If the names of white men were stricken from a promotion list to one-star general because they were white men, it would constitute unlawful discrimination. The same is true if the names were of black or female officers. They shouldn’t get the promotion because of their race or sex, and they shouldn’t be denied the promotion either. That’s the part the eludes Hegseth. Or maybe it doesn’t elude Hegseth at all and he’s just racist and sexist, using the Trump-demanded war against woke to cleanse the military of those he deems unworthy of being in this white man’s army?

Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consists of about three dozen officers, most of whom are white men, senior military officials said.

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Prefatory note: Friends, the travelogue is taking a slight break this week.

I remember the first season of ABC’s reality TV juggernaut “The Bachelor” somewhat vaguely. As I recall the lead was a single guy from a fairly large tire magnate family. The premise of the show was vulgar, but it made sense: this was a guy twenty women would arguably throw themselves at in real life.

Fast forward to last week and the show’s gone from THAT to…well…having twenty men compete for the love of a single mother of three with multiple baby daddies and a guilty plea for domestic violence. Continue reading →

One of the most incomprehensible aspects of Trump’s foreign policy decision-making is his abject refusal to do lay any responsibility, any blame, on Vladimir Putin and Russia. Jay Nordingler wrote an insightful post about how Trump understands America’s position in the world relative to Russia, and his personal grasp of his role relative to Putin. It doesn’t explain why, but it does explain how.

William F. Buckley Jr. had a line about moral equivalence. He worded it slightly differently each time, but here is one version: “The man who pushes an old lady into the path of an oncoming truck, and the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of an oncoming truck, are not to be denounced evenhandedly as men who push old ladies around.”

In Trump’s eyes, however, the United States and Russia are two sides of the same coin, each the moral equivalent of the other. Continue reading →

Only in a fantasy narrative wholly detached from any cognizable version of reality could one not see the settlement as the United States Department of Justice, or Attorney General Pam Bondi to be more specific, handing over taxpayer funds to a Trump=aligned criminal-turned-retconned victim to the tune of $1.25 million as an act of  flagrant corruption. Granted, that’s not a huge sum, particularly in light of the sums that will be paid by Bondi to victims-of-injustice Trump and his family, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at.

But mostly, the notion that the United States paid off Michael Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to obstruction for lying to investigators, after being fired by Trump as National Security Advisor for lying to Vice President Mike Pence, and ultimately pardoned by Trump in the waning hours of his first term, is such a flagrant act of corruption as to be absurd, but for the fact that it happened. The Attorney General of the United States agreed to give $1.25 million to Flynn, who pleaded guilty and was pardoned, for being maliciously prosecuted. Nope, it actually happened. Continue reading →

Over more than 40 years of practice, I’ve worked in jurisdictions in which I was not admitted to practice and served as local counsel to lawyers not admitted in jurisdictions where I was. It’s hardly uncommon, but it is fraught with the potential for very serious problems. As Eugene Volokh notes, those problems smacked an Oregon local counsel upside the head for a sanction of $14,205.66 when pro hac vice counsel submitted papers containing hallucinated AI citations.

Ms. Couvrette … [had] asked Mr. Murphy to serve as local counsel for Mr. Brigandi’s pro hac vice admission. Mr. Murphy signed Mr. Birgandi’s pro hac vice application and personally attested that he read and understood the requirements of serving as local counsel under LR 83-3….

Mr. Brigandi’s son was dating Ms. Couvrette’s daughter, and Mr. Brigandi had agreed to represent Plaintiffs for free. According to Mr. Murphy, Mr. Brigandi was primarily responsible for the litigation strategy and for all dispositive motions practice. Mr. Murphy explained, “[m]y role mostly involved strategizing with Mr. Brigandi and Ms. Couvrette on how to fashion a settlement in connection to the commercial property…. I believed that my expertise in landlord tenant law would be helpful.” … Continue reading →

Trump did his civic duty by voting by mail, even if he doesn’t want you to because that’s cheating. Following up on his debunked conspiracy delusion that the 2020 election was “rigged” and stolen from him, Trump has told congressional Republicans to make no deal to fund the Transportation Safety Administration, and thereby end the hours of waiting on line at airports, unless the SAVE Act is passed

.“I’m suggesting strongly to the Republican Party, don’t make any deal on anything,” Mr. Trump said during a crime reduction event in Memphis.

He suggested that he would use the standoff over funding for the Department of Homeland Security as leverage to pass his voter ID bill, which he says is necessary to combat voter fraud by noncitizens — something that is exceedingly rare. Continue reading →

For many of us, notably including lawyers for whom the courts remain the final arbiters of legality and constitutionality, the judicial branch of government has become the “go to” guardrails of government. Congress has forsaken any meaningful role in national governance, and Trump neither knows nor cares about the limits of his lawful authority. So where else are institutionalists to turn but the courts?

In a New York Times op-ed, Duncan Hosie argues that our faith in the courts is misplaced.

Most areas of the law, like contract law and criminal law, can readily handle the bad man: They simply have to ensure that the consequences of violating the law are clear enough and strong enough to dissuade even those who lack moral scruples. But constitutional law is different. It is predicated not on consequences, but on the assumption that those who occupy public office will subordinate self-interest to larger obligations of service. It does not compel compliance so much as it presupposes it. Against a bad man, it has no obvious recourse.

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Robert Mueller, widely respected despite being a lifelong Republican and former Director of the FBI, was appointed by Trump’s Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in 2017 to investigate foreign interference in the 2016 election and obstruction of justice. He found it.

Over nearly two years, the investigation examined a broad campaign by Russia to influence the election, including the hacking and release of Democratic emails connected to his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and a social media operation aimed at American voters. It also scrutinized contacts between Russian individuals and Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers, as well as actions taken by the president after he took office.

The inquiry resulted in charges against more than 30 people and three companies on more than 100 criminal counts. Continue reading →

There’s nothing quite like the convenience and splendor of luxury cruise ships these days. You’re on a boat housing the population of Nashville that contains all manner of amenities designed to relax, entertain, and separate you from more of your hard-earned money than you originally intended to spend.

My ship was 25 decks of heaven. There were two theaters, a comedy club, restaurants open twenty-four hours a day, and a replica of a British rock club where the Beatles used to play. The pool deck had two pools separated by age, hot tubs, a splash pad and two waterslides that hung over the side of the ship. Continue reading →

It first dawned on me that the ability to make music was an extraordinarily effective way to smack the crap out of someone who did you wrong when Dave Carroll of Sons of Maxwell put United Breaks Guitars on Youtube. Not only was it incredibly cutting, but it was a damn good song as well.

But then came Joseph Foreman, a/k/a Afroman, whose door was broken down and home searched after a confidential informant accused him of having a basement dungeon. One problem was that he had no basement, but that didn’t stop the Adams County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputies from raiding his home. Continue reading →