Skip to content

Fun reading

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

I just finished reading the Georgia indictment. A bit of a slog, since you have to go through so much boilerplate legal language, but still a fun read. I didn’t practice criminal law, and RICO wasn’t a thing when I took criminal law in law school, but it looks like a pretty strong case to me. As I understand it, the theory of the case is that the parties entered into a conspiracy to steal the election, which made many of what might otherwise be seen as legal acts illegal, as they were taken in furtherance of the conspiracy.

I haven’t read a lot of reaction to the indictment, but what I have read hasn’t, so far, emphasized the fact that there are 30 unindicted co-conspirators. One must assume that a number of them must be co-operating witnesses. Just based on the overall story told in the indictment, I’d guess that many of them are the fake Georgia electors, some of whom must have felt, in retrospect, that they were being used (which they were).

Not to be a nit-picker, but the indictment may be vulnerable in light of the legal theories popping up on the right, for after all, it’s always possible that the Supreme Court (really hurts to call it “supreme”) will adopt this spanking new legal theory that making false statements in order to achieve the ends of a criminal conspiracy cannot be a crime (when committed by a Republican), because “free speech!”. I’m sure we’ll be hearing soon that when Rudy lied to state legislators about alleged fraud in Georgia when he tried to get them to overturn the election results, or when other defendants signed official documents asserting that the fake electors were in fact the real electors, that they were merely exercising their right to free speech and any statute that makes it a crime to induce official action by making false statements is simply not constitutional when applied to Republicans. I’m sure Clarence Thomas will see the merits in that position.

If you want a copy of the indictment, you can download it here.

UPDATE: Well, the free speech defense has been raised on Fox, by none other than Jonathan Turley, the guy who used to be a fairly rational legal analyst years ago when my wife and I used to watch him on the Keith Olbermann show. I guess some people will say anything to get on TV. There’s a good explanation at the link explaining why the speech defense is without merit.

Filed in Lawyer stuff, Republican Corruption, The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (1)

Yet another modest proposal

Monday, August 14, 2023

While reading this post over at Hullabaloo I got to wondering about two things about the Hunter Biden thing. I wondered, first, why it is proper to have a special counsel to go after someone who has never held a position in government and to investigate crimes in which there’s not a scintilla of evidence, if crimes they were, that any public official was involved.

But, putting that aside, I also wondered why 1) no special counsel has been appointed to investigate Jared Kushner’s transition from assistant to the president to immediate recipient, once he was out of office, of 2 billion dollars from the countries with which he interacted while allegedly working on behalf of the American people, and 2) why the Democrats have not been demanding the appointment of such a special counsel for the past three years.

So I decided to write this post. It’s about time that the Democrats started counter-attacking. After all, the Kushner crimes mirror the alleged crimes of Hunter Biden, except for the fact that there’s more evidence of criminality, there’s far more more money involved, and Kushner was in a better position than Hunter to supply some quid for the Saudi quo.

Alas, digby beat me to the punch, and made the same point. Still, it’s well worth repeating. It can’t hurt if we continually expose Republican hypocrisy. We’ll never win over the nutjobs, but there are still a lot of low information voters who aren’t fascists but aren’t yet aware that Republicans are fascists. I read somewhere that Trump has often told people that if you repeat something often enough people will believe it. If it works with lies it should work slightly better with the truth.

Filed in Modest Proposals | | Comments (0)

Movie Review

Sunday, August 13, 2023

Last Night my wife and I, along with some friends, went to see Barbie. I can honestly say that it was the best movie we’ve gone to in years. I can also honestly say it was the worst move we’ve gone to in years, since it was the first movie we’ve gone to in years.

My primary reason for going was to “own the whackjobs”, since bashing the movie has been a thing among the right. I considered it a sacred obligation to help it amass its numbers to get them further riled up.

I believe this is the first time I’ve ever tried to critique a movie, so bear with me. It’s not easy to do so while also not giving away too much of the plot.

The movie got me laughing right from the start, as the opening is a takeoff on the opening of a certain movie that came out in 1968. As I was laughing I was also wondering how many in the audience got the reference. Primarily us geezers I guess.

