Forum shopping is the process of looking for the courtroom where the judge (and jury, if needed) will be most hospitable to your claims. Lawyers who represent the rare policeman facing criminal or civil trial for killing an unarmed Black kid try to avoid urban courts, particularly in the area of the killing; those juries tend to be skeptical of police arguments for why the unfortunate death had been inevitable and legally justifiable.
Judge Aileen M. Cannon, Federalist Society member and federal judge for life, was appointed by F POTUS (“Individual One”) after being confirmed nine days after the election was brutally stolen from him by a vast conspiracy of radical left billionaires and a cabal of international socialists, communists and cannibal pedophiles. There is a federal courthouse in the Southern District of Florida quite close to Mar-a-Lago. There is one about 70 miles north, in Fort Pierce, and in that courthouse there is one federal judge: Aileen Cannon. Why roll the dice in West Palm Beach, where you might go before a George W. Bush appointed judge, when you can take the highway up to a courthouse where, it turns out (who knew?), there is only one federal judge in residence, loyal Aileen M. Cannon?
Cannon has done her damnedest for her benefactor, completing her legally dodgy 24 page order on a national holiday, to protect F POTUS against “reputational harm” and make sure every day of unwarranted delay his lawyers have demanded, in two fairly incoherent sets of legal papers, will be provided — in the interests of mindfulness. She wrote her decision “mindful of the need to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity under the extraordinary circumstances presented.”
Also mindful, of course, of putting herself at the center of national news and her name at the top of Leonard Leo’s list of future Supreme Court justices, as Lawrence O’Donnell points out:
So saith Rupert Murdoch, a reactionary billionairewhoought to know.
That’s what fascists do, as everybody knows, you lock up your enemies on baseless charges, like innocently stealing classified government documents you have every right to keep in your desk drawer.
In other news, a Federalist Society judge, out of concern for reputational damage to F POTUS, (apparently his reputation for never being held accountable for anything), wrote this great howler in her labored legal decision on Labor Day.
Because, truly for historically great white men, very wealthy and powerful ones, you never know if a search warrant based on probable cause was legal or not under such extraordinary circumstances. The appearance of propriety you understand sometimes requires impropriety, like foregoing all ordinary legal procedures — such as waiting until you’re prosecuted to raise sketchy Fourth Amendment defenses. Federalist Society 101, baby.Smash your fucking enemies right in the fuckingmouth.
Biden is the fascist who is criminalizing dissent, and his buddy Obama was a fascist and communist both. You figure it out, asshole.
As federal lifetime appointee, Aileen Cannon, confirmation pushed by McConnell post-election loss, was getting learned legal advice on how to rule in the bizzarrely convoluted manner of Noemi Rao on theDC Circuit Court of Appeals(in re Flynn, reversed 8-2 on appeal),with utter fealty to her celebrity benefactor, F POTUS addressed a campaign rally in the Keystone State and delivered thesestrong words.
Translated directly from the original German, no doubt. F POTUS had a book of the Führer’s speeches next to his bed when he was married to the woman he buried on his New Jersey golf course for a tax write-off. One suspects it must have been his favorite book, aside from, of course, the Art of the Deal.
Biden was wrong to qualify the word fascist when referring to F POTUS, his lockstep 50+ voting bloc in the Senate and the people roaring at Trumpie’s rally,there’snothing semi about them.These guys and gals are proud to be following a guy who’s proud to be as strong and beloved as the Führer himself on his bestday.
Except for the ones like Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Lyin’ Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Mark Meadows, brave Mike Pence and their ilk, shamelessly desperate for power, but also fearful of the kompromat F POTUS is apparently holding over some of them. Schadenfreude aside, I’d hate to picture the videos F POTUS has of Lindsey.
Right before the early 2021 (January 5th, for those keeping score at home) runoff in Georgia for two US senate seats, I came across a great group of women called Tinicum Together, out of Pennsylvania, who organize nationwide targeted postcard writing campaigns to increase turnout in important elections.
