Did the judge really rule that racially discriminatory contracting is expression protected by the First Amendment? Can’t be, that goes against the entire body of law, and if true, would eviscerate a wide range of civil rights laws. So I awaited the written Order and decision before writing about this, surely he would correct that error when it came time for a formal ruling.

But the Order Denying Prelminary Injunction did not correct the error, it memorialized the error //

Section 1981 bans all racial discrimination in contracting—public and private, no matter which race is harmed. See 42 U.S.C. §1981. Defendants run the Fearless Strivers Grant Contest. Contests are contracts—submissions for prizes—and here Fearless admits that its contest’s rules “ARE A CONTRACT.” Yet the contest is open only to black women. Whites, Hispanics, Asians, and every other race are barred from entering. A more blatant violation of §1981 is hard to imagine. //

Fearless claims the right that those cases all deny: a right to discriminate in contracting because §1981’s mandate of race neutrality might have an incidental effect on the communicative effect of their conduct. In other words, they seek First Amendment protection for the discrimination itself. While they want to deliver their message that businesses owned by black women are important, Fearless remains free to express this message by donating money, encouraging others to support businesses owned by black women, and through mentoring and networking. But the First Amendment gives them no right to discriminate by race in contracting, even if that discrimination might deliver some message. //

That a federal court would say the Civil Rights Act of 1866 likely violates the First Amendment is alarming. And it’s indefensible given the many Supreme Court precedents saying the opposite. //

The district court said discriminatory contracting itself is protected speech. That line is one the Supreme Court has always been careful not to cross, as it would destroy the whole enterprise of antidiscrimination law.

Fulton County DA Fani Willis has evidence exonerating Republicans she’s targeting in her 98-page Georgia indictment. //

The revelations unearthed in the transcript raise a significant question: If Willis was in possession of the transcript prior to Aug. 14, why did she charge Shafer and Smith for allegedly partaking in a “conspiracy” to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results when the aforementioned document shows otherwise? //

Unlike the 1960 Hawaii case, which was promptly resolved in court prior to Congress’s certification of the election, the Fulton County state court reportedly violated Georgia’s election code by failing to swiftly assign a judge to hear Trump’s election challenge. Furthermore, the Georgia court delayed the first scheduled hearing of Trump’s lawsuit until Jan. 8, 2021 — “two days after Congress certified Biden the winner of the 2020 election” — which effectively guaranteed that any court decision invalidating potentially illegal ballots would be moot.

It’s worth mentioning that evidence unearthed following the 2020 election shows Trump’s legal challenge in Georgia had strong merit, with records indicating there were more illegal votes than Biden’s margin of victory in Georgia. Under state law, Georgians must vote in the county where they reside, unless they changed their residence within 30 days of Election Day.

As The Federalist reported, however, Mark Davis, the president of Data Productions Inc. and “an expert in voter data analytics and residency issues,” used data from the National Change of Address database to identify “nearly 35,000 Georgia voters who indicated they had moved from one Georgia county to another, but then voted in the 2020 general election in the county from which they had moved.” In a phone interview this week, Davis told The Federalist that more recent figures show more than 12,000 of those 35,000 Georgians later updated their voter registration addresses, “providing the secretary of state the exact address they had previously provided to the [U.S. Postal Service].” In other words, more than 12,000 in-state movers tacitly confirmed they illegally cast their vote in the wrong county in 2020.

Harvard Loses $15 Million Insurance Claim For Legal Fees In Famous Race Discrimination Case, Appeals Ct Calls Arguments “Gaslighting”

What is happening here? First it was Oberlin College, now Harvard, where I’m rooting for insurance companies. First Circuit Court of Appeals finds Harvard failed to comply with claims notice requirement of insurance policy, and its main argument was “little more than gaslighting.”

Words should have meaning; at least they did until Harry Blackmun decided abortion was health care, Anthony Kennedy found homosexuality to be in a “realm of personal liberty,” and John Roberts declared Obamacare was not a tax.

