political attempts to reshape or constrain state courts have risen sharply in the last 10 years, Mr. Raftery said, propelled by polarization and a fading of the civics-book notion of governmental checks and balances.
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Judges Say Throw Out the Map. Lawmakers Say Throw Out the Judges. - The New York Times - 0 views
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“It ultimately boils down to this,” he said. “The courts are not looked on by some legislators as being an independent branch of government. For some, they’re looked on as an agency that needs to be brought to heel.”
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This combative approach, some analysts say, mirrors the heated rhetoric about judicial bias and overreach that has become a staple of national politics.
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“This is Trumpism at the lower level,” said Bernard Grofman, an elections expert at the University of California, Irvine who redrew Virginia’s congressional map in 2015 following a federal court finding that districts had been racially gerrymandered.
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“This is the view that if independent branches of government say things that don’t match what you say or do, you fire them; you impeach them; you malign them; you destroy them as best you can.”
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The impeachment threat has drawn sharp criticism from some quarters. “Calling for impeachment — especially five of seven justices, especially when all five are Democrats — can’t help but look partisan,”
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“We use impeachment to remove judges for serious criminal or ethical wrongdoing. This is a direct affront to the judicial branch’s power, not reasoned disagreement.”
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That said, impeachment — or at least, impeachment threats and attempts — have become a common tool to pressure courts in recent years, said Mr. Raftery of the National Center for State Courts.
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How Donald Trump is weaponising the courts for political ends | US news | The Guardian - 0 views
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t was a startling omission, even according to the peculiar moral norms of the Trump era. When Wendy Vitter, one of the US president’s judicial nominees, was asked whether she supported the supreme court’s 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision to end racial segregation in schools – a near sacred pillar of progress for civil rights in the 20th century – she did not say yes.
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With just over a year in office, Donald Trump has already appointed 21 of America’s 167 current circuit judges and intends to fill an additional 20 or more vacancies by the end of the year. He is far outpacing Barack Obama, whose 21st circuit court nominee was approved 33 months into his presidency amid gridlock in Congress. Seventeen of Trump’s nominees for district courts, most of whom replaced Democratic appointees, have also been approved by the Republican-controlled Senate.
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“This is stunning,” said Christopher Kang, former deputy counsel to Barack Obama, who for more than four years was in charge of the selection, vetting and confirmation of Obama’s judicial nominees. “Conservatives are using the courts to bring us back to a time when ‘religious liberty’ allowed discrimination. We’re seeing legal arguments we had hoped were consigned to the dustbin of history being dusted off and used again in the hope of turning back the clock on the way we treat all Americans.” Four cases relating to Trump’s ban on transgender personnel in the military are working their way through the courts. Employment and housing protections for LGBT individuals could be at risk. Battles over reproductive rights are also under way at state level. Last month a federal appeals court blocked an Ohio law that would cut taxpayer funding to 28 Planned Parenthood clinics, holding that conditions it imposed that denied funds to abortion providers were unconstitutional. But campaigners against abortion rights are unlikely to be deterred.
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Progressives have in recent years won landmark victories on issues such as same sex marriage and transgender rights. But conservatives, sensing the wind changing in their favour, may push significantly harder on issues such as environmental regulations, land rights, racial profiling, trade unions and reproductive and voting rights
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The judge who says he's part of the gravest injustice in America - 0 views
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Jeff Sessions' decision to enforce mandatory minimum sentences with renewed vigor has some questioning if it is sending America in the wrong direction. A federal judge who gives out these sentences, and a woman whose sentence was commuted by President Obama say their experience shows the policy is fundamentally flawed. -
Jeff Sessions' decision to enforce mandatory minimum sentences with renewed vigor has some questioning if it is sending America in the wrong direction. A federal judge who gives out these sentences, and a woman whose sentence was commuted by President Obama say their experience shows the policy is fundamentally flawed.
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AG Jeff Sessions: Judges shouldn't 'psychoanalyze' Trump to see if executive orders are... - 0 views
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Sessions made the comments on "The Mark Levin Show" Wednesday evening when he was asked about potential judges Trump would appoint. "I think our President, having seen some of these really weird interpretations of the executive orders that he's put out, I think he's more understanding now that we need judges who follow the law, not make law," Sessions said.
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Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views
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Many people underreport embarrassing behaviours and thoughts on surveys. They want to look good, even though most surveys are anonymous. This is called social desirability bias.
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An important paper in 1950 provided powerful evidence of how surveys can fall victim to such bias. Researchers collected data, from official sources, on the residents of Denver: what percentage of them voted, gave to charity, and owned a library card. They then surveyed the residents to see if the percentages would match. The results were, at the time, shocking. What the residents reported to the surveys was very different from the data the researchers had gathered
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Then there’s that odd habit we sometimes have of lying to ourselves. Lying to oneself may explain why so many people say they are above average. How big is this problem? More than 40% of one company’s engineers said they are in the top 5%. More than 90% of college professors say they do above-average work. One-quarter of high school seniors think they are in the top 1% in their ability to get along with other people. If you are deluding yourself, you can’t be honest in a survey.
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on sensitive topics, every survey method will elicit substantial misreporting. People have no incentive to tell surveys the truth.