I sent 100 postcards to registered Democrats in key districts in Georgia, urging them to vote for Warnock and Ossoff. It felt great to roll up my sleeves and finally be doing something that could bring a few more voters out to vote in that key election.
Send them an email at Tinicumtogether@gmail.com and they will send you a packet containing stamped. ready to mail postcards, the names and addresses of swing voters, and, this year, in the crucial case of Pennsylvania, an excellentconcisescript.
Anger-stoking right wing icon Newt Gingrich, the first modern Speaker of the House to advocate calling political opponents enemies, and vicious, sick, haters, and popularized of the epithet RINO for non-extremist Republicans, is now being sought by the January 6th Committee in connection to his apparent role in stoking the Big Lie and giving aid and comfort to the planners of the, like totally spontaneous, unplanned January 6th riot to stop the certification of Biden’s victory.
The [J6 Committee’s] letter explained that the committee has learned that Gingrich was part of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. He apparently exchanged emails with Trump’s advisors, including Jason Miller and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, in which Gingrich provided “detailed input” on the scripting of television ads that deliberately pushed lies that the 2020 election was stolen. The ads encouraged people to pressure state officials to overturn the election.
Gingrich wrote: “The goal is to arouse the country’s anger through new verifiable information the American people have never seen before[.]… If we inform the American people in a way they find convincing and it arouses their anger[,] they will then bring pressure on legislators and governors.”
Gingrich was also apparently involved in the scheme to produce fake electors and did not let up even after the attack on the Capitol. That night, he emailed Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to pursue the plan.
Newt, bellicose piece of shit emeritus [1], fancies himself a historian now. The day the story broke that the J6 committee is looking for him to “voluntarily” testify, he did what he does best, went on the attackon FOX.
And thank goodness for that, he straightens out that the Biden DOJ is “the most corrupt Department of Justice in American history”, following presumably the least corrupt, Bill Barr’s dogged defense teamfor F POTUS and friends.THAT’Show you punch a hated enemy in the face!
Plus, Rupert Murdoch and Fox will not be distracted from the real news story by fake news, even if fucking Zelensky wouldn’t follow up, and do F POTUS a favor, though, and even while this historically corrupt DOJ is taking its goddamned time investigating Hunter. Keep your eye on the ball MAGA nation!Next up, Benghazi and trans teensin scandalous attire.
[1] although there’s apparently some controversy about Mitt Romney’s remark that speaker Gingrich “resigned in disgrace,” the facts don’t look particularly good for Newtie:
Gingrich himself, though reelected to the 106th Congress, did not take his seat for a third term as speaker. Instead, J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois took the job.
Gingrich reimbursed U.S. taxpayers $300,000 for legal expenses and costs incurred by the investigation by the Select Committee on Ethics into his use of tax-exempt funds to promote Republican causes and lying about it to the committee.
Though the committee allowed him to hold onto his post, its vote marked the first time the House had disciplined a sitting speaker.
The Trump PR/legal team is on TV today spinning like a congregation of whirling dervishes. I saw a dervish whirling once, in Riverside Park, it was impressive how he kept his balance while making those fast circles on one leg, the tassel on his fez whipping the air. It turns out, according to F POTUS lawyer and former OANN host Alina Habba and her colleagues, that it is Merrick Garland, of course, who is partisan, sloppy, transparently amateurish in his legal papers and F POTUS, obviously, who’s brilliant, playing five dimensional chess and completely beyond reproach.
According to the talking F POTUS heads on FOX, Garland performed an illegal, political raid that clearly violated the Fourth Amendment (and the Second!), whatever some so-called magistrate (there is no such thing!) may have signed that supposedly makes it a legal “search”. Probable cause, a pig’s ass! The brutal raid was clearly a squad of corrupt, partisan, witch-hunting thugs who stormed Mar-a-Lago and took things out of boxes, where F POTUS had neatly stored some innocent documents, and spread them all over the floor, in a transparent attempt to make F POTUS look like a pig. He had them neatly stored in boxes, in his office, where he hosts visitors, in the secure store room, in the dining room, bedroom, etc. Democrat [sic] partisan Garland (a Jew, voo den?) wants to politicize the issue of whether F POTUS is sloppy, which he certainly is not. We demand to see pictures of Garland’s house, we bet F POTUS is much neater than that dirtyrat.
