Law
January 9, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Last month, a federal district court judge issued an injunction against using $3.6 billion dollars of Pentagon funds to construct more border wall. Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a very brief opinion, reversed that decision and lifted the injunction. No one should be surprised to learn that the district court judge who blocked the use of the funds, David Briones, was appointed by President
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January 4, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Some of us who criticize the House’s second article of impeachment against Trump — alleged obstruction of justice based on refusing to produce documents and witnesses — argue that the remedy for the non-cooperation is to seek enforcement of subpoenas in court, not to impeach the president. However yesterday, as discussed below, the Trump Justice Department argued in court that the judiciary shouldn’t even consider enforcing House subpoenas because to
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December 22, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, I wrote about a case in which the Fifth Circuit, in a unanimous decision, ruled that a suit could proceed against a Black Lives Matter activist for violence he didn’t commit or encourage. The police officer who brought the suit was hit in the head by a rock thrown during a BLM protest. However, he did not claim that the individual he sued, DeRay McKesson, threw the rock,
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December 20, 2019 — Scott Johnson
When FISA court presiding judge Rosemary Collyer issued her order rebuking the FBI earlier this week, I wondered where the court had been. Don’t FISA judges read the newspapers? Like so many involved in the Russia hoax, Judge Collyer gave every appearance of having tumbled only lately to the misconduct committed before her court, courtesy of the Department of Justice Inspector General report issued last week. I embedded a copy
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December 18, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
In his post about Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision refusing to find prosecutorial misconduct in the case against Michael Flynn, Scott noted that Sullivan berated Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, for lifting a portion of her brief to the court. Scott added that Sullivan’s accusation “is misplaced,” but did not discuss the matter further because it was not the subject of the post. Jonathan Turley takes up Sullivan’s accusation in this article.
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December 15, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A police officer who was hit in the head by a rock thrown at a 2016 demonstration in Louisiana sued DeRay Mckesson, the prominent Black Lives Matter provocateur who organized the demonstration. The officer did not allege that Mckesson threw the rock, that he called on anyone to throw rocks, or that he called on anyone to commit any act of violence. Yet, he sought to hold Mckesson liable for
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December 6, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
One of my biggest grievances with Alex Acosta’s stewardship of the Department of Labor was his pursuit, based on indefensible statistical analyses, of compensation discrimination claims against Oracle and other high tech Silicon Valley companies. I discussed the flaws in the Labor Department’s analyses here. These actions were filed in January 2017, just as the Obama administration was coming to an end. The idea was to force the Trump Labor
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December 3, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
In his impeachment preview, Scott notes that on Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will begin its hearings by taking testimony from four law professors: Pam Karlan, Noah Feldman, Michael Gerhardt, and Jonathan Turley. It’s easy to ridicule leading off with law professors, and it’s true that doing so isn’t the best way to capture the public’s interest. Logically, however, it makes sense to begin the hearings by discussing the standard
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November 26, 2019 — Scott Johnson
District of Columbia United States District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has upheld the subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee to former White House counsel Don McGahn in the nattering Nadler spinoff of the Mueller probe. Although obviously relevant to current issues in the Schiff show, the opinion already feels something like a walk down memory lane. The Dems nevertheless won’t let their dream of impeachment die. Judge Jackson
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November 16, 2019 — Scott Johnson
I observed earlier this week that there is a classic satire of democratic politics struggling to escape from the House’s impeachment inquiry. It was only yesterday that the Obama administration refused to provide lethal military aid to the Ukraine. Now the provision of lethal military aid appears to have become a holy sacrament in the evolving Democratic orthodoxy, one with its own martyrs and rites and hymns. You know, like
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October 16, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
I once heard Jonah Goldberg talk about a book in which multiple conservative and multiple liberal authors were asked to write whatever they wanted to about politics and political theory. As Goldberg told the story (or at least as I remember it), the conservative authors collectively presented an array of theoretical musings (libertarian, social conservative, natural law based, etc.). The liberal authors all wrote about how Democrats could win the
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September 22, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
In a talk at Brigham Young University, Justice Neil Gorsuch denied that the Supreme Court is split along partisan lines. Chief Justice Roberts has made a similar denial. He disputes the idea that there are Obama judges and Trump judges. Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative jurist who would like to join Gorsuch on Roberts on the Supreme Court, has echoed the Chief Justice’s view. At a conference at the College
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September 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Attorney Generals from almost every state have banded together to investigate whether Google is violating the antitrust laws. This will be a bipartisan effort. The lead AGs are Ken Paxton, a Republican from Texas, and Karl Racine, a Democrat from the District of Columbia. The two “dissenters” are also bipartisan. Only the AGs from California and Alabama have not joined in. A bipartisan group of AGs held a press conference
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September 10, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Senior district judge Marianne O. Battani sentenced Rand Paul’s attacker, one Rene Boucher, to imprisonment for 30 days. Sentencing guidelines prescribed a 21-27 month sentencing range. Recalling the severe injuries sustained by Senator Paul, one wonders how Judge Battani came up with a 30-day sentence. So did the government. The government appealed Judge Battani’s sentence to the Sixth Circuit. Yesterday the Sixth Circuit vacated Boucher’s sentence and returned the case
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September 9, 2019 — Scott Johnson
In his weekly NR column this past Saturday Andrew McCarthy decried “The turn to a pre9/11 mindset.” In part the column takes up last week’s decision (linked below) invalidating the Terrorist Screening Database. Secretly compiled by the government, the watch list subjects those listed to heightened security vetting before they are permitted to board commercial aircraft. My friend Andy writes: Judge Anthony Trenga’s watch-list decision (Elhady v. Kable) is a
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August 31, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The 9/11 attacks occurred almost 18 years ago. Now, finally, a trial date has been set for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other plotters of the attacks. That date is January 11, 2021. These bastards should have been executed no later than in 2009, after they acknowledged, and attempted to justify, their roles in the 9/11 terrorism. But if a trial was needed, it should have occurred years ago. Why didn’t
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August 29, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier this year, George Soros heavily funded primary challenges to two veteran Northern Virginia Commonwealth Attorneys, both of who whom have served their counties well and both of whom are Democrats. In Arlington County, Soros backed Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a criminal defense lawyer whose slander of the local police force was her calling card. She narrowly defeated Theo Stamos. In Fairfax County, Soros funded Steve Descano in his race against incumbent
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