But it wasn’t all laughter. There were some serious downers inflicted on we of the male gender, like when Ken’s attempt to pull off a coup in Barbieland and establish a “patriarchy” was foiled. By Barbie no less! Likely one of the reasons the movie has drawn the wrath of the right. Whoops, I gave away part of the plot.

Anyway, the people who made the film seemed to have this strange idea that women should be treated with the same respect as men. How woke can you get?

I was somewhat impressed by Mattel’s willingness to be the butt of some of the humor. Just casting Will Ferrell as the Mattel CEO did the job along those lines, but that wasn’t the whole of it. The all male boardroom, each dressed in an identical suit, was a great visual joke. Of course, Mattel will make millions off the movie, and I suppose most people would be willing to be the butt of some jokes if they got a few hundred million for it.

All in all, the movie is well worth seeing. It’s a great mix of comedy and serious commentary on our society. I have to admit I came away a bit mystified by some of it. I’m still puzzling over exactly what was meant by Barbie’s last line. There’s enough hidden away in some of the dialog to justify a second viewing. So I urge you to go see it, if only to get the folks on Fox a bit more riled.

Filed in Media | | Comments (0)

Friday Night Music makes a reappearance

Friday, August 11, 2023

Along with some musings on our uncertain future.

I chanced upon this video a few months ago. It features Rhiannon Giddens and Paul Simon singing Simon’s American Tune. I put it on my to-do app to post the following Friday, and I’ve been putting it forward a week ever since, for reasons too diverse to go into.

I remember listening to this song when Simon first released it many years ago, thinking how relevant it was to those times. Little did I know that the road we were traveling down then hardly prepared us for the road on which we find ourselves today.

I saw an old friend for the first time in years today, and our conversation was pretty much dominated by the state of our world, more specifically the country in which we live.  Try as we might, it’s not easy to be “bright and bon vivant” in what is clearly the “ages most uncertain hour” as the climate deteriorates and half the country embraces fascism.

The song is well worth the listen. In my humble opinion Giddens is a fantastic singer.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Music | | Comments (1)

There’s nothing new about the Republican drive toward fascism

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to beat Driftglass on this one, yet another example of Never-Trumpers rewriting history to, among other things, obscure their own roles in bringing us to the sorry state in which we find ourselves. Charlie Sykes and Joe Scarborough can’t figure out why Trump supporters are willing to destroy Democracy.

“I think where we’ve come since 2015, what’s happened to the American conservative movement, think what’s happened to our political culture,” Charlie Sykes said.

“It’s easy to dismiss Donald Trump as this narcissistic clown, but it is hard to understate the impact that he’s had on our political standards. and to your point, look, you are seeing a full-out attack, not just on the culture of facts, which we had back in 2016, but now on all of the institutions of our constitutional republic. There’s great piece in the Washington Post that talks about how all the other Republican candidates are going after the courts, the system of law, the deep state, sowing distrust in any institution that might challenge or hold someone like Donald Trump accountable.

I’ve put the most blatant fantastical language in bold. The fantasy is that the Republican Party was a party based on a “culture of facts” until Trump came along. Nothing could be further from the Truth. Sykes himself was a Limbaugh wannabe until 2016, feeding right wing paranoia to his radio listeners. Fox “News” has been spreading lies on behalf of Republicans for decades, and Republicans have been happily embracing those lies. Scarborough himself had Trump on his show multiple times in 2016, giving him a platform to spread what every thinking person knew were lies at that time, not to mention that every thinking person knew then that Trump was a budding fascist.

Ever since Ronald Reagan, and perhaps all the way back to Nixon, Republicans have realized that the only way they can win elections and further enrich their rich backers is to lie and divide. That’s what they have been doing since Nixon adopted his Southern Strategy and Reagan announced his candidacy in Philadelphia, Mississippi talking about state’s rights. For years they figured they could garner those votes without going full crazy, but the whackos were bound to take full control, as they now have, at some point. Why I even remember some obscure blogger predicting back in 2012 that the next Republican candidate for President would not be the Romney type “moderate” who would throw enough red meat at the base to garner their votes, but a full on nutjob. I was wrong only in the sense that Trump has no real principles, he’s just a skilled grifter and he saw how to work the grift. It would never have worked had the ground not been prepared for years.

