Tag Archives: federal judge

Some Sanity From The Federal Bench

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With all the cries from hysterical Democrats that President Trump would be a dictator if he is elected, why don’t the Democrats look in the mirror? The student loan forgiveness has continued despite being ruled unconstitutional, domestic oil production has pretty much been shut down despite the fact that Congress passed no laws shutting it down, the border has been left open despite laws that would control the flow of illegal immigrants, and liquid natural gas exports have been shut down despite the fact that Congress never passed a law shutting it down (more on that in a moment). So who is the dictator?

On Friday, Hot Air posted an article about a recent decision by Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana putting the Biden’s pause on LNG exports on hold.

The article quotes Politico:

A federal judge in Louisiana on Monday put the Energy Department’s pause on natural gas export permits on hold, dealing another legal blow to the Biden administration’s climate agenda.

Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee, granted a request for a stay from 16 red states that had challenged the pause, arguing it will harm their economies.

The decision to stay the LNG pause upends one of Joe Biden’s major policy nods to climate-focused activists who have accused the president of not doing enough to mitigate planet-warming emissions despite Democrats passing the largest investment in climate in history via the Inflation Reduction Act.

The article also quotes The Wall Street Journal (behind the pay wall):

The Sierra Club, a vociferous and enthusiastic proponent of the January pause, is one of the more strident voices now encouraging our mush-brained hero to do an end-run around SCOTUS.

KEEP DOIN’ THAT VOODOO THAT YOU DO SO WELL

…Who cares what a court says? Not the Sierra Club, which says the judge’s ruling doesn’t compel the Administration “to issue any specific decisions.” In other words, the Administration can continue to slow-walk reviews, as it has been doing.

…Democrats fret that Donald Trump will ignore court rulings, but the Biden Administration defies them left and right. A federal judge in June 2021 ordered the Administration to resume quarterly oil and gas lease sales as required under federal law. It didn’t hold its first auction until June 2022 and waited another year to hold a second.

Progressives have no credibility when they warn about an imperial Trump Presidency after encouraging a lawless Biden Administration.

Laws only apply to Republicans.

The Price Of Following The Crowd

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It’s a pretty safe bet that less than one percent of the students protesting in support of Palestine have any idea of the history of the Middle East. Most of them are simply doing the ‘cool’ thing with their classmates (not realizing that the people who are encouraging them are paid agitators).  So essentially, these students are followers–not leaders–who did not fully investigate the facts before they followed. This is not a trait employers generally look for when hiring people. Protesting is legal, destroying property and denying access to students are not. The students’ treatment of their fellow students who were Jewish was also despicable.

On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted the following headline:

13 Federal Judges Say They Will No Longer Hire Law Clerks From Columbia University, Citing ‘Virulent Spread of Antisemitism’ and ‘Explosion of Student Disruptions’

The article reports:

Thirteen federal judges said Monday that they would no longer hire law clerks from Columbia College or Columbia Law School after the university allowed an encampment on its lawn to spiral into a destructive occupation of a campus building. The judges cited the “explosion of student disruptions” and the “virulent spread of antisemitism” at Columbia, which has now canceled its main graduation ceremony because of the unrest.

Led by appellate judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, who spearheaded a clerkship boycott of Yale Law School in 2022 and Stanford Law School in 2023, as well as by Matthew Solomson on the U.S Court of Federal Claims, the judges wrote in a letter to Columbia president Minouche Shafik that they would no longer hire “anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or as law students—beginning with the entering class of 2024.”

“Freedom of speech protects protest, not trespass, and certainly not acts or threats of violence or terrorism,” the judges wrote. “It has become clear that Columbia applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct.”

Actions have consequences. Tuition and housing at Columbia University costs approximately $85,000 a year. That’s a lot of money to pay for an education that, because of the actions of some students, disqualifies you from an entire group of jobs.

Finally Addressing The Obvious

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On Thursday, PJ Media posted an article about the difference between the way the ‘summer of love’ Antifa protestors who burned down buildings and killed people were treated and how the January 6th protestors who did nothing but walk through the Capitol were treated. Evidently there are some people in our judicial system who want to restore equal justice under the law.

The article reports:

Finally a federal judge who believes in justice or something close to it. Could this be a crack in the dike of the tyranny of the DOJ? Is this the beginning of the end of Antifa pattern of violence and silence? We can hope.

To understand what’s at stake, let’s take you back.

At UC Berkeley in 2017, Antifa and their local black bloc franchisees set fires and rioted to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus. 

The anti-free speech violent protesters set off munitions, broke windows, beat people, and scared the university away from allowing any right-wing speakers to be heard on campus—unless they paid for their own security. Antifa radicals, calling themselves By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), framed themselves as brave and heroic for silencing speech of people they detested at the very birthplace of the campus free speech movement.

It was the first round of the speech wars between people on the right who were trying to speak and those on the left who called them “fascists” while calling themselves “anti fascist” and using violence to literally shut them up. 

Several people were arrested for the melee, but guess who were the only ones prosecuted? 

In an opinion issued February 21, California Federal District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney stiff-armed the DOJs Terrorism and Export Crimes Section out of Los Angeles and nailed them for selective prosecution. The decision to dismiss the federal charges against two men who at some point became members of a group characterized as “white supremacist” was based on the fact that Antifa did as bad or worse that day and at other events where both groups were represented and Antifa wasn’t prosecuted.

This pattern continues as charges were dropped against those who participated in the ‘summer of love’ and Vice-President Kamala Harris asked people to contribute to the bail of the people who were arrested. We need to restore ‘equal justice under the law’ if our country is to survive.

It’s Amazing How Justice Works In America

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PLEASE SEE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ARTICLE!

