Law
June 17, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Last year, I wrote about the case of Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren, which the Supreme Court had just agreed to hear. The issue was whether the Atomic Energy Act preempts a state law (a ban on uranium mining) that on its face regulates an activity within its jurisdiction (uranium mining), but has the purpose and effect of regulating the radiological safety hazards of activities entrusted to the Nuclear Regulatory
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June 9, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Arriving on the tenth floor of the Hennepin County Government Center for the sentencing of Mohamed Noor on Friday morning, one could see that Somali supporters of the defendant constituted the vast majority of those turning out. The line of Somali supporters going through tenth floor security for the hearing was so long at 8:30, a half hour before the hearing, that I was asked to go to another floor
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June 8, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Since she was first elected to public office in November 2016, Ilhan Omar has rarely avoided the opportunity to talk for public consumption. We happened upon an exception to the rule back in 2016 in the course of Omar’s campaign for the Minnesota legislature when we learned of Omar’s then current marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. At the time she held out Ahmed Hirsi as her husband on her
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June 7, 2019 — Scott Johnson
This morning’s sentencing hearing in the case of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor was an emotionally devastating affair. Cameras in the courtroom captured much of the drama in the victim impact statements, the defendant’s statement to the court, and Judge Quaintance’s pronouncement of conviction and sentence. The Star Tribune has a decent narrative account here. I have embedded all the videos I could find from the hearing below. I
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June 7, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Following an emotionally devastating hearing including victim impact statements and a related video of the victim’s family and friends, Hennepin County District Judge Quaintance sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor to 150 months in prison for the third-degree murder of Justine Ruszczyk (Damond). Judge Quaintance rejected the defendant’s arguments in favor a dispositional or durational departure as unsupported by any relevant legal argument. She specifically rejected the therapeutic options
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June 7, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The sentencing of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor for killing Justine Ruszczyk (Damond) is set for this morning at 9:00 a.m. before Judge Kathryn Quaintance. Minnesota operates under a set of sentencing guidelines that indicate presumptive sentences for a given conviction. (The current sentencing guidelines and commentary are accessible here.) Noor’s presumptive sentence for third-degree murder is about 12.5 years. Noor’s attorneys have asked for a sentence including no
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June 1, 2019 — Scott Johnson
In its Volume II the Mueller Report treats a voicemail message from President Trump’s (unnamed) personal counsel to counsel for former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (also unnamed) as potentially obstructive of the investigation. The facts are set forth at pages 293-294 of the report. The message is quoted in part at page 294. The report’s analysis is set forth at pages 298-300. The report finds the message potentially
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May 30, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday morning we received the following message from Leonard Schrank, former CEO of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). Speaking from a position of first-hand knowledge, Mr. Schrank responds to my recent Power Line posts taking up the subject of the New York Times and its malicious treatment of highly classified national security information. I am most grateful for his permission to share these comments with Power Line
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May 29, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday afternoon Seth Leibsohn invited me to discuss the peculiar dishonesty of the New York Times on intelligence and national security issues at the top of hour 2 of his AM 960 The Patriot show in Phoenix. Seth was up to speed on everything I’ve written about this branch of the poisonous Times tree over the past 15 years. Most recently, I returned to the subject in “The Assange indictment”
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May 28, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Teresa Seeberger rented rooms in a house she owned in Davenport, Iowa. When Seeberger learned that her tenant’s fifteen-year-old daughter had become pregnant, she told the tenant that she and her daughter would have to leave. When the tenant asked why, Seeberger said: “You don’t even pay rent on time the way it is . . . now you’re going to bring another person into the mix.” The eviction was
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May 28, 2019 — Scott Johnson
New York Times media reporter Marc Tracy has written with a question following up on my long message responding to his request for comments on the Assange indictment. He wonders if I “could speak to [my] feelings specifically on the superseding indictment against Assange.” I thought my feelings were apparent from what I wrote, but I have responded as follows: I support enforcement of the Espionage Act against perpetrators of
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May 28, 2019 — Scott Johnson
On Friday afternoon New York Times media reporter Marc Tracy wrote us to ask if we might be available to discuss the superseding indictment of Julian Assange before a Tuesday evening deadline. I promptly gave Marc my personal contact information and invited him to fire away. He didn’t get around to posing a question until 11:00 p.m. last night. Here is what’s cooking in his kitchen: Basically we are writing
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May 27, 2019 — Scott Johnson
I was deeply touched by the concern implicit in the Julian Barnes and David Sanger New York Times story reporting President Trump’s authorization of Attorney General Barr to declassify the documents underlying the greatest political scandal in American political history — i.e., the Russian collusion hoax. Their concern for national security permeates the story. There it is right at the top, for example, in the lead paragraph: President Trump’s order
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May 25, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The man from Wikileaks — i.e., Julian Assange — is the subject of a superseding indictment charging him with 17 counts under the Espionage Act along with the original count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. I have embedded a copy of the indictment below. Charlie Savage expresses the institutional interest of the New York Times in the case in his story on the indictment: Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader,
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May 6, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Roger Simon asks that question. He rightly indicts the journalists who spread the idiotic lie that President Trump “colluded” with Putin’s Russia: [A] penalty of some kind, indeed a serious one, should certainly be levied for misinforming the public on the most important subject of our day, which has happened repeatedly over the last few years concerning the Russia probe. And when these prevarications can be shown to have been
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April 19, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Ronald Reagan liked to joke that the closest thing you’ll ever find to eternal life on earth is a federal program. He underestimated the possibilities of a Justice Department antitrust suit. I was stunned earlier this week to read in the Wall Street Journal that the famous antitrust lawsuit against Standard Oil that broke up John D. Rockefeller’s massive creation and decided at the Supreme Court in 1911 was still
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April 16, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Prosecutors in Montgomery County, Maryland — the bastion of leftism and Trump hatred I call home — have dismissed charges against the woman who assaulted Kellyanne Conway in a restaurant where Conway was celebrating her birthday. The woman, Mary Elizabeth Inabinett, age 63, grabbed Conway from behind and shook her. That’s clearly a misdemeanor assault. So why have charges against the assailant been dropped? Prosecutors say that even if they
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