As a young attorney in Denver with 17 clients whose homes were destroyed by fire, it’s nearly impossible not to find some way to evoke enough sympathy from the court to make it past a motion to dismiss. Josue Hernandez found a way, suing 113 defendants for 23 causes of action, beginning with five sounding in RICO.*

Rule 8 requires that Plaintiffs’ complaint provide “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief,” with allegations that are “simple, concise, and direct.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2), (d)(1). I find that Plaintiffs’ 260 page, 1,363 paragraph Third Amended Complaint fails to meet this standard.

In the first place, the sheer length of Plaintiffs’ complaint (260 pages and 1,363 numbered paragraphs) suggests that Plaintiffs have failed to comply with Rule 8.

One might wonder whether such a long complaint was necessary due to the number of parties, the complexity of the issues, the demands of Iqbal. Senior District Judge John Kane explains that wasn’t the problem. For all its length, it failed miserably to do its job. And had it ended there, perhaps Hernandez might have walked away with only a loss to his name. But he wasn’t done with this case. Continue reading →

Strap on your Sam Browne and head for the mall. Straw cop is on duty.

Washington has become the latest city in a nationwide movement to ban plastic straws, and it’s up to Rybarczyk, an inspector for the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment, to enforce the new law.

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According to Inside Higher Education, there are more than 96,000 comments on the proposed Title IX rules, which would make it 96,000 more than were made when Russlyn Ali and Catherine Lhamon created a system of campus sex policing out of whole cloth. Most of the comments are noise, of little value or use. Contrary to the assumptions and efforts of advocacy organizations, it wasn’t a public referendum and the side with the most “Fuck You” comments doesn’t win.

In the final days, the “big guns” came out, introducing their prolix thoughts on the systemic changes. There is a forest. There are a great many trees. Few of the comments take a look at the big picture, although it’s in there, even if inadvertantly. For example, from the American Council on Education:

Most importantly, we ask that the final rule reflect this fundamental premise: Colleges and universities are educational institutions, not arms of or alternatives to the criminal justice system. They should not be expected to mimic civil court systems with trial-like forums that enable one person to seek a quasi-judicial judgment against another individual. Attempts to graft formal legal procedures onto internal college and university disciplinary systems conflict with a longstanding body of case law that distinguishes college disciplinary processes
from judicial systems.

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The topic of the debate was controversial, as well it should be. After all, if there was no controversy, what’s to debate?

Layton High School senior Michael Moreno and his debate partner, whom The Daily Wire will not name, were participating in a round with a topic relating to immigration. The specific topic of the round was “Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce restrictions on legal immigration.” Moreno and his partner were arguing in the negative, meaning they were arguing against the other team’s plan to reduce restrictions on legal immigration.

Immigration is one of those fascinatingly trendy issues, flying under the radar for decades despite doing serious harm to many, until Trump issued his Muslim Ban, whereupon it burst onto the consciousness of his detractors and there was suddenly extreme, if deluded, interest. Continue reading →

If it’s remotely possible, consider putting aside your fears of what might be and instead consider what is. The right to an abortion is one of the most feared losses on the left, it being of deep concern that a conservative block on the Supreme Court might reverse Roe v. Wade or, more likely, approve limits on abortions that will put those rights on the slippery slope of obliteration.

In the meantime, Virginia Representative Kathy Tang offered a bill to expand the right to an abortion through the moment of birth, with conditions that included a physician’s certification that birth would “likely” threaten the mental or physical health of the mother. The bill failed, but not before it evoked outrage and took a toll on Governor Ralph Northam, whose words confusingly suggested that the right might be availabe after birth as well. It’s not what he meant, even if it’s kind of what he said.

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He was a regular at the SJ Hotel bar for years, but as occasionally happens, didn’t come in one day.

At a subreddit called “Bad Cop, No Donut,” a mod who went by the handle FritzMuffKnuckle started having some doubts. He reached out to me. He had an issue with a poster there, a guy who said he was a lawyer, who appeared to be knowledgeable about the law, and who was schooling others about the “meaning” of stories posted. He asked me whether this commenter was for real, knew what he was talking about.

Fritz was annoyed by this guy, as he derailed threads and, to Fritz, was kinda nuts and made people stupider. Fritz was mostly right, and we talked about it. His sense was right, even if he wasn’t clear on the details. As a subreddit mod*, he felt it was his job to not let the place get any worse than it naturally was.  Continue reading →

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has been everything he said he would be when he ran for office, and he’s taken some heat along with the kudos. But a collateral consequence is unfolding as his Conviction Integrity Unit is doing its job. Judges find it hard to adjust to a prosecutor who concedes that there are innocent people in prison.

As much as his office has demonstrated its willingness to go back, review old convictions, determine whether they were obtained through some impropriety or whether a defendant might have been innocent, it wasn’t entirely his call.

It will be a decade in April since a federal judge, after hearing evidence in the case of Terrance Lewis, ruled that he appeared to be innocent of the 1996 murder of Hulon Howard in West Philadelphia — but that for procedural reasons, his conviction and life sentence could not be overturned.

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The proposed Title IX campus sex policing rules (which, I note, are not changes since the prior “rules” were “guidance” rather than regulations, having never gone through the Notice and Comment required by the Administrative Procedures Act, and were merely instituted by bureaucratic fiat during the Obama administration), are coming to the end of their comment period. So how’s that working out?

“F— you Betsy,” reads one comment.

“DeVos is a traitor to women everywhere,” another wrote. One chimed in with: “Ms DeVos: for the good of ALL women: PLEASE RESIGN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Well, not too bad, apparently. There are more substantive comments as well. Continue reading →

In the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign, someone who lived in my house decried the fact that the options offered were, how to say this kindly, unappealing. On the right was the singularly least qualified, and worst, candidate since Andrew Jackson, and probably ever. On the left was a former First Lady who deplored a significant portion of her countrymen and announced she would not be their president.

That the Democrats lost to Trump was the greatest humiliating defeat ever in the history of politics. That they didn’t win 80-20 is shocking, a point they missed as they cast blame around the fringes. So if they couldn’t pull off a win with Clinton, would they learn anything? Not that they didn’t get their message out well enough, but that their message, pushing ever-harder to toward progressive ends, was rejected. Nah.

Enter the possibility of a run by former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. So, what if he did? Continue reading →

Cato’s Julain Sanchez proffers a curious theory, that the now-adored Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s takedown of cartoon character Roger Stone was less to prosecute Stone than to get his hands on Stone’s apps.

For many, Friday’s arrest of Roger Stone, the veteran political trickster and longtime adviser to Donald Trump, was a sign that the special counsel investigation into Russian electoral interference is entering its final phase. Yet there were also several indications that the probe may not be as near its conclusion as many observers assume — and that the true target of Friday’s F.B.I. actions was not Mr. Stone himself, but his electronic devices.

There are two aspects of this theory that will give rise to resistance. The first is that Stone is the perfect foil for anyone who wants to see Trump crash and burn. Continue reading →