Back from meetings. Yes, I see that number now also.
That moment between the gathering on the first day for pretrial motions and when the jurors walk into the box is the last best opportunity to settle. And nearly every trial lawyer who was convinced they had a good case will join me in bristling at the instruction from the client to go explore settlement at that point in time anyway -- and then complying and doing what you know is in the client's best interests.
Also, I believe it was Saul above who said: "Dominion is not part of the resistance." This was right when he said it, and now it is proven.
Fox News and its parent company Fox Corp have struck a deal averting a trialin the blockbuster defamation suit filed by the election-tech company Dominion Voting Systems over spurious claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential race.
Judge Eric M. Davis of the Delaware Superior Court announced the settlement from the bench on Tuesday afternoon ahead of the trial's scheduled start.
No details of the settlement were immediately available.
Excuse me, I need to go buy a Costco-sized bin of popcorn.
This suggests that in both cases, existing systems are inadequate to protect against such threats manifesting. Ideology may be (probably is) the reason for this -- an ideology that is articulated in the first sentence of your comment.
I'm not saying we change that ideology, but a critical re-examination of it is probably overdue. ...And, of course, impossible.
Freddie's writing eighteen years ago was what first brought me to this blog, back when it operated under its former name, with its OG cast of writers. It's really kind of great to see Freddie's words here still in 2023.
After a previous elaborate thank you to Walter Reed Hospital's staff, Senator Jon Fetterman returns to duty in the U.S. Senate.
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1648033256346984449
I have not had the sort of acute treatment that Sen. Fetterman received; I've been blessed to not have the sort of intense, acute attack that he seems to have suffered. Such things are potentially life-threatening, as I've written about previously. But I would hope that people do not confuse the reality of getting help and treatment for depression with the scurrilous rumors of mental incapacity that also surround the man. And that kind of irresponsible rumormongering is an obstacle to Sen. Fetterman serving as a more transparent example that could actually help a lot of other people regardless of their politics.
I suppose a "let's pretend for a moment that money is no object" starting point for policymaking is a potentially legitimate way to go. But once you've put together such a dream agenda, you then need to prioritize down because where real people live, there are only so many tax dollars.
Methinks Mayor Bass is going to have some trouble making the numbers line up the way they ought to pursue such an ambitious agenda.
Gun rights folks become very angry when driver's licenses are mentioned as an analogy.
But I'm not particularly here to make them happy. If you don't have the mental capacity to drive a car, seems likely that you don't have the mental capacity to carry a weapon. Mishandling either device, after all, carries the imminent potential of killing someone who doesn't deserve to be killed.
It goes to authoritarianism, because that's what happens everywhere an we are not special that way. There has always, everywhere, been a demand for authoritarian, autocratic government; people who find attraction to a strong man, a dictator, a king. "It takes an Emperor to run an Empire," is a thought that goes back to pre-history. Trump-worship is as naked a form of this strain of political culture as almost anyone alive can remember, but it is not new here any more than it was in Europe or Asia.
if we are special, it's because once upon a time, our elites vehemently rejected this direction of aspiration and tried something very different. And wrote those ideals into our foundational documents. And then we prospered and grew strong, concluding that our Founders had been right.
But even in the Grand Old Federal Era there were monarchists and those who aspired to dictatorial powers. Napoleon had many admirers here once; Putin has many admirers now.
That's not to paint our conservative friends here with that brush. (The OP demonstrates the discomfort that holdout small-L libertarian style conservatives have with the new Trumpy GOP.) But the basic direction of right wing politics at the moment is towards consolidation and unification of power in the executive.
And let's not forget the propensity of Dems to eff things up, which will induce the voters to punish them, especially after the conservative media acts like whatever the Dems do to eff things up (which we needn't defend here) gets portrayed as the very death knell of the Republic and a moral catastrophe on par with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and/or the innovation of no-fault divorce. This will obscure whatever lesson the GOP would otherwise have been learning because, once in power, they will assume that literally everything their candidate did was what the voters wanted and they needn't moderate at all, as opposed to "well, our guy wasn't all that great but the Dem did just get caught with bricks of cash wrapped in aluminum foil in his freezer and his male member inside someone who wasn't his wife so maybe this was not so much us winning as it was them doing bad things."
