Clarissa Gilmore just wanted to visit her husband, Mulik Sheets, at the Smith State Prison in Georgia, as she had many times before. It started with nothing beyond the usual entrance searches.

Twice a month, Ms. Gilmore visited her then-husband, Mulik Sheets, at Smith State Prison in Georgia. On February 26, 2017, she arrived, as she had roughly fifty times before, and successfully proceeded through the initial security screening. That meant undergoing three different types of searches: a pat-down search, a metal-detector wand search, and an electromagnetic-radiation/body-scan search.

Bringing contraband into a prison is a problem, even if the biggest violators tend to be guards rather than visitors. And it’s not as if visitors aren’t warned that there will be searches, but within the normal parameters. Gilmore went through the normal searches and began her visit with her husband. Then she got the eye from Lieutenant Alberta Milton, and Gilmore stared back. From there, things got weird. Continue reading →

It’s not that I intentionally set out to do something epically stupid on July 4th.

It just sort of happened. That’s pretty much America in a nutshell, right?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Last week, I set out to take care of a minor gardening issue while my better half and the children cooked for our annual America Day feast. There are a number of bushes in my front yard and around the side of the house that have overgrown onto the walkway surrounding the property. I’m quite aware of this as the family dog, Poppy, is a ball of muscle with zero physical restraint who loves to pull me into those overgrown branches when we go out for morning walks. Continue reading →

The newest justice on the Supreme Court has no less a vote and voice as the most senior, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has not been shy about using both. But to what end?

At bottom, this case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives—and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened. Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.

Harsh words. Justice Jackson’s dissents have regularly used harsh words in condemnation of Trump’s actions. But in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees, addressing the reduction in force of federal government employees, Jackson dissented alone, with Justice Sotomayor, her usual comrade in dissent, admonishing her to take it down a notch. Continue reading →

It’s a movie. See it. Don’t see it. Whatever. But the fact that the new James Gunn Superman movie has become the latest focus of anti-woke grievance as the latest battle in the culture war is illegal aliens is telling.

“Superman” director and DC Studios co-head James Gunn is facing backlash for calling the Man of Steel “an immigrant that came from other places” in a new interview.

Ahead of the release of Warner Bros.’ superhero reboot on July 11, Gunn, 58, told The Sunday Times of London that “‘Superman’ is the story of America… An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country.” Continue reading →

The simplistic slogan that “no one is above the law” has become unfortunately popular, as it’s neither correct nor sound, gripping the public perception whenever it’s convenient. It was regurgitated constantly when it was Donald Trump in the dock, until the Supreme Court’s decision to the contrary, and it reared its ugly head again when Milwaukee District Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested and indicted for her role in interfering with ICE’s seizure of Eduardo Flores-Ruiz.

Judge Dugan moved for dismissal on the basis, inter alia, of judicial immunity. Eastern District of Wisconsin Magistrate Judge Nancy Joseph’s report and recommendation would deny the motion, finding that while immunity for civil liability is clearly established, the same cannot be said for criminal liability. Continue reading →

Not too long ago, there was growing consensus that the “Warrior Cop” as described by Radley Balko’s seminal work was a bad thing, creating the mentality of police against citizenry rather than police as protectors of the people. Police carried weapons of war, drove armored vehicles and wore gear best suited to causing fear and loathing. If that was a problem then, what happened in Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park was nothing short of a siege, albeit one without an enemy in sight or a purpose other than to perform for the cameras.

It had been a quiet morning in MacArthur Park, a hub in one of Los Angeles’s most immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. Children at a summer camp were playing outside, but the park was otherwise largely empty. Continue reading →

Remember when the co-president was thought to be Elon Musk, before he decided to start a new political party because he was such a popular and charismatic figure in American politics? We were, apparently, quite wrong, as the real president was hiding in the shadows all along. He was a 39-year-old son of wealthy California Democrats whose formulative years were spent blaming janitors for not picking up the trash he tossed to the ground. And in the second Trump administration, he appears to have more power than pretty much anyone else. His name is Stephen Miller.

It was during his formative years that Mr. Miller developed a broader critique of society. He watched the left take over California and, in his view, turn it into a failed state — failures that he believed were directly attributable to immigration. As he explained years later, it was his experience in California that led him to conclude that “mass migration turns politics leftward” and that mass migration was turning the United States into California.

Continue reading →

Whether or not it’s feasible, the fact remains that a couple of Trump’s most adoring congressional representatives want his face on Mount Rushmore, beside Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. And nobody loves the idea more than Trump.

Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, at the time running for South Dakota governor, recalled in a 2018 interview with a Coyote State newspaper that during her first meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, he told her it was his “dream” to be immortalized on the monument someday.

“I started laughing,” Noem, at the time a Republican member of Congress, told the Argus Leader. “He wasn’t laughing, so he was totally serious.”

Continue reading →

As regular readers of SJ know, I am surprisingly patriotic for someone who occasionally criticizes my nation and its officials, both right and left. It’s harder this year than it has been in the past. It’s not that my love of country has waned, but that too many within the MAGA fold who call themselves “patriots” care little about the Constitution, that thing that makes us Americans.

But I refuse to give up, either on this nation or its Constitution, even if we just saw Congress fold like a cheap suit to the whims of a vulgar, deceitful, vindictive, narcissistic ignoramus. And so, I celebrate today, the Fourth of July, in the 249 year of our independence. I celebrate the Americans who gave their lives for their country. I celebrate the blessings of liberty we enjoy, even as armed masked men snatch people off the street for looking swarthy. Continue reading →

When Skink sent me the decision yesterday, without comment, I opened it to see a mere 38-page ruling from the Eleventh Circuit. In the grand scheme of judicial decisions nowadays, meaning since the advent of computers allowing the facile regurgitation of formulaic and prolix writing, a mere 38-page decision is considered relatively succinct. But still, it came from the swamp and rarely does anything good come from the swamp.*

And so I read, without further introduction, about someone named Katie Woods suing the Florida Department of Education, and the Hillsborough Board of Education. Suddenly the strains of Harper Valley PTA started swirling in my head, because as I dove further and further into the decision, I realized what a petty, absurd and ridiculous case this was. Continue reading →