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 →

Since my son went off the college, he’s brought his friends from college whose either lived too far away to go home for Thanksgiving or couldn’t afford the trip. We always wanted to be the place they were welcome. For well over a decade now, we’ve shared Thanksgiving at Casa de SJ with who our daughter dubbed the “Lost Boys.” They became part of our family.

This Thanksgiving, our son came home with his special person, who is brilliant, lovely and brings me hope of becoming a grandfather some day. But the Lost Boys? They were here last year, except one who was supposed to come but mysteriously went silent and ghosted us at the last minute, causing Dr. SJ much concern and sadness. This year, they no longer needed a second home, a second family, so they wouldn’t be alone on Thanksgiving. Continue reading →

It seems wrong to many that two people, a mother and father, who are within the borders of the United States of America without lawful authorization, should be able to produce a child who, by virtue of having been born here, is American. After all, if the parents never should have been here in the first place, how can their illegal status be magically cleansed for their offspring, who is a birthright citizen? Because that’s what the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution says.

Section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

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Vicki Baker didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t ask for or facilitate Wesley Little entering her house with a teenage girl, later released. She didn’t let him refuse to leave. She wasn’t even there. And yet, she, and she alone, will bear the cost of the police destroying her house, now that the Supreme Court has denied cert and allowed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling to stand.

The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment provides that private property shall not “be taken for public use, without just compensation.” This case raises an important question that has divided the courts of appeals: whether the Takings Clause requires compensation when the government damages private property pursuant to its police power.

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Some of you probably thought about this long ago, but it just clicked with me when I watched a segment on Discovery about how candy became connected to holidays. Back in the 1960s, television saturated American households. They said that between 1950 and 1960, households with televisions went from 8% to 89%. Whether that’s accurate or not, I don’t know, but even if the numbers are less than precise, the point was clear. Americans got their news from television, and there were only three networks, all of which told the same basic story.

What there wasn’t was cable news channels. What there wasn’t was journalists eschewing facts in favor of moral clarity. What there were not were channels dedicated to pushing one tribe’s narrative and denigrating the other’s. What there were not were viewers who watched the station that fed them what they wanted to hear, validated their priors and fed them “news” without regard to facts. Continue reading →

Dr. SJ hates bad food. We try to go to interesting restaurants with reputations for serving good food. Occasionally, a restaurant can be refreshingly inexpensive, but most “good” restaurants are quite pricey. Whether for good food or barely mediocre food, they charge as if they’re serving gold. And whether the dinner is fabulous or tasteless, the check eventually comes and demands to be paid.

Restaurants do not serve you dinner because they love you. They serve you dinner because you pay the tab.  It is a business transaction like any other. It may be framed in terms of love, as in food prepared with love and some personal connection between server and diner, but when dinner is over, you will still have paid and neither the server, hostess, chef, bartender nor cashier will be inviting you to their home for Thanksgiving. Continue reading →

In the normal course of affairs, sentencing follows upon a verdict of guilty like day after night. But then, the Supreme Court doesn’t stick its nose in between the two to issue a ruling as to presidential immunity. And then the defendant, now a convicted felon pending sentencing, isn’t elected President of the United States of America. Justice Juan Merchan is in uncharted territory, there being neither rules nor precedent to inform his next move.

What to do?

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial has adjourned his sentencing, which was set for next week. Continue reading →

It doesn’t really matter how much you hate Jussie Smollet or what he did. Not even how it played into the lie that permeated the politics of the moment. It also doesn’t matter how much you hate Kim Foxx, or believe her office was corrupted by the politics of the moment. Like it or not, Smollett was a criminal defendant and Foxx the Cook County State’s Attorney.

And they made a deal.

The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the conviction of Jussie Smollett on charges he faked an anti-gay, anti-Black hate crime, saying the state made a deal with Smollett to drop the charges and it can’t renege on that agreement. Continue reading →

Trump went to town on Harris’ 2019 response to a question posed by the ACLU about whether  inmates should be given taxpayer-funded gender-transition surgery. Was her failure to address this “political malpractice”? 

Since Ms. Harris’s defeat, her campaign’s decision has landed in the center of a contentious debate over how large a role transgender issues played in her party’s losses around the country. Several prominent Democrats said Ms. Harris’s relative silence was a damaging concession to Mr. Trump — and evidence that the campaign was so out of step with Americans’ views that it did not appreciate the potency of the ads.

“Malpractice was committed by that campaign,” said Ed Rendell, a Democratic former governor of Pennsylvania and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

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