If putting misinformation about voting out into the ether is a crime, then politics just became an uncrossable minefield. Yet, this didn’t concern the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, who announced the arrest of Douglass Mackey, 31, as the twitter troll Ricky Vaughn.

“There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote,” said Seth D. DuCharme, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “With Mackey’s arrest, we serve notice that those who would subvert the democratic process in this manner cannot rely on the cloak of Internet anonymity to evade responsibility for their crimes. They will be investigated, caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

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As the majority in the Senate shifted, so too have the arguments against the filibuster. When it could be used to block the Republican majority, it was critical to democracy. Now that it can be used to block the Democratic majority, it must be eliminated to save democracy. No surprise thus far.

What it accomplishes is to provide a way for the minority party in the Senate to require a 60-vote supermajority. While this seems, on its face, undemocratic, there are strong arguments in its favor. It prevents a one-vote majority from establishing a tyranny, where it can make monumental changes that impact everyone even though it holds essentially no greater authority than the opposition. If a change is that significant, should there not be at least a supermajority in support of it? After all, Congress is supposed to reflect the will of the people, not half the people plus one at the expense of the other half minus one. Continue reading →

Every once in a while, a bodycam video comes along that contradicts so many beliefs that it’s hard to pigeonhole. On the one hand, the cop didn’t shoot the guy, which no doubt some will decry as the distinction of the maskless miscreant surviving the encounter. See how nice they are to white people?

On the other hand, cops are supposed to hug and kiss their own, not call in that they’re armed and dangerous in a legal carry state. Continue reading →

Nobody knows for sure what a president will do once in office. To some extent, it shouldn’t matter all that much, as he’s not the king, just the president. It’s not as if he can rule by decree in our tripartite system. Then again, there are Executive orders. Biden hasn’t been shy about issuing them, largely to rescind those issued by Trump, but also to reimagine his policy agenda to make “racial equity” the centerpiece of his administration.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday rolled out an additional slate of executive actions to address racial equity, a move to fulfill a key campaign promise that he made during the height of this past summer’s protests. Continue reading →

At Techdirt, Mike Masnick’s headline sums up the reaction.

Disingenuous, Lying, Whining, Bloviating, Insurrection Encouraging Senator Josh Hawley Given Pages Of Major Newspaper To Explain How He’s Being Silenced

This comes from the “oh-fuck-off dept,” which is usually staffed by Tim Cushing. Mike’s referring to a New York Post op-ed by Josh Hawley, graduate of Stanford University (2002) and Yale Law School (2006) and elected in 2019 as senator from the Show-Me state of Missouri. Continue reading →

Much as the Republicans are fighting their own internal battles between conservatism and cultism, the Biden administration faces its own. There’s one in the great Northeast, but thus far he’s managed to avoid anyone questioning him about it. Chicago, on the other hand, just smacked him in the face.

A growing consensus finds that children from less-advantaged backgrounds are falling behind academically because remote learning does not work as well for them as for kids from more advantaged families. These students are disproportionally minorities, especially so for Chicago’s student body. Roughly 80 percent of the 355,000 children in Chicago Public Schools qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch, a factor that is often used as a proxy to measure a district’s population of low-income and working-class students. Staying out of the classroom will hurt children who can ill afford falling even further behind.

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It’s hard to understand what goes through people’s minds. Is it that they believe themselves invincible? Is it some combination of immaturity and certainty that makes them believe this is a worthy thing to do? It’s bad enough when protesters, if that’s what they are, block a car driving down the street. Cars get to drive down public streets, even if protesters don’t want them to. Protesters do not get to damage the cars, threaten their occupants, even if protesters want to.

But when it’s a police car, another factor comes into play. The police car, and the cop inside, is on the road for a public purpose. Yes, the protesters don’t want that to be so, but not even a crowd of 100 protesters gets dictate how society functions for the rest of society. Cops’ existence may offend them, but that’s not their choice. And the cop is placed in a quandary. Does he do his job, which is not to be dictated by people in the street, or does he allow his job to be controlled by the protesters, who have decided to surround the car, pound on the car, block the car and, thus, control the cop? Continue reading →

You remember Alan Sokal, right? Well, he’s back and he’s no less concerned about subjugation of objective fact to cries of “social construct.”

Imagine that the election really had been stolen. Four-hour lines and broken voting machines in Black neighborhoods of Milwaukee and Atlanta. Thousands of absentee ballots thrown out for minor technical flaws in Michigan and Arizona. Massive postal delays leading to late delivery of mail-in ballots all around the country. Finally, by a 5-4 decision—with Amy Coney Barrett as the key vote—the Supreme Court rules that, under Pennsylvania law, ballots postmarked prior to election day but arriving after election day cannot be counted. This throws Pennsylvania, and the election, to Trump. Continue reading →

Listening to Biden’s inaugural address, I was struck by his mentions of racial justice. I’m not a fan of the word “justice,” used too often to promote whatever outcome someone preferred. It was the go-to word for why convicted killers had to be executed. It was “justice,” we were told. But pairing the word with “racial” confused me even more. I keep hearing the phrase, but I don’t know what it means. It sounds good, but it doesn’t tell me anything.

In his inauguration speech, the president pledged to defeat “white supremacy,” using a burst of executive orders on Day 1 to declare that “advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our government.”

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It was Skink who came up with the notion that SJ was like hotel, and the comments were its bar. All were welcome until you annoyed the other patrons or the barkeeper, and then, well, you might be politely asked to leave. Okay, not always politely.

A few people have asked of late why it “seems” as if SJ has become a magnet for people with conservative views, together with the usual assortment of lefty libs one would expect of a criminal defense blog. And I’ve asked myself that question as well, many times, over the past few years. This started well before Trump, though he exacerbated the problem, as the criminal defense bar grew increasingly progressive and became increasingly dedicated to anger and outcomes with increasingly less concern for principle, honesty and balance. Continue reading →