York Times reports that Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate for Senator from Alaska, pulled a dirty trick. Her campaign sought out a person with the same name as the incumbent Republican Senator, convinced him to run as a Republican, supported his candidacy, and, most importantly, lied about it.

The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in his candidacy. But The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory.

Continue reading →

They’re not judges. The judicial branch of government exists under Article III of the Constitution. Its judges are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, after which they have tenure for life upon good behavior. These judges get to appoint inferior judges, magistrates, to assist them. Mags are judges because they serve under the judicial branch.

But immigration judges are not judges, do not serve under Article III or the judicial branch, and yet are charged with the fair and impartial administration of immigration laws. But despite the name and cool black robes, they are not to be confused with judges.

(4) The term “immigration judge” means an attorney whom the Attorney General appoints as an administrative judge within the Executive Office for Immigration Review, qualified to conduct specified classes of proceedings, including a hearing under section 1229a of this title. An immigration judge shall be subject to such supervision and shall perform such duties as the Attorney General shall prescribe, but shall not be employed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Continue reading →

There will almost certainly be accusations, if not legal battles, by Trump against election officials in various states and cities claiming that they violated the law by not denying putative citizens with names ending in vowels or swarthy complexions the right to vote. But there is a much more immediate concern that will arise next Tuesday, November 3rd, when the mass of Americans go to the polls to vote in the midterm elections.

The Trump administration said it would dispatch around 1,000 election monitors to polling places across the country. It’s important to remember that under the law, election monitors are entitled to observe polling places, but they cannot administer elections, determine voter eligibility or direct any election officials.

Continue reading →

The use of artificial intelligence to write motions and briefs, not to mention the occasional opinion, containing hallucinated caselaw and quotations is already a well-known problem. Not only does it reflect the likelihood of a lawyer cheating the client out of competent representation and fees charged for work done by computer rather than the retained counsel, but with a modicum of efforts, it’s revealed to be an AI sham and ends with the client getting slammed and the lawyer being humiliated and sanctioned. All as it should be.

Eugene Volokh points to a series of websites created by Damien Charlotin to track AI cases.

Damien Charlotin, who runs the invaluable AI Hallucination Cases site (2200+ cases worldwide and counting) has a new one, AI Deepfakes in Court, listing 26 cases worldwide so far. His summary: Continue reading →

Trump’s erstwhile lawyer, Attorney General Todd Blanche, made the ignominious statement that he would never “improperly” interfere in the midterm elections. This happened on a Thursday.

But if Trump says interfere, then it can’t be improper. After all, Blanche works for Trump, and proper is whatever Trump says it is. On Friday, Blanche proved both this point and that t\his statement the day before, that he couldn’t preclude some theoretical future possibility that he would be compelled to interfere was a lie. That next day, Blanche’s Department interfered. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: This is Part 3 of the adventure. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

A grizzled veteran of many a war sat in a rocking chair. Pushing into his sixties, the white-haired man with a white beard lit a cigar as his nieces and nephews sat around him.

“Uncle Jim, it’s almost Halloween,” one little girl said.

“Why yes, Brittany, it is. Why do you bring that up?” Uncle Jim said as he took a few puffs from his cigar.

“Could you tell us a scary story tonight for Halloween?” Brittany implored. The other children erupted in cheers and pleas for Uncle Jim to spin one of his signature scary yarns. Continue reading →

It wasn’t just the hypocrisy of using a family member to attack a candidate or nominee for office. That happened with Hegseth and RFK, Jr., and was roundly condemned by Trump and his MAGA faithful. Family is out of bounds, it was screamed. But as happens without shame these days, the tables turned and the script was flipped when Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy created an attack ad featuring his opponent, Amy Acton’s mother.

Under other circumstances, there might have been a fair debate over whether this was a fair attack in the dirty world of politics in the current climate. But these circumstances weren’t “other.” These circumstances were singularly despicable.

The spot from Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign began circulating on social media this week and airing Thursday on television. In it, Donna Arthur, Dr. Acton’s birth mother, calls her daughter a “liar” and says that she fabricated stories about her difficult childhood. Continue reading →

That the president and his administration maintain a tenuous relationship with the media is not a bad thing. The press isn’t supposed to be his propaganda outlet, and the media challenging, and sometimes attacking, the government by publishing articles that call his integrity, veracity and propriety into question is pretty much the point. Whether you want to characterize it as “speaking truth to power” or “just the facts, ma’am,” the press is not supposed to be the president’s friend.

Then again, it’s not supposed to be the president’s enemy either.

For a while, the media eschewed journalism in favor of what it delightfully called “moral clarity,” which was essentially yellow journalism directed at damaging Trump, facts be damned. This was all too prevalent during his first term, where nothing he could say or do wouldn’t be twisted into some catastrophically wrongful act. Ironically, there were more than enough legitimately bad acts to criticize, but that didn’t stop the media from turning every act, no matter how anodyne or banal, into a federal offense. Continue reading →