MTG's "whistleblower"

Are the Republican loudmouths still defending this guy?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

OOOOOOOH

Said at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, so could be played off as a joke.

Dems can't afford to lose the Senate in 2024

But they might.

One possibility:  They lose Manchin, who has been a thorn in their side, so good, but to a Republican, so bad.

It's Sunday

Bingo.  

And, "render unto Caeser", Christians.

This month, Texas Senate Republicans passed three bills about religion in schools that have historians feeling déjà vu.

The first, SB 1515, would require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in a “conspicuous place” in classrooms. The other bill, SB 1396, would permit public schools to set aside time for students and staff members to pray or read the Bible and other religious texts. The third, SB 1556, would give employees the right to pray or “engage in religious speech” while on the job. The bills are on their way to the Texas House for approval. These bills follow Texas’s SB 797, which took effect in 2021 and requires schools to display “In God We Trust” signs.

[...]

[I]n 2022, the Supreme Court decided in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that a football coach’s prayer at football games constituted protected speech. The bill’s authors and conservative supporters said the court’s ruling represents a “fundamental shift” for religious liberty much in the way that “the Dobbs case was for the pro-life movement.”

The lawmakers see a signal that they can rethink the separation of church and state, the long-standing idea embedded in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

[...]

"The Ten Commandments measure is almost surely unconstitutional. It would be astonishing to me if it survives a court challenge.

[...]

"The other bill about prayer and Bible reading is a little more complicated because they do say that it would be open to other religious texts. But I’d be curious as to how many districts in Texas would be down with people reading the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita.


[...]

When the Supreme Court banned school-sponsored prayer in 1962 in Engel v. Vitale, most African Americans wanted prayer in schools, based on what I read in the Black press from the time. They were opposed to the Supreme Court decision because the civil rights movement was a religious movement. It’s characteristic of our moment that the religion schools push has become exclusively a right-wing matter because there was a long tradition of left-wing efforts to promote religion in schools as a way to fight racism or poverty. And that’s gone.

[...]

"Some people on the court, including Gorsuch, have suggested that they want to revisit the Lemon test. But let’s be clear, the Lemon test is just about the question of whether you can promote religion. It’s not about the question of whether you can establish a single religion, and that’s what the Ten Commandments legislation would do. It is cleanly and clearly unconstitutional. The religious texts bill is probably more contestable, but the Ten Commandments one, it will be a slam dunk.
  Vox

We'll see.

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's Sunday

Deuteronomy 21:18-21

18 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Also investigating Trump for wire fraud

Led by the special counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as $250 million through a political action committee by saying they needed the money to fight to reverse election fraud even though they had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those fraud claims.

The prosecutors are looking at the inner workings of the committee, Save America PAC, and at the Trump campaign’s efforts to prove its baseless case that Mr. Trump had been cheated out of victory.

[...]

An initial round of subpoenas, which started going out before Mr. Trump declared his candidacy in the 2024 race and Mr. Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in November, focused on various Republican officials and vendors that had received payments from Save America.

But more recently, investigators have homed in on the activities of a joint fund-raising committee made up of staff members from the 2020 Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, among others. Some of the subpoenas have sought documents from around Election Day 2020 up the present.

Prosecutors have been heavily focused on details of the campaign’s finances, spending and fund-raising, such as who was approving email solicitations that were blasted out to lists of possible small donors and what they knew about the truth of the fraud claims, according to the people familiar with their work. All three areas overlap, and could inform prosecutors’ thinking about whether to proceed with charges in an investigation in which witnesses are still being interviewed.

  NYT

They all knew what they were doing. Trump is the world's biggest grifter.

Mr. Trump’s team may argue that the fund-raising represented political speech with solicitations that were generally vague, and that subjecting it to a criminal process could raise First Amendment issues and create a slippery slope for future candidates. Political fund-raising materials often engage in bombast or exaggeration.

[...]