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How, therefore, can we learn what our fellow humans are really thinking and doing? Big data
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Think of Google searches. Remember the conditions that make people more honest. Online? Check. Alone? Check. No person administering a survey? Check.
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I am now convinced that Google searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche.
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How many American men are gay? This is a regular question in sexuality research. Yet it has been among the toughest questions for social scientists to answer. Psychologists no longer believe Alfred Kinsey’s famous estimate – based on surveys that oversampled prisoners and prostitutes – that 10% of American men are gay. Representative surveys now tell us about 2% to 3% are
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About 2.5% of male Facebook users who list a gender of interest say they are interested in men; that corresponds roughly with what the surveys indicate.
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There is clearly some mobility – from Oklahoma City to San Francisco, for example. But I estimate that men moving to someplace more open-minded can explain less than half of the difference in the openly gay population in tolerant versus intolerant states.
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If mobility cannot fully explain why some states have so many more openly gay men, the closet must be playing a big role. Which brings us back to Google
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about 5% of male porn searches are for gay-male porn. Overall, there are more gay porn searches in tolerant states compared with intolerant states.
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one consequence of my estimate is clear: an awful lot of men in the United States, particularly in intolerant states, are still in the closet. They don’t reveal their sexual preferences on Facebook. They don’t admit it on surveys. And, in many cases, they may even be married to women.
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It turns out that wives suspect their husbands of being gay rather frequently. They demonstrate that suspicion in the surprisingly common search: “Is my husband gay?” The word “gay” is 10% more likely to complete searches that begin “Is my husband...” than the second-place word, “cheating”. It is eight times more common than “an alcoholic” and 10 times more common than “depressed”.
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On Google, there are 16 times more complaints about a spouse not wanting sex than about a married partner not being willing to talk. There are five-and-a-half times more complaints about an unmarried partner not wanting sex than an unmarried partner refusing to text back.
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Google data also suggests a reason people may be avoiding sex so frequently: enormous anxiety, with much of it misplaced. Start with men’s anxieties. It isn’t news that men worry about how well endowed they are, but the degree of this worry is rather profound. Men Google more questions about their sexual organ than any other body par
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Men conduct more searches for how to make their penises bigger than how to tune a guitar, make an omelette, or change a tyre. Men’s top Googled concern about steroids isn’t whether they may damage their health but whether taking them might diminish the size of their penis. Men’s top Googled question related to how their body or mind would change as they aged was whether their penis would get smaller.
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Do women care about penis size? Rarely, according to Google searches. For every search women make about a partner’s phallus, men make roughly 170 searches about their own
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Men’s second most common sex question is how to make their sexual encounters longer. Once again, the insecurities of men do not appear to match the concerns of women. There are roughly the same number of searches asking how to make a boyfriend climax more quickly as climax more slowly.
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while it’s true that overall interest in personal appearance skews female, it’s not as lopsided as stereotypes would suggest. According to my analysis of Google AdWords, which measures the websites people visit, interest in beauty and fitness is 42% male, weight loss is 33% male, and cosmetic surgery is 39% male
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you could call it progress that many people today feel they will be judged if they admit they judge other people based on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. But many Americans still do. You can see this on Google
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African Americans are the only group that faces a “rude” stereotype
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Nearly every group is a victim of a “stupid” stereotype; the only two that are not: Jews and Muslims.
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The “evil” stereotype is applied to Jews, Muslims, and gay people but not black people, Mexicans, Asians, and Christians.
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Muslims are the only group stereotyped as terrorists.
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minutes after the media first reported one of the shooters’ Muslim-sounding names, a disturbing number of Californians decided what they wanted to do with Muslims: kill them. The top Google search in California with the word “Muslims” in it at the time was “kill Muslims”
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In the days following the San Bernardino attack, for every American concerned with “Islamophobia”, another was searching for “kill Muslims”. While hate searches were approximately 20% of all searches about Muslims before the attack, more than half of all search volume about Muslims became hateful in the hours that followed it. And this minute-by-minute search data can tell us how difficult it can be to calm this rage.
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Obama’s speech, in other words, was judged a major success. But was it?
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In his speech, the president said: “It is the responsibility of all Americans – of every faith – to reject discrimination.” But searches calling Muslims “terrorists”, “bad”, “violent”, and “evil” doubled during and shortly after the speech.
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Obama also said: “It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country.” But negative searches about Syrian refugees, a mostly Muslim group then desperately looking for a safe haven, rose 60%, while searches asking how to help Syrian refugees dropped 35%
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Obama asked Americans to “not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear”. Yet searches for “kill Muslims” tripled during his speech. In fact, just about every negative search we could think to test regarding Muslims shot up during and after Obama’s speech, and just about every positive search we could think to test declined.
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new data from the internet, offering digital truth serum, suggested that the speech actually backfired in its main goal. Instead of calming the angry mob, as everybody thought he was doing, the internet data tells us that Obama actually inflamed it.
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Searches for “nigger jokes” are 17 times more common than searches for “kike jokes”, “gook jokes”, “spic jokes”, “chink jokes”, and “fag jokes” combined. When are these searches most common? Whenever African Americans are in the news.
