My wife has been on my case for a while now to go through my book cases, desk and the piles of things around the room that I’ve accumulated over more than 40 years of lawyering. I am not a hoarder by any means, but I do have a tendency to see the future potential of something that I don’t need at the moment, but may well need someday. So I find a place for it.

After 40 years, that ends up being a great many things that I might have needed someday, but for many saved items, that day never came. Yesterday, at Dr. SJ’s extreme urging, I pulled books from their shelves and put them in a pile. It was not a small pile.* Continue reading →

The following may or may not be based on a true story. You be the judge—CLS

DEAR DIARY,

Zaslav wants me to do this diary thing for the upcoming documentary they’re going to do for me on HBO Max, Max, VICE or whatever the hell it’s called now. I can’t stand this place anymore or these people and I want to leave so bad. But I’m being paid a stupid amount of money to work here with people who I hate and who hate me, so what does one do? Continue reading →

It’s no secret that among the potential leaders, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyanhu is the most right wing, corrupt and disagreeable Israel has to offer. It seems possible that Bibi’s unpopularity both in Israel and abroad was part of the calculus when Hamas decided to attack on October 7th, as no other prime minister holding the post by the oddity of coalition was as vulnerable to criticism.

And yet, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s call for regime change to oust Netanyahu was not only the most tone deaf cry he could have made, causing even Bibi’s many enemies to circle the wagons around him, but feeding into the very thing that Schumer, the highest ranking Jew in the United States government and a staunch supporter of Israel, claimed he wished to prevent. Continue reading →

In pretty much every news story involving a prosecution, they include the max sentence. If the statute provides for a sentence of probation to 20 years, it will say “the defendant faces a sentence of 20 years.” If there were three counts, it will say 60 years, because math. Of course, this is nonsense as every lawyer knows, but they have space to fill and the public, for better or worse, latches onto numbers for dear life.

And then there are the 91 counts. It sure seems like a lot of counts, and it may be the most restated fact regarding Trump’s prosecution. And it means nothing. After the decision by Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee, it’s down to 88 counts. Oh no, he’s going to get away with it! Or the prosecution can re-indict on the six counts tossed for lack of specificity. Or not because, well, they were just gilding on the lily. Continue reading →

President Joe Biden put himself into an untenable dilemma by telling MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart that his “red line” was Israel attacking the southern Gaza city of Rafah. His campaign swiftly tried to walk it back, recognizing the unforced error, but the bell can’t be unrung.

In the interview, with MSNBC, Mr. Biden rebuked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel over the rising civilian death toll in Gaza, saying that “he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost” and that “he’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel.”

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When originally conceived, the notion of independent counsel arose from the best of intentions, to assure the public that the investigation was fair and without influence by the reigning regime.

Special counsels have had different labels over the years. They were first institutionalized when a post-Watergate statute created what came to be called an “independent counsel” appointed by a federal court upon application of the attorney general and removable by the attorney general or Congress only in extreme cases. This was the statute under which Lawrence Walsh investigated the Iran-contra scandal and Kenneth Starr investigated Whitewater and President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

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The post was a beautifully written first-person account of Joanna Chen, who found herself caught after October 7th between the reality of the atrocities of that day and her concerns for her friends and Palestinians in Gaza. It was poignant.

The horrors that had been perpetrated rose to the surface of my consciousness at these times. I listened to interviews with survivors; I watched videos of atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel and reports about the rising number of innocent civilians killed in a devastated Gaza.

There is a limit to which the human soul can stomach atrocities and keep going. On the other hand, turning away from distressing footage taken by Hamas terrorists, by surveillance cameras, and by people running for their lives or sheltering from missiles meant turning away from their pain. I couldn’t do it.

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There is nothing, but nothing, that isn’t flagrantly unconstitutional about the proposal that American citizens should be required to pass a basic civics test of the sort required of aliens seeking citizenship in order to enjoy the rights of citizenship or hold public office. And yet, it’s still a pretty good idea, not to exclude citizens from participation, but to compensate for the ubiquitous ignorance of American civics.

For more than 100 years, the United States has used a civics test as a gentle screen for naturalizing new citizens. The idea behind the brief exam is straightforward: To participate fully in the life of the republic, newcomers must first evince some knowledge of the values and mechanics of that republic.

Why not deploy a civics test more widely — as a modest hurdle other Americans must surmount before enjoying some of the many privileges of U.S. citizenship?

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It should have been a lay up for the Supreme Court, having been teed up by Fourth Circuit dissenting Judge Harvie Wilkinson.

How did it ever come to this—that such a fine and distinguished university would institute a policy with such incipient inquisitional overtones, one that turns its campus into a surveillance state? The First Amendment guarantees to everyone not just passive access to but active participation in the marketplace of ideas. Today, the majority breaks that promise to a segment of society who needs it most—college students.

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I want to begin by discussing a rather nasty rumor I heard spread regarding my whereabouts last week. Contrary to what’s discussed on the Twitter, I had been nowhere near a “tragic kiln explosion.” Hell, I don’t even know where one would find a kiln locally.

My absence was a bit less dramatic. I was sick. Not overly sick, mind you. That would be crass to discuss publicly. But suffice it to say for my current purposes I was less than my optimal self.

How I fell ill came down to one of two possible culprits. One’s eight and one is ten. My kids are truly the greatest joy of my life. I look at them and I see the possibility of the future reflected in their eyes. Continue reading →