Prosecutors have also been examining the plan to assemble alternate slates of pro-Trump electors from swing states won by Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the broader push by Mr. Trump to block or delay congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6, 2021, leading to the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another day, another American mass killing

After neighbors complained about the noise he was making, a Texas man went next door with an AR-15-style rifle and shot them, killing five people – including an eight-year-old child – as well as wounding three others at a home in Cleveland, Texas, on Friday night. Law enforcement patrolling the community more than 40 miles outside of Houston were searching for Francisco Oropeza, 39, who had been intoxicated and fled the scene.

[...]

Family members had walked to his fence and asked Oropeza to cease shooting rounds in his yard because an infant was trying to sleep.

Oropeza responded by saying that it was his property. Capers told reporters that video footage showed Oropeza walking up to the neighbors’ front door with the rifle.

[...]

That puts the United States at a record pace of mass killings this year. Currently, mass killings happen once every six and a half days, according to an analysis by the Associated Press and USA Today.

[...]

The killing [...] marked the 174th mass shooting and 17th mass killing in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The archive defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are killed or wounded. It defines a mass killing as one in which four or more victims are slain.

  Guardian

One, two, or three killings won't get you on the books.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of Supreme Court corruption

Let's revisit Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing for a minute.

A 2018 Senate investigation that found there was “no evidence” to substantiate any of the claims of sexual assault against the US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh contained serious omissions, according to new information obtained by the Guardian.

The 28-page report was released by the Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the then chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. It prominently included an unfounded and unverified claim that one of Kavanaugh’s accusers – a fellow Yale graduate named Deborah Ramirez – was “likely” mistaken when she alleged that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a dormitory party because another Yale student was allegedly known for such acts.

The suggestion that Kavanaugh was the victim of mistaken identity was sent to the judiciary committee by a Colorado-based attorney named Joseph C Smith Jr, according to a non-redacted copy of a 2018 email obtained by the Guardian.

[...]

Smith said it was a fellow classmate named Jack Maxey, who was a member of Kavanaugh’s fraternity, who allegedly had a “reputation” for exposing himself, and had once done so at a party.

[...]

In an interview with the Guardian, Maxey confirmed that he was still a senior in high school at the time of the alleged incident, and said he had never been contacted by any of the Republican staffers who were conducting the investigation.

“I was not at Yale,” he said. “I was a senior in high school at the time. I was not in New Haven.”

[...]

A new documentary – an early version of which premiered at Sundance in January, but is being updated before its release – contains a never-before-heard recording of another Yale graduate, Max Stier, describing a separate alleged incident in which he said he witnessed Kavanaugh expose himself at a party at Yale.

[...]

Maxey adamantly denied any allegation that he exposed himself to Ramirez at any time. Asked if he had ever visited Yale at the time of the alleged incident, Maxey said he had visited his older brother, Christopher, who was an older student at Yale, on a limited number of occasions when he was a senior in high school, but that they had not attended any freshmen parties.

Maxey, a Republican activist, has gained prominence in conservative circles for his role in sharing a portable hard drive of data from Hunter Biden’s laptop with members of the media.

[...]

Maxey has said he obtained the hard drive from Rudy Giuliani. He previously worked as a researcher for Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast but the two have since had a falling out.

[...]

[Maxey] also separately defended Kavanaugh, who he said had behaved like a “choir boy” while attending Yale.

[...]

[Yale graduate, Max] Stier wanted to tell the FBI anonymously during the confirmation process that he had allegedly witnessed Kavanaugh’s friends push the future judge’s penis into the hand of a female classmate at a party. While Republicans on the Senate committee were reportedly made aware of his desire to submit information to the FBI, he was not interviewed by the committee’s Republican investigators.

The committee’s final report claimed there was “no verifiable evidence to support” Ramirez’s claim.

[...]

[Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse] is expected to release a report into the FBI’s handling of the Kavanaugh investigation by the end of this year.

  Guardian

Good one, Chuckles

Yeah, they're passing that around for a good laugh.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Chief Justice in the muck

Chief Justice Roberts has reason not to want to talk to Congress about court ethics.

Last week, Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, invited Roberts to "restore confidence in the Court's ethical standards" by coming on the Hill and giving public testimony. Roberts declined.

[...]

