I was fairly certain that after the jury hung on the top count of Manslaughter 2, and Justice Max Wiley agreed to dismiss the count with prejudice at the prosecution’s request, Daniel Penny was looking at a conviction on the lesser account of criminally negligent homicide as a compromise verdict. After all, there was at least one, if not more, jurors ready to convict on the top count, and jurors get tired after a while and tend to accommodate the strongly held positions of their fellow jurors so they can reach a verdict and go home.

I was wrong. The jury acquitted and courtroom burst into chaos. Continue reading →

Dr. SJ informs me that we, meaning she, needs a little warm weather break, so we’re off to a Caribbean cruise. See you back here in about a week or so. Maybe. Have fun and be kind to each other.

Is there any doubt that the targeted assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was wrong and tragic? It’s almost inconceivable that a cold-blooded murder, caught on video for all to see, would be anything but. And yet, the very online left fringe sees the murderer as a hero and the murder as an act of bravery against an evil billion dollar business that makes its money by denying health care to those who need and deserve it, causing the deaths of many.

“How could people be so mad at a guy that runs the biggest insurance corporation that makes billions of dollars by denying claims for basic healthcare at the highest rate of any company?” Yea is a real head scratcher

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Some would suggest it’s pretty foolish to publish an “enemies list” of those you would target for prosecution if you had the power to do so. Others would call it far worse. So, naturally, that’s what Kash Patel did, because that’s what Kash Patel is.

Was hard for me to find the list of people Kash Patel included in his book “Government Gangsters” as Deep State officials who need to be targeted so here it is in one place. pic.twitter.com/j9I7FWNzoZ

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) December 2, 2024

And that’s just the start of it, Patel having already expressed his desire to target journalists who said mean things about his beloved. Continue reading →

Oral argument will be had today in United States v. Skrmetti, challenging the Tennessee law prohibiting medical intervention for minors for gender dysphoria, pitting the Equal Protection Clause for sex discrimination against the unsettled medical nature of hormonal to surgical interventions for children.

The Tennessee law prohibits medical providers from prescribing puberty-delaying medication, offering hormone therapy or performing surgery to treat the psychological distress caused by incongruence between experienced gender and that assigned at birth. But the law allows those same treatments for other purposes.

The primary question for the justices is not whether Tennessee’s ban is wise or consistent with the views of medical experts. It is, instead, whether the law makes distinctions based on sex. If it does, a demanding form of judicial review — “heightened scrutiny” — kicks in. If it does not, the Tennessee law will almost certainly survive.

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Sure. it’s all the rage at the moment, but Joe Biden’s pardon of his son is hardly a novel concept, either as to pardoning a family member (think Charles Kushner) or issuing a pardon on the way out the door. But it still emits an unpleasant odor, both because the president asserted that he would not do so, undermining whatever integrity he had left, and that there is no accountability for the exploit of a power possessed solely by the president.

Presidents have the constitutional “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” There’s nothing Congress can do about that.

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When Donald Trump pardoned Crazy Joe Arpaio, there was a smattering of criticism that lasted minutes, maybe an hour or two, before he did something else that caught the media’s attention. Joe Biden is unlikely to be so lucky when it comes to his issuance of a pardon to his son, Hunter, after the many disavowals that he would do so. Is the problem that he pardoned Hunter, that he flip-flopped, maybe lied, about not pardoning Hunter, or both?

He said he made the decision because the charges against Hunter were politically motivated and designed to hurt him politically. Continue reading →

It started as a Joan Rivers’ shtick on Fashion Police, but it’s now the basis for a lawsuit in the Western District of Texas between “influencer” Sydney Nicole Gifford and “content creator” Alyssa Sheil.

In the lawsuit filed in April, Gifford — who has over 790,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok — claimed “at least” 30 photo posts across Sheil’s platforms featured “identical styling, tone, camera angle and/or text” to her images.

Gifford also claimed that Sheil — who has 380,000 social media followers — posted “nearly identical videos” to her content.

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Before being subjected to hearings before the appropriate Senate committees for confirmation, senior executive branch nominees undergo investigation by the FBI to ascertain whether they have any issues that could compromise national security and prevent them from clearance for confidential information. And both Democrat and Republican counsel, whether disagreeing on myriad policy matters otherwise, agree that these FBI checks were critical to United States national security.

For several years, we were the Republican and Democratic counsels who reviewed presidential nominees’ background checks for the Senate Judiciary Committee. We know how the confirmation process is supposed to work and how important F.B.I. vetting is to that process. That’s why we’re appalled by reports that the new Republican-led Senate and the incoming Trump administration may dispense with it. Continue reading →

Why it’s called “Black” Friday, I don’t know. Why not “Sale” Friday or “Green” Friday, because green is really what it’s all about. Of course, if that cool new flat screen OLED TV can be sold today for $12.39, why did it cost $2,097.99 last week? Of course, we all know that it costs more to make, market and sell than the ridiculously low price being offered today. We also know that the neither the company whose name is on the TV, as well as the company whose name is on the store or website selling the TV, have to make a profit or they won’t stay in business.  So what gives?

There are, obviously, two big reasons why retailers do this. First, because they have to clear out merchandise that didn’t sell at full price. It’s not doing them any good to have back rooms filled with unsold TVs, each representing money tied up in inventory that’s going nowhere fast. Plus, if the back room is full, where will they put the incoming, next year’s, new and improved, not to mention more expensive, stuff? Continue reading →