There's already been a judicial determination that knowingly Fox broadcast lies about Dominion. So I guess the questions remaining are:
1) How much money and goodwill did Dominion lose?
and
2) How likely are punitive damages?
These aren't the kinds of questions I'd want to be confronting if I were Fox.
I heard a report on NPR irresponsibly speculating this morning that the issue in today's talks were going to include the nature and wording of an apology. In most cases I handle (fellow lawyers feel free to chime in) there are never any apologies at all.
John Smith's letter on behalf of ABC Beer at least directly addresses the issue.
Seriously they could have given this to an intern filling in some gap time between completing high school and their first year of community college, and got a better result.
Yes indeedy. This pickle soda tastes very similar to that last batch you mentioned.
Excepting the absence of Log Cabin Republicans who, credit where it's due, did ... oh wait, did absolutely nothing to helping the GOP mitigate that decade-long spiral into that particular own-goal. If there's an organized cadre of transsexual Republicans out there today, well, I'm willing to bet that Caitlin Jenner and that other person are probably going to have about the same level of effect.
The underlying tweet from AB is getting ratioed, hard, with sarcasm and dismissals coming from both right and left. Which makes sense, because this "Responsibility to America" statement from AB is about as devoid of content and side-taking as their beer is devoid of flavor.
The right thing for AB to have said was nothing, and the right thing for AB to have done was to keep on doing exactly what it had been doing, and wait it out for a week, by when the next shiny object would have popped up in popular culture. The next best thing (although more morally cowardly) would have been for AB to have said nothing and quietly discontinued the market-to-trans people campaign while resolutely continuing to say nothing at all about it.
But, instead, we get this statement -- which doesn't even indicate that they are discontinuing the Dylan Mulvaney campaign (if indeed they are).
President Biden's decision to host the Democratic National Convention in Chicago represents the triumph of practicality over sentimentality. He picked a major Midwestern city with ample labor-friendly hotels, good transportation and a billionaire governor happy to underwrite the event. That combination overpowered the pull Biden felt from runner-up Atlanta, the capital of a state Mr. Biden won for Democrats in 2020 for the first time in a generation.
1. Republicans are cranky about Chicago as it is, feeling it is a vulnerable place to point to high crime rates and the failure of gun control laws to prevent gun crime. May not matter.
2. Battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan are reasonably nearby, true. Query how much that helps. But it's for sure Democrats don't need any help in Illinois. And they probably do need help in Georgia. If rebuilding the midwest as a backstop for Democrats were the objective, Milwaukee would have been a better choice. There are plenty of hotels and other facilities there. May not matter.
3. Chicago's a super fun city to visit and play in. Won't be hard to get people to want to go there. Almost certainly will not matter.
Oh yeah, it's allergy season. Was having a beer with a friend last weekend and we looked outside and saw a gust of wind blow through a cottonwood tree. It was immediately surrounded by a poof of yellow haze.
If they're only engaged in short-term thinking and can win re-election with performative but meaningless maneuvers, I say they succeeded. This probably plays well to deep-Red crowds. We can't see it here because most of the conservative types who hang out with us on these pages are the increasingly-rare "Reasonable Republican" breed. We can agree or disagree with them, have conversations on the meritsof an issue, and back off the heat of disagreements when the conversation is done.
That's not how you win election in a deep red district. It seems you win election in those places by grandstanding on social issues, cutting spending on things like libraries and schools, distributing pictures of your grinning children in their pajamas holding AR-15's on Christmas morning, making public displays of your shallow patriotism and even shallower piety, and throwing darkly-worded, reality-deficient, and (((barely-coded))) intimations about your "Democrat" opponent. The sort of stuff that I for one would love to dismiss as fringe stuff that gets highlighted on social media by the lefty types who try to outrage us not-so-far left Democrats with outrageous things but doesn't really exemplify what Republicans are actually all about.
