Per federal law 18 USC § 926A, every U.S. citizen may legally transport firearms across state lines as long as he or she is legally allowed to possess the weapons in both the state of origin as well as the destination.

You can legally transport firearms across state lines as long as:

• You can lawfully possess firearms in your state of origin.
• You can lawfully possess firearms at your destination.
• The firearm and ammunition must be stored out of reach (not in the glove compartment or center console).*
• Although it may not be required, it is a good idea to lock your ammunition and guns in separate lock boxes in the trunk or anywhere out of immediate reach.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title18/pdf/USCODE-2011-title18-partI-chap44-sec926A.pdf

Supreme Court may finally end rule of bureaucrats with ‘tragic’ Chevron case
By John Fund
May 2, 2023 8:29pm

The Supreme Court made a tragic mistake almost 40 years ago.

In the 1984 case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, it ruled federal judges must defer to a regulatory agency’s interpretations of federal laws, so long as Congress has not addressed the issue in question and the agency’s view can be construed as “reasonable.”

Since then, the power of the unelected administrative state has ballooned so that it now dictates much of our economy and daily lives.

The court announced Monday it will revisit that precedent, raising hopes that this enormous federal power might be reined in.

The Constitution set up a system of separated powers in which Congress would pass the laws, the president would administer them and the courts would interpret them.

Since the New Deal, Congress has shirked its accountability by increasingly giving unelected agencies the power to make decisions of vast economic and political significance. //

In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 6 to 3 court majority ruled that from now on Congress must explicitly grant regulatory agencies the power they wield.

That infuriated the activist left.

Since the spectacular collapse of President Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme to rein in carbon emissions, which failed to even get a Senate floor vote in 2010, environmentalists have become experts at twisting and distorting old laws to accomplish by the back door what they could never do using legitimate constitutional approaches.

From regulations aimed at climate change to the overriding of local zoning laws in New York, activists have used that approach to lobby federal agencies to implement an agenda Congress would never approve on its own. //

One former federal regulator, appalled at left-wing efforts to ban gas stoves, told me: “They go through federal agencies like burglars who try every door in a neighborhood in the belief one of them will be unlocked.”

The court may not overturn the case in full, but the fact that at least four justices have agreed to reexamine the decision indicates Chevron deference is likely to be curbed.

Jonathan Turley
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Today the Supreme Court granted review in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which involves a challenge to the Chevron doctrine and its heavy agency deference. Notably, the Court granted only on one of the questions concerning Chevron...
Jonathan Turley
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...Here is the question: “whether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.” Show more
10:27 AM · May 1, 2023 //

The federal government has been completely out of control for decades, and the Chevron Doctrine has been at the heart of many of the abuses.

Now, the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the doctrine at some major level. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is already recused from the case, meaning that the conservative wing would only need to muster four votes. On that front, most of the conservatives on the court have already signaled a willingness to curb the power of the bureaucratic state by rolling back the Chevron Doctrine.

The Supreme Court is looking at a case that could have tremendous ramifications for property rights. Its ruling will determine whether the government is able to continue stealing from Americans using tax laws. When it comes to property rights, this one could be a game-changer.

This case will decide if it is constitutional for the government to seize and sell a person’s home to pay off overdue property taxes, without returning any excess proceeds to the homeowner. The practice, known as home equity theft, is legal in several states, including Minnesota, Michigan, and New York.

In each state, the process is different, but homeowners are usually bought out by private investors without their knowledge and receive letters after three years of overdue taxes, informing them that they have 90 days to pay their debts. If they fail to pay within that timeframe, the county treasurer gives the deed to an investor who takes the home, sells it, and keeps the profit.

Costello is the former legal adviser for Michael Cohen. Cohen is one of the two key witnesses in the case, along with Stormy Daniels. Both have serious credibility issues.

Costello’s testimony further decimated any case that the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg may have thought he ever had. //

Costello is the former legal adviser for Michael Cohen. Cohen is one of the two key witnesses in the case, along with Stormy Daniels. Both have serious credibility issues.

Costello’s testimony further decimated any case that the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg may have thought he ever had. //

Costello said that Michael Cohen has “far from solid evidence.” Costello said he used to be Deputy Chief in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, so he would know. Costello said he “never would have touched a guy” like Cohen (as a witness) because he was a convicted perjurer. Not to mention all the other lies that he told them that are in the emails that were being discussed, Costello said. //

Costello said that the prosecution wanted to ask him limited questions about six emails but that he managed to force the fact that Cohen said he hadn’t told Trump he made the payments to Stormy Daniels into an answer, presumably because the prosecution didn’t want the grand jury to hear it. But it sounds like he did get it in there.