The Supreme Court should take this as an opportunity to reiterate two precedents that backstop the black-letter words of the Constitution and the English language. Taxing people on money they haven’t made is obscene. Opening the door to the government confiscating wealth is a betrayal of the country because that is where this concept leads. //

anon-onh5
9 hours ago
Roberts is a legalist not a justice. We're hosed. //

bk
12 hours ago
Next up: Increasing property values start affecting income taxes, not just property taxes. //

A-Nony-Mouse
3 minutes ago
taxing income at all is "obscene", IMO. The entire 16th Amendment should be repealed. While we are repealing Amendments, repeal the 17th as well and go back to the senators being appointed by the state legislatures.

The Court recognizes both the vital importance of a free press and the critical role that confidential sources play in the work of investigative journalists like Herridge. But applying the binding case law of this Circuit, the Court concludes that Chen’s need for the requested evidence overcomes Herridge’s qualified First Amendment privilege in this case.

Really now.

Regardless of how one feels about the press, its ability to work freely cannot be hindered by the government in any manner, including the allowance of legal action designed to silence media information sources. It bears mention that in a 2020 ruling in the matter, in the course of denying a Department of Justice request to dismiss the matter the court neither affirmed nor denied that the Privacy Act, under which Chen’ makes her claims, covers said claims.. //

While Herridge has made no public announcement regarding whether she will comply with the order instead of appealing the decision, one hopes she will not. This is important not only to her personally and professionally but to all genuine newsgathering efforts and national security itself. Without immunity from court-ordered harassment of such journalistic efforts, the Washington Post’s joke of the slogan “democracy dies in darkness” becomes chillingly real.

Oberlin College Sues Insurers For Refusing To Cover $36 Million It Paid Gibson’s Bakery For Defamation And Other Torts

Four insurance companies have told the college to pound sand. Have you ever rooted for insurance companies ever? There’s a first for everything.

THE rules of the road have expanded onto several private parking lots thanks to a new city ordinance.

Drivers should be aware that violating state road laws in some Brick Township, New Jersey, lots could lead to massive $500 fines.

The city council agreed last week to adopt an ordinance that extends police jurisdiction and signage to 20 more lots. //

Police will now be able to enforce all aspects of traffic code, including violations like motorists making illegal turns to cars blocking fire lanes.

“I think the objective was ensuring that DOJ would not prosecute Hunter Biden now, or in the future, for a wide swath of offenses relating to what I consider to be, you know, a broad international criminal conspiracy,” Scharf said.

“That’s FARA, influence peddling, the money laundering, the whole story,” he said. “It appears that they were trying to shoehorn that non-prosecution or immunity agreement into this case.”

Scharf said he executed hundreds of diversion agreements as a federal prosecutor. Yet, in his experience, training, or education, he had never heard of an agreement structured as Biden’s was.

The Biden agreement included language that gave Biden broad immunities from future prosecutions—language typically found in the plea deal, the graduate of Harvard Law School said.

While plea deals are public and approved by judges, diversion agreements are private and outside the purview of the courts, he said.

Both Weiss and the defense team had to understand there was a public perception problem, so they buried the non-prosecution language into the diversion agreement and then referred to the diversion agreement in the plea agreement, he said.

He said that by linking the two agreements, they attempted to get the judge’s backdoor approval of the non-public non-prosecution language.

“In the diversion agreement, they refer back to all the facts in the plea such that prosecuting Hunter would be impossible as long as he didn’t break the conditions of his probation in that diversion agreement,” Scharf said.

“If I’m not explaining it well, I apologize. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

This is why Noreika balked at a constitutional problem because the linkage made the judge the arbiter of Biden’s conduct, not the Justice Department, he said. In that way, the judiciary branch would assume an executive branch function—an innovation the judge was not ready to validate. //

anon-adwq
38 minutes ago
Judge Noreika performed masterfully at the hearing. She was presented at the last minute with a "pardon for anything and everything" clause buried in a diversion agreement she was not allowed to reject. First of all, she found it. Second, her questioning at the hearing maneuvered Weiss into a statement the Biden team could not accept. This nullified the agreement in fact, so Judge Noreika could send them back to the drawing board. Game, set, match. Brilliant!