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Any theory of racism has to explain a big puzzle in America. On the one hand, the overwhelming majority of black Americans think they suffer from prejudice – and they have ample evidence of discrimination in police stops, job interviews, and jury decisions. On the other hand, very few white Americans will admit to being racist. The dominant explanation among political scientists recently has been that this is due, in large part, to widespread implicit prejudice. White Americans may mean well, this theory goes, but they have a subconscious bias, which influences their treatment of black Americans.
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There is, though, an alternative explanation for the discrimination that African Americans feel and whites deny: hidden explicit racism. Suppose there is a reasonably widespread conscious racism of which people are very much aware but to which they won’t confess – certainly not in a survey
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That’s what the search data seems to be saying.
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this gender bias is not grounded in reality. About 28% of girls are overweight, while 35% of boys are. Even though scales measure more overweight boys than girls, parents see – or worry about – overweight girls much more frequently than overweight boys. Parents are also one-and-a-half times more likely to ask whether their daughter is beautiful than whether their son is handsome.
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And then there is the phenomenon of Donald Trump’s candidacy. When Nate Silver, the polling guru, looked for the geographic variable that correlated most strongly with support in the 2016 Republican primary for Trump, he found it in the map of racism I had developed.
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The primary explanation for discrimination against African Americans today is not the fact that the people who agree to participate in lab experiments make subconscious associations between negative words and black people; it is the fact that millions of white Americans continue to do things like search for “nigger jokes”
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, I was able to use Google searches to find evidence of implicit prejudice against another segment of the population: young girls. And who, might you ask, would be harbouring bias against girls? Their parents.
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Prior to the Google data, we didn’t have a convincing measure of this virulent animus. Now we do. We are, therefore, in a position to see what it explains. It explains why Obama’s vote totals in 2008 and 2012 were depressed in many regions. It also correlates with the black-white wage gap, as a team of economists recently reported. The areas that I had found make the most racist searches underpay black people.
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Perhaps young boys are more likely than young girls to use big words or show objective signs of giftedness? Nope. If anything, it’s the opposite. At young ages, girls have consistently been shown to have larger vocabularies and use more complex sentences. In American schools, girls are 9% more likely than boys to be in gifted programmes. Despite all this, parents looking around the dinner table appear to see more gifted boys than girls.
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What then are parents’ overriding concerns regarding their daughters? Primarily, anything related to appearance.
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Parents are about twice as likely to ask how to get their daughters to lose weight as they are to ask how to get their sons to do the same
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Parents are two-and-a-half times more likely to ask “Is my son gifted?” than “Is my daughter gifted?”
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I did not find a significant relationship between any of these biases and the political or cultural makeup of a state. It would seem this bias against girls is more widespread and deeply ingrained than we’d care to believe.
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Let’s return to Obama’s speech about Islamophobia. Recall that every time he argued that people should respect Muslims more, the people he was trying to reach became more enraged. Google searches, however, reveal that there was one line that did trigger the type of response Obama might have wanted. He said: “Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbours, our co-workers, our sports heroes and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform, who are willing to die in defence of our country.”
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When we lecture angry people, the search data implies that their fury can grow. But subtly provoking people’s curiosity, giving new information, and offering new images of the group that is stoking their rage may turn their thoughts in different, more positive directions.
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What’s your background?I’d describe myself as a data scientist, but my PhD is in economics. When I was doing my PhD, in 2012, I found this tool called Google Trends that tells you what people are searching, and where, and I became obsessed with it.
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What would your search records reveal about you?They could definitely tell I’m a hypochondriac because I’m waking up in the middle of the night doing Google searches about my health. There are definitely things about me that you could figure out. When making claims about a topic, it’s better to do it on aggregate, but I think you can figure out a lot, if not everything, about an individual by what they’re searching on Google.
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All this data I’m talking about is public
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Does it change your view of human nature? Are we darker and stranger creatures than you realised?Yeah. I think I had a dark view of human nature to begin with, and I think now it’s gotten even darker. I think the degree to which people are self-absorbed is pretty shocking
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When Trump became president, all my friends said how anxious they were, they couldn’t sleep because they’re so concerned about immigrants and the Muslim ban. But from the data you can see that in liberal parts of the country there wasn’t a rise in anxiety when Trump was elected. When people were waking up at 3am in a cold sweat, their searches were about their job, their health, their relationship – they’re not concerned about the Muslim ban or global warming.
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Was the Google search data telling you that Trump was going to win?I did see that Trump was going to win. You saw clearly that African American turnout was going to be way down, because in cities with 95% black people there was a collapse in searches for voting information. That was a big reason Hillary Clinton did so much worse than the polls suggested.
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Boulder Shooting Suspect Makes 1st Court Appearance : NPR - 0 views
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The suspect in the Boulder, Colo. grocery store shooting that left 10 people dead made his first appearance in court Thursday in a brief hearing that called for a mental health assessment. On Wednesday night, hundreds of people gathered to mourn the victims and support those affected by senseless gun violence.
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Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, is facing 10 counts of murder in the first degree and one count of attempted murder over the horrific attack at a King Soopers supermarket. The victims include a police officer who responded to calls for help. The ages of those who died range from 20 to 65.
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Alissa appeared in court alongside his attorney, Kathryn Herold of the Colorado Public Defender's Office. Alissa wore a white face mask and what looked to be a purple hospital gown. Because of an injury to his leg, the suspect was seated in a wheelchair.