Costello also told Tucker Carlson what Michael Cohen said about doing anything he had to, to stay out of jail. //

He explained Cohen said he hadn’t waived the attorney-client privilege. Costello then pulled out his waiver and said, “Is this the kind of witness you want to ride to the finish line?” just completely doing Cohen in.

Trump not knowing about the payment is one more thing that should end this case if this wasn’t a completely political effort.

But meme-ing shouldn’t be a crime. It’s sad and often stupid, but not illegal, to be a loudmouth.

I don’t know what evidence the government has but one would think it would have to produce at least one person who was stupid enough to take the MAGA hat-wear Ricky Vaughn avatar seriously, was registered to vote in New York, planned to vote, actually saw that tweet, and “voted-by-text,” and then failed to actually vote. Notwithstanding my personal opinion that anyone dumb enough to buy into a pro-Clinton meme by a MAGA hat-wearing “Ricky Vaughn” avatar being actual election advice from Hillary Clinton maybe shouldn’t be voting — but that’s just my opinion.

Either way, this seems like a whole lot of dollars spent and effort expended to bury Mackey. Maybe the government found one person who fit the criteria. And if they found that one New Yorker stupid enough to “vote-by-text,” Mackey might go to prison. By the way, Mackey didn’t influence the election in New York. Trump lost his home state by almost two million votes.

Mackey is being tried in New York and there is no doubt why the government picked that venue. His chances of conviction? The deck is stacked against him, and the government needs to send a message. Watch what you meme. Big Brother is watching — and he isn’t laughing.

Using litigation to achieve policy ends has become a tried and true tactic in political and advocacy fights. However, in recent years, climate activists have used the courts as a weapon to attack large energy companies — essentially leveraging the legal system as a proxy to win a war of public opinion. Nowhere is this form of “lawfare” more pronounced than in the raft of climate litigation facing energy producers. //

The counties, cities, and states filing climate lawsuits are not only attempting to pin down fossil fuel producers for alleged harms but also to leverage America’s state and district courts to diminish their standing in the court of public opinion. Leveraging of the judicial system in the name of politics not only threatens the rule of law, but also jeopardizes whether oil and gas will be available when America and its allies need them. //

Energy production provides tangible benefits to all Americans. First, hydrocarbons are central to powering our economy and creating essential products. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy notes that Americans use at least 6,000 everyday products manufactured with petrochemicals. //

Second, homegrown fossil fuels ensure America’s energy security and reduce our dependence on less reliable and often untrustworthy foreign countries and companies along with their dirtier product and insecure supply chains. Third, and importantly, energy producers are often the ones paving the way for low- and zero-carbon energy solutions through innovating next-generation technology. Climate lawsuits undermine all these goals. //

The ironies here show the goal of these lawsuits is bringing litigation to change behavior, not to uphold the rule of law. In reality, plaintiffs do not have to win in court to succeed. By casting energy producers as villains, they advance the dubious narrative that the companies producing the energy the American economy requires are blocking a low-carbon future. As one journalist explained, climate lawsuits are useful tools for special interests because of the “effect the suits could have even before they’re decided in court.” Such suits do not have to prove any actual wrongdoing or legal violations, as long as the “lawfare” they wage degrades the reputation of energy producers.

What is really at work here is the old boiling-the-frog tactic. They are attacking weapons accessories rather than weapons to avoid legal challenges and to get gun owners used to the ATF regulating those items. I think there is a more nefarious strategy at work here beyond desensitizing gun owners to ATF bullying. The ATF has suddenly become aggressive about redefining weapons. In the bump stock case, they claimed that it made a semi-automatic rifle into an automatic one. With the pistol brace rule, they are blithely declaring that a pistol may if you turn down the lights and look at it just right, be a rifle. What both rules are calculated to do, in my opinion, is to encourage people to ignore them and then hammer gun owners with federal felony convictions. //

Paxton is headed to court in a friendly federal district and will probably prevail. If the ATF defends this rule, it is headed to the Supreme Court, along with the bump stock case, where the Second Amendment is in favor and “Chevron deference,” the legal doctrine that says courts should defer to executive agency interpretations of the law, is not. //

libertylioness
2 hours ago edited
All my handguns now identify as cordless hole punchers. //

jumper
3 hours ago
"What is really at work here is the old boiling-the-frog tactic."

100% correct here. The ATF keeps chipping away, going after things they know the FUDDs don't care about. Bump stocks and pistol braces aren't mainstream accessories so they know this will largely be ignored and, unfortunately, agreed with in the usual "I'm pro-2A but..." crowd.

The Power of Attorney's Notebook: Everything You Need for Managing Your Loved One’s Estate

What kinds of contracts might not hold up in court?

