Ed. Note: This is a guest post by Madison, Wisconsin, criminal defense lawyer Christopher Van Wagner.

There’s blood in political and judicial waters in Wisconsin today. Some of the blood has been shed by a sitting elected judge, targeted by DOJ and yesterday found guilty by a federal jury of felony crime. But this is not a horror story. This is not about whether a certain judge is guilty or not. This is about whether she can be removed from the bench, now, later, ever.

The simple answer is she can be. But there is no simple way to remove her. The full answer requires discussion of the four separate ways to boot a sitting elected Wisconsin judge off the bench.

Here are the four ways to do so. Continue reading →

There is a law. It required full disclosure within 30 days. On the one hand, the Department of Justice announced on the morning of the 30th day that it would not comply with the law, as if the law gave them an option. On the other hand, most of what was disclosed was already disclosed, other than some pictures of a young Bill Clinton which, to no one’s surprise, were one of the few things unredacted.

On the third hand, without explanation or justification, this is much of what the DoJ produced:

So?

Dear SJ:

What follows is my annual attempt at a Christmas letter. Normally this is set to Tom Lehrer’s “Christmas Carol.” With the passing of that beloved humorist last year, I thought long and hard about whether I’d use it again this season. I’ve decided to do just that as it’s my way of honoring him. So Mr. Lehrer: will you do the honors?

Christmastime is here by golly, disapproval would be folly
Deck the halls with hunks of holly, fill the cup and don’t say when! Continue reading →

During his bellicose address to the nation, Trump announced that he is sending every member of the United States military a check in the amount of $1776 as a “warrior dividend.” While most of us don’t have any particular problem with giving our military a bonus payment, per se, this payment raises a host of issues, not the least of which is why is he doing this?

President Donald Trump’s promise Wednesday to pay troops a “warrior dividend” bonus is actually a military housing stipend already approved by Congress, and not a generous new White House program.

The rebrand, confirmed by a senior administration official and two congressional officials, follows a pattern for the president, who has previously claimed credit for routine military pay increases that weren’t his doing.

Continue reading →

Ka$h Patel’s firing of “disloyal” FBI agents have given rise to a number of potential claims for wrongful discharge, but the former agents suing in Does v. Patel aren’t the one who were canned for doing their jobs in investigating Trump or the J6 insurrectionists, but the agents who took a knee after the killing of George Floyd.

The lawsuit says the agents were assigned to patrol the nation’s capital during a period of civil unrest prompted by Floyd’s death. Lacking protective gear or extensive training in crowd control, the agents became outnumbered by hostile crowds they encountered and decided to kneel to the ground in hopes of defusing the tension, the lawsuit said. The tactic worked, the lawsuit asserts — the crowds dispersed, no shots were fired and the agents “saved American lives” that day.

For Patel, however, this was deemed political expression, agents who chose sympathy with the protesters in conflict with Trump administration’s animosity toward the protests. For that, they were fired. Continue reading →

It’s not a ruling, as there is no majority of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in its Commonwealth v. Kurtz opinion saying so, but that’s only because the fourth vote held it unnecessary to reach the question. The point, nonetheless, is clear. While the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States may have carved out a narrow exception to the Third Party Doctrine for cellphones, as a theoretical body part to which people have no real option to possess at all times and thus compelled to provide information to third-party providers, Google search is a voluntary act for which no warrant is needed.

In the case, the police were trying to find out who committed a sexual assault of a person known in the opinion by her initials, “K.M.” Police figured that whoever committed this crime may have googled K.M.’s name or address before committing the crime.  Investigators obtained what is known as a “reverse keyword search warrant,” asking for Google to hand over the I.P. address of whoever may have googled the name or address of the victim shortly before the crime.  Google responded that someone at a particular I.P. address had conducted two searches for K.M.’s address a few hours before the attack.  The I.P. address was in use at the home of the defendant, Kurtz.  The police had not suspected Kurtz in the crime, but they started to watch Kurtz closely, obtained a DNA sample, and found a DNA match from the crime.

Continue reading →

Upon learning that Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, were murdered, President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, immediately reacted by posting on Truth Social.

Needless to say, the Reiner’s murder had nothing to do with Trump. It had nothing to do with TDS. It had nothing to do with driving “people CRAZY” with his “raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump,” curiously written in the third person. But the impetuous Trump couldn’t wait until there was more information and, instead, leapt to the assumption that Reiner’s murder was all about him. Continue reading →

As the levers of government were handed off to the guy who paid for Trump’s campaign and his adorable muskrats, Big Balls and all. the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, did the very best it could to achieve its ambitious goals. Now that it no longer exists and nobody talks about it, except perhaps the former federal employees with glowing performance reviews who were fired by terse emails written by twelve-year-olds who almost made it through their sophomore year of college, how did it do?

As the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) transitioned from internet meme to real-life government reform effort, the agency claimed it would achieve many far-reaching, seemingly improbable goals.

It was going to slash $2 trillion in federal spending, eliminate burdensome and unconstitutional regulations, upgrade the federal government’s “tech stack,” evict the woke deep state, and, time permitting, balance the budget. Continue reading →

Some states put limits on the number of times a case may be presented to a grand jury. Some require judicial approval before resubmission. But in the federal system, there are no legal limits, per se, to the number of times a prosecutor can present and represent a case to grand juries until he gets the ham sandwich indicted. The only prerequisite for resubmission is set forth in the Justice Department Manual.

Approval Required Prior to Resubmission of Same Matter to Grand Jury: Once a grand jury returns a no-bill or otherwise acts on the merits in declining to return an indictment, the same matter ( i.e., the same transaction or event and the same putative defendant) should not be presented to another grand jury or resubmitted to the same grand jury without first securing the approval of the responsible United States Attorney.

Continue reading →

Prefatory note: Yep. I think I’ve officially lost it.—CLS

‘Twas the night before Christmas, in Mud Lick so still

Sheriff Roy Templeton locked up every grill

Tyrone’s on vacation, thank God—he’s dim as a drill.

The station was quiet, Just two drunks in a cell Continue reading →