Two years after John Roberts' confirmation as the Supreme Court's chief justice in 2005, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, made a pivot. After a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, she refashioned herself as a legal recruiter, a matchmaker who pairs job-hunting lawyers up with corporations and firms.

Roberts told a friend that the change was motivated by a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given that her husband was now the highest-ranking judge in the country.

[...]

[F]or the years 2007 to 2014 [...] Jane Roberts generated a whopping $10.3 million in commissions, paid out by corporations and law firms for placing high-dollar lawyers with them.

That eye-popping figure comes from records in a whistleblower complaint filed by a disgruntled former colleague of Roberts [Kendal B. Price], who says that as the spouse of the most powerful judge in the United States, the income she earns from law firms who practice before the Court should be subject to public scrutiny.

[...]

Price's disclosures, which were filed under federal whistleblower-protection laws and are now in the hands of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, add to the mounting questions about how Supreme Court justices and their families financially benefit from their special status.

[...]

"I believe that at least some of her remarkable success as a recruiter has come because of her spouse's position."

  Business Insider

He's just jealous, right Jane?

Mark Jungers, another one of Jane Roberts' former colleagues, said that Jane was smart, talented, and good at her job. "To my knowledge," he told Insider, "friends of John were mostly friends of Jane, and while it certainly did not harm her access to top people to have John as her spouse, I never saw her 'use' that inappropriately. In fact, I would say that Jane was always very sensitive to the privacy of her family and when she could drop the name or make certain calls, she didn't."

[...]

[A] spokesperson [for the Supreme Court] told the Times that the Robertses had complied with the code of conduct for federal judges, citing an advisory opinion finding that "a judge whose spouse owned and operated a legal or executive recruitment business need not recuse merely because a law firm appearing before the judge engaged the judge's spouse."

Of course not. Those justices are above being influenced. They should never be questioned.  They're practically Gods.

(Other advisory opinions have held that when a judge's spouse is actively recruiting for a firm appearing before that judge, or when a spouse has personally done "high level" recruitment work that generated "substantial fees," recusal would be appropriate.)

But they have no mandatory rules on recusal. Or ethics for that matter.

"What's the public confidence in a system when the firms which are appearing before the court are making decisions that are to the financial benefit of the chief justice?"

How dare you question them.

Only 25 percent of Americans say they have "a great deal" of confidence in the court, the lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 1974. The court has been rocked in recent weeks by a series of revelations about the behavior of sitting justices, including transactions and relationships that could lead to discipline in almost any other professional context.

[...]

ProPublica revealed that Clarence Thomas accepted lavish, undisclosed gifts of travel and had engaged in real estate transactions with Harlan Crow, a Dallas real-estate developer and GOP donor. That news prompted the discovery of errors in Thomas's financial disclosure forms, which he agreed to revise. This isn't the first time that Thomas has had difficulty with filing complete and accurate financial disclosure forms. In 2011, Thomas amended 13 years of forms, some of which had wrongly claimed that his wife Ginni had no outside income, when in fact she'd been paid more than half a million dollars by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Then came the news that shortly after his confirmation to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch had sold his share of a vacation property to Big Law CEO. He reported the transaction on his disclosure forms, but left the name of the buyer blank.

These disclosures came on the heels of yet another report in November that an evangelical activist orchestrated an influence campaign targeting Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. by mobilizing a network of well-heeled conservative donors to contribute to the Supreme Court Historical Society. One of those donors, the activist claims, received an early heads up about a coming decision in the Hobby Lobby case.

Oh, hell yes. I had forgotten about Alito's stench.

In a statement to Insider, Durbin suggested that he was close to giving up on the prospect that the Supreme Court was capable of policing itself. "The need for Supreme Court ethics reform is clear," he said. "And since it appears that the Court will not take adequate action, Congress must."

Do it.

Roberts said she specialized in placing current and former government officials at law firms, describing the mechanics of her job in market-oriented terms.

Jane is the matron of the revolving door.

While there is no evidence that any of Roberts' placements — as opposed to the firms that hire them — have argued before the Supreme Court, a legal consultant told Politico that Roberts' "access to people is heavily influenced by her last name."

Hunter Biden's laptop!