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Herold asked for a three-month delay before a preliminary hearing, noting the need to assess her client as well as the pending arrival of evidence and records from the ongoing investigation into the shooting — a discovery process she predicted will be "voluminous."
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District Judge Thomas Mulvahill agreed to Herold's request after Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty noted that his office will file additional charges against Alissa "in the next couple weeks." While Dougherty did not object to the delay for a mental health assessment, he asked for a shorter time frame, of a month and a half.
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The judge did not set a bond for the suspect, meaning he will stay in jail as the case moves to the next steps. Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing, Dougherty was asked if he believes a "fair" jury can be convened in Boulder.
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Explaining the attempted murder charge Alissa is facing, the prosecutor said the charge refers to a police officer whom the suspect fired at but did not injure. Dougherty also noted that in Colorado, homicide cases commonly take at least a year to be tried to completion.
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The case will be assigned to Chief Judge Ingrid Bakke; rather than set a date for the next hearing in the case, Mulvahill told the attorneys from both sides to be in touch with Bakke about the next proceeding.
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The suspect is from Arvada, a suburb between Denver and Boulder. Before this week, Alissa had a criminal record that included a guilty plea to a misdemeanor assault charge in 2018. He paid a fine to resolve that case, according to court records.
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Alissa surrendered to police after suffering a gunshot wound to his leg. That injury, a "through-and-through" wound, was treated at a hospital before Alissa was taken to the Boulder County Jail. He was taken into custody after removing most of his clothing – jeans, a long-sleeve shirt and a tactical vest – and walking backward toward police, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
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Along with Alissa's clothes, police recovered "a rifle (possible AR-15)" and a semiautomatic handgun, the court document states.The arrest warrant affidavit for Alissa said he purchased a gun less than a week before the King Soopers shooting, citing official databases that show he bought a Ruger AR-556 on March 16.
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The weapon used in the shooting is legally classified as a "pistol" in the U.S., but many people would likely consider it to be a rifle — and the affidavit repeatedly refers to it as one. The gun has the same lower receiver, the shell-like piece that houses the trigger, as AR-15 rifles that have been used in many other mass shootings in the United States.
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Senate confirms Merrick Garland as attorney general - CNNPolitics - 0 views
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he Senate voted to confirm attorney general nominee Merrick Garland on Wednesday, sending the appellate judge on his mission to uphold the integrity of the Justice Department after its actions over the past years threatened to undermine it.
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Garland was confirmed in a 70-30 vote.
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"America can breathe a sigh of relief that we are finally going to have someone like Merrick Garland leading the Justice Department," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York. He called Garland "someone with integrity, independence, respect for the rule of law and credibility on both sides of the aisle."
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Garland will soon face politically charged questions at the Justice Department, including whether the Justice Department should wade into former President Donald Trump's role in the Capitol riot, and how to handle a federal probe into Biden's son, Hunter Biden.
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Garland also could oversee the investigation of the FBI's Russia probe. But he said in his nomination hearing that he didn't have "any reason to think" that special counsel John Durham "should not remain in place."
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"I come from a family where my grandparents fled anti-Semitism and persecution," said Garland. "The country took us in and protected us. I feel an obligation to the country to pay back."
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"When confirmed, Judge Garland must not back other constitutionally-corrosive efforts to effectively repeal laws just by ignoring them," said McConnell.
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Garland said at his hearing that the current threat from White supremacists is a "more dangerous period than we faced at that time." He also gave a brief, yet emotional, anecdote in response to a question about his family's history in confronting hate and discrimination. Garland fought back tears as he explained why leading the Justice Department was important to him.
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McConnell said he voted to confirm Garland's nomination as attorney general "because of his long reputation as a straight-shooter and legal expert," calling his "left-of-center perspective" within "the legal mainstream."
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The Senate voted to confirm attorney general nominee Merrick Garland on Wednesday, sending the appellate judge on his mission to uphold the integrity of the Justice Department after its actions over the past years threatened to undermine it.
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Kyle Rittenhouse Trial In Kenosha Killings Delayed Until November : NPR - 0 views
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A Wisconsin judge on Wednesday delayed the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who is charged with fatally shooting Black Lives Matters protesters in Kenosha last summer.
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Prosecutors as well as Rittenhouse's defense attorneys had asked for the postponement, arguing they needed more time to build their respective cases. Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder also set a meeting for May, to ensure that the new timeline still works for the two legal teams.
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Months after his release, Rittenhouse was spotted in a Wisconsin bar with possible members of the Proud Boys, an extremist group that federal prosecutors say played a critical role in storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
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In February, Schroeder refused to issue a new arrest warrant or increase Rittenhouse's bail, after he failed to update his current address with the court. But he did prohibit the shooter from associating with white supremacists.
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On Wednesday, Rittenhouse's lawyers said they needed extra time to finish up a public opinion poll "to get a feel for whether Rittenhouse can expect to get a fair trial in the county, or if there might be reason to seek a change of venue or a jury pool from another county," the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.
