Tim Cushing does an excellent job of saying what needed to be said about the Third Circuit’s decision in Fenico v. Philadelphia.

The First Amendment protects speech, even the horrible stuff. It can’t protect the speaker from being criticized for being abhorrent, despite what many abhorrent people believe. It can, however, in certain cases, protect the speaker from being punished for this speech.

It’s not blanket coverage. The person engaging in the speech generally has to be punished by a government entity for this protection to kick in. A private company can fire someone for their speech without worrying too much about the Constitution. But a state entity needs to be far more careful, even when it’s dealing with its own employees. Continue reading →

To be fair, Hunter Biden’s plea deal, two years probation for failing to timely pay taxes for two years, even though already paid up, was pretty sweet. Even sweeter was the deal of diversion for lying on the form to obtain a handgun that he wasn’t an addict. It was a good deal. A really good deal. But with good counsel, even really good deals happen.

But what about Garland, the attorney general appointed by none other than Hunter Biden’s daddy? The investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden was under the auspices of the United States Attorney for the District of Delaware. His name is David Weiss. He was appointed not by Biden, but by Trump, in 2018. Biden did not replace him with a new United States Attorney of his own choosing, as he could, because he sought to avoid the appearance of exactly what’s running through the overly fertile minds of conspiracy believers. Continue reading →

Yesterday, Trump gave another confession. He didn’t mean to, I suppose, but he lacks the capacity to tell the difference between something that legally damns him and something that just makes him look foolish and incompetent on the telly. There is an increasingly strong likelihood that Trump will be convicted at trial for his retention of national security papers and obstruction of justice.

In anticipation of this increasingly likely scenario, some have been calling for the pardon of Donald Trump. Continue reading →

No one is arguing that Duane Owen wasn’t a monster who committed horrific crimes. Whether that means that the death penalty is the right punishment is another matter, perhaps best argued based on opposition to the death penalty than that Owen’s crimes were not so horrible that execution wasn’t warranted. As monsters go, Owen’s actions would certainly qualify.

Owen was convicted for the 1984 rape and fatal stabbing of teenager Karen Slattery and for the rape and killing of 38-year-old Georgianna Worden in Palm Beach County.

It should be noted that Owen was convicted in 1984, nearly 40 years ago. Whether it makes any sense to execute anyone for a crime committed 40 years earlier is another good question. Yet these were not the foremost issues that outraged the ACLU, which felt compelled to make a public assertion of the harm suffered by Duane Owen. Continue reading →

In one sense, it’s a meme. But in another, there’s a good deal of truth in the assertion that Mario Puzo’s The Godfather teaches all the life lessons one needs to know. And in light of the new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “rules” for diversity, it does so again.

Starting with the March 2024 awards, movies will not be considered for a Best Picture nomination unless they feature a lead or significant supporting character from an “underrepresented racial or ethnic group,” have a main storyline that focuses on an underrepresented group, or at least 30% of the cast comes from two or more underrepresented groups (women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ or the disabled).

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Ten years ago, maybe even five, no one would have blinked at the bold assertion that there are only two genders. Some now argue to the contrary, and perhaps have made a legitimate argument that there are more than two and that the assertion that there are but two genders either “erases” their existence or, to put it more aggressively, is an act of violence against them. Massachusetts district court Judge Indira Talwani agreed.

The First Amendment has long been understood to protect messages on kids’ T-shirts in school, as long as they weren’t vulgar or likely to cause a disruption. For example, a federal appeals court ruled that a kid had the right to wear a T-shirt saying, “Be Happy, Not Gay.” But that was back in 2008, a less woke time, when judges were not as eager to sacrifice free speech rights at the altar of political correctness. Continue reading →

Hello, fellow movie lovers! It is I, your humble humorist, and today I’m attempting something I’ve never done before: a review of four movies at once. This week we’re taking a ride through the cinematic universe of John Wick. Buckle up, because this is going to be a bumpy and extremely bullet-ridden journey through all four installments of the Keanu Reeves-led action franchise.

I’ll get the pleasantries out of the way from the start. These are probably my favorite action films of the past decade. Make a point to see them. If you haven’t, you’re missing out on some of the most intense action scenes to ever grace celluloid. But let’s be completely honest here— the biggest positives of the series are Keanu Reeves making it cool to wear dark suits and dress shoes again, and John Wick taking out bad guys like he’s nonchalantly strolling through a park. Continue reading →

Every once on a while, the same old argument arises to do away with the bar exam because it’s a poor test of the skills needed to practice law and it reduces the number of lawyers, thereby increasing the cost of representation and leaves many without access to representation. This time, Ilya Somin at VC has latched onto a study that appeared in an ABA Journal article to pursue his belief in deregulation of the legal profession.

An important new study by Washington University (St. Louis) legal scholar Kyle Rozema finds that bar exam requirements massively reduce the number of lawyers. While some might cheer that result, the main effect is to increase the cost and reduce the availability of legal services. Lack of access to affordable legal representation is a serious problem in our legal system, particularly for the poor and lower middle class.

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It passed the House judiciary committee by a unanimous 26-0 vote. For the math challenged, that means both the Republican majority and Democrat minority on the committee agreed. With each other. But the most shocking part is that it was about in rem asset forfeiture, the debacle born in the heat of the crack epidemic and mafia war to, as its marketing spiel went, “take the profit out of crime.”

Back then, the promise was that it would only be used against mobsters and drug kingpins, so ordinary folk wouldn’t get too bothered by its near-total lack of due process and its presumption that assets were criminal until proven otherwise. Since then, we’ve come to appreciate that it’s used against anyone with loot to snatch, which then inures to the benefit of the thieving cops who snatch it. Continue reading →

As every lawyer is brutally aware, the judge on a case holds extraordinary power in making or breaking the case. From slow-walking rulings to the usual “denied” from the bench without even pretending to glance at the papers, there are a thousand little decisions that spell the difference between dismissal/acquittal and conviction. Much as some of us hope for fair, smart and reasonable judges, we know only too well that some judges fall short. And then there’s United States District Judge Aileen Cannon.

Her name may be familiar to many. Judge Cannon heard Trump’s challenge to the government’s classified-documents investigation, appointed a special master to review the documents, and temporarily barred the Justice Department from using those records in its investigation. That much-maligned decision was later reversed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit consisting of three conservative judges: two Trump appointees and the G.W. Bush–appointed Chief Judge William Pryor. They wrote that her decision violated “clear” law and that her approach “would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations” and “violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”

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