On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn. In case you don’t remember, Mr. Littlejohn was the person who stole and helped publicize the confidential tax records of Donald Trump and an estimated 7,500 other wealthy Americans. That is obviously illegal. So what price will Mr. Littlejohn pay for his actions? Is the fact that he leaked President Trump’s tax returns to the public going to play a role in the penalty he pays? We now have the answer to those questions.

The article reports:

Former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, who stole and helped publicize the confidential tax records of Donald Trump and an estimated 7,500 other wealthy Americans, could face little or no jail time when he’s sentenced later this month, because the DOJ allowed him to plead guilty to a single felony count.

In a new court filing, prosecutors acknowledge the plea deal “does not account for the fact that he leaked thousands of individuals’ tax returns. His [sentencing] range would be the same today if he had leaked only a single return.”

But instead of seeking prison time for each of his offenses — or even for the two separate mass thefts he committed, one in 2019 and another in 2020 — the DOJ is asking a federal judge to sentence Littlejohn to just 60 months, the maximum for a single offense under the statute. Some political leaders angry over the plea deal say he should get 60 years, not months, for his crime — the biggest heist of IRS taxpayer data in history.

Attorneys for Littlejohn, 38, argue he actually deserves an even lower sentence, closer to the presentencing report’s range of four to 10 months, in part because he leaked the reams of stolen private income-tax data to “reputable news organizations — The New York Times and ProPublica — that he knew would handle the information responsibly.” They say a 60-month term is “equivalent to a 15-level upward departure” from the range prosecutors originally agreed to in the plea deal, and such a wide departure would be unprecedented.

The D.C. judge deciding Littlejohn’s fate “does not have unfettered discretion to depart from the applicable sentencing guidelines,” Littlejohn’s attorney Lisa Manning advised the court in papers filed last week.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee who has a record of meting out lenient sentences, will decide his punishment on Jan. 29.

I guess it depends on who’s tax returns you leak.

UPDATE!  GOOD NEWS!   JUSTICE STILL EXISTS IN AMERICA!

According to Hot Air on January 19:

Charles Littlejohn pleaded guilty in October, and prosecutors sought the statutory maximum of five years in federal prison, saying that he “abused his position by unlawfully disclosing thousands of Americans’ federal tax returns and other private financial information to multiple news organizations.” Prosecutors said that Littlejohn “weaponized his access to unmasked taxpayer data to further his own personal, political agenda, believing that he was above the law.” …

Hopefully This Will Uncover The Truth

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On July 10, 2016, Seth Rich was murdered in Washington, D.C. He was shot twice in the back. The police dismissed it as a botched robbery, but there are some legitimate questions regarding his death.

On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit posted the following headline:

BIG NEWS: Federal Judge Orders FBI to Hand Over Evidence in Former DNC Employee Seth Rich’s Murder Case within 14 Days

It was rumored at the time that Seth Rich was the source for the information about the Democrat Party posted at Wikileaks. Julian Paul Assange, the founder of Wikileaks has been in prison for four years after being removed from Ecuador’s London embassy and arrested by British police.

The article reports:

Clevenger (Attorney Ty Clevenger) has been attempting to get to the bottom of who supplied the DNC and Podesta emails to the DNC for several years now.  This was always the key to the Russia collusion nightmare.  If Russia didn’t supply emails to WikiLeaks (the FBI has never asked WikiLeaks who supplied the emails by the way) then the Russia collusion story was built on a lie.

After years of denying they had anything related to Seth Rich, the FBI and DOJ were caught lying over and over again.  In September, a judge finally demanded the FBI and DOJ provide all they had in regard to Seth Rich and the FBI responded requesting another 66 years before releasing the information.

Now, a Federal Judge has just ruled the FBI must hand over evidence regarding former DNC employee Seth Rich’s murder.
The article concludes:

The lack of details regarding Rich’s death has left many people puzzled.

According to authorities, Rich died from a “botched” robbery attempt, and his murderer has never been found.

In recent years, it has been reported by outlets that Rich made himself a target after he allegedly leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks before his sudden death.

Previously, the FBI prevented a FOIA request relating to Rich’s death.

 

 

When Did We Give Judges This Kind Of Power?

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Yesterday Just the News reported that a federal judge has reinstated DACA. DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that would provide people brought into America illegally as children a path to citizenship. DACA was put in place by an executive order by President Obama. When President Trump tried to undo that executive order, which supposedly he is allowed to do, the courts got involved. It went to the Supreme Court, and they told President Trump he was doing it wrong. So we are essentially back at square one.

The article reports:

The DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) saga continues its long and winding road through all branches of government, as a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on Friday that these undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children can once again apply to remain in this country legally.

This goes back to the Obama administration, who said repeatedly that “I am president, I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself. We have a system of government that requires the Congress to work with the executive branch to make it happen,” and words to that effect.  

But finally he gave up on Congress and in June of 2012, he signed DACA into law as an executive directive and said that it was “a temporary stopgap measure.”

President Trump had planned to end it, and then offered it as part of a grand bargain to get a wall built and to end chain migration. The Democrats did not accept his offer. Finally he attempted to rescind the Obama directive and end the program, but the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against him in June of this year on the basis that he hadn’t properly used the Administrative Procedure Act, not on the merits or the constitutionality of the case.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis fully restored the Obama-era program. He ordered the Department of Homeland Security to begin accepting new applications on Monday.

The Trump administration can now go back to court. I do have compassion for the children who were brought here with no say in the matter. However, DACA as it is currently set up is an invitation to fraud. We have MS-13 gang members lying about their age to get into the country. We have no real handle on how many people this will impact. What do you say when you see a person who has waiting years to immigrate to America, doing it the right way and paying the cost and they watch someone who came illegally step in front of them in line? This whole program needs to go back to the drawing board along with our existing immigration policies.