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Supreme Court Rejects Limits on Life Terms for Youths - The New York Times - 0 views
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The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that judges need not determine that juvenile offenders are beyond hope of rehabilitation before sentencing them to die in prison. The decision, concerning a teenager who killed his grandfather, appeared to signal the end of a trend that had limited the availability of severe punishments for youths who commit crimes before they turn 18.
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Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority in the 6-to-3 ruling, said it was enough that the sentencing judge exercised discretion rather than automatically imposing a sentence of life without parole.
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“In a case involving an individual who was under 18 when he or she committed a homicide,” he wrote, “a state’s discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient.”
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Over the past 16 years, the court, often led by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, methodically limited the availability of the harshest penalties for crimes committed by juveniles, first by striking down the juvenile death penalty and then by restricting sentences of life without the possibility of parole.
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Thursday’s decision, Jones v. Mississippi, No. 18-1259, concerned Brett Jones, who had recently turned 15 in 2004 when his grandfather discovered his girlfriend in his room. The two men argued and fought, and the youth, who had been making a sandwich, stabbed his grandfather eight times, killing him.
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In 2005, Mr. Jones was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, then the mandatory penalty under state law. That same year, the Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penalty for juvenile offenders was unconstitutional.
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In Montgomery v. Louisiana in 2016, the court made the Miller decision retroactive. In the process, it seemed to read the Miller decision to ban life without parole not only for defendants who received mandatory sentences but also “for all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.”
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“How low this court’s respect for stare decisis has sunk,” she wrote. “Now, it seems, the court is willing to overrule precedent without even acknowledging it is doing so, much less providing any special justification.”
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Justice Kavanaugh rejected the charge that the majority had twisted the earlier decisions, saying it had faithfully complied with stare decisis, the legal doctrine requiring respect for precedent.
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Justice Sotomayor responded that the majority had satisfied none of the usual criteria for overturning earlier decisions.
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Writing for the majority on Thursday, Justice Kavanaugh said the resentencing did not violate the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishments, because the punishment imposed by the trial judge had been discretionary rather than mandatory.
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Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions had made life-without- parole sentences for juvenile offenders uncommon. In Mississippi, he wrote, resentencings following the Miller decision have “reduced life-without-parole sentences for murderers under 18 by about 75 percent.”
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The experience in states that require a finding of incorrigibility was different, she wrote. In Pennsylvania, for example, fewer than 2 percent of resentencings have resulted in the reimposition of life-without-parole sentences.
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Justice Kavanaugh wrote that states had tools to address juvenile life without parole.“States may categorically prohibit life without parole for all offenders under 18,” he wrote. “Or states may require sentencers to make extra factual findings before sentencing an offender under 18 to life without parole. Or states may direct sentencers to formally explain on the record why a life-without-parole sentence is appropriate notwithstanding the defendant’s youth.”
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A man accused of killing an iguana wanted the charge dismissed based on stand your grou... - 0 views
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A Florida man accused of killing an iguana last year wanted a charge of animal cruelty dismissed on the basis of the state's "stand your ground" law. A judge has denied his motion.
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PJ Nilaja Patterson was arrested after allegedly beating, dragging and kicking a 3-foot iguana in Lake Worth, Florida, on September 2, 2020, according to a probable cause affidavit. The animal died as Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control was transporting it to be euthanized, according to the affidavit.
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Patterson's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the charge, but Judge Jeffrey Gillen denied the motion on Friday.
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"kicked the iguana as far as he could."
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"In this case, Patterson acted in a reasonable manner under all the circumstances because the wild iguana was first to engage with physical violence, during the encounter," his attorneys wrote.
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She wrote that the video shows how Patterson tormented the iguana, which "was not bothering anyone and did not pose a threat to anyone." She said there was no provocation or no justification for the actions.
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They also wrote that Patterson believed the iguana "could have injected poison" into him.
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"Thus he rushed to incapacitate the iguana the best way he could in order to preserve its antidote," they wrote.
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Florida's stand your ground law states deadly force can be used if a person "reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm." In this case, Patterson's attorneys said the animal was the first to engage in aggression, so Patterson had a right to defend himself.
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"The Defendant unnecessarily put himself in a position to be bit by this animal," Dorman wrote. "The State's position is that Stand Your Ground does not even apply to this case because the iguana is not a human being." Patterson is due back in court on July 30. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted of animal cruelty.
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Rudy Giuliani probe: Judge approves review of material seized from Trump lawyer - 0 views
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A federal judge agreed Friday to appoint a special master to recommend what evidence prosecutors should be able to see from material recently seized via search warrants from Rudy Giuliani, who is under criminal investigation, and another lawyer allied with former President Donald Trump.
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Giuliani is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a position he once held, for his activities in Ukraine.
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“The search warrants at issue here were based on judicial findings of probable cause — supported by detailed affidavits — to believe that evidence of violations of specified federal offenses would be found at the locations to be searched. There is no legal requirement for the Government to proceed by subpoena, nor is there any basis for the subject of an investigation to require it to do so.”
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“Guiliani’s and Toensing’s position lacks legal support,”
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Prosecutors are eyeing whether he violated federal lobbying law by not registering as a lobbyist for entities who were seeking various actions related to Ukraine, including the removal of the American ambassador under Trump.
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Oetken noted that prosecutors suggested the electronic devices seized from Giuliani and Toensing should be handled the same way as Cohen’s “in light of the parallels to this matter.”
