There has been harsh criticism of Trump for having pardoned or commuted the sentences of violent criminals in his grandiose, yet shallow, display of pandering to his MAGA base that saw them as patriots and hostages. To those who believe in faeries, he was a hero, kind of keeping his campaign promise and bringing home the well intended, if none too bright, patriots he told to storm the Congress to save the nation.

To others, he was his usual simplistic fool, doing pretty much what one would expect of any simplistic fool, uninterested in distinguishing between unworthy defendants and unwilling to put in the effort when the only purpose of his act was to pander to sycophants who similarly wouldn’t care either way. It was a cheap way for Trump to buy himself some adoration and, if necessary, useful idiots to take to the streets again if he needed some very fine people to do his dirty work. Continue reading →

No, Trump didn’t get a “mandate.” He didn’t get a majority of the popular vote and had the smallest winning percentage of any president in generations. No, “woke” isn’t just being courteous, and DEI isn’t just being against discrimination. And no, yours isn’t the side of good and theirs isn’t the side of evil, and everyone who fails to live up to your purity test isn’t part of the evil tribe.

I blame myself for trying to be as accommodating of differing views as possible. It had been my hope that commenters here would police themselves and each other, would exercise some modicum of self-control so as not to spew their tribe’s lies and delusions, as if to challenge me and others here to disprove them. Continue reading →

No one has ever accused Donald Trump of being deep, nuanced and petty subtle. But then, no rational person believes that the avalanche of Executive Orders marked with a sharpie come from the mushy-minded Trump. The “tell” is that they aren’t in all caps, use big words spelled correctly and are generally coherent. Someone came up with all these ideas, save the silliness of renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, and Trump is channeling his best Governor William J. Le Petomane.

Among the proclamations are two Executive Orders seeking to eradicate, overnight, the dreaded Diversity, Equity and Inclusion machinery that have properly come under fire for their infusion of race and sex discrimination under the woke guise of remediating past discrimination by exploiting current discrimination. The Supreme Court says no. Americans say no. Even those it was putatively supposed to help say no. So what’s not to like? Continue reading →

If you were privileged to know Judge Richard G. Kopf at all beyond the blawg posts or comment section replies, you were fucking spoiled.

You had the ear of a federal Judge who would give you his 100% no bullshit opinions on anything and everything. If he felt like he could impart some wisdom in the process, so much the better. Continue reading →

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is about to reach its one week anniversary, longer than many had anticipated. The next step requires Hamas to release four female hostages, while Israel is to release more than 100 Palestinian terrorists. For a variety of reasons, this should strike people as a pretty lousy deal. Obviously, the ratio is horribly skewed in favor of Hamas. Then, too, are the “equivalences” of kidnapped hostages to convicted terrorists. How, then, did such a bad deal get struck?

It’s entirely understandable that Israelis whose loved ones were kidnapped and held hostage, often sex slaves, in Gaza would do anything to secure their return. Give up 1000 terrorists? Anything. End the war in Gaza? Anything. If it was your child/parent/spouse in captivity for all this time, would you put geopolitics ahead of their life? Continue reading →

Caught in between the January 6th defendants who had already completed their sentences and those sentenced for many years of imprisonment to come were some whose prosecutions had commenced, but had not yet been completed. Nicholas DeCarlo and Nicholas Ochs were two defendants who had already pleaded guilty, already allocuted under oath that they committed the crimes with which they were charged, and were awaiting sentence when Trump directed the prosecution to trash the case.

I further direct the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Continue reading →

It’s said that unexplaining lies and irrational arguments to people who passionately desire to believe them and lack the education, experience and knowledge to grasp why the arguments are fundamentally absurd takes a magnitude of effort greater than creating them. Whether that’s true is doubtful; there is no unexplaining lies and irrational arguments to people incapable or disinterested in facts and reason, no matter what effort is mounted.

This was overwhemingly demonstrated in yesterday’s Tuesday Talk, perhaps the most disgraceful showing of ignorance and idiocy I’ve ever suffered here, and which has given me reason to put an end to TT lest Simple Justice become a cesspool of idiocy. Just as I refuse to let the woke have their way with their fantasy version of the world, I refuse to contribute to stupidity by giving space to the Trump faithful. There are other places happy to do so. Go there, not here. Continue reading →

There were the blanket Select Committee pardons and the family pardons, both of which were terrible exercises of judgment that open the door, as if the door needed opening, to cries of “Biden did it first” from the unduly simplistic. And wrongs they were, even if the rationalization was that Trump was going to exact retribution on all the people who were mean to him and kicked sand in his face.

But then came Trump’s turn, and turn it was.

Acting pursuant to the grant of authority in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, I do hereby: Continue reading →

Donald Trump will take the oath of office today to become the 47th President of the United States of America, conclusively proving Mencken right. According to Fox News, he will take “more than 200 executive actions” today. Some are intended to fulfill campaign promises, such as ending undocumented immigrants from entering the country, even if they’re more rhetorical than practical. Some are the sort one would expect of a petty, little person, such as revoking the security clearances of 51 people who said Hunter Biden’s laptop had the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.

And then there’s pure Trump, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America (despite Elon Musk’s request that it be changed to the Gulf of X). Continue reading →

I wasn’t a big fan of Hercules and the Umpire at first. Frankly, it wasn’t until Tamara Tabo pushed me to check it out that I read anything there. After all, what does a criminal defense lawyer from New York care about what some federal judge in Nebraska has to say? That was more Above the Law’s David Lat territory. But one day I checked it out, and Judge Richard G. Kopf was not at all what I expected.

Sure, we were far apart on our views of the law, Judge Kopf never met a prosecutor he didn’t trust and thought Bill Barr, who was AG when he was nominated by Bush I, was a good guy. But he was honest about being a judge, the law, and himself. The first email I ever received from Judge Kopf started, “I [expletive deleted] love bacon.” No other federal judge wrote that to me. Continue reading →