Since a contract is a legally binding agreement, in the typical scenario, once you enter into a contract with another person or business, you and the other party are both expected to fulfill the terms of the contract. But it's possible for an otherwise valid contract to be found unenforceable in the eyes of the law, and this article looks at some common situations where that might be the case. //

Contracts can be found unenforceable on grounds of public policy not only to protect one of the parties involved, but also because what the contract represents could pose harm to society as a whole. For example, a court will never enforce a contract promoting something already against state or federal law (you can never enforce a contract for an illegal marijuana sale) or an agreement that offends the "public sensibilities" (contracts involving some sort of sexual immorality, for example).

"Google consciously failed to preserve relevant evidence. The daily destruction of relevant evidence was inevitable when Google set a company-wide default to delete history-off chat messages every 24 hours, and then elected to maintain that auto-delete setting for custodians subject to a litigation hold," US Department of Justice antitrust lawyers wrote in a memorandum supporting the motion.

Google "had a duty to preserve employee chat messages" starting in 2019 due to the litigation, the US motion said. //

"Amazingly, Google's daily spoliation continued until this week," the US alleged. "When the United States indicated that it would file this motion—following months of conferral—Google finally committed to 'permanently set to history on' and thus preserve its employees' chat messages." //

A similar motion for sanctions was filed by 21 states that are also involved in the litigation against Google. The motions came in a lawsuit filed in October 2020 in which the US and states allege that Google illegally maintains monopolies in search and search advertising through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices." //

All this time, Google falsely told the United States that Google had "put a legal hold in place" that "suspends auto-deletion." Indeed, during the United States' investigation and the discovery phase of this litigation, Google repeatedly misrepresented its document preservation policies, which conveyed the false impression that the company was preserving all custodial chats. Not only did Google unequivocally assert during the investigation that its legal hold suspended auto-deletion, but Google continually failed to disclose—both to the United States and to the Court—its 24-hour auto-deletion policy. Instead, at every turn, Google reaffirmed that it was preserving and searching all potentially relevant written communications.

The dispute is similar to an earlier one in the same lawsuit that involved Google's alleged practice of routinely CCing lawyers on emails even when no legal advice is being sought. In March 2022, the US and states asked the federal court to sanction Google for misusing attorney-client privilege to hide emails from litigation.

Joe Biden’s Dec. 29 signing of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 was invalid because the House never actually passed the omnibus spending bill the president purportedly signed into law. At least, that’s what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claims in a little-noticed lawsuit he filed last week against the Biden administration. If a court agrees, the taxpayer-funded $1.7 trillion federal spending spree — and every other aspect of that bill — could be rendered void.

While the “if” in that sentence does some heavy lifting, it is not because Paxton’s lawsuit is weak on either the facts or the law. On the contrary, his complaint in Paxton v. Department of Justice makes a seemingly unassailable case that the House of Representatives lacked the constitutionally mandated quorum to pass the appropriations act. Nonetheless, the enormity of a court striking an omnibus spending bill may leave the judicial branch shrinking from its constitutional duty. //

When the House met on Dec. 23, 2022, to vote on the Consolidated Appropriations Act, it lacked a quorum to conduct business. Only 201 of the representatives were present. Nonetheless, the House proceeded with the vote. But it didn’t just count the votes of the present members. It added to the tally an extra 226 votes, cast by present House lawmakers on behalf of absent ones who had appointed them “proxies.”

Two months before Zeran's suit, Congress had enacted the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a mostly anti-porn law that the Supreme Court would later strike down on First Amendment grounds. The law contained something else, though: a provision now best known as Section 230. //

But just how sweeping was this law?

Before Zeran, it was hard to say. The 26 words of Section 230 that give "interactive computer services" immunity were inscrutable. Debate raged about how broad or narrow the words should be seen.

But when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit issued its opinion in Zeran's case, it strongly favored AOL, expanding and strengthening the law and leaving little doubt about just how powerful this legal shield is.

"Congress recognized the threat that tort-based lawsuits pose to freedom of speech in the new and burgeoning Internet medium," the court wrote. "The imposition of tort liability on service providers for the communications of others represented, [is] for Congress, simply another form of intrusive government regulation of speech."

With that ruling, tech companies no longer had to fear getting sued for something users posted, even if the online service was put on notice about defamatory content. It helped propel tech startups into multi-trillion-dollar global behemoths. Scholars call the Zeran decision "the most important Internet law ruling ever."

While in many countries it is a citizen's duty to serve occasionally on a jury, there are some ways to avoid such duty if it would prove a true hardship. Failure to respond to a summons for jury duty is not a good idea: that could result in up to two years' incarceration or a substantial fine. However, if you have a legitimate reason for avoiding jury duty, you should go through the legal process of getting yourself excused.