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Giuliani’s lawyers argue that the search of his iCloud — which was not known to Giuliani for about 18 months — may have violated his attorney-client privilege and the right of Trump as president to have his communications with his lawyer protected.
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Opinion: Investigation of Rudy Giuliani is ramping up in a big way - CNN - 0 views
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FBI agents showed up at Giuliani's home and office to execute a search warrant approved by a federal judge, and later did the same with respect to fellow lawyer Victoria Toensing, a major sign that the investigation is not just still alive, but that it is ramping up in a big way. (In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Toensing's law firm said she had been informed she wasn't a target of the investigation.)
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The crimes under investigation, according to The New York Times, relate to whether Giuliani acted as an unregistered foreign agent
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Giuliani was also lobbying US officials about matters of interest to Ukrainians with whom Giuliani was working, like the removal of then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
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One may ask: why did it take so long to get around to executing search warrants? We don't know for sure, and likely never will given the confidentiality around internal deliberations involving criminal investigations at DOJ, but The New York Times is reporting that there may have been politically motivated action taken to delay and then refuse to approve the warrant under the Trump administration. Search warrants involving lawyers like Giuliani carry particularly onerous approval requirements, because of concerns around breaching the attorney-client privilege by gaining access to communications between a lawyer and his client.
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That means that these particular warrants would have been sent through the chain of command at the US Attorney's Office, up to Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss, and then down to the Justice Department in Washington for another set of approvals.
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Thus, in this case, before presenting the warrant to a judge, the Giuliani and Toensing search warrants also would have been approved by DOJ's second-in-command, now Lisa Monaco. Once approval is given, prosecutors take the application to a federal judge, who must be satisfied that there was probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that the evidence sought would be relevant to proving that crime.
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But I expect -- as we saw when another Trump personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was served with a search warrant as part of his criminal investigation by SDNY -- that Giuliani will challenge them every step of the way.
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Once the legal challenges are dispensed with and the investigative team is able to review the evidence they collected, they will conduct any necessary follow-up investigation before making a charging decision. And while the FARA charges described above may be the most likely at this moment, new and additional offenses often come to light as an investigation proceeds, so it's impossible to say where authorities may end up.
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while executing a search warrant certainly was a major event in the already lengthy saga of the investigation of Rudy Giuliani, there remains a long road ahead before we will know whether Giuliani faces arrest and criminal prosecution
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Judge blocks the scheduled federal execution of 4 death row inmates - CNNPolitics - 0 views
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halting the Justice Department's plans to reinstate the death penalt
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"The public interest is not served by executing individuals before they have had the opportunity to avail themselves of legitimate procedures to challenge the legality of their executions,"
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of replacing a three-drug lethal injection previously used in federal executions with a single drug, pentobarbital
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They argued that it differs from state protocols and that legally federal executions must be carried out according to state law.
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ohh i get it now. federal executions were illegal before, but state executions were not
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Daniel Lewis Lee for murdering a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl; Wesley Ira Purkey for raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl; Alfred Bourgeois for torturing and killing his own 2-year-old daughter; Dustin Lee Honken, for shooting and killing five people, including two young girls.
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it is really conflicting to decide to not kill these men, because they have done such terrible things. however, i personally believe that dying is the easy way out, and a life in prison is worse than death
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Kids' Climate Case 'Reluctantly' Dismissed By Appeals Court - 0 views
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Back in 2016, as she campaigned for Hillary Clinton, Laura Hubka could feel her county converting.
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"People were chasing me out the door, slamming the door in my face, calling Hillary names," Hubka recalled.
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In 2012, Howard County voted for then-President Barack Obama by 21 percentage points. In 2016, it voted for candidate Donald Trump by 20 points.
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Howard County, with its 41-point shift, saw the biggest swing.
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"Republicans stand behind their candidate," Hubka said. "Like, the Democrats have to fall in love. We have to be, like, 'Oh, Barack Obama.' You know, I don't feel like people are, like, 'Oh, Joe Biden,' you know — and that's a problem."
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I met Ernst recently, along with some 20 other Democrats, at the local chamber of commerce, which also houses the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame. (Random fact: Tiny Howard County is home to multiple Olympic wrestlers.)
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Ernst, like some other folks at the Democratic committee meeting, is looking for a moderate candidate. And he's worried about some ideas on the left of his party. The 66-year-old is skeptical of "Medicare for All."
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"Amy Klobuchar is kind of right in the middle," Godwin said. "I like what she has to say."
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"I will do my best to try to get this county back," said Hubka, the party chair. "I don't have high hopes. ... I don't know in November that it'll flip completely. I hope that I can get at least 10 of the points back or, you know, 15."
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Democrats can turn to history for some hope. The last time the county went for a Republican prior to Trump was in 1984 for Ronald Reagan. Four years later, it turned blue again
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A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by nearly two dozen young people aimed at forcing the federal government to take bolder action on climate change, saying the courts were not the appropriate place to address the issue.
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three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday the young plaintiffs had "made a compelling case that action is needed,
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The lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, was filed in 2015 on behalf of a group of children and teenagers who said the U.S. government continued to use and promote the use of fossil fuels, knowing that such consumption would destabilize the climate, putting future generations at risk.
