It was a dumb fight to pick for a business that relied upon the largesse of the state and for a state that relied upon the largesse of a business. In the heat of the moment, Disney employees pushed for the company to speak out against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. CEO Bob Iger Chapek succumbed to pressure. But in response, Gov. Ron DeSantis decided to teach Disney a lesson by seizing control of the “special tax district” that was DisneyWorld.

Disney sued DeSantis and others, arguing that the governor’s actions were in retaliation for its speech critical of his law and thus violated its First Amendment rights. Northern District of Florida Judge Allen Winsor, a Trump appointee, tossed the suit. Continue reading →

The Supreme Court has held that child pornography is an exception to the First Amendment, and few would argue otherwise. But it also limited the exception to actual kiddie porn, not fake computer generated porn where no child was sexually abuse.

The court held, 6 to 3, that the Child Pornography Prevention Act is overly broad and unconstitutional, despite its supporters’ arguments that computer-generated smut depicting children could stimulate pedophiles to molest youngsters. Continue reading →

It’s foolish, bordering on dangerous, but not having found anything compelling to write about today, I’m closing my eyes and hoping for the best. What’s on your minds? Please (and I mean this with utmost sincerity) don’t spew nonsensical conspiracy theories (looking at you, Vivek) or right-wing propaganda. Try to focus on real things, not the crap made up or believed by people whose tin foil hats are too tight.

I’m relying on sane and/or knowledgeable people to take the initiative here to debunk those whose views are considered too idiotic for reddit. There’s a reply button. Don’t be afraid to use it.

So what’s on your minds?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply. Please don’t make me regret this.

Sure, an award of $83.3 million, or $148 million, or even more than a billion, is a lot of money, assuming it’s payable and paid. So why then are defamers unrepentant to the point of walking out of court and repeating the very defamatory statements that just cost them bigly? Why do the verdicts not “correct the public record” but rather give rise to yet further debate and accusation about the truthiness of the statements? Why is there no social disgrace to being held a lying liar telling lies?

Several examples show a stark break from the past. For most of the long history of libel law, a jury determination that material was false and defamatory settled the question, and defendants facing that liability would take every possible step not to repeat the lie — both because it would be socially reprehensible to do so and because the risk of punitive damages was a powerful deterrent unlikely to be overcome by any stronger incentive. In short, libel law used to stop the libel.

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Despite only being about 2% of the population, Jews were some of the first and strongest supporters of civil rights for black people. Remember the Freedom Riders? And yet, a link has been established between the oppressed people of Gaza and the oppressed black people, enough so that the pastors of black churches have issued a threat to President Biden.

As the Israel-Hamas war enters its fourth month, a coalition of Black faith leaders is pressuring the Biden administration to push for a cease-fire — a campaign spurred in part by their parishioners, who are increasingly distressed by the suffering of Palestinians and critical of the president’s response to it. Continue reading →

After the jury awarded a total of $83.3 million, atop the $5.5 million awarded after the first trial that the defendant found unworthy of his appearance or testimony, Trump’s immediate response was that the award was “ridiculous” and he would appeal. Like any defendant, Trump has the right to an appeal to the Second Circuit, and if he’s demonstrated anything about his knowledge of law, it’s how to delay proceedings.

But what happens to this judgment in the meantime?

Mr. Trump can pay the $83.3 million to the court, which will hold the money while the appeal is pending. This is what he did last year when a jury ordered him to pay Ms. Carroll $5.5 million in a related case. Continue reading →

Prefatory note: Everything in this post is true. It may seem preposterous to my Yankee friends but I swear I’m not making any of this up.

On January 11, I got one of the wildest voicemails and texts I’ve ever seen.

It was from my kids’ school system. They were closing schools due to high winds potentially affecting bus travel. I would later find out the bus drivers essentially revolted after a school bus in Tennessee overturned from high wind gusts. Still, they’re closing school for wind.

This would not be the most ludicrous thing to happen to me in the past two weeks. Continue reading →

Frankly, I haven’t a clue whether David French’s characterization of the Republican Party before Trump is accurate or idiosyncratic. It’s not that I dispute what he has to say, but just don’t know as it was never my party and, aside from its presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and John McCain, offered nothing to suggest that I would ever consider supporting it. But David did, and this is what he thought he was supporting.

If you had asked me to describe the Republican Party, I would have answered something like this: At our best, we are a party that possesses a distinct conservative ideology and a commitment to character. Continue reading →

The tit-for-tat messaging has become a ubiquitous tool of divisive politics. They did it to us so we’re going to do it to them and see how they like it. Hah! Sure, it’s infantile and invokes the logical fallacy of tu quoque, but it plays well with the perpetually outraged. It’s one thing to use this weapon for disputes that don’t involve constitutional rights, and another thing entirely to do what Tennessee is trying to do, trade off the right to vote with the right to keep and bear arms.

Tennessee, which imposes notoriously demanding requirements on residents with felony records seeking restoration of their voting rights, recently added a new wrinkle: Before supplicants who have not managed to obtain a pardon are allowed to vote again, they have to successfully seek restoration of their gun rights, a task that is complicated by the interaction between state and federal law. Given the difficulty of obtaining relief from the federal gun ban for people convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year of incarceration, this requirement would be prohibitive in practice.

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Not to question the wisdom of imposing a sentence of 100 hours of community service to be used telling people about the dangers of demon weed, plus two years probation, but by any measure, it was a remarkably lenient sentence for stabbing a man to death. And, not to speculate, had the killer been a man and the victim been a woman, it has all the makings of another Brock Turner case.

And the rationale for such leniency was a second hit on a bong.

Spejcher testified that she asked him for a hit from the bong. He prepared it for her and she inhaled. All she felt, she told the court, was ‘burning and coughing’. Continue reading →