Most lawyers wouldn’t find themselves in this position. But then, most lawyers aren’t Rudy Giuliani, having two key differences: First, they’re competent. Second, they insist on getting paid for their services. To be fair, Rudy hasn’t done too poorly over the years, bootstrapping his credibility from having been United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and then America’s Mayor, even if New Yorkers didn’t like him all that much, to making decent money by bringing business into the firm that other, more competent, lawyers would then work.

But having gone all in on his failed gig as Trump’s beleaguered election fraud lawyer, informing United States District Judge Matthew Brann that only “normal scrutiny” applied, he now says he’s back for a Mulligan in defense of Trump in the trial of Impeachment 2.0. Continue reading →

She’s white, so she’s Karen and, well, tolerated to the extent of not beating her. But if cops have to debate the merits of their actions with every person who refuses to comply with their commands, or people only have to comply when they approve of the cops’ actions, what comes of it.

But the kicker is when she says “I can’t breathe,” which has become the go-to phrase for obvious reasons. Pour another cop of joe, then sit back. Watch, There’s a lot to unpack here. Continue reading →

Joe Biden owed some debts. Don’t make a big deal of this. Every pol owes debts to those who backed him, and Biden is no different. The only question was who he would pay and how much. One payback, bringing Catherine Lhamon of Title IX infamy* to the White House, was sadly expected. Joe was in charge of buying off feminists in the Obama Administration, and it costs the government nothing to curry favor at the expense of male students denied due process to prove how much he cares about “survivors,” provided they’re not named Tara Reade.

But his announced stimulus package, at $1.9 Trillion dollar, was just as ripe for the pickings as the two stimulus packages during Trump’s term. And buried therein were some long-favored changes, but curious in a stimulus bill given their obvious consequence. Continue reading →

Today, we’re taking a look at one of my favorite places on Earth and a murder that’s fascinated me for years. Before any of you start, none of this has to do with pro wrestling. I have principles, dammit.

Savannah, Georgia is my favorite place in the country besides my mountain home. The architecture is exquisite, the food decadent, and so much history is baked into Savannah you can’t help but be charmed. Continue reading →

No one really knows what lurks beneath the dynamics of the family relationship. Parents can be awful to their children. Children can be spiteful to their parents. Maybe they have good reason. Maybe no. But family has long been recognized as an entity of enormous value, to be encouraged in law and protected from outside attack. How, then, did the disintegration of the familial relationship turn Helena Duke into a hero?

For four years, Helena Duke, an 18-year-old high school senior in Massachusetts, had been growing further apart from her mother over their political views. She marched in protests for racial justice to her mother’s outspoken disapproval, she said. All the while her mother, a longtime Democrat, became ever more supportive of President Trump.

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In law, it’s long been established that the defense of property is not worth a human life. This notion has been twisted over the past year from valuing the sanctity of human life to justifying the destruction of property. It’s not big deal. It’s not “violence.” It’s just stuff. So what? The “so what” is that its destruction is being used to coerce political decision making.

Commissioner Dan Ryan said Wednesday that his home has been vandalized seven times since late October, when the North Portland dwelling he shares with his fiance was first targeted by protesters who wanted him to support cutting millions of dollars from the city’s police budget.

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Lawyers end up standing next to a wide array of clients, not because we necessarily like them, or even can tolerate them, but because we understand our duty to represent them. But that has limits.

An attorney representing President Trump in one of his dozens of lawsuits challenging the 2020 election moved to withdraw from the case on Thursday, telling a federal court that the president used him to “perpetrate a crime.”

Philadelphia-based attorney Jerome Marcus asked the court to allow him to withdraw, citing concerns over Pennsylvania’s professional conduct standards for lawyers.

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Dr. SJ loves to read books. Over the past few years, she’s taken to reading the books up for book prizes, which both she and her book club expect to be the best new books coming out. They tend to have one thing in common: they are about a young woman in another country, what we used to call a third-world country, who is overwhelmed by her sad feelings about her personal struggles. They are, I’m told, tedious.

Literature once reached up, elevated us to higher truths uttered in greater prose. If Disrupt Texts has anything to say about it, these will be the only books your child ever reads. Continue reading →

There is no rational argument that Twitter, a private corporation, was not entirely within its legal rights to throw Trump off its site, even if a handful of unduly passionate lawyers and scarily moronic congress folk cry First Amendment. No, it doesn’t matter that it’s a publicly traded corporation. No, it doesn’t matter that some call it the virtual town square. No, it doesn’t matter that you’ve been reliably informed that Section 230 protections require it to not discriminate politically. This isn’t a discussion.

But as Eugene Volokh points out in his New York Times op-ed, that’s not where the fair concerns end. Continue reading →

Is the House of Representatives’ second impeachment of Trump serious? Maybe they’re hoping the threat will push him to resign in exchange for Pence handing him that sweet pardon he can’t give himself, or the invocation of the 25th Amendment which would take the onus off Pelosi and the Dems and shift it onto Mike Pence and what’s left of the Cabinet.

There only being a few days left in the term, and the House both rushing while dilly-dallying its way to a vote, now supposedly set for Wednesday, January 13, when they could have had the deal wrapped up last Friday if it were so critical and necessary, or Monday, or Tuesday. That’s the thing about exigency. If it’s critical, do it now. If you don’t have to do it now, then it’s not critical. Continue reading →