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it was unclear if the court could compel the federal government to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess greenhouse gas emissions as the plaintiffs requested.
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"Reluctantly, we conclude that such relief is beyond our constitutional power,"
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The decision reversed an earlier ruling by a district court judge that would have allowed the case to move forward.
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Both the Trump and Obama administrations opposed the lawsuit. All three of the judges involved in Friday's ruling were appointed under Obama.
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In these proceedings, the government accepts as fact that the United States has reached a tipping point crying out for a concerted response
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yet presses ahead toward calamity," she wrote. "It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses."
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Kids' Climate Case 'Reluctantly' Dismissed By Appeals Court
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Why the 2020 Election Could Come Down to the Courts | Time - 0 views
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When Chief Justice John Roberts joined his three liberal colleagues on Monday to uphold Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court decision extending the deadline for accepting absentee ballots, Democrats were ecstatic.
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But Democrats’ excitement was tempered by a lingering anxiety that their victory may be short-lived. The ruling remains in place only because the U.S. Supreme Court is deadlocked.
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This past year, Democratic and Republican lawyers have filed hundreds of election-related lawsuits in state and federal courts, putting this election on track to become the most litigated in history.
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If the final vote tally ends up being close, election experts say that both Democrats and Republicans will likely take the matter to court—increasing the possibility of another Bush v. Gore-style stand-off in which lawyers and judges, rather than the voters, ultimately determine the next President.
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They argue that making it easier to apply for, vote, deliver, and count mail ballots facilitates fraud, thereby diluting the votes of those who play by the rules. So far, the rival teams appear to be in a dead heat. “Depending on the week, you may say it’s a very good Democratic week or a very good Republican week,” says Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford Law Professor.
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Nearly every time states have implemented a change, it’s been followed by a lawsuit. There have been at least 380 election-related lawsuits solely stemming from the pandemic, according to the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.
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To the extent that it can be simplified, this year’s election-related legal brawls can be distilled into two groups: a push to eliminate expanded mail-in voting policies on the basis that they would produce unprecedented fraud, and a push to ease the restrictions already in place.
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Similar examples of litigation whiplash have played out across the country—each time banking a victory for the GOP.
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Progressive watchdogs also point to another factor. Since taking office, Trump has appointed 53 appellate court judges, according to July data from the Pew Research Center, most of whom are reliably conservative and tend to sympathize with the Republicans’ legal positions.
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Both Republicans and Democrats are actively preparing for the possibility of a pitched, multi-front court battle after Nov. 3. “We have been planning for any post-election litigation and recounts for well over a year and are extraordinarily well-positioned,”
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Any post-Election Day litigation is most likely to involve swing states, crucial to determining the Electoral College winner, that end up having tight vote counts. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and North Carolina are all high on the list of possibilities, and top election officials in these states are girding for battle.
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Judge mandates USPS take 'extraordinary measures' as on-time movement of mail ballots d... - 0 views
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A federal judge on Sunday ordered the United States Postal Service to mandate some of the "extraordinary measures" the agency announced earlier this week to address the slow down of ballot processing in key states.
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The order from federal Judge Emmet Sullivan, which comes just two days before Election Day, requires USPS to utilize the Express Mail network -- which guarantees delivery in one to two days -- for all ballots that are traveling longer distances, even after Election Day.
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The order comes as the Postal Service's delivery performance in the days before the presidential election has become a major point of contention -- especially in the battleground states where thousands of voters are mailing ballots instead of visiting polling places in person because of the coronavirus pandemic
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As part of the order, USPS must send a memo by 9 p.m., local time, Sunday evening to processing plant managers and division directors saying the extraordinary measures "must be put in place to ensure we delivery every ballot possible by the cutoff time on Election Day."
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In addition to the USPS' daily sweeps for election mail, USPS processing plant managers must also certify that all local ballots have been sent to the local election or post office by 10 a.m., local time, on Monday and Tuesday.
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In New Jersey and three key states in the election -- Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania -- USPS must issue "targeted written communication, and make all reasonable efforts to orally convey" to plant managers and division directors that ballots should be processed prior to the deadline in which they need to arrive at election offices on Election Day.
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And by 9 a.m., local time, on Monday, USPS is required to send a memo to every local post office reiterating that they must postmark all ballots they receive. Properly postmarked ballots are important because some states allow for pre-Election Day postmarked ballots to arrive after Election Day.
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In a document filed in US District Court Sunday, USPS said that on a national level, they moved fewer ballots on time on Saturday than on Friday and their processing score dropping from 93% to 91%
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More critical battlegrounds states are now experiencing a drop in scores -- below 90% -- and those already below that did not improve substantially and some dropped even lower.
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Federal judge rejects Texas Republicans' bid to toss 127,000 drive-thru ballots - 0 views
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A federal judge Monday ruled against Texas Republicans who sued to toss out more than 127,000 ballots cast in drive-thru voting booths in Harris County, declaring that the plaintiffs didn't have standing to sue.
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a group of state Republicans sued the county clerk claiming that the process violated the legislature’s authority over elections and Texans' equal protection rights.
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The county argued that the voting method had been approved by the secretary of state and their plans had been public for months but were only challenged recently.
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Democrats and national voting rights advocates quickly moved to defend the ballots this weekend, but there’s also been some high profile Republican opposition to the suit.
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Which Ballots Will Count? The Battle Intensifies as Voting Ends - The New York Times - 0 views
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In the most aggressive moves to knock out registered votes in modern memory, Republicans have already sought to nullify ballots before they are counted in several states that could tip the balance of the Electoral College.
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In an early test of one effort, a federal judge in Texas on Monday ruled against local Republicans who wanted to compel state officials to throw out more than 127,000 ballots cast at newly created drive-through polling places in the Houston area. The federal court ruling, which Republicans said they would appeal, came after a state court also ruled against them.
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In his last days of campaigning, Mr. Trump has essentially admitted that he does not expect to win without going to court. “As soon as that election is over,” he told reporters over the weekend, “we’re going in with our lawyers.”
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After months of claiming that any election outcome other than a victory for him would have to have been “rigged,” the president used his final days on the campaign trail to cast doubt on the very process of tabulating the count, suggesting without any evidence that any votes counted after Tuesday, no matter how legal, must be suspect.
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Both sides expect Mr. Trump and his allies to try again to disqualify late-arriving ballots in the emerging center of the legal fight, Pennsylvania, after the state’s high court rejected a previous attempt and the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.
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“This is the most blatant, open attempt at mass disenfranchisement of voters that I’ve ever witnessed,” said Dale Ho, the director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which has litigated several major cases this year.
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The Republican efforts moved to an even more aggressive footing on Sunday, after Mr. Trump made clear his intention to challenge an unfavorable outcome through a focus in particular on the mail-in vote, which both sides expect will favor Mr. Biden.
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On Monday night, in an extraordinary moment that encapsulated the tenor of his presidency, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that the Supreme Court’s Pennsylvania decision would “allow rampant and unchecked cheating” and “undermine our entire systems of laws” and “induce violence in the streets,” drawing a warning on the platform that it was misleading.
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Mr. Trump has spent the past few years appointing conservative judges, an effort that has affected the balance on several appellate panels that will be critical in swing-state voting fights while giving the Supreme Court a new, 6-to-3 conservative tilt.And he has another wild card in Mr. Barr.
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This summer, Mr. Barr made a string of exaggerated claims about the problems with mail-in voting and opened the door to sending in federal authorities to stop voter fraud threats.
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That situation has led Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general and a Democrat, to issue guidance that election officials should segregate any ballots that arrive after 8 p.m. Tuesday.“We made a careful decision to segregate those ballots in part to stave off possible future legal challenges from Donald Trump and his enablers,” Mr. Shapiro said.
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“They’ll be fanned out across Pennsylvania, on Election Day, and prepared for whatever challenges to possibly come beginning at 8:01 when the polls close,” he said.
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Election Voting Issues: What We're Watching - WSJ - 0 views
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Voters face challenges including changing deadlines for mail-in ballots and concerns about long lines, demonstrations and potential intimidation at polling places.
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Disabled voters will have limited access after the Supreme Court reinstated a ban on curbside voting, blocking a lower-court order that allowed county officials to use the accommodation.
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A Superior Court judge ordered polls to remain open an additional two hours, until 9 p.m., in Spalding County after technical difficulties prevented people from voting in the county. Voters who vote in the extended time frame will cast provisional ballots.
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reports of robocalls spreading misinformation in the city of Flint that told voters that “due to long lines, they should vote tomorrow.” Attorney General Dana Nessel said that was false and called it an effort to suppress the vote.
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An extension for receiving ballots in the mail by Nov. 10, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day, faces legal uncertainty after a federal appeals court ruling last week that the extended deadline is likely unconstitutional. The court ordered the state to segregate late-arriving ballots for possible disqualification.
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Civil-rights groups said they filed a lawsuit in federal court late Monday against the Alamance County sheriff and chief of police in Graham, N.C., alleging the police disrupted a Saturday march to an early-voting location and intimidated and discouraged march participants from voting. The Graham Police Department said the demonstration blocked traffic and was deemed unsafe and unlawful. The department said it arrested eight people.
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A Republican-backed lawsuit asked a federal judge to throw out at least 1,200 ballots in Montgomery County, outside Philadelphia, alleging local officials handled mail-in ballots illegally. The suit alleged the county Board of Elections was illegally sorting through and identifying potential problems with mail-in ballots received before Nov. 3. A county spokesperson said: “We believe our process is sound and permissible under the Election Code.”
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The Supreme Court earlier let stand a ruling by Pennsylvania’s highest court that extended the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots by three days. The ruling also allows ballots with illegible postmarks to be counted if received by the deadline. The state’s top election official, a Democrat, extended the deadline to compensate for more voters turning to mail ballots. Republican plaintiffs asked the high court to reconsider the matter. In anticipation of possible postelection legal challenges, local election officials have been directed to separate ballots received after the original Election Day deadline.
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The judge noted that state law requires voting on Election Day to take place inside buildings. To ensure compliance, the clerk for Harris said on Twitter that the county would operate one drive-through center on Election Day, at the Toyota Center, a large indoor arena.
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The Supreme Court declined to allow pandemic-related changes to voting rules in Wisconsin, letting stand a federal appeals court’s ruling that mail-in ballots must be received by Election Day.