Forum shopping (and how Aileen Cannon shot to the top of the short list for SCOTUS)

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:

Biden’s the FASCIST!!!

So saith Rupert Murdoch, a reactionary billionaire who ought 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 fucking mouth.

Biden is the fascist who is criminalizing dissent, and his buddy Obama was a fascist and communist both. You figure it out, asshole.

Neurotic

I don’t know for sure what the clinical definition of the slippery term “neurotic” is [1], though anxiety is its’ hallmark.  The following illustration comports with my understanding of what it means to be neurotic, that is, so anxious, guilt-driven and chagrined, that you often do things that sabotage your own best interests in relations with other people.

My last remaining friend from a childhood that ended more than fifty years ago was in a desperate death spiral with his wife.  It had long been a very tense, combative, distrustful marriage, and it was coming to an end.  At one point, not long before their divorce, his wife and a marriage therapist convinced him that he had to confront me for deliberately or callously trying to end his doomed marriage.  His wife didn’t respect him as a man, found him weak and contemptible, and only confronting me would demonstrate that he had any spine at all.

I was supportive as I gave him a convincing, and true, response for his wife and the idiot therapist.  He seemed relieved, even grateful.  Things continued to go from bad to worse, and finally, after months of trying, it was impossible for me to maintain my friendship with my old friend.

Recent events in my own life made me realize that I should reach out to the poor devil, a guy I hadn’t exchanged a peep with in a few years.  We made plans to talk, by text (as it is done these days) and there were a few hits and misses due to his busy schedule until we could find a mutually good time to talk.   He was very happy to hear from me.

I told him about a long chat I had with his mother, after she dreamed about me and left me a message.   I described the traumatized friend who was in the hands of a great therapist who’d provided her with some excellent rules about life.  I quoted rules 12 and 13, texted them to him afterwards.   

12. A lesson is repeated until it is learned.  A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it.  When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

13. People always do the best they can.  If they are doing poorly, it is because they have not learned the lessons that will enable them to do better.

We discussed these revelations and then he promised that the next time we talked he’d share his revelations.   He’d had some major revelations since the last time we spoke.  I told him I was looking forward to it.

“This might sound funny,” he told me, “but you never actually left my life.  I see you frequently in dreams, just passing by, or sitting around, but you are there pretty consistently.”

I paused and said “well, then I hope this was a dream conversation for you.”

He laughed, and we said goodbye.

One month ago.

[1] apparently the term is no longer used clinically, psychiatrists have replaced the squishy term neurotic with more concrete and identifiable ones. Here’s a general definition from thefreedictionary.com

neu·ro·sis (no͝o-rō′sĭs, nyo͝o-)

A mild mental disorder characterized by excessive anxiety, insecurity, or obsession, usually compensated for by various defense mechanisms.

F POTUS addresses MAGA/Q faithful

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 the DC 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 these strong 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’s nothing 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 best day.

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.

Getting out the vote 2022

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 excellent concise script.

It hurts to know a friend is dying

I heard from the widow of a beautiful soul I knew for many years that my old friend Les has been struggling for the last few years against a rare and relentless form of cancer called liposarcoma.  He’d always been thin, but this cancer, which attacks fat cells, found plenty of places to grow large, aggressive tumors among major organs inside his body.  Since his cancer is rare, and research dollars are scarce, they don’t have many options to treat it. They remove chunks of him and keep him on chemotherapy, while paring down their predictions for his life expectancy.

His daughter graduates high school next year.  He told the oncologists he wanted to live to see her graduate college and they told him it was possible.  Then it was trying to keep him alive until she graduates high school next year.   Now it is any day, apparently. 

I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I spoke to him, I’d known nothing about his grim situation until a few weeks ago when I found out by chance.  Last I’d heard he’d had complete remission from a scary bout with prostate cancer a few years back.  We’d kept in touch over the years, but not that closely, and apparently not for a while before the pandemic lockdown.

I called today and a woman picked up Les’s phone.  It was his older sister, who told me her little buddy was in bad shape, emaciated and grey as a prisoner in Auschwitz.  Something the doctors told him recently had finished off his will to fight, she surmised.  Her little sister, who lives near Les, had called and told her that if she wanted to see him, she’d better get down there.  She arrived the other day.  

He sleeps most of the time, they installed a hospital bed and have hospice nurses to attend him at home.  He’d been falling, so now he’s pretty much confined to bed, except when he’s helped to the bathroom.   His sister, who I met once during a shiva call after their mother died, seemed glad to talk and we chatted for a few minutes.   She’d moved to Kansas City, which was nicer than she thought, her daughter had insisted she move to where they were.  She passed a Denny’s when she got near her brother’s place in Arizona and bought a shake they used to love back when they were kids in Brooklyn.  He hasn’t been eating, nothing, for days now — never a good sign.  She offered him a sip of the milkshake and “the little stinker drank 3/4 of it”, she reported happily. but nothing since.  

We talked about things, moving between little details of our lives and her brother’s misery and soon to end life.   I told her to send my love, and Sekhnet’s, to Les, since he seemed to be sleeping.  I told her I’d try him again soon.  She told me to hang on and tried to rouse him.  She persisted for a long while, repeating my name a few times, it seemed he was deep in sleep.

Then I heard sounds coming from Les that I have never heard come from a human being.  The sounds were like a series of strangled barks overflowing with emotion.   He was trying to speak, or was in distress, or both.  His sister told me calmly that she needed to call the nurse, she thought he had to go to the bathroom and she wasn’t strong enough to help him out of bed by herself.  I told her to take care of him, and herself, and that I’d call again in a few days.  

I’m still thinking about that sound Les was making.

Newtie on Offense

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. 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-1-2022?r=74gv9&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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 attack on 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 team for F POTUS and friends. THAT’S how 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 teens in 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.

https://www.cnn.com/2012/01/24/politics/truth-squad-ex-speaker/index.html