Gershman's memo cites one case, Dutra Group v. Batterton, in which the Supreme Court overruled a decision that found a WilmerHale client potentially liable for punitive damages. Roberts voted with the majority. "In my opinion, a reasonable person would want to know that the law firm on the other side of a legal dispute had recently paid the judge's household over $350,000," Gershman wrote. "Such a payment might cause a reasonable person to question the judge's impartiality."

[...]

The Supreme Court is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act or the oversight of the Office on Government Ethics. It has no internal ethics committee and no inspector general. In lieu of all these safeguards, there is a document called "Statements of Ethics Principles and Practices," which Roberts provided to Durbin.

Even the bare-bones requirement of an annual financial disclosure form is, in Roberts' view, a voluntary gesture, as "the Court has never addressed whether Congress may impose those requirements on the Supreme Court."

[...]

As with his previous forms, Justice Roberts' most recent financial disclosure gives no indication of how much money his spouse made or which law firms it came from. Nor is there any indication that she earned a commission on placements, only income paid out by "Macrae, Inc. — Attorney Search Consultants – salary."

[...]

A memo written in support of Price's complaint by Bennett Gershman, professor at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University who has written books on legal ethics, goes further. "Characterizing Mrs. Roberts' commissions as 'salary' is not merely factually incorrect; it is incorrect as a matter of law," Gershman wrote. "The legal distinction between these terms is clear, undisputed, and legally material. If the Chief Justice's inaccurate financial disclosures were inadvertent, presumably he should file corrected and amended disclosures."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 04/29/2023:

Congress makes laws. Congress spends money. Congress approves the president’s cabinet and says whether he can appoint a judge or not. Congress structures the judiciary and Congress sets the size of the Supreme Court and the scope of its business.

The upshot of all of this is that when Congress calls, the other branches are supposed to answer — not as a courtesy, but as an affirmation of the rules of the American constitutional order.

[...]

Last week, Congress called the chief justice. In the wake of revelations concerning the friendship between Justice Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow, a billionaire Republican donor, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, invited Roberts to testify at an upcoming hearing on Supreme Court ethics rules.

[...]

“I must respectfully decline your invitation,” Roberts wrote. “Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the chief justice of the United States is exceedingly rare as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”

[...]

More striking than this evasion is the manner in which Roberts ended his reply. Faced with serious questions about the integrity of the court, he pointed to a nonbinding ethics document that has done almost nothing to prevent these situations from arising in the first place. “In regard to the Court’s approach to ethics matters,” he wrote, “I attached a Statement of Ethics Principles and Practices to which all of the current members of the Supreme Court subscribe.”

[...]

“Separation of powers,” in Roberts’s view, means the court is outside the system of checks and balances that governs the other branches of government. “Judicial independence,” likewise, means neither he nor any other member of the court has any obligation to speak to Congress about their behavior. The court checks, according to Roberts, but cannot be checked.

A number of legal scholars have remarked on the judicial power grab of the past several years, in which courts across the federal judiciary have seized key governing decisions from the legislative and executive branches and disparaged the ability of elected officials to, as Josh Chafetz of Georgetown University Law Center writes, “engage in principled, competent governance.”

As one of the architects of this development in American politics, Roberts is essentially using this letter to make plain to Congress the reality of the situation: I will not speak, and you cannot make me. And he’s right, not because Congress doesn’t have the power, but because it doesn’t have the votes.

[...]

It is not especially dramatic, but this exchange with Chief Justice Roberts over the court, its ethics and its responsibility to the public and its representatives has done more than almost anything else in recent memory to illustrate a key reality of American politics in this moment: that our Supreme Court does not exist in the constitutional order as much as it looms over it, a robed tribunal of self-styled philosopher-kings, accountable to no one but themselves.

  NYT

Trump knew there was no fraud in the 2020 election

His cabinet members told him.  The White House lawyers told him.  And even two firms hired to prove there was fraud found none and told him.

A second firm hired by the Trump campaign to investigate fraud in the 2020 election said all of Trump’s fraud claims were false, the firm’s founder told The Washington Post

The Trump campaign hired Simpatico Software Systems and its founder, Ken Block, to investigate fraud claims all over the country after the 2020 election.