For in depth documentation, subscribe to Driftglass and peruse his posts on the subject.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism | | Comments (0)

Do I meander? Very well then, I meander

Monday, August 7, 2023

It has been several weeks since I’ve posted anything, primarily because we have had family visiting here or in Vermont for the last several weeks. We returned from Vermont Saturday, and spent most of Sunday taking my brother in law to the Providence airport as he began his trip back to Paris.

We spent a week in Vermont, experiencing the still lingering effects of the flooding that took place in July. We actually own a little house in Chester, Vermont, but that’s currently occupied by one of my sons, his wife and their two kids. Every summer we rent a lake house for a week, cram it full of relatives and have a good time. This year was no exception, though the lake was full of detritus from the floods and had a brown cast to it, so both boating and swimming were discouraged. As we normally do little of either, we didn’t much care.

One thing I did do a lot of was biking, so I saw a lot of the Vermont roads. Several major roads were shut down completely, and it was often impossible to know whether a minor road was completely passable. The lake is in Ludlow, which was among the hardest hit areas, so we saw a lot of closed businesses and flood damage.

But, we had a good time. Especially fun was a dinner on the porch of the Fullerton Inn in Chester on Thursday, the 3rd. The concert scheduled for the green, which abuts the Inn, was moved indoors due to predicted bad weather that never came, but that was minor compared to the fact that we were able to celebrate yet another Trump indictment.

So now this post finally gets around to politics. The indictment itself made fun reading, though I think I can honestly say there was very little in it that I didn’t know already. The only thing that jumped out as new was Trump telling Pence he was “too honest”, with subsequent events seeming to establish that Pence has concluded he’s not going to be president, so he no longer has a reason to hold back on criticizing Trump.

I did almost no criminal law when I practiced, but even I know that the defenses proffered by Trump’s lawyers should not get them anywhere. Maybe Aileen Cannon would buy into the “free speech” defense, but the judge he drew in DC will give it short shrift. Just as a hypothetical, I’m fairly sure that a person who directed an accomplice to shoot someone would be found guilty of some felony. In fact, he or she would likely be found guilty if it was just a strong suggestion. But maybe I’m wrong. If John Eastman were to get his way, future law students will be told that Justice Holmes was simply wrong when he said that “you can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater”.

Okay, I promise the next post will be a little more coherent.

Filed in Ramblings | | Comments (0)

Every allegation is a confession, part 1000

Monday, July 17, 2023

There’s probably not a single liberal type blogger who hasn’t commented about the fact that every time a Republican accuses a Democrat, or Democrats, of something heinous, it is a sure bet that it is something Republicans are already doing or planning to do. I suppose it’s possible that someone in the mainstream media, possibly Paul Krugman, has commented on this fact as well, but it mostly goes unremarked because, after all, one must maintain objectivity, which means one must never mention certain obvious facts about our budding fascists, including the fact, now that I think about it, that they are budding fascists.

Case in point. We have the idiotic Gym Jordan heading a committe on the “weaponization” of the government against conservatives, a charge he has, to date, failed to back up with enough evidence to establish a whiff of suspicion, never mind, probably cause.

But of course this means that when given the chance Republicans intend to weaponize the government against their own foes, including, sooner or later, unless I miss my guess, the hapless media that fails repeatedly to call them out for what they are.

Today’s New York Times provides proof. Trump wants to make himself dictator if he’s reelected.

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

It goes on. It’s quite clear that the objective is to allow the president (provided he or she is a Republican) to use the machinery of government to subvert the law and attack political opponents. In fact, based on the quotes in the full story, they’re being fairly upfront about it.

It’s a good story, but not surprisingly, the fact that Republicans are accusing the Democrats of weaponizing the “deep state” is never mentioned. Perhaps it would help if someone wrote a book documenting each time the Republicans have confessed their sins by accusing Democrats of committing them.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Hypocrisy, Republicans | | Comments (0)

Want to discriminate? Blame Jesus!