As for "Legendary Lowell", have fun! He is dealing with a judge that is thoroughly PO'd at the Biden team of shysters after they lied to her clerk and then tried to blame the grift on the clerk. He is just icing on the cake, particularly after attacking the prosecutor in open court. Some "Legendary Lawyer". Alligator mouth and hummingbird brain. Judge Noreika has already shut down all communication between her court and the "Legendary" Biden team except through her in person. That will speed things up! It will also mean that the person on the other end of the phone when the Biden team calls is on to their game and her attitude will range the full span from ticked off to p**sed off. I just wish I could be an observer in the corner - I would pay admission.

Imagine a future in which AIs automatically interpret—and enforce—laws.

All day and every day, you constantly receive highly personalized instructions for how to comply with the law, sent directly by your government and law enforcement. You’re told how to cross the street, how fast to drive on the way to work, and what you’re allowed to say or do online—if you’re in any situation that might have legal implications, you’re told exactly what to do, in real time.

Imagine that the computer system formulating these personal legal directives at mass scale is so complex that no one can explain how it reasons or works. But if you ignore a directive, the system will know, and it’ll be used as evidence in the prosecution that’s sure to follow.

This future may not be far off—automatic detection of lawbreaking is nothing new. Speed cameras and traffic-light cameras have been around for years. These systems automatically issue citations to the car’s owner based on the license plate. In such cases, the defendant is presumed guilty unless they prove otherwise, by naming and notifying the driver. //

A future where AIs interpret, apply, and enforce most laws at societal scale like this will exponentially magnify problems around fairness, transparency, and freedom. Forget about software transparency—well-resourced AI firms, like Breathalyzer companies today, would no doubt ferociously guard their systems for competitive reasons. These systems would likely be so complex that even their designers would not be able to explain how the AIs interpret and apply the law—something we’re already seeing with today’s deep learning neural network systems, which are unable to explain their reasoning.

Even the law itself could become hopelessly vast and opaque. Legal microdirectives sent en masse for countless scenarios, each representing authoritative legal findings formulated by opaque computational processes, could create an expansive and increasingly complex body of law that would grow ad infinitum.

And this brings us to the heart of the issue: If you’re accused by a computer, are you entitled to review that computer’s inner workings and potentially challenge its accuracy in court? What does cross-examination look like when the prosecutor’s witness is a computer? How could you possibly access, analyze, and understand all microdirectives relevant to your case in order to challenge the AI’s legal interpretation? How could courts hope to ensure equal application of the law? Like the man from the country in Franz Kafka’s parable in The Trial, you’d die waiting for access to the law, because the law is limitless and incomprehensible. //

Yet it is not a future we must endure. Proposed bans on surveillance technology like facial recognition systems can be expanded to cover those enabling invasive automated legal enforcement. Laws can mandate interpretability and explainability for AI systems to ensure everyone can understand and explain how the systems operate. If a system is too complex, maybe it shouldn’t be deployed in legal contexts. Enforcement by personalized legal processes needs to be highly regulated to ensure oversight, and should be employed only where chilling effects are less likely, like in benign government administration or regulatory contexts where fundamental rights and freedoms are not at risk.

AI will inevitably change the course of law. It already has. But we don’t have to accept its most extreme and maximal instantiations, either today or tomorrow. //

K.S. • July 21, 2023 8:17 AM

If all laws are enforced all the time our society would break down. Our laws are nowhere near robust where such compliance is possible even by well-meaning parties.

modem phonemes • July 21, 2023 8:45 AM

The demolition of humankind. Innocent until proven guilty, and proof is not a capability of a machine, which is only data; truth is a capability only of a mind.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demolition_Man_(film)

The preliminary injunction prohibits nearly all of the federal government, including DHS, DOJ, and HHS, from coercing and colluding with social media companies to censor free speech, amongst other things: pic.twitter.com/CixBjbT8LN

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 4, 2023

Just as the judge hinted at in our first hearing in May, there is nothing stopping the feds from continuing to censor political speech without this injunction.