[...]

Campaign finance records show the campaign paid Block’s firm about $750,000, starting just days after the election.

A similar firm, Berkeley Research Group, was hired by the Trump campaign to investigate fraud claims. Like Simpatico, Berkeley did not find evidence of fraud or that the election was stolen.

A Trump spokesperson did not address claims in the Post report, but he did deride its findings.

[...]

Block said he recently met with special counsel Jack Smith, the federal investigator into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No surprise here

Trump rape case, day 3

I think that's a pretty fair hit.

And that.

And then...

Court will resume on Monday.

UPDATE :

He's going to save them up until the verdict is given, and then he'll flood the zone with nasty bleats.  That is, IF he can restrain himself that long.

Feinstein must go

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Haven't heard from this asshole for a while

Suing a cow may not be the best idea, but aside from his personal foibles, I wonder if he'll show up in any of Jack Smith's investigation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Toward court reform

Sens. Angus King (I-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have introduced a bipartisan bill to require the Supreme Court to create a new code of conduct for itself after ProPublica revealed that conservative Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose luxury trips he accepted from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow.

The bill would require the Supreme Court to implement a code of conduct within one year of its enactment into law and publish the new code on its website so it’s available to the public.

It would further require the court to name an individual to handle any complaints of violations of the code and give the court authority to initiate investigations to determine if justices or staff have engaged in conduct affecting the administration of justice or violating federal laws or codes of conduct.

  MSN

Should that function be held by the court itself? I don't think so.

It would empower the court to draft its own code of conduct to preserve the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches, thereby deflecting any criticism that members of Congress would be interfering in the court’s affairs.

And what if they don't? Or if they don't draft anything meaningful?

Murkowski said the legislation will address public concerns about the court’s impartiality amid its declining approval ratings.

It doesn't address my concerns very well.

King told The Hill that he will try to recruit more Republicans to support the bill and hasn’t yet begun discussing it with GOP colleagues other than Murkowski.

Good luck there, Angus.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) last week invited Chief Justice John Roberts to testify at the hearing, which Roberts declined.

In a letter responding to Durbin Tuesday, Roberts pointed out that members of the Supreme Court in 1991 “voluntarily adopted a resolution” to follow the “broadly worded” principles set out in the Judicial Conference’s code of conduct. The Judicial Conference is the policymaking body for the federal courts.

The new legislative proposal from King, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, and Murkowski, an influential Republican moderate, will put more pressure on Roberts to take action, senators say.

Good luck there, too.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 05/05/2023:

What a c*nt

She continues to outdo herself.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

* Apologies to c*nts.

Temporary stay in Missouri madness

UPDATE 12:00 pm:  I wonder if the DOJ's intervention in Tennessee over a similar ban had anything to do with the Missouri stay.  Waiting to see how the Tennessee case goes.

Trump loses again

Doesn't mean he will quit trying.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected former President Trump’s effort to block former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying to a grand jury probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to reports.

The Washington Post reported that the reasoning behind the new order from a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals remains under seal.

The former president’s legal team earlier this month appealed a judge’s order that Pence answer Justice Department questions about Trump’s role in Jan. 6 and efforts to interrupt the transition of power during the 2020 election.

[...]

Trump can appeal to the Supreme Court, though he has not said whether he intends to do so.

  The Hill

I guess yes.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 08:59 pm:  Well, that settles that.

Former Vice President Mike Pence testified on Thursday [for more than five hours] to a federal grand jury investigating the aftermath of the 2020 election and the actions of then-President Donald Trump and others, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The testimony marks a momentous juncture in the criminal investigation and the first time in modern history a vice president has been compelled to testify about the president he served beside.

  CNN

Well, maybe not beside beside.

I hope he spilled all the beans.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Nikki Haley is not ready for prime time

Hell of a pitch:  Hey, Disney, we'll take the business, but we're not your kind of people.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Free from Tucker

I’ve been called out by Sean Hannity and quoted out of context in the pages of Brietbart; I’ve been mocked by the Federalist Society and watched Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz disparage my book during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. But in terms of pure disruption to my life, nothing compared to having my image shown on Carlson’s nightly white supremacist hoedown.

