The characterization of Joe Biden “as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” in Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report was intentionally damning. There were a great many other ways to express his point, that Biden would have made a sympathetic witness had he testified in a prosecution, without calling him a doddering and demented old man. While it wasn’t Hur’s job or inclination to be kind to Biden, it also wasn’t his job to do as much political damage as possible while declining to prosecute, which was never seriously on the table given Biden’s cooperation with the FBI and his immediate return of all classified documents.

But what isn’t well understood is that Hur, as special counsel, had a duty to explain his decision not to prosecute to the attorney general in a report. Continue reading →

Wherever the interest began, I wasn’t there. But over the past few weeks, there have been more than a few people talking about polyamory. Before that, it had been a niche concern, the sort of thing that young people trying to navigate the shoals of marriage and sexuality latched onto to make their confusion appear more intellectual and less banal. But it has now hit the New York Times, elevating polyamory into a real thing that some might take seriously.

It’s hard to miss the growing interest these days in polyamory and ethical non-monogamy, the term du jour for having multiple romantic relationships. The new year kicked off with a slew of articles on the subject from a number of publications that shed light on the practice and lifestyle. Continue reading →

Without reading the complaint itself, it’s hard to determine whether Northern District of Florida Judge Kent Wetherell was being fair or harsh with pro se plaintiff lawyer Allan Kassenoff. That a lawyer proceeded pro se is a red flag, as with anyone else. That the lawyer’s complaint was 110 pages was another red flag, although it’s not all that unusual in the age of computers for complaints to run needlessly long, just like judicial opinions.

But what plaintiff was fighting was not merely the battle to win a defamation case against a tiktokker who called upon his minions to destroy Kassenoff by bombarding his law firm, Greenberg Traurig, until they capitulated and fired him, but the ruination of him and his children on social media to millions. Continue reading →

Sheriff Roy Templeton noticed two things on arriving at the scene of the incident.

The first was that Farmer Jesse Burkitt’s prize Holstein was very dead.

The second was the cow apparently met its demise when something (it had to be a something, Sheriff Roy thought) sucked its innards out through its rectal area.

“Deputy Miranda, what do we have here?” Sheriff Roy asked his second in command. Continue reading →

One possibility is that the Supreme Court’s questioning during oral argument over Colorado’s disqualification of Trump from the primary ballot reflected a number of serious, legitimate concerns about the novel issues raised by the state’s putative exercise of Section 3 of th Fourteenth Amendment. The other is the XAnon conspiracy theory being propounded by the left that it’s a cynical ploy to rehabilitate the Court’s public image.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his colleagues seemed ready on Thursday to start to rebuild the court’s reputation by presenting themselves as unified and apolitical. Continue reading →

There are two truisms here. The first is that there is no parent who doesn’t know, in their heart, that they could have done a better job of it. And many, if not most, did a very poor job of it. The second is that the warning signs are always more obvious after your child murders people.

Jennifer Crumbly was not a good parent. Whether she appreciated at the time her son, Ethan, murdered four of his classmates, just how bad a mother she was is another matter. Sure, we can now, after four classmates were killed, but there’s nothing like a quadruple murder to clarify whether the shooter’s mom could have prevented the shooting. Oh, and dad James sucked too. Continue reading →

You thought we were past the worst of me too, the sex inquisition where any accusation by a woman was all that was needed for punishment to be exacted? Sit down. I have something to tell you about Yascha Mounk and it’s going to make you sad.

A woman with issues claims that she was raped about two and a half years ago. What happened is unclear despite thousands of words murdered in furtherance of her catharsis, except to the extent she says this:

I mean, it wasn’t violent like that. I didn’t bleed. I was in and out of sleep when he penetrated me and was jolted wide awake when he started moving fast inside me.”

Continue reading →

There has been a great deal of discussion about whether Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment precludes Trump from being re-elected president. Issues swirl, from whether the president is an officer to why it was specifically omitted. Is he precluded from running or just serving? Must he be convicted or is it left up to the states to decide? There are “expert” opinions all over the place, meaning that the Supreme Court’s decision can legitimately go either way.

But what if the Court rules that a state can decide to reject Trump as a candidate and not put his name on the ballot? Continue reading →

There are few worse jobs in Washington than representative. You’re one of 435, so it’s not as if any individual congressman carries much clout. You have a two-year term, so the day after you win election you’re back to begging for money to pay for the next campaign. Why would anyone want such a job?

Joe Cohn told me it was because he’s dedicated his career, indeed his life, to trying to make this a better country, and he’s willing to take the hit for the rest of us. I tried to talk Joe out of it, but he made up his mind. Joe Cohn is running for Congress in the Third Congressional District of New Jersey. Continue reading →

At Volokh Conspiracy, Jon Adler provides four “concerns” about what has become of Chevron Deference, the doctrine that courts should defer to the “expertise” of federal agencies executing the law.

First, in practice, Chevron is often used to uphold agency interpretations that have little to do with allowing agencies to exercise their delegated authority to make policy judgments based upon agency expertise.

Second, despite Supreme Court decisions suggesting that ambiguity alone is insufficient to trigger Chevron deference, lower courts often fail to engage in any meaningful “step zero” analysis in order to make sure that Congress had delegated the relevant authority to the agency. Instead, Chevron has become an excuse for courts to abdicate their responsibility to resolve legal questions in favor of agencies. Continue reading →