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 4, 2023

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rebuffed a legal theory that argued that state legislatures have the authority to set election rules with little oversight from state courts, a major decision that turns away a conservative push to empower state legislatures.

By a 6-3 vote, the court rejected the “independent state legislature” theory in a case about North Carolina’s congressional map. The once-fringe legal theory broadly argued that state courts have little — or no — authority to question state legislatures on election laws for federal contests.

The court’s decision in Moore v. Harper closes the path to what could have been a radical overhaul of America’s election laws.

A particularly robust reading of the theory — which the court turned aside — would have empowered state legislatures to make decisions on all aspects of elections, from congressional lines to how people register to vote and cast a ballot, without any opportunity for challengers to contest those decisions in state courts under state laws or constitutions. Opponents of the theory argued that it could have led to unchecked partisan gerrymandering, and laws that would make it harder for people to vote.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s opinion, joined by the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, along with two conservatives, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

Unfortunately, sad stories like this will continue to emerge as long as these outrages are allowed to continue. Kids should not be used as surgical guinea pigs and weapons in this bizarre and ghoulish culture war we’ve found ourselves in. One can only hope these doctors and the Kaiser Hospitals are forced to pay hand over fist.

Unfortunately, Bouldin is one of many individuals who have been targeted driving through Seward County. In fact, the county has raked in $7.5 million over the past five years: //

Officers typically take their ill-gotten gains by pressuring motorists to sign a form indicating that the civilian is willingly giving up their money or property to law enforcement. They do so under the threat of being taken to prison and charged with felonies. In essence, the officer offers to let them go in exchange for taking the money they confiscate as payment.

Does this not sound like a government official requesting a bribe? //

The Original John Doe
12 hours ago edited
"For those unaware, civil asset forfeiture is a legal process..."

Civil forfeiture was ruled legal by SCOTUS in the 1840's in HARMONY v. UNITED STATES. In that case Justice Joseph Story wrote:

"vessel which commits the aggression is treated as the offender, as the guilty instrument or thing to which the forfeiture attaches, without any reference whatsoever to the character or conduct of the owner. [The seizure of the ship is justified by] the necessity of the case, as the only adequate means of suppressing the offense or wrong, or insuring an indemnity to the injured party."

Civil forfeiture was supposed to be used only in those cases where getting hold of the person was impossible. The federal and state governments have been abusing it ever since.

In 2017, Justice Clarence Thomas denied certiorari (refused to hear the case) in LEONARD v. TEXAS on technical grounds but he wrote at the end of his opinion the following:

"Whether this Court’s treatment of the broad modern forfeiture practice can be justified by the narrow historical one is certainly worthy of consideration in greater detail."

Then on on April 17, 2023 the court agreed to review "CULLEY v. MARSHALL" which is a civil asset forfeiture case against the state Alabama who seized a car because the driver was in possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. However the car did not even belong to the driver. It belonged to his mother.

Maybe the new conservative SCOTUS will finally put some limits on civil asset forfeiture. //

It was another one of those laws that supposedly had only the best of intentions, ignoring that it is always those with bad intentions who will always find a way to twist and abuse it.

And that is why less gov't is best gov't.

Xanthro
3 hours ago

After all, how could a dog be biased during interactions with the public?

Do you have dogs?

People who have or interact with dogs, know that dogs will try and please the people around them.

There was a famous experiment, which "proved" wolves were smarter than dogs. They put both in the same chainlink fenced area (one at a time, not both together) and timed how quickly the canine was able to escape the pen. Wolves ALWAYS won. 100% of the time, the wolf was able to escape in a shorter period of time. In fact, many times, the dogs never escaped, despite making rounds around the area and checking for what looked like escape routes.

Then someone pointed out, that the dogs are likely not even trying to escape, because they know they are supposed to stay in the pen. So, the experiment was changed, so that the dogs owner would call for help, and suddenly, the dogs always beat the wolves in time to escape, and it wasn't even close.

