For many of us, notably including lawyers for whom the courts remain the final arbiters of legality and constitutionality, the judicial branch of government has become the “go to” guardrails of government. Congress has forsaken any meaningful role in national governance, and Trump neither knows nor cares about the limits of his lawful authority. So where else are institutionalists to turn but the courts?

In a New York Times op-ed, Duncan Hosie argues that our faith in the courts is misplaced.

Most areas of the law, like contract law and criminal law, can readily handle the bad man: They simply have to ensure that the consequences of violating the law are clear enough and strong enough to dissuade even those who lack moral scruples. But constitutional law is different. It is predicated not on consequences, but on the assumption that those who occupy public office will subordinate self-interest to larger obligations of service. It does not compel compliance so much as it presupposes it. Against a bad man, it has no obvious recourse.

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Robert Mueller, widely respected despite being a lifelong Republican and former Director of the FBI, was appointed by Trump’s Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in 2017 to investigate foreign interference in the 2016 election and obstruction of justice. He found it.

Over nearly two years, the investigation examined a broad campaign by Russia to influence the election, including the hacking and release of Democratic emails connected to his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and a social media operation aimed at American voters. It also scrutinized contacts between Russian individuals and Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers, as well as actions taken by the president after he took office.

The inquiry resulted in charges against more than 30 people and three companies on more than 100 criminal counts. Continue reading →

There’s nothing quite like the convenience and splendor of luxury cruise ships these days. You’re on a boat housing the population of Nashville that contains all manner of amenities designed to relax, entertain, and separate you from more of your hard-earned money than you originally intended to spend.

My ship was 25 decks of heaven. There were two theaters, a comedy club, restaurants open twenty-four hours a day, and a replica of a British rock club where the Beatles used to play. The pool deck had two pools separated by age, hot tubs, a splash pad and two waterslides that hung over the side of the ship. Continue reading →

It first dawned on me that the ability to make music was an extraordinarily effective way to smack the crap out of someone who did you wrong when Dave Carroll of Sons of Maxwell put United Breaks Guitars on Youtube. Not only was it incredibly cutting, but it was a damn good song as well.

But then came Joseph Foreman, a/k/a Afroman, whose door was broken down and home searched after a confidential informant accused him of having a basement dungeon. One problem was that he had no basement, but that didn’t stop the Adams County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputies from raiding his home. Continue reading →

At the public hearing of the House Oversight Committee, Attorney General Pam Bondi was, to say the least, uncooperative. Without answering questions, she reached deep into her “Op Book” to attack Democratic representatives who questioned her about the failure to comply with the Epstein Transparency Act. Then came the subpoena, at the behest of Republican Representative Nancy Mace.

Committee Chair James Comer had little choice but to issue the subpoena after the committee vote, but made the return date April 14th. A lot can happen between now and then that could well distract people, including the committee members, from issues surrounding the Department of Justice’s monumental and, as yet unexplained, failure to comply with the law. Who knows who we will be at war with? Who knows whether Bondi will still hold the position by then? Who knows if Bondi will even show up? If she doesn’t, what does the committee plan to do about it? It’s not as if Chairman Comer gives a damn. Continue reading →

There’s some irony that the walls behind Trump as he “explained” from the Oval Office that the United States didn’t need any other country’s help are covered in the resplendent gold-ish doodads reminiscent of King Louis XIV. Of course, this came after our former NATO and other allies begged off sending ships to help Trump open the Strait of Hormuz. Not their war. Not their monkey.

Trump could have consulted with our former allies before starting the war, but that’s not the way Trump operates. Indeed, he didn’t bother to consult our own military, which would have told him that there was little doubt that Iran would bomb its neighboring countries and close the Strait to shipping other than that of its allies, of which it approved, thus giving Russia and China a huge win by continuing to provide oil while its enemies were deprived of fuel. Trump then doubled down by waiving sanctions on Russia so it could sell its oil to India, giving its starved economy lifeblood so it could continue its war against Ukraine. Continue reading →

Kind words and the red carpet were saved for Putin, while NATO allies were disdainfully scolded and hit with tariffs for having treated the United States poorly for decades. A constant series of threats were delivered to do as commanded or lose the United States from the fragile North Atlantic alliance.

And then the United States, with Israel as its partner, went to war. The other nations of the Middle East were neither asked nor warned that missiles and drones would soon be landing at their airports, oil infrastructure or cities. They were not told that their futball matches and F1 races would be canceled. They had no vote in the matter. But they got bombed anyway.

When help was considered, Trump smacked it in the face to prove how manly and winning he was. Continue reading →

It wasn’t long ago that Brendan Carr, not yet the chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission, made clear that the FCC had no mandate to serve as the roving speech police.

But that was then, 2019 and Carr was not yet Trump’s chair. Times have changed. Continue reading →

Now that the AI tech giants swear* they have fixed the problem of chatbots providing teens with the information needed to plan and execute violent attacks, lesser concerns are coming to the fore, such as AI giving people writing advice ranging from bad to mediocre in the name of a real person, without the person’s knowledge, approval or compensation.

The writing was clunky, the point weirdly unspecific. Grammarly had been offering paying users editing suggestions, supposedly from a handful of writers — including me. Pop a piece of prose into its service and little editing bubbles would emerge on the page from “Julia Angwin,” suggesting things like, “Lead with personal stakes to boost immediacy.” That sentence about Meta was something Grammarly apparently thought I would suggest. Continue reading →

The underlying case of Olympus Spas v. Armstrong, challenging the application of the Washington Law Against Discrimination is very much the culture war case that makes most people rightfully cringe.

In 2020, the HRC, the agency tasked with enforcing WLAD, received a complaint from a transgender woman. The complaint alleged that Olympus Spa “denied [her] services and stated that transgender women without surgery are not welcome because it could make other customers and staff uncomfortable.” Specifically, the Spa excluded preoperative transgender women who have not yet received gender confirmation surgery affecting their genitalia.

This isn’t about whether the spa (or the court) used the complainant’s chosen pronouns, but whether a Korean spa for women could prohibit a pre-op transgender woman from its services. Sound familiar? Continue reading →