Friday, July 14, 2023

I’m sort of beating a dead horse here, but I like to think the horse was a Republican.

A short while ago I asked how Clarence and his pals would explain why it’s okay for someone to refuse service to a gay couple but not an interracial one.

Now we learn that the same folks that brought us the right to discriminate against gays decision are pushing it even further. A Texas justice of the peace is claiming she can refuse to marry gay couples because of her “sincerely held religious beliefs”. She will undoubtedly win her case, if not in the state courts, then in the federal when she files suit in the court where that crackpot Trumper sits.

The correct legal decision in this case is a no-brainer. If you put yourself forward to hold a public office, then you commit yourself to following the law that relates to that office. If your religion forbids you to perform your duties, then don’t assume the office. A policeman, for instance, can’t refuse to arrest a criminal out of a sincere religious belief that the act should not be a crime. Or I guess I should say, that it has always been the case that a policeman must enforce the laws as written, but we are, after all, entering a new legal era.

There is a distinction between the justice of the peace case and the one the court just decided, in that in the new case you are talking about a state actor. That should make all the difference, but I suspect it won’t. We are well on the way to the establishment of a state religion in which the “sincere religious beliefs” of those with whom the Supreme Court right wing justices agree trump (small “t” but maybe I should capitalize it) all else.

Again, we must look forward to see whether Clarence will attempt to explain how this doesn’t apply to his marriage or he will remain silent. I predict silence, but the issue will ultimately come up. I can’t wait. On a related note, I often wonder how a certain local Republican squares the legalization of discrimination against gay people with his own sexual orientation. Just wondering!

Another thing: Yes, it’s illegal to engage in affirmative action if you are looking to recruit black students, though affirmative action for legacies, children of large donors, and athletes is perfectly okay. But what if the school in question engages in affirmative action out of a sincere religious belief that it is a moral imperative? Shouldn’t that make it okay? My guess is that anyone who tried that one would utlimately be mystified by the fact that the court would refuse to defer to their sincere religious beliefs.

Filed in Hypocrisy, Lawyer stuff | | Comments (0)

Are the Republicans flailing?

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

I’ve been reading a lot about the efforts Republicans are making to smear Joe Biden. You know, with “credible” whistleblowers that just got indicted for spying for China, etc.

My overall impression is that they’re not getting much traction, even with a media that is usually anxious to prove it’s impartiality by hyperventilating over stories about Democrats that they’d ignore if the same things were done by Republicans. They don’t seem to be getting much traction with voters, either. In fact, the general impression is that they’re preaching to the MAGA choir and nothing they’re saying or doing is having much impact anywhere else.

It’s almost as if the non-MAGA types have all accepted the fact that these types of attacks are just Republicans doing what they do, lying their asses off and imposing a double standard so obvious that it just doesn’t work anymore.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just looking on the bright side.

Filed in Republicans | | Comments (0)

Something missing from the White House cocaine reporting

Saturday, July 8, 2023

I should start this by saying that I haven’t read everything out there about the cocaine discovered in the White House, but what I have read leaves me wondering: why isn’t the most obvious possible source of the cocaine being bandied about, rather than focusing on Hunter Biden or Joe?

The cocaine was found in an area where tourists are supposed to leave their cell phones, etc. In other words, a location accessible to anyone and a location it is unlikely that Hunter would be required to visit. It also seems unlikely that the cocaine was left there by accident.

There are only two plausible explanations. One, is that a cocaine sniffing tourist decided he or she should leave their cocaine, which he or she inexplicably took with them to the White House, somewhere it was most likely to be found, rather than keep it in their pocket as they strolled through the White House. The other is that a right wing type left it there precisely so it could be blamed on the Bidens. Personally, I go with option two. Whoever left it there wanted it to be found.

In a not so distant past the “it must be Hunter” story would have had no legs, but we are now at the point where any unhinged story, no matter how easily it is to logically destroy it, will have legs with a large percentage of the folks Driftglass refers to as “reprogrammable meatbags”. But logic has no place in the American discourse anymore. Why can’t I come to terms with that?

Filed in Media | | Comments (0)