Donald Trump will be sentenced today by Acting Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, Juan Merchan, upon his conviction for 34 felonies. Absent any monumental change in circumstances, his sentence will consist of a stern look and admonition to never do it again. Whether Trump can control himself from using his opportunity to address the court to convince Justice Merchan that an unconditional discharge is inadequate remains to be seen, but assuming so, the entire matter will be over quickly with little muss or fuss, or consequences beyond the obligatory post-sentence appeal to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, First Department.

So why did four justices of the Supreme Court of the United States vote to stay this proceeding? Continue reading →

The 118th Congress didn’t do much, but it did enact the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act which, effectively, will ban TikTok. The rationale is that the owner of TikTok, ByteDance, is integrally related to or controlled by the Chinese communist party. As such, it can harvest the information available through the platform and use it to misinform and influence the American public.

The problem, of course, is that people love TikTok, where Trump claims to be “one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history,” shy and reticent fellow he is. If TikTok is bought from ByteDance by an entity that isn’t controlled by a foreign adversary, then the problem is fixed. If not, the law would ban TikTok, and by doing so, would cut off the platform from being employed by its many users to convey their speech. Continue reading →

It comes on the heels of Jeff Bezos’ $40 million bribe in the form of payment to Melania for an Amazon documentary, because who isn’t desperately desirous of watching a documentary about the fascinating nude model from Slovenia made good? Mark Zuckerberg, the third richest man on the planet, issued what, under any other circumstances, might be considered a principled stand for the free speech.

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There are more stickers on a ladder than on a NASCAR race car, the purpose of which is to putatively warn you not to eat the ladder, insert it into your ear or climb up to the very tippy-top rung after injecting heroin into your veins. Okay, I exaggerate just a bit to make a point. Do you read the warning labels?

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy now argues that alcoholic beverages should have warning labels too.

Alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer, and alcoholic beverages should carry a warning label as packs of cigarettes do, the U.S. surgeon general said on Friday. Continue reading →

There are arguments to be made that many who participated in the insurrection of January 6, 2021 thought they were being patriots defending a nation from a stolen election, even though it was a nonsensical lie fed to the willingly delusional by an amoral narcissist who wasn’t strong enough to endure the humiliation of failure. There are arguments to be made that some sentences imposed on J6 insurrectionists were excessive, even though capital police were beaten and bloodied. But there are no arguments that January 6th didn’t happen as it was seen, experienced and suffered that day, as Trump gleefully watched. Continue reading →

It started last midnight, congestion pricing hopes to accomplish four things. The first is to improve air quality by reducing the number of cars in Manhattan from the Battery to 60th Street. The second is to reduce gridlock, cars unable to make it through an intersection blocking the cars trying to travel perpendicular such that a huge traffic jam ensues. Third is to fund mass transit, a morass of waste, filth and abuse that carries the majority of New Yorkers to work and play and threatens bankruptcy weekly.

The fourth is to prove that Democrats can run a city. Continue reading →

In his decision denying Trump’s Clayton motion. Justice Juan Merchan eventually addresses the final piece to his felony conviction in New York County, sentencing. The judge set January 10th, a mere week after the issuance of the decision, for sentencing, with the express reason being that the defendant be sentenced in advance of his assuming the position of president.

Finding no legal impediment to sentencing and recognizing that Presidential immunity will likely attach once Defendant takes his Oath of Office, it is incumbent upon this Court to set this matter down for the imposition of sentence prior to January 20,2025. It is this Court’s firm belief that only by bringing finality to this matter will all three interests be served. A jury heard evidence for nearly seven weeks and pronounced its verdict; Defendant and the People were given every opportunity to address intervening decisions, to exhaust every possible motion in support of and in opposition to, their respective positions in what is an unprecedented, and likely never to be repeated legal scenario. This Court must sentence Defendant within a reasonable time following verdict; and Defendant must be permitted to avail himself of every available appeal, a path he has made clear he intends to pursue but which only becomes fully available upon sentencing.

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Welcome to 2025! Weren’t we supposed to have teleporters and flying cars by how? What a ripoff. Anyway we at Simple Justice wouldn’t dream of starting this New year without properly saying goodbye to 2024.

Time for The SJ Year In Review!

Your humble humorist decided to embrace the modern age and use AI to assist in the penning of this post. Before anyone gets upset, I had a really difficult time defining this year in one word. So I enlisted the services of X’s Grok, Google’s Gemini and Meta AI. Here were the results: Continue reading →

There is probably no political operative more fun to watch than James Carville, talking in his twang, using normal-people words, and saying things that others lack the guts to say. The baseball cap and sweatshirt don’t hurt either. No fancy-pants outfit for Jimbo to lend him credibility. Nosirreebob. But as fun and likeable as he may be, does that make him right?

I’ve been going over this in my head for the past two months, all the variables, all the what-ifs, all the questions about Joe Biden’s re-election decisions and what kind of Democrat or message might have worked against Donald Trump. I keep coming back to the same thing. We lost for one very simple reason: It was, it is and it always will be the economy, stupid.

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My pal Carl, who has attracted a very substantial following on the ex-twitters by being brutally fair and reasonable, has made surviving the ordinary routine of life in New York City into a running joke.

After the recent subway tragedy of a woman being set on fire, following the acquittal of Daniel Penny, many have asserted that New York has become a hellscape of violence and lawlessness. It’s not true. Indeed, New York is remarkably safe as cities go, and far safer than it was a generation ago. The murder rate is stunningly low. That’s the data, no matter what the images show. Continue reading →