Dog behavior is GREATLY affected by human interaction, even when humans are not nearby. Dogs are even more affected when humans are close.

There is no such thing as an impartial dog.

BTW, not only was the reason for the traffic stop invalid, the entire stop would be invalid the moment the officer states that he doesn't write tickets. A traffic stop is over once the initial reason for the stop is complete, nor can the stop be extended. The moment the officer stated that he wasn't writing a ticket, the person should have been free to leave, but obviously he was not. That is an unlawful detainment.

Let's be honest, the reason for the stop was the hope of finding money that could be stolen via forfeiture.

In a significant victory for Second Amendment advocates, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Bryan Range, a Pennsylvania man barred from possessing firearms due to a non-violent conviction. This ruling, a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, reinforces the principles of individual liberty and emphasizes the importance of adhering to constitutional rights. Even better, it could signify some positive developments in the future when it comes to protecting the right to keep and bear arms for those convicted of non-violent offenses.

The 11-4 ruling was handed down on Tuesday: //

“At root, the Government’s claim that only ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens’ are protected by the Second Amendment devolves authority to legislators to decide whom to exclude from ‘the people,’” wrote Judge Hardiman in the majority opinion. “We reject that approach because such ‘extreme deference gives legislatures unreviewable power to manipulate the Second Amendment by choosing a label.’”

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on Thursday in favor of a 94-year-old widow in her battle with a rapacious Hennepin County, MN, government which sold her home for a small tax debt and pocketed the change. //

The court did not rule on the “excessive fines” claim, but the concurrence by Justice Gorsuch indicates that Hennepin County would not have fared better on that issue. //

This decision is a great victory for freedom. It follows the same direction the courts have been taking in regards to Civil Asset Forfeiture; //

Mtnjacket
2 hours ago
One governmental crime bites the dust. Time for similar treatment of civil asset forfeiture and no-knock warrants.

Late last month, we reported on the case of 94-year-old grandmother Geraldine Tyler, whose Minneapolis condo was sold by Hennepin County in Minnesota for $40,000 to pay off a $15,000 tax debt: 94-year-old Grandmother Fights Home Equity Theft at the U.S. Supreme Court

The kicker was that instead of returning the $25,000 surplus over the amount Geraldine owed the state, Hennepin County decided to keep the whole amount! Even worse, the County’s retention of those funds was entirely in keeping with Minnesota state law, as we reported: //

in a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the Court gave short shrift to the Eighth Circuit’s “state law controls” argument:

The Takings Clause does not itself define property…For that, the Court draws on ‘existing rules or understandings’ about property rights…State law is one important source…But state law cannot be the only source. Otherwise, a State could sidestep the Takings Clause by disavowing traditional property interests in assets it wishes to appropriate.

In other words, a state cannot just pass a state statute that lets them take your property without compensation, which is apparently what the County, and the federal district and appeals court thought. Or as the Supreme Court puts it: “The Takings Clause would be a dead letter if a state could simply exclude from its definition of property any interest that the state wished to take.” //

The Court then gives a history lesson, going all the way back to the Magna Carta, which said that “when [a] sheriff or bailiff came to collect any debts owed [the King] from a dead man, they could remove property ‘until the debt which is evident shall be fully paid to us; and the residue shall be left to the executors to fulfill the will of the deceased.” Blackstone, the leading legal authority in England in the 1700s, said, “[i]f a tax collector seized a taxpayer’s property, he was ‘bound by an implied contract in law to restore [the property] on payment of the debt, duty, and expenses, before the time of sale; or, when sold, to render back the overplus.'” //

The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more.

Biased juries and politics, rather than an ‘objective view of the law and the facts,’ may dictate whether a defendant is convicted or acquitted. //

Special Counsel John Durham breached neither ethics nor etiquette when he highlighted the difficulty of obtaining a conviction in a politically charged case when the jury holds opposing partisan views. He merely stated the reality on the ground in D.C.-area federal courts. And by his own actions prosecuting the J6 defendants solely in the nation’s capital, Attorney General Merrick Garland has confirmed that assessment by proving the corollary: Criminal cases against individuals viewed by the local populace as political pariahs make for easy convictions.

