Ed. Note: Five years ago, Judge Richard Kopf wrote about a criminal defense lawyer in his courtroom, David Tarrell. At the time, David saw Judge Kopf’s post, but still being on the CJA panel and Judge Kopf having yet to retire, he wasn’t sure what the appropriate response would be. Years have since passed, Judge Kopf has retired and David finally thought it time to respond.

Dear Judge Kopf,

It’s been five years since you wrote a post on this blog about a time when I appeared before you and in that post you vehemently (but also erroneously, in my opinion) claimed that any “empathy that [you] once had had been burned out of [you].” That wasn’t the only thing you were clearly incorrect about, in fact, your honor. Continue reading →

Trump proxies were asked a simple, straightforward question on the Sunday morning interview shows: Did Trump lose the 2020 election? Mike Johnson couldn’t say it. Tom Cotton couldn’t either. Vance wouldn’t do so the Wednesday before. To be fair, the interviewers pressed the question, refusing to let them dodge and weave without notice, but they were not going to answer no matter what.

Last night, Kamala Harris was interviewed by Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes. On the one hand, at least she had the gumption to show up and be asked questions. On the other hand, she dodged every one of them, refusing to give a straight answer no matter how Whitaker pushed. She was given the opportunity to finally establish what she stood for on a very large media platform and chose instead to regurgitate the same canned vagaries that have left so many to question why she should be president. Continue reading →

In her typical fashion, Linda Greenhouse blames the Supreme Court for sticking its nose into the culture war just because both right and left keep passing laws, rules, regulations and mandates in their battle over the culture war that give rise to novel disputes that end up in the Supreme Court.

The most important decision the Supreme Court’s justices will make in the new term that begins on Monday transcends the questions presented in any of its many cases. It is whether the court will resume or refrain from injecting itself into the country’s culture wars.

The quiet part is Greenhouse’s hatred of the Court’s Trumpian majority ruling contrary to the way Greenhouse would have the Court rule. If the 6-3 majority was reversed, would Linda be spinning like a whirling dervish to support the Court’s finding a new substantive due process right monthly, if not sooner? Continue reading →

As Elizabeth Nolan Brown rightly notes at Reason, Kamala Harris has shed her failed progressive persona from 2020 in favor of a new quasi-moderate stance, a linchpin of which has been “freedom.”

Over the summer, Harris’ evolutions kept on coming, with her campaign issuing rapid-fire disavowals of many of her previous positions. Because she ran her failed 2020 presidential primary bid on an ultraprogressive, big-government platform, many of her new positions are noticeably more oriented toward the mainstream—and freedom.

After all, who doesn’t like freedom, right? What’s not to like? Continue reading →

With the election nearly upon us, a potential regional war breaking out in the middle east, and a never-ending stream of court decisions, you would think there would be something, if not many things, to write about daily. And, indeed, there is. The only problem for me is that I’ve already written about them. Some more than once. Some many times.

For those of you who are new here, you may wonder why I didn’t pound to death some facet of an issue that you believe deserves a damn good pounding. Some of you will make note of it by raising what you perceive as my shortfall in the comments. After all, if I was thorough, or perhaps a little smarter, I would have included your issue in my post because it’s important. That I wrote about it a year ago, or ten years ago, means nothing to you. It’s like TV reruns, if you didn’t read it the first time, it’s new to you. Continue reading →

Flooding is a bitch.

Last Thursday when I sat down to write—something, I’m not really sure what—I stared out the window and saw more rain pouring down than I’d seen in a long time. We were on about the third straight day of heavy rain here in East Tennessee, but why worry? After all we’re a landlocked state, right? There’s no way a hurricane could seriously affect my area, right?

Oh dear readers, how little I knew. Continue reading →

In a brutally vague advisory opinion for the purpose of concealing pretty much everything meaningful about what happened, a judge raised a question that has both been asked and answered a million times before (thinking of the Prince of Darkness, former legal aid lawyer cum Justice “Hardass’ Harold Rothwax of “Guilty” fame), and yet is new again under a shifting progressive regime.

The judge soon learned that, in a recorded conversation between defense counsel and the defendant, the attorney had referred to the age, race, political affiliation, and gender of the court’s judges, and suggested that the court ‘should look a little bit more like the people that are in front of them.’ The attorney also suggested that the defendant would not receive a fair trial from the court’s judges, who are a different race and gender from the defendant. Finally, the attorney used a pejorative term, drawing on racial and gender stereotypes, to refer to the complainant.

Continue reading →

Whether university legacy admissions are as big a deal as some make of it is beside the point. At best, it’s a tie-breaker for equally admissible students. Contrary to the widely shared assumption, it doesn’t mean colleges will admit the drooling idiot children of its alumni. But still, it’s hard to justify giving any weight to a legacy when deciding whether a student should be admitted. So when the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional for race to be considered in admissions, the backlash was that if they couldn’t have affirmative action, they shouldn’t have legacy admission.

California turned the argument into law. Continue reading →

But for Trump, it seems impossible that anyone at MSNBC would find Andrew Weissmann tolerable, no less one of their “go to” federal prosecutors for all things legal, no matter how utterly ignorant he and his cohort may be about state criminal law and civil law. These are the very same prosecutors who gave us incarceration nation, who were complicit in putting tens of thousands of black men in prison, some of whom were even guilty, and happily skirted the Constitution when it served their flavor of justice.

And yet, Weissmann is an omnipresent persona on the MSNBC tube because he hates Trump and will say whatever it takes to show how everything bad in the legal universe leads back to Trump. And he does so with gravitas because of his ascribed credibility. He was a federal prosecutor. He was general counsel of the FBI. He was part of Mueller’s team. He’s a prof at NYU law school. He wrote a book deciphering the Trump indictments. And no one, but no one, challenges anything he says. Indeed, their gushing thanks for his legal brilliance would be embarrassing to anyone with a modicum of humility. But that’s not Weissmann. Continue reading →

Rarely does something happen, like a fly on a head, that makes a vice presidential debate matter. Sure, Lloyd Bentsen took Dan Quayle to the woodshed with his “I knew Jack Kennedy” retort, but did it change the outcome of the election? Dukakis got crushed in his own right, and Bentsen’s memorable line may have been perfect, but it couldn’t un-Willie Horton the vote.

Tonight, J.D. Vance will debate Tim Walz. Vance, a Yale-trained lawyer who has more than a few debates under his belt, will debate Coach Walz, whose “aw shucks” dad vibe has pretty much encapsulated the start and finish of his campaign contribution as second to Kamala Harris. Of course, with Harris at a spry 59 years of age, it’s unlikely that she’ll be unable to complete her term such that Walz will end up as president in her stead. Thus, who really cares one way or the other? Vice president is, for the most part, a non-job, a spare, a warm body just in case. Continue reading →