Law
August 4, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Scott has embedded the opinion of Judge John Bates in NAACP v. Donald J. Trump. Judge Bates ordered the administration to restart the DACA program within 20 days because, in essence, he doesn’t think much of the administration’s policy reasons for ending the program. I have plowed through the opinion. It reminds me of the scene in “Duck Soup” where Groucho Marx (Rufus T. Firefly) refuses to hear a matter
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August 4, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Paul Mirengoff frequently refers to “our robed masters” in the federal judiciary. Yesterday our robed master Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia administered the latest in a series of legal defeats to President Trump’s attempted rescission of President Obama’s unconstitutional program to regularize illegal immigrants by executive decree. The is President Trump’s second defeat in this case. The New York Times’s Miriam Jordan gave
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July 26, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
In a stunning display of judicial activism, one with far-reaching implications, a federal appeals court has ruled that the Alabama law Minimum Wage and Right-to-Work Act, which mandates a uniform minimum wage of $7.25 per hour throughout Alabama, may be unconstitutional. Finding that the Act, which toppled a Birmingham ordinance setting the minimum wage at $10.10 per hour, has a disparate impact on black workers, the court allowed a claim
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July 25, 2018 — John Hinderaker
I don’t believe we have written anything about the “bombshell” tape that President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, leaked to CNN. On the tape, Trump and Cohen can be heard discussing a potential payment to a former Playboy Playmate of the Year named Karen McDougal. McDougal claims that she had an affair with Trump in 2006. I doubt that anyone cares about the underlying facts. The president’s reaction was, on
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July 25, 2018 — Scott Johnson
I spoke with Minneapolis attorney Bob Bennett about the complaint he filed on Tuesday in connection with the death of Justine Damond at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor. Bob represents the plaintiff trustee for the next of kin in the case. I’ve known Bob as a dogged and straightforward attorney from the first time I met him at the rosy dawn of our legal careers. Since then
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July 5, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Earlier this week the pseudonymous Techno Fog posted the transcript of the June 15 hearing before Judge Dabney Friedrich in the Special Counsel prosecution of Concord Management and Consulting (“the Russian troll case,” as TF calls it). TF extracts every bit of interest from the transcript in a series of tweets beginning with the one below. I have posted the 33-page transcript itself at the bottom. New – transcript of
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June 28, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Anthony Kennedy isn’t likely to get the moment in the sun sometimes granted to an outgoing or departed Supreme Court Justice. Two factors conspire against it. First, Kennedy was admired by neither the left nor the right. Second, the battle over confirming his successor has already commenced, even though no successor has been nominated. The intensity of the battle doesn’t leave much energy for Kennedy appreciation (or condemnation). Jack Goldsmith,
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June 25, 2018 — Steven Hayward
We’ve reported here previously on the frivolous lawsuits the climatistas brought in California courts against major oil companies, and especially how California cities claimed imminent harm from climate change while telling prospective bond buyers that they couldn’t estimate possible future risks from climate change. In any case, late today Federal district court judge William Alsop—a Bill Clinton appointee—dismissed the lawsuits with a strongly-worded opinion that is quite clear about how
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June 23, 2018 — Scott Johnson
I have been saying that an overwhelming wealth of story lines emerges from the IG report on the Clinton email “investigation” released last week. I posted the report via Scrbid here. Andrew McCarthy pointed out before the election in 2016 and repeatedly since (perhaps most recently here), the fix was in from the beginning. The fix was in because Obama was in on the wrongdoing and he was the head
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June 20, 2018 — Scott Johnson
An overwhelming wealth of story lines emerges from the IG report on the Clinton email “investigation,” as I call it, released this past Thursday. I posted it via Scrbid here. Andrew McCarthy pointed out before the election in 2016 and repeatedly since (perhaps most recently here), the fix was in from the beginning. The fix was in because Obama was in on the wrongdoing and he was the head of
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June 18, 2018 — Scott Johnson
The leftist hate cult known as the Southern Poverty Law Center has settled defamation claims by two of the SPLC’s many victims. The Quilliam press release datelined Montgomery announces: MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA — The Southern Poverty Law Center, Inc. has apologized to Quilliam and its founder Maajid Nawaz for wrongly naming them in its controversial Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists. In a public statement, the SPLC’s president, Richard Cohen, explained that
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June 17, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
John wrote here about the class action lawsuit that accuses Harvard of discriminating against Asian-Americans in admissions. The plaintiffs have moved for summary judgment, arguing that they should prevail based on facts not genuinely in dispute. One fact not genuinely in dispute is that Harvard’s own researchers found statistical evidence that the University’s undergraduate application process discriminates against Asian-Americans. In 2013, the Harvard Office of Institutional Research found that Asian-Americans
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June 16, 2018 — Scott Johnson
The three “Minnesota men” who were convicted after a three-week trial in federal court in Minneapolis appealed their convictions to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. I covered the trial every day on Power Line and following the convictions in the Weekly Standard article “‘Minnesota men’ on trial.” The Eighth Circuit heard oral argument in the appeals this past Thursday morning before a three-judge panel including
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June 11, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
The Supreme Court issued a decision today in Husted v. A. Phillip Randolph Institute, a case involving Ohio’s voter list maintenance policies. By a 5-4 vote, the Court upheld Ohio’s policy of removing ineligible and outdated voters from it rolls. The majority concluded that the practice under challenge – which cancels the registration of voters who do not go to the polls and who don’t respond to a notice –
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June 2, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Someone has leaked a confidential 20-page letter that President Trump’s legal team sent to Robert Mueller in January of this year. Not cool. The letter responded to Mueller’s request that Trump agree to be questioned about allegations that he committed obstruction of justice. Trump’s team advised Mueller that the president would not agree to an interview. However, the lawyers said they would be willing to provide written answers to questions
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May 25, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports on a suit in federal court alleging that policies instituted by the District of Columbia government to attract younger, more affluent professionals to poor, African-American neighborhoods discriminate against poor and working-class Blacks who have lived there for generations. The city stands accused of breaking up “close-knit” black communities. The policies challenged were undertaken pursuant to D.C.’s “New Communities” program, initiated to turn aging public housing complexes
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May 24, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, a Clinton appointee, ruled that President Trump violated the First Amendment by blocking certain followers because of the views they expressed. Judge Buchwald found Trump’s blocking to be “viewpoint discrimination,” which it is, and held that Trump is not exempt from constitutional obligations to refrain from such conduct. Then came the obligatory incantation: “No government official — including the President — is above the law.”
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