“Did the Durham Report’s Criticism of Juries Go Too Far?” The Washington Post’s headline from last week asked rhetorically. It was quite an ironic concern coming from the legacy outlet serially guilty of publishing fake news to propagate the Russia-collusion hoax. A better question for the “democracy dies in darkness” rag would be: Did Clinton and Democrats’ Dirty Politics Go Too Far?

But no, instead of focusing on the substantive content contained in the 300-plus pages of Durham’s report detailing malfeasance by the Department of Justice and FBI and the Clinton campaign’s responsibility for the scandal, The Washington Post focused on Durham’s introductory remarks explaining the “special care” the special counsel’s office used in making criminal charging decisions — decisions Durham stressed were “based solely on the facts and evidence developed in the investigation and without fear of, or favor to, any person.”

After noting the high burden the Constitution places on the government in criminal cases, Durham explained why, in numerous instances, he did not seek criminal charges even though the conduct deserved “censure or disciplinary action.”

“In examining politically-charged and high-profile issues such as these, the Office must exercise — and has exercised — special care,” Durham explained. “First, juries can bring strongly held views to the courtroom in criminal trials involving political subject matters,” Durham continued, “and those views can, in turn, affect the likelihood of obtaining a conviction, separate and apart from the strength of the actual evidence and despite a court’s best efforts to empanel a fair and impartial jury.”

Those taking umbrage at Durham’s remarks, claiming they erode faith in our justice system, seem to have missed that the Justice Department’s manual, “The Principles of Federal Prosecution,” quoted in the special counsel report, makes the same point.

Gorsuch has this right. The Title 42 restrictions have long since run their course and the were being used as a proxy in the fight over the Biden White House’s lawless immigration policy. At best they were questionable. They were probably unconstitutional when President Trump put them into force. It seems like at least one justice has learned the right lesson from what we went through.

Jordan requested Tristan Leavitt further explain from a Congressional perspective, what constitutes a whistleblower:

In light of all these obstacles for FBI whistleblowers, you think Congress would do everything that it could to welcome their disclosures here. But FBI employees coming to Congress have unfortunately been shamefully treated by Democrats on this committee. It’s one thing to hear allegations and find them unpersuasive or even distasteful. An office can even ignore the allegations if they choose, that is their prerogative. But to go out and actively smear the individuals making disclosures, is far worse. That’s what the Democrats on this committee did when they released the March 2nd report entitled, “GOP Witnesses: What Their Disclosures Indicate About the State of the Republican Investigations.”

That report was inaccurate, both on the law and on the facts. The law doesn’t define the term “whistleblower.” Instead, it protects from retaliation individuals who engage in protected activity. For over a century, simply making disclosures of any information to Congress has been a protected activity. Furthermore, an appropriations rider in effect at this time prohibits money from paying the salary of any federal employee who prohibits or prevents any other federal employee such as FBI whistleblowers from communicating with Congress. The Democrats’ report denied whistleblower status to individuals engaged in the precise activity the legislative branch has considered protected since 1912. The report’s reliance on evidence for whistleblower status is also misplaced. Simply communicating a reasonable belief of misconduct is protected whistleblower activity under the law. This applies regardless of whether the whistleblower produces evidence at that time backing up their allegations. Only protecting whistleblowers disclosures accompanied by conclusive evidence, as the Democrats seem to require, would have disastrous consequences for retaliation throughout the federal government. My experience working for Congress was that whistleblowers brought allegations, and where the committees found those allegations worthy of further follow-up and congressional action, we conducted investigations.

No one expects a private citizen to investigate a crime before going to the police. And we didn’t expect the whistleblower to investigate their own agency.

It’s also essentially how the law for remedying retaliation through the MSBP is set up. Where making a non-frivolous allegation, leads to discovery, interviews, and more. Simply put, the burden isn’t on the whistleblower to produce the evidence at the outset. That’s why there’s an investigative process.