The level of analysis on the DOJ side is detailed, logical, dependent on evidence and proof. It makes legal arguments, based on the facts and the law. The legal analysis on the F POTUS side is about the same as the level of analysis in the many voter fraud cases team F POTUS brought to court, arguing that “evidence” was not really necessary. There is a theoretical harm, their filings insisted, a deadly threat posed by vicious pedophile cannibals, as Q warns us all, and that, by itself, is as good as all your so-called legal “arguments” and your “concrete harm” standard to adjudicate “justiciable” legal disputes. What about the harm of unfairly losing a rigged election if every Tom, Dick and Shaqueena gets to fraudulently vote? What about that harm, “judge”?
The real point of this constant snarling and misdirection from MAGA world is to keep F POTUS’s loyal 35% base stewing in ill-informed righteousanger, to keep that most violent part of his base ready to fight and die for him, the murderous lone wolves inspired to take up arms and attack the deep state with legally possessed military assault weapons, the corrupt so-called democracy that won’t even let a man who got 73,000,000 votes stay in power, no matter how many fake votes the other guy supposedly got. The only point of these “arguments” presented by men of genius and understanding like steady Sean Hannity and cackling Cucker Tarlson, is to make sure good Americans understand how devilish these lying, cheating Democrat [sic] pedophile cannibal communist cucks are. Make no mistake, DEVILS. If not exorcised, they will infect us all with their Satanism and you can flush orthodox Christianity right down the toilet.
Meanwhile, the lawyers for F POTUS who signed a sworn statement in June stating that everything “improperly” taken from the White House and kept at Mar-a-Lago for a year and a half, had been returned to NARA and DOJ, a statement contradicted by boxes of secret documents found in August, are now likely material witnesses to obstruction of justice or targets of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. That felony, probably the most serious one a government official or their lackeys can commit (outside of publicly shooting and skullfucking a guy on Fifth Avenue), carries a twenty year prison sentence. Something tells me no lawyer for F POTUS, even if paid in full, is willing to do twenty years in the can to protect the guy who is constantly screaming that everyone is out to get him for no reason and will punish anyone who crosses him, or thinks of crossing him, or thinks of thinking about crossinghim.
Plus, he is not a slob! Garland’s goons are fucking liars and that prejudicial, staged photo in the room where F POTUS sees important guests was a set up. The boss is neat as a pin.APIN!
Most judges, even those appointed by an extremist president, from a carefully vetted list of extremist judicial candidates, followprocedure andapply the law, most of the time, based on the facts demonstrated by evidence. J. Nicholas Ranjan is one such lifetime federal judge, appointed by F POTUS DJT. Ranjan eventually dismissed an evidence-free, conspiracy theory-based, voting fraud lawsuit brought by the RNC and the corporation representing F POTUS’s campaign, going out of his way to brief the Appellate Court on the total lack of merit of the case.
Ranjan had been confirmed 80-14 by the Senate (Kavanaugh’s 50-48, thanks Joe Manchin [1], was the slimmest confirmation margin since 1881) and lived up to the faith members of both parties placed in him to be a fair and impartial arbiter of the law.
In most cases the evidence (or lack of evidence) leads to a certain legal conclusion and there isn’t much wiggle room for even the most ideologically dogmatic judge (until think tank theories like ‘the non-delegation doctrine’ come into play, but that’s only at the appellate and Supreme Court levels). That said, there are judges willing to do anything to advance their ambitionsand their biases.