[...]

Being on Tucker’s radar was completely different from getting criticized by hosts of other shows or by other newsmakers. I’ve been in extended flame wars with Glenn Greenwald and Megyn Kelly, and my punishment has been having to read a few Greenwald or Kelly tweets. On a bad day, any of these Fox and Fools can make you update your passwords; Carlson’s show made you update your home security system.

And I’m not the only one who noticed this difference between Carlson and his competition. Rachel Vindman (writer, podcaster, and wife of Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman) tweeted: “The hate and death threats that come from being on Tucker’s show are worse than when the former president mentions you.” She would know. If you haven’t been caught in a Tucker tornado, you’ll have to trust us that it is… unpleasant.

[...]

Tucker himself is an intellectual lightweight, “a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like,” according to political scientist, Dr. Jason Johnson.

[...]

Bill O’Reilly was smarter (in a racist uncle’s armchair-version-of-history sort of way). Rush Limbaugh was more entertaining (for people who thought Archie Bunker was funny but didn’t get that he was the joke). But Carlson’s show somehow managed to make the most aggrieved white people in society feel seen, and empowered. [...] His only true skill is in the construction of plausible deniability.

[...]

For now, though, my life is better. My life is safer. The next host will surely try to keep Tucker’s deplorable audience engaged and enraged. But while many hosts can ride the wave of white grievance that keeps Fox afloat, few can amplify and justify those grievances the way Carlson could. Carlson is replaceable, but I hope that his show cannot be easily recreated.

  Elie Mystal @ The Nation

I hope not, too.  A lot of people's lives are safer without Tucker on Fox.

Day 2, Trump rape trial

Or jury tampering?  I'll defer to Joyce.  She's the attorney. (Former federal prosecutor.)

A department store manager at the time testified:

E. Jean herself testified today.  She says it all started with flirtation on both their parts and ended with Trump raping  her in a dressing room.  She says she hasn't been able to have a romantic relationship or sex since.

Every woman who's ever been accosted understands that.

UPDATE 02:55 pm:

Adam Klasfeld is a good one to follow live-tweeting the trial.

UPDATE 06:11 pm:  Eric Trump's tweet via MSN:

"Jean Carroll's legal battle against my father is allegedly being FUNDED by political activist Reid Hoffman (co-founder of Linkedin)," Eric Trump said in a tweet. "A civil lawsuit, being funded by a billionaire, with no direct involvement in the case, out of pure hatred, spite or fear of a formidable candidate, is an embarrassment to our country, should be illegal, and tells you everything you need to know about the case at hand."

Not sure which came first, the judge's ruling or Eric's tweet, but I think it was the judge's ruling.

UPDATE 04/27/2023:

The judge took Trump's derogatory social media postings seriously, telling his lawyer Joe Tacopina, "If I were in your shoes, I’d be having a conversation with your client." Later on he added, "there are some relevant United States statutes here and somebody on your side ought to be thinking about them,” in a not particularly subtle reference to the array of federal statutes that criminalize obstruction of justice, including the broad prohibition in 18 USC 1512 against even attempting to tamper with a witness, victim or informant, and other provisions that apply to jurors. While Trump’s conduct here probably doesn’t cross that line, the Judge is putting him on notice, early.

[...]

Deposition testimony is wide-ranging and often goes beyond the bounds of what will be admissible at trial. The parties may acquire evidence in discovery that a judge ultimately rules isn’t admissible. The governing rules in federal court are federal rules of evidence 402 and 404(b).

[...]

The judge has the discretion to exclude relevant evidence if it’s cumulative—evidence of something that has already been overwhelmingly established. But the part of the rule, 403, which explains when relevant evidence can be excluded, that comes into play most often is a provision that permits a judge to exclude relevant evidence when it’s more likely to be unfairly prejudicial than probative.

[...]

