Following Trump’s photo op on June 1, 2020 at St. John’s Church in Lafayette Square, with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley reaiized the error of his participating in the venture.
Soon enough, Milley recognized the error of his decision and apologized, saying, “I should not have been there. My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
This week, thousands of Americans who previously held strong beliefs that the criminal justice system is rigged against the accused celebrated in droves as the one person they all agreed was a No Good Rat Bastard Who Totally Did it was found guilty by a jury of his peers.
Social media trended with the terms “Guilty,” “There is a God” and “Rule of Law” for days following the verdict. Strangely, these were the same accounts posting things like “ACAB,” “No Justice, No Peace” and “Free [insert name of local felon]” only days earlier. Continue reading
One of the most basic thought experiments is to replace the target of an action against a disfavored group with a favored group, and see if you still approve. The problem with this experiment is that under the progressive ideal, where achieving the goal of standing up for whomever they’ve deemed oppressed is the only thing that matters and should be accomplished by any means necessary, they just don’t care. When you wrap yourself in the glory of righteousness, the ends justify the means.
So it was at UCLA, as reflected in the complaint in Frankel v. Regents. Continue reading
The website now shows “website is under maintenance” where it once showed an article written by Rabea Eghbariah, a Palestinian human rights lawyer and a doctoral candidate at Harvard entitled Toward Nabka As A Legal Concept. According to the New York Times, the law review’s Board of Directors has issues.
In a statement, the board of directors, which consists of faculty members and alumni, said it had decided to suspend the website on Monday after learning two days earlier that not all of the students on the Law Review had read the essay before publication. Continue reading
Ilya Somin argues that President Joe Biden’s proclamation on securing the border is likely ultra vires, and will eventually be struck down. The ACLU has already announced that it’s taking it to court, because it involves one of its favored groups, so of course it is. And they will likely prevail, eventually. But in the meantime, there is a crisis at the southern border, an influx of immigrants that the United States lacks the resources and infrastructure to absorb. Something must be done.
There’s no denying that the executive order President Biden signed on Tuesday — significantly curtailing the number of asylum seekers allowed into the country — is a head-spinning reversal for a president who promised to undo Donald Trump’s policies at the border. It’s worth remembering that Biden wasn’t alone on that front. Eight out of 10 Democrats running in the presidential primaries said in 2019 that they would make walking across the border without permission a civil infraction, like a traffic ticket, instead of a criminal offense.
As a Class E non-violent felony, conviction for the crime of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree is subject to a range of punishment, from probation to a term of imprisonment, the maximum of which is an indeterminate sentence of 1 1/3 to 4 years.
Within the sentencing parameters, there are many variations, such as a split sentence involving part incarceration and the balance probation, and conditions such as home or weekend detention, curfews and ankle monitors. Continue reading
After the stunning implosion of a sweet plea deal that, all things being equal, should never have been allowed to escape the grasp of the defense, Hunter Biden is going to trial. You remember Hunter Biden, whose conduct was denied and pooh-poohed when initially raised, another fabricated conspiracy theory of the right crafted as disinformation to harm his father, which turned out to be not merely true, but damning?
Last September, a federal grand jury charged Mr. Biden with three felonies: lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the federal firearms application used to screen applicants and possessing an illegally obtained gun for 11 days, from Oct. 12 to Oct. 23, 2018. Continue reading
Like many of us who found the legal theory upon which the New York County “hush money” indictment of Trump problematic, former prosecutor turned prawf Randall Eliason had his doubts.
The New York courts appear to be mixed on this question and there is no definitive ruling from the state’s highest court. If Bragg’s theory is that the false entries were part of a scheme to defraud an agency such as the New York State Board of Elections, then a court might apply this broader definition. If his theory is that it was a scheme to deceive the voters, I think a court is likely to hold that does not constitute fraud. (Part of the problem, as I discuss below, is that we don’t know exactly what Bragg’s legal theory is.)
The COVID-19 pandemic severely harmed schoolchildren in ways we’re only beginning to fully understand. Loss of instruction time, socialization and structure have repeatedly shown in the past four years to have negatively affected everything from reading comprehension to basic speech. Some states brushed away the problems by abolishing tests and declaring subjects like math racist. My home state of Tennessee, not to be outdone in acts of legislative stupidity, decided to base all of third grade on one pass/fail test.
The Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act updated the state’s third grade retention requirements and requires intervention for some students before they can be promoted to fourth grade. Starting in the 2022-23 school year, third grade students who score “below expectations” or “approaching expectations” on the third grade ELA TCAP shall not be promoted to the fourth grade unless they meet the requirements.
There are a few decisions which, by law, are left entirely to the defendant. Whether to plead guilty. Whether to testify. But trial strategy is the lawyers’ domain. And with any other defendant, there is a good chance that the lawyers defending Donald Trump could have mustered a defense that would have sufficiently countered the prosecution’s narrative to get an acquittal, or at least a hung jury. Even with the defense provided, there were serious doubts whether the jury would find the defendant guilty. It did.
The defendant blamed the corrupt judge and rigged trial. He called it a disgrace, over and over. He lied about his ability to defend himself, claiming the gag order prevented it when the choice was his whether to testify. Of course, testifying would have been critical if he wanted to claim innocence, but then he would have been subject to cross. There is no one who believes he would have done well on cross. Continue reading