The aforementioned Boof Kavanaugh leaps to mind, an ambitious and supremely entitled man, he was not on the preliminary Federalist Society list of 25 carefully vetted ideologues to replace Anthony Kennedy. He was not on the second list. He auditioned by being the loudest, shrillest, most brazen extremist on the federal bench, working his network of influential contacts, getting Leonard Leo and Don McGahn on board, and suddenly — he was number one (though redolent of number two) on the new list. As a Supreme Court justice he’s lived up to his reputation as the angry, paranoid, brash, truth-challenged partisan asshole he showed himself to be when he unleashed a temper tantrum to demonstrate his judicial temperament during his confirmation hearings. Read any of his opinions on the Supreme Court if you have any doubt of his extreme partisanship and genuine asshole cred.
Kavanaugh’s replacement on the DC circuit court of appeals, Neomi Rao, is a chip off the old Kavanaugh block. Recall she ruled that a federal judge planning to hold a hearing before allowing DOJ to drop charges against good guy Mike Flynn, a friend of F POTUS who had already pleaded guilty to a felony, was a “usurpation of the prerogatives of the Executive Branch”, and a no-no for a loyal judge appointed by the head of that Executive Branch. She granted extremely rare legal relief after arguments in court that established not one of the three conditions that always must precede the relief she granted. The trial court judge appealed, the entire DC appeals court met, and her decision was overturned 8-2, Rao and the colleague who’d signed on to the original, asinine ruling — well written, though it was— were the only dissenters. It was not that any legally compelling reason for the relief sought had been produced by Bill Barr and Flynn lawyer Sidney Powell, it was that, as the en banc court wrote: All three requirements must be satisfied, and the absence of any one compels denial of the writ.
In the end the reversal became academic, F POTUS pardoned the guy and that was that.
In American legal proceedings, notice is a big, big deal. You can’t file something in court without serving a copy on your adversary. It’s basic fair play to send your specific legal complaint to the people you are complaining of in a lawsuit. You make charges, send them to your opponent, the judge sees both parties in court and sets a schedule for you to respond to your opponent’s charges. Basic rule of the game. In a recent filing F POTUS’s crack new legal team submitted papers to a judge F POTUS had appointed after he lost the stolen election. They did not submit proof of having served a copy on the DOJ (because they hadn’t served DOJ). They also did not make any argument for why they were filing in her courtroom as opposed to the courtroom of the magistrate down the hall who was already in charge of the search of Mar-a-Lago case. They also did not make it clear what relief they sought or what the basis for jurisdiction was (without jurisdiction a court can’t hear a case). She ordered them to fix these defects before she’d consider the case.
The lawyers fixed some of the defects, at least to the satisfaction of the judge, Aileen M. Cannon (appointed after F POTUS lost the election victory that was stolen from him). It was not clear from reporting whether they’d served a copy on DOJ, their adversary in the case. Like Neomi Rao before her, Cannon made a quick, purely partisan decision, scheduling a hearing and writing that she likely intends to grant F POTUS’s bizarre and long belated request to try to stop DOJ from reviewing documents they seized during a legal search of Mar-a-Lago that F POTUS (and seriously, F that F’ing malignant polyp) has been denouncing as an armed robbery witch hunt personal vendetta by Hunter Biden as fake and vicious as the stolen election and the claim that he is not, today, the rightful goddamned POTUS.
DOJ is going to speak through its response to the desperate, frivolous, weeks’ too late filing. They have asked the judge for forty pages to set out, in detail, all the things that are sickeningly wrong about this too late attempt by F POTUS to seek more delay, more confusion, to spread more manure. One point they are sure to raise first is that the relief Judge Cannon signaled readiness to grant — appointing a Special Master — (although DOJ still hadn’t seen the motion) is moot, dead, kaput. DOJ has already reviewed everything with a filter team that flagged anything that might be protected by any legal privilege F POTUS could claim (except for Executive Privilege, which the Federalist Society Supreme Court ruled does not apply to F POTUS) and those few pages have already been removed and will never be seen by the team reviewing the mishandled documents for possible criminal charges. DOJ has probably filed their speaking response as I’m typing these words. Good for them.
[1] Manchin was the sole “Democrat” to vote yea for Kavanaugh. Here’s a mysterious position in a close, multimillion dollar confirmation fight:
gratuitousblahg 