Trump’s lawyers wanted a ruling about whether they would be able to introduce evidence about Carroll’s past that painted her in a negative light, including evidence about her relationship with her second husband, John Johnson. Carroll testified about the relationship in her deposition, and there was some violence in the marriage. Trump’s lawyers wanted to introduce evidence that Johnson, who was Black, was provoked to violence when Carroll called him an ape. The judge, Lewis Kaplan, said that while they could get into the fighting, they could not get into the reason for it, because “it is a subject on which the unfair prejudicial effect outrageously outweighs any probative value, to a mixed-race jury in New York.”

[...]

The jury also won’t hear that George Conway, estranged husband of former Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, was the one who connected Carroll with her lawyer Roberta (“Robbie”) Kaplan following a party at podcaster and writer Molly Jong Fast’s Upper East Side apartment. Nor will they hear that Kaplan’s firm received some funding that covered “certain costs and fees in connection with the firm’s work on Carroll’s behalf” from billionaire Democratic Party donor Reid Hoffman’s PAC. Kaplan advised the judge that Carroll didn’t personally communicate with the nonprofit organization or its financial supporters. In other words, none of this is relevant to the issues of whether Trump defamed or raped Carroll.

[...]

So while we’re likely to hear talking points from Trump’s camp about how an unfair judge excluded important evidence, now you understand the rules and why Judge Kaplan ruled the way he did here.

[...]

Trump’s lawyers are likely to appeal all of these rulings if the jury finds against him. He’ll try to get any verdict overturned, claiming the judge made reversible errors about the admissibility of evidence. There are standards of review on appeal that appellate courts use to assess the decisions made by trial judges. Decisions about the admissibility of evidence are within the discretion of a trial judge, and they will only be reversed on appeal if the judge abuses their discretion.

  Joyce Vance

Tucker's dilemma

FOX NEWS EXECUTIVES have in their possession a dossier of alleged dirt on Tucker Carlson should he attack the network in the wake of his departure.

[...]

Fox News and its communications department — long led by the notoriously aggressive Irena Briganti — has assembled damaging information about Carlson. One source with knowledge calls it an “oppo file.”

[...]

The file includes internal complaints regarding workplace conduct, disparaging comments about management and colleagues, and allegations that the now-former prime-time host created a toxic work environment, three of the sources say.

  Rolling Stone

Fine, but I don't think anybody would care. Who doesn't know already that Carlson is an SOB? And we're learning more and more about him from Abby Grossberg's lawsuit against him.

A network spokesperson denied the existence of the file on Carlson. “This is patently absurd and categorically false,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “We thank Tucker for his service to the network as a host, and prior to that, as a contributor.”

I don't know if I buy that, either. But I don't think there's any real danger to Tucker from Fox at this point.

Over the years, Briganti and Fox PR’s tactics have been turned against its own most prominent talent. For instance, The Daily Beast reported in 2018 that “emails reviewed and verified” by the outlet “show that Fox’s communications brass have planted negative stories about some of their own top stars, including hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Stuart Varney — the latter of whom is still a Fox employee.”

Those methods for keeping personnel in line are an open secret among current and former Fox News staff. Four former Fox News personalities confirmed Briganti likes to keep “dirt files” on Fox News talent, including one on Carlson.

“[Briganti] keeps files on everybody to screw with them,” a departed Fox News host adds. “It’s classic Fox.”

[...]

On Monday, it was revealed that Carlson had hired Bryan Freedman, a high-powered entertainment lawyer, to represent him following his Fox exit.

[...]

“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Carlson wrote shortly after Fox News projected Joe Biden had beaten Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Regarding Fox News executives, Carlson also privately sniped: “A combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to back down is what’s happening.”

Harshly trashing leadership is considered to be a major transgression at Fox News and Fox Business, where those who step out of line may find themselves on the receiving end of an unfavorable story.

There may indeed be worse things, but those remarks are really rather mild.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another SCOTUS justice story

For nearly two years beginning in 2015, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sought a buyer for a 40-acre tract of property he co-owned in rural Granby, Colo.

Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court.

[...]

Gorsuch, who held a 20 percent stake, reported making between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale on his federal disclosure forms.

Gorsuch did not disclose the identity of the purchaser.

[...]