Winter • January 28, 2023 10:56 AM

@keithpeter

In the UK we have the word ‘reasonable’ in various laws and regulations.

Actually, almost every country has this in their law or procedures.

US law is different. In the 1990’s I read “The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America” by Philip K. Howard.
‘https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/239430.The_Death_of_Common_Sense

For me as a non-American, this was an eye opener. The basic philosophy of US legal thinking is explained as the principle that nobody can be trusted. Therefore, law should be written as algorithms with no option for interpretation, not by judges, not by prosecutors, not by lawyers.

This leads to all the idiocies of USA legal practice where, e.g., people are jailed for life for stealing a bicycle [1] or breaking into a car [2].

The underlying mistrust of everyone leads to a system where the law is a quagmire where no human being is safe. [3]

[1] ‘https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Bike-Thief-s-3-Strikes-Sentence-Judge-says-3035160.php

[2] ‘https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/us/california-prison-three-strikes-law.html

[3] Don’t Talk to the Police (really, really watch this)
‘https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Because, you will be guilty of something:
Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime
‘https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2203713
‘https://newjurist.com/ham-sandwich-nation.html
‘https://economicthinking.org/ham-sandwich-nation-due-process-when/

Mods tell SCOTUS that Reddit's special formula depends on Section 230 immunity.

As two courts of appeals have now concluded, the federal contractor mandate is unprecedented and unlawful. It would allow the government to use its purchasing power to mandate individual health decisions for one-fifth of the nation’s workforce. This sort of policymaking decision must be made by Congress, not an agency that is unaccountable to the American public.

McGehee in reply to TheFineReport.com. | January 10, 2023 at 7:52 pm
Decades ago in California, I served on a jury in which the judge instructed us that, if we believed the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, we may but need not return a verdict of guilty. I thought that was interesting, because it is exactly how “jury nullification” is argued to work.

It was a DUI case, though, and none of us were in a mood to nullify that law.

Someone may start off as not an imminent unlawful threat, then become an imminent unlawful threat, then cease being an imminent unlawful threat. It’s analogous to a window that’s shut, then open, then shut again.

The privilege to use defensive force exists only when that “window” is open. Prior to the window opening, no defensive force is justified. Similarly, after the window is closed, no defensive force is justified. The privilege to use defensive force ends when the threat is no longer imminent. //

It’s important to remember that what controls your legal destiny under this justification is not your sense of what was reasonable. Rather it is the sense of reasonableness of other people that control your fate—that of the police, the prosecutor, the judge, the jury. If you believe you acted reasonably, but they believe you acted unreasonably, it’s their determination that sends you to prison regardless of what you believed. //

REMEMBER
You carry a gun so you’re hard to kill.

Know the law so you’re hard to convict.

Stay safe!

–Andrew

Attorney Andrew F. Branca
Law of Self Defense LLC

On November 4th, a class action lawsuit — Doe 1 v. GitHub Inc., N.D. Cal., No. 3:22-cv-06823, 11/3/22 — was filed in the US District Court in the Northern District in California, alleging against Microsoft and GitHub (a Microsoft subsidiary), inter alia: violation of the DMCA; breach of contract; tortious interference in a contractual relationship; unjust enrichment; unfair competition; violation of California Consumer Privacy Act; and negligence. Also sued were a confusing mishmash of for profit and non-profit related entities all using a variation of the name OpenAI (OpenAI, Inc., OpenAI, LLC, OpenAI Startup Fund GP I, L.L.C.; you get the picture). OpenAI received one billion dollars in funding from Microsoft although they seem “officially unrelated.” //

Plaintiffs allege that OpenAI and GitHub assembled and distributed a commercial product called Copilot to create generative code using publicly accessible code originally made available under various “open source”-style licenses, many of which include an attribution requirement. As GitHub states, “…[t]rained on billions of lines of code, GitHub Copilot turns natural language prompts into coding suggestions across dozens of languages.” The resulting product allegedly omitted any credit to the original creators. //

As a final note, the complaint alleges a violation under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for removal of copyright notices, attribution, and license terms, but conspicuously does not allege copyright infringement. A material breach of a copyright license can give rise to an infringement claim, so this is an interesting move. While the plaintiffs’ attorney indicated that an infringement claim might be added later, I suspect that this was done to avoid a messy fair use dispute. The complaint includes a statement by GitHub asserting an expansive, almost global fair use assertion which is at odds with explicit relevant law in many countries and frankly at odds even with US law. Nonetheless, fair use as a defense is expensive and complicated to litigate, so perhaps they chose to focus on something that is beyond factual dispute, and still provides the same damages.