I'd love to think that's fringe stuff. But there's a lot of it. And the brakes on it have become disabled over time. I fear there aren't enough David Thorntons in the GOP anymore to constitute effective adult oversight.
After five decades of mainlining moral absolutism it's hard to see how the GOP could pump the brakes on abortion bans without an assist from either the Democrats or the courts or both.
Now, having done what was within their power during those five decades to pack the courts with intellectual clones bred using FedSoc(tm) Juice, the courts are not likely to provide that assist. (A few days ago I offered my poetic analysis of this facet of the situation).
Having applied their very clever but very contra-democracy Red States Initiative to gerrymander state legislatures so as to lock in minority government forever (best exemplified in Wisconsin) there may not be enough Democrats in many of these states to negotiate some kind of compromise.
Finally, term limits, where they apply, operate to make sure that not even the leadership of the GOP in these state houses have the experience and wisdom to be able to talk a good game to the anti-abortion crowd button actually do anything to actually move the ball (See: Reagan, Ronald W.).
Whatever chickens haven't made it home to the roost yet are on their way.
If we leave aside performative stuff like bathroom admittance ordinances and sanctuary city declarations, this may not be unreasonably far from the truth.
Come to think of it, the Vice-Provost-Elect of the Wymyn’s Mutual Business and Self-Esteem Support Collective and Book Exchange having a date at BLACK BLOC BOOCH with the off-duty Deputy Municipal Pronoun Promotion Officer, a date that goes horribly wrong in less than five minutes, has the potential to be pretty funny.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 4/17/2023”
Back from meetings. Yes, I see that number now also.
That moment between the gathering on the first day for pretrial motions and when the jurors walk into the box is the last best opportunity to settle. And nearly every trial lawyer who was convinced they had a good case will join me in bristling at the instruction from the client to go explore settlement at that point in time anyway -- and then complying and doing what you know is in the client's best interests.
Also, I believe it was Saul above who said: "Dominion is not part of the resistance." This was right when he said it, and now it is proven.
"
They settled. We don't know how much for just yet:
Excuse me, I need to go buy a Costco-sized bin of popcorn.
On “The Problem With Constitutional Carry”
This suggests that in both cases, existing systems are inadequate to protect against such threats manifesting. Ideology may be (probably is) the reason for this -- an ideology that is articulated in the first sentence of your comment.
I'm not saying we change that ideology, but a critical re-examination of it is probably overdue. ...And, of course, impossible.
On “Freddie Gets Practical, As In “Practical Majors””
Freddie's writing eighteen years ago was what first brought me to this blog, back when it operated under its former name, with its OG cast of writers. It's really kind of great to see Freddie's words here still in 2023.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 4/17/2023”
After a previous elaborate thank you to Walter Reed Hospital's staff, Senator Jon Fetterman returns to duty in the U.S. Senate.
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1648033256346984449
I have not had the sort of acute treatment that Sen. Fetterman received; I've been blessed to not have the sort of intense, acute attack that he seems to have suffered. Such things are potentially life-threatening, as I've written about previously. But I would hope that people do not confuse the reality of getting help and treatment for depression with the scurrilous rumors of mental incapacity that also surround the man. And that kind of irresponsible rumormongering is an obstacle to Sen. Fetterman serving as a more transparent example that could actually help a lot of other people regardless of their politics.
"
I suppose a "let's pretend for a moment that money is no object" starting point for policymaking is a potentially legitimate way to go. But once you've put together such a dream agenda, you then need to prioritize down because where real people live, there are only so many tax dollars.
Methinks Mayor Bass is going to have some trouble making the numbers line up the way they ought to pursue such an ambitious agenda.
On “Something Is Very Wrong In McCurtain County, Oklahoma”
Well, it sure ain't the Midwest.
On “The Problem With Constitutional Carry”
Gun rights folks become very angry when driver's licenses are mentioned as an analogy.
But I'm not particularly here to make them happy. If you don't have the mental capacity to drive a car, seems likely that you don't have the mental capacity to carry a weapon. Mishandling either device, after all, carries the imminent potential of killing someone who doesn't deserve to be killed.
On “I Agree With Donald Trump (For Once)”
Dave! My dude, I hope you're thriving.
"
It goes to authoritarianism, because that's what happens everywhere an we are not special that way. There has always, everywhere, been a demand for authoritarian, autocratic government; people who find attraction to a strong man, a dictator, a king. "It takes an Emperor to run an Empire," is a thought that goes back to pre-history. Trump-worship is as naked a form of this strain of political culture as almost anyone alive can remember, but it is not new here any more than it was in Europe or Asia.
if we are special, it's because once upon a time, our elites vehemently rejected this direction of aspiration and tried something very different. And wrote those ideals into our foundational documents. And then we prospered and grew strong, concluding that our Founders had been right.
But even in the Grand Old Federal Era there were monarchists and those who aspired to dictatorial powers. Napoleon had many admirers here once; Putin has many admirers now.
That's not to paint our conservative friends here with that brush. (The OP demonstrates the discomfort that holdout small-L libertarian style conservatives have with the new Trumpy GOP.) But the basic direction of right wing politics at the moment is towards consolidation and unification of power in the executive.
"
And let's not forget the propensity of Dems to eff things up, which will induce the voters to punish them, especially after the conservative media acts like whatever the Dems do to eff things up (which we needn't defend here) gets portrayed as the very death knell of the Republic and a moral catastrophe on par with the Chinese Cultural Revolution and/or the innovation of no-fault divorce. This will obscure whatever lesson the GOP would otherwise have been learning because, once in power, they will assume that literally everything their candidate did was what the voters wanted and they needn't moderate at all, as opposed to "well, our guy wasn't all that great but the Dem did just get caught with bricks of cash wrapped in aluminum foil in his freezer and his male member inside someone who wasn't his wife so maybe this was not so much us winning as it was them doing bad things."
"
This makes me very sad.
Not surprised, but sad.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 4/17/2023”
Sorry about that. Walgreen's has a special this week on headache relief medicine if that helps.
"
There's already been a judicial determination that knowingly Fox broadcast lies about Dominion. So I guess the questions remaining are:
1) How much money and goodwill did Dominion lose?
and
2) How likely are punitive damages?
These aren't the kinds of questions I'd want to be confronting if I were Fox.
I heard a report on NPR irresponsibly speculating this morning that the issue in today's talks were going to include the nature and wording of an apology. In most cases I handle (fellow lawyers feel free to chime in) there are never any apologies at all.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 4/10/2023”
John Smith's letter on behalf of ABC Beer at least directly addresses the issue.
Seriously they could have given this to an intern filling in some gap time between completing high school and their first year of community college, and got a better result.
"
Yes indeedy. This pickle soda tastes very similar to that last batch you mentioned.
Excepting the absence of Log Cabin Republicans who, credit where it's due, did ... oh wait, did absolutely nothing to helping the GOP mitigate that decade-long spiral into that particular own-goal. If there's an organized cadre of transsexual Republicans out there today, well, I'm willing to bet that Caitlin Jenner and that other person are probably going to have about the same level of effect.
"
Yeah, that seems about right.
"
Wow. They found a way to make it worse.
The underlying tweet from AB is getting ratioed, hard, with sarcasm and dismissals coming from both right and left. Which makes sense, because this "Responsibility to America" statement from AB is about as devoid of content and side-taking as their beer is devoid of flavor.
The right thing for AB to have said was nothing, and the right thing for AB to have done was to keep on doing exactly what it had been doing, and wait it out for a week, by when the next shiny object would have popped up in popular culture. The next best thing (although more morally cowardly) would have been for AB to have said nothing and quietly discontinued the market-to-trans people campaign while resolutely continuing to say nothing at all about it.
But, instead, we get this statement -- which doesn't even indicate that they are discontinuing the Dylan Mulvaney campaign (if indeed they are).
"
Chicago to host 2024 Democratic Convention:
1. Republicans are cranky about Chicago as it is, feeling it is a vulnerable place to point to high crime rates and the failure of gun control laws to prevent gun crime. May not matter.
2. Battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan are reasonably nearby, true. Query how much that helps. But it's for sure Democrats don't need any help in Illinois. And they probably do need help in Georgia. If rebuilding the midwest as a backstop for Democrats were the objective, Milwaukee would have been a better choice. There are plenty of hotels and other facilities there. May not matter.
3. Chicago's a super fun city to visit and play in. Won't be hard to get people to want to go there. Almost certainly will not matter.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Sick. Sick, sick, sick.”
Oh yeah, it's allergy season. Was having a beer with a friend last weekend and we looked outside and saw a gust of wind blow through a cottonwood tree. It was immediately surrounded by a poof of yellow haze.
"Did you see that?" I said. "All that pollen!"
"EWWWW A CLOUD OF TREE SPERM!!!" she cried.
I really haven't been the same since.
On “Two Face-Palm Stories From This Week”
If they're only engaged in short-term thinking and can win re-election with performative but meaningless maneuvers, I say they succeeded. This probably plays well to deep-Red crowds. We can't see it here because most of the conservative types who hang out with us on these pages are the increasingly-rare "Reasonable Republican" breed. We can agree or disagree with them, have conversations on the meritsof an issue, and back off the heat of disagreements when the conversation is done.
That's not how you win election in a deep red district. It seems you win election in those places by grandstanding on social issues, cutting spending on things like libraries and schools, distributing pictures of your grinning children in their pajamas holding AR-15's on Christmas morning, making public displays of your shallow patriotism and even shallower piety, and throwing darkly-worded, reality-deficient, and (((barely-coded))) intimations about your "Democrat" opponent. The sort of stuff that I for one would love to dismiss as fringe stuff that gets highlighted on social media by the lefty types who try to outrage us not-so-far left Democrats with outrageous things but doesn't really exemplify what Republicans are actually all about.
I'd love to think that's fringe stuff. But there's a lot of it. And the brakes on it have become disabled over time. I fear there aren't enough David Thorntons in the GOP anymore to constitute effective adult oversight.
"
After five decades of mainlining moral absolutism it's hard to see how the GOP could pump the brakes on abortion bans without an assist from either the Democrats or the courts or both.
Now, having done what was within their power during those five decades to pack the courts with intellectual clones bred using FedSoc(tm) Juice, the courts are not likely to provide that assist. (A few days ago I offered my poetic analysis of this facet of the situation).
Having applied their very clever but very contra-democracy Red States Initiative to gerrymander state legislatures so as to lock in minority government forever (best exemplified in Wisconsin) there may not be enough Democrats in many of these states to negotiate some kind of compromise.
Finally, term limits, where they apply, operate to make sure that not even the leadership of the GOP in these state houses have the experience and wisdom to be able to talk a good game to the anti-abortion crowd button actually do anything to actually move the ball (See: Reagan, Ronald W.).
Whatever chickens haven't made it home to the roost yet are on their way.
"
I'm with the OP on Tiexiera: Red Forman said it best.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 4/10/2023”
If we leave aside performative stuff like bathroom admittance ordinances and sanctuary city declarations, this may not be unreasonably far from the truth.
"
Come to think of it, the Vice-Provost-Elect of the Wymyn’s Mutual Business and Self-Esteem Support Collective and Book Exchange having a date at BLACK BLOC BOOCH with the off-duty Deputy Municipal Pronoun Promotion Officer, a date that goes horribly wrong in less than five minutes, has the potential to be pretty funny.