Since then, Greenberg Traurig has been involved in at least 22 cases before or presented to the court.

[...]

In the 12 cases where Gorsuch’s opinion is recorded, he sided with Greenberg Traurig clients eight times and against them four times.

  Politico

So, not dispositive of bias, but he should have recused himself from all of them.

Such a sale would raise ethical problems for officials serving in many other branches of government, but the Supreme Court sets its own rules. It has largely left justices to make their own decisions about when and how to report outside gifts and income.

We're seeing how that has left some to decide very liberally on their own behalf. And Chief Justice Roberts has just refused to answer a call to testify to Congress about it.

It is time for all Americans of a certain age to gather in one spot and deliver an ensemble apology to the late Justice Abe Fortas, who was squeezed off the Supreme Court over financial issues that are penny-ante accusations compared to what's going on among the Nine Wise Souls today. [...] In just the last few days, we have seen the messy death of Clarence Thomas's primary alibi for his lucrative relationship with Texas billionnaire Harlan Crow. In addition, it seems that Justice Neil Gorsuch had similar trouble understanding the financial disclosure forms as regards a sweet deal he made for some property in Colorado.

[...]

The time was when you could count on the Chief Justice to take matters in hand and to waste no time in shoring up the Court's reputation. Instead, of course, we have Chief Justice John Roberts, who is the nominal engineer of a runaway ideological train in his day job, and who doesn't have the clout to do anything about the grubby financial deals that some of his colleagues seem to believe are their rights as lifetime federal employees. Senator Richard Durbin sent Roberts a nice letter asking if he'd like to talk things over with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Roberts politely declined.

[...]

The interesting political aspect of this is that Thomas and Gorsuch have been wallowing in the warm springs of wingnut welfare the way the average conservative Senator or state representative do.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a43709578/neil-gorsuch-colorado-home-disclosure/?src=socialflowTW   Charlie Pierce

I'm waiting for stories on Alito and Kavanaugh.  Because Alito is a total asshole, and we never did find out who paid off Kavanaugh's big debts when Trump nominated him to the bench.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Disney is suing DeSantis

And a bunch of Florida tourism officials.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Abby Grossberg with the receipts

Add another defendant to Jack Smith's case.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Now do Bannon

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 07:35 pm:

Ask and ye shall receive.

So subpoena his ass

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 05/11/2023:  So, I have learned that they CAN'T subpoena him without FUCKING DIANNE FEINSTEIN, who won't retire and can't go to work.

The Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial is over

It's in the jury's hands now.

The seditious conspiracy case against former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants went to the jury on Tuesday after dozens of witnesses over more than three months in one of the most serious cases to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The jury will begin deliberating Wednesday to decide whether the onetime Proud Boys national chairman and four co-defendants are guilty of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors allege was a desperate plot to keep President Donald Trump in the White House after the Republican lost the 2020 election.

[...]

Defense attorneys say there was no conspiracy and no plan to attack the Capitol. They’ve sought to portray the Proud Boys as an unorganized drinking club whose members’ participation in the riot was a spontaneous act fueled by Trump’s election rage.

A lawyer for Tarrio sought to push the blame onto Trump in his closing argument, telling jurors on Tuesday that the Justice Department is making Tarrio a scapegoat for the former president.

  ABC

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Live-tweeting the E. Jean Carroll case against Trump: Jury selection & opening statements

Good stuff here.  

Includes:

Jurors recite their marriage, family situation, whether they follow the news/from what sources, and where they work.  This thread lists all that.  Judge Kaplan informs them they will be in a news blackout on this jury.

Counsel are given 3 automatic juror excuses.

Trump's lawyer's opening statement is a litany of ridicule of Carroll, the main thing being she's just out to sell books, and none of what she says happened actually happened.

Carroll's lawyer's opening statement recounts her claims and tells the jury there will be two other women with similar stories who will testify.  His statement includes this major point:

The judge says the trial will last 5-10 days, excluding weekends.

The thread includes some posts from another trial that this guy is covering at the same time - no, I don't know how he's doing that - so a little confusing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 06:56 pm:  A parting reminder from Carroll's attorney, Shawn Crowley: