Tag Archives: Lawsuit

Using The Law Against Your Political Opponents

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The story below is one of the things that makes me wonder about the future of America. Somehow we have lost the concept of equal justice under the law and many legal actions have become totally political.

On Tuesday, The Washington Examiner reported the following:

A POLITICIZED, GROSSLY UNFAIR LAWSUIT AGAINST TRUMP. Former President Donald Trump testified Monday at the trial of the lawsuit, filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James, alleging that Trump inflated the values of his real estate properties to receive lower interest rates on loans. It’s important to note that Trump has already lost the case. The judge, Arthur Engoron, weeks ago pronounced Trump guilty of the actions alleged, and what is going on now in court is the penalty phase, in which Engoron will decide whether to confiscate Trump’s business empire.

The punishment will be extraordinary and unprecedented. This is how Axios has described it: “Former President Donald Trump is at risk of losing the New York real estate empire that the rest of his career was built on. Forcibly dismantling Trump’s company is so unusual that no one is quite certain how it would play out.”

Engoron could decide to cancel the business certificates of all of Trump’s companies. “If the business certificates were canceled,” Axios continued, “the relevant assets — which include Trump Tower, Trump Park Avenue, 40 Wall Street, and Trump National Golf Course Hudson Valley — would be put under the control of a court-appointed receiver, who operates much like an executor of an estate. The receiver would continue to manage the properties, but also could be allowed by the court to sell some — particularly if cash was needed to pay off legal penalties or creditors. Trump, who views himself as a consummate dealmaker, would not be at the negotiating table.”

That is a punishment so out of line with the behavior alleged in this case that it boggles the mind. It is made possible by two factors: a bad law and a hyperpoliticized attorney general. On the bad law, New York’s Executive Law 65(12), the former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote: “The law doesn’t require a showing of harm. The state need not prove the defendant even intended to defraud anyone, much less actually defrauded someone. It need not be established that any creditor or financial institution even relied on the defendant’s misrepresentations, that those misrepresentations were material, or that anyone was actually fooled by them.” There need be no victim — after all, in this case, no bank or financial institution is suing Trump for cheating them, nor does there need to be any crime involved — in fact, prosecutors looked at the same evidence and declined to charge Trump.

Hopefully this case will eventually suffer the same fate as the case against former Virginia Governor Bob McDonald. However, the damage done in getting there will be immense and inexcusable.

Following The Legal Trail

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Recently, President Trump was found guilty of sexual misconduct and defamation. The interesting part of this case is that the woman bringing the charges couldn’t even remember what year the incident happened. She accused the President of rape in a department store dressing room. Her description of the event described her entering a dressing room with the President and locking the door. If that account is true, what did she expect to happen? At some point, women need to take responsibility for doing stupid things. However, that is not the most interesting part of the story. Until recently, the case could not have been brought because the statue of limitations for the ‘crime’ had expired. A law was passed in New York that allowed the suit to be brought.

On Thursday, PJ Media reported the following:

One of the more curious aspects of this case was that the only reason Carroll was even able to sue Donald Trump was because of a law passed in New York in 2022 called the Adult Survivors Act. This legislation, signed by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, introduced a “one-year lookback window for survivors of sexual assault” to legally pursue their alleged abusers, irrespective of when the abuse took place. Many argued it was passed specifically to let Carroll take her absurd allegations to court and punish Trump

It turns out those claims weren’t mere conspiracy theories. In a surprising revelation, E. Jean Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, acknowledged that Carroll played a role in advocating for the passage of the aforementioned law.

“The fact that New York passed this law, the Adult Survivors Act,” CNN’s Poppy Harlow said while interviewing both Carroll and Kaplan. “They passed it just a few years ago. Were it not for that law, you never would have been able to bring this case.”

“Exactly. This would never — I would never have this window, this year of having the ability to bring a lawsuit for rape,” Carroll responded, then pointed to her attorney and said. “Robbie can explain it better.”

“Well, E. Jean actually helped to get that law passed,” Kaplan admitted. “It passed last year. We filed – it was Thanksgiving Day, the first day you could sue. We filed it just after midnight on Thanksgiving. And there are a lot of other women throughout the state and, hopefully, throughout this country, that they will get other laws like this passed in other states. And New York women should use this law while it’s still around, which is until next Thanksgiving.”

The article concludes:

So not only was the civil suit a politically motivated attack, but it was also an attack that required an act of the Democrat-controlled New York State legislature and the Democrat governor of New York to make it possible. Does that sit well with you? Just how corrupt is this conspiracy to get Trump? Among other things, we’ve seen the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, the bogus Bragg case, and now this.

Wow.

A Positive Move

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On Friday, The Epoch Times reported that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ), FBI, and others, alleging he was maliciously prosecuted. He is demanding at least $50 million in compensation.

The article reports:

“Defendant maliciously investigated and prosecuted General Flynn by initiating and continuing a baseless counterintelligence investigation and by filing a criminal information lacking probable cause,” says the suit, filed on March 3 with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (pdf).

The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under the Obama administration was investigated by the FBI starting in August 2016 for supposed ties to Russia. In 2017, he was charged with lying to the FBI during an interview earlier that year.

The suit alleges that the FBI, and later prosecutors from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, investigated and prosecuted him for political reasons, considering him a threat.

“General Flynn—who already had a reputation as a hands-on disruptor at DIA, who had publicly excoriated the politicization of the intelligence community, and who had made clear his desire to overhaul the national security structure and the ‘interagency process’—was a direct threat, not only to the self-interest of entrenched intelligence bureaucracies and the federal officials involved, but to exposing their prior and ongoing efforts to derail and discredit President Trump,” the suit says.

The case against Flynn was riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies. FBI agents had already decided to close his case by early January 2017, but higher-ups intervened to keep it open on the justification that Flynn may have violated an obscure and antiquated law called the Logan Act by discussing with a Russian ambassador the priorities of the incoming administration during the transition period. DOJ officials at the time rejected the legal theory. The 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits certain kinds of unauthorized diplomacy, may in fact be unconstitutional, several lawyers previously told The Epoch Times. It has never been successfully prosecuted, much less aimed at an incoming national security adviser.

I would like to remind people that in 2018, CNN reported the following:

Gowdy (Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican) also pushed Comey (former FBI Director James Comey) on comments he had made in a New York forum earlier this month, in which he told a moderator his decision to send two FBI agents to the White House without notifying the White House counsel’s office was something he “probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration.”

“I’m just kind of hung up on the phrase ‘gotten away with,’ ” Gowdy told Comey on Monday in the private Capitol Hill interview, according to the transcript.

I am in favor of this lawsuit. I am also in favor of someone wiping that arrogant grin of James Comey’s face.

Now They Tell Us

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about some recent discoveries regarding Dominion voting machines.

The article reports:

Dominion Voting Systems employees have acknowledged serious problems with the company’s technology, saying, for example, that a bug led to “INCORRECT results,” according to discovery cited in the defense brief in Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

Dominion is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion for defamation after becoming a target of alleged conspiracy theories regarding its voting machines being hacked and flipping election results.

In a legal brief made public Thursday, the news outlet cited information obtained from Dominion through discovery. 

In a 2018 email Fox News obtained from Dominion Director of Product Strategy and Security Eric Coomer, he acknowledged the company’s technology was marred by a “*critical* bug leading to INCORRECT results.”

“It does not get much worse than that,” he later added.

…In another 2019 email, Coomer wrote, “we don’t address our weaknesses effectively!”

Less than a week before the 2020 presidential election, Coomer conceded in an email that “our sh-t is just riddled with bugs.”

Mark Beckstrand, a Dominion Sales Manager, testified in a deposition that “other parties ‘have gotten ahold of [Dominion’s] equipment illicitly’ in the past,” according to the defense brief.

“Beckstrand,” the brief continues, “identified specific instances in Georgia and North Carolina and testified that a Dominion machine was ‘hacked’ in Michigan” and “confirmed that these security failures were ‘reported about in the news.'”

After the 2020 election, “a security expert told the media that Dominion ‘software should be designed to detect and prevent th[e] kind of glitch’ experienced in Antrim County, Michigan,” according to the defense, and “Coomer told Dominion Vice President Kay Stimson: ‘He’s not entirely wrong.'”

A conspiracy is only a conspiracy until it turns out to be true.

When The Government Interferes With Medical Treatment

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On Monday, Townhall reported on a lawsuit filed by a group of doctors against the Food and Drug Administration.

The article reports:

In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, a group of doctors sued the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Health and Human Services for “unlawfully” interfering with their ability to practice medicine and prescribe ivermectin for use in Covid-19 patients.

Specifically, the three doctors—Robert L. Apter, Mary Talley Bowden and Paul E. Marik—argue the FDA can’t ban use of an approved human drug for “off-label” use. 

“The FDA also can not advise whether a patient should take an approved drug for a particular purpose. Those decisions fall within the scope of the doctor-patient relationship,” the complaint says. “Attempts by the FDA to influence or intervene in the doctor-patient relationship amount to interference with the practice of medicine, the regulation of which is — and always has been — reserved to states.”

The article concludes:

In a statement, Bowden said “fighting the system has been a much bigger challenge than fighting the disease.“

“Despite my excellent track record treating COVID patients, the FDA’s smear campaign against ivermectin continues to be a daily hurdle to overcome,” she said. “I am fighting back – the public needs to understand what the FDA has done is illegal, and I hope this suit will prevent them from continuing to interfere in the doctor-patient relationship.”

The government’s handling of the use of ivermectin in concerning. It was proven early on that if you administered ivermectin to Covid patients early, the results were positive. The fact that the government opposed the use of ivermectin is puzzling. Hopefully the disclosure portion of this lawsuit will shed some light on that.

Good Idea

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The cancel culture often hurts the people it claims to want to help. Well, some of the people recently cancelled have decided to fight back.

Just the News posted an article on Monday about a lawsuit brought against Major League Baseball by a group of Atlanta business owners.

The article reports:

A small business group on Monday evening sued Major League Baseball, its commissioner Rob Manfred and the head of professional baseball players union Tony Clark alleging their efforts to move this summer’s All-Star game from Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new election integrity law unlawfully inflicted “staggering” damages on businesses in the region.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by the Job Creators Network alleges MLB violated the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1871 and committed “tortious interference” in business by canceling the game over a political matter.

It seeks damages of at least $100 million for the businesses of Atlanta as well as an order to restore the game this summer to the Atlanta Braves home stadium, Truist Park.

“MLB Defendants intended to punish Georgians because their state enacted a reasonable ballot-integrity statute and to coerce Georgia and its duly elected government to surrender Georgia’s sovereignty in our federal system,” the lawsuit charged.

It said the true victims were small businesses who spent money and made plans for two years to host the All-Star Game based on MLB’s promise, only to see it canceled.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article which includes a link to the complaint. The decision by Major League Baseball was based on faulty information and should be met with a lawsuit.

An Administration That Does Not Enforce The Law

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On Tuesday Judicial Watch posted the following in its Corruption Chronicles section:

States Say ICE Stops Issuing Detainers for Illegal Immigrant Convicts, Revokes Them for Dozens

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has long complained about police in sanctuary cities that fail to honor its detainers, instead releasing serious criminals in the U.S. rather than turn them over to get deported. Now two states are suing the Homeland Security agency for failing to issue detainer requests for convicted felons in the country illegally, forcing local authorities to free them after completing their sentence rather than turning them over to the feds for removal. It seems that the tables have turned under the Biden administration, according to the lawsuit, filed this month by officials in Texas and Louisiana.

The states claim that ICE has reversed a Trump era policy and is not issuing detainer requests for dangerous illegal aliens imprisoned in their jurisdiction. “As a result, many convicted criminal aliens have been released to society after their sentences, contrary to Congress’s mandate that they be detained pending their removal from the United States,” according to their complaint, filed this month in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas Victoria Division. Besides ICE, the defendants include the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and various officials at the DHS agencies. The lawsuit begins by stating that “the Biden Administration is refusing to take custody of criminal aliens despite federal statutes requiring it to do so.” Instead, the document reads, defendants “have issued and implemented unlawful agency memoranda that allow criminal aliens already convicted of felony offenses to roam free in the United States. Such aliens belong in federal custody, as Congress required.”

Adding insult to injury, officials in the Lone Star State reveal in the court document that the Biden administration has taken the extra step of revoking ICE detainer requests for a multitude of illegal immigrants convicted of felonies and serving sentences in prisons operated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Many were found guilty in a U.S. court of serious drug offenses, including possession, manufacturing, and sale. “President Biden’s outright refusal to enforce the law is exacerbating an unprecedented border crisis,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “By failing to take custody of criminal aliens and giving no explanation for this reckless policy change, the Biden Administration is demonstrating a blatant disregard for Texans’ and Americans’ safety. Law and order must be immediately upheld and enforced to ensure the safety of our communities. Dangerous and violent illegal aliens must be removed from our communities as required by federal law.” In 2019 Texas housed nearly 9,000 undocumented criminal aliens at a cost of more than $152 million, according to the lawsuit.

In Louisiana ICE is not removing individuals subject to mandatory deportation, the complaint says, causing convicted felons incarcerated in state facilities to be released in local communities throughout the Bayou State. Louisiana, more than any other state, has greater risk due to the large number of local jails that are used to house detainees prior to removal, according to Attorney General Jeff Landry. “The President’s refusal to enforce the law only worsens an already dire border crisis,” Landry said. “Law and order must prevail; dangerous and violent criminal aliens must not be allowed to roam free in our communities.” Both states assert that the administration is violating binding agreements with DHS to assist in immigration enforcement and national security missions as well the Constitution, Immigration and Nationality Act and Administrative Procedure Act, which require the government to post proposed substantive rule changes in the Federal Register and allow the public to comment on them before enacting them.

For years ICE has slammed sanctuary cities nationwide for refusing to honor a local-federal partnership known as 287(g) that notifies the agency of jail inmates in the country illegally so that they can be deported after serving time for state crimes. Before Biden became president, ICE repeatedly issued statements reminding sanctuary cities and states that when law enforcement agencies fail to honor immigration detainers and release serious criminal offenders onto the streets, it undermines its ability protect public safety and carry out its mission. The agency even launched a billboard campaign seeking the public’s help in capturing felons released by one state’s sanctuary policy.

The actions of the Biden administration are not contributing to public safety. The lawsuit is necessary. Hopefully the states will win their case.

 

Will The Tenth Amendment Stand?

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The American Spectator posted an article today about the recently passed coronavirus relief bill.

The article reports:

Well, that didn’t take long. The first major bill passed by the new Democratic congressional majority and signed into law by our new president on March 11 had already provoked a constitutional challenge by March 17. The attorney general of Ohio filed suit against the Biden administration last Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, alleging that the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) unconstitutionally and coercively limits the right of states to manage their internal fiscal policies: “This suit challenges an unconstitutional provision in the American Rescue Plan Act — a provision that allows the federal government to commandeer state taxing authority.”

If the use of “commandeer” in this context seems vaguely familiar, it’s probably a vestigial memory of the Obama administration’s failed attempt to exert equally questionable control over state budgets using the mandatory Medicaid provision of Obamacare. Fortunately, in NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that such coercion is unconstitutional. Ohio’s ARPA challenge involves a provision whereby $195.3 billion in fiscal recovery aid will be distributed among the states and the District of Columbia. Beyond its effect on the federal budget deficit, this doesn’t seem particularly pernicious. The real problem arises from the restrictions the provision imposes on the power of the states to reduce taxes:

A State or territory shall not use the funds provided under this section or transferred pursuant to section 603(c)(4) to either directly or indirectly offset a reduction in the net tax revenue of such State or territory resulting from a change in law, regulation or administrative interpretation during the covered period that reduces any tax (by providing for a reduction in a rate, a rebate, a deduction, a credit or otherwise) or delays the imposition of any tax or tax increase.

This constitutionally dubious language was inserted into the legislation by the Democrats at the last minute, the New York Times reports, for the express purpose of interfering with the ability of the states to make changes in their tax codes. It is a deliberate and insolent attack by the federal government on state sovereignty and the doctrine of federalism. As Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost puts it in his Motion for Preliminary Injunction, “The Tax Mandate thus gives the States a choice: they can have either the badly needed federal funds or their sovereign authority to set state tax policy. But they cannot have both. In our current economic crisis, that is no choice at all. It is a metaphorical ‘gun to the head.’ ”

The coronavirus relief bill actually punishes fiscally responsible states and rewards fiscally irresponsible states, so it is no surprise that the law would actually limit the ability of states to improve their economies by lowering taxes. In the world envisioned by the current Democrat party, we would all pay more taxes and government would have more control over our lives. Never in the history of America have Americans been given government guidelines as to their activities in their own backyards on Independence Day. I fear that this is only the beginning of the power grab by those currently in control of Washington.

Pettiness On Parade

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The cancel culture’s attack on President Trump has soared to new heights since he left office. We have reached the point where in some circles it is probably a crime to mention his name in any positive way. This is not only ridiculous, it is not helpful in building unity in America. Half of the country (at least) voted for President Trump. Those in the media might do well to remember that.

Hot Air posted an article today that illustrates how ridiculous things have gotten.

The article reports:

We learned last month that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was cooking up a plan to cancel all of the Trump organization’s contracts with the city. Those contracts involve the operation of a golf course, the carousel in Central Park and two skating rinks. The contracts were set to expire in April anyway, but apparently, the city’s showboating mayor couldn’t wait that long. It was just announced that de Blasio wants the Trump-owned operations shut down and moved out by February 26. (In one week.) That means that operations will end tomorrow to give them time to pack everything up. So any children showing up to go skating this week will find the rinks closed for business.

First we keep the children out of school, then we deny them outdoor recreation, and then we wonder why they might be depressed.

The article continues:

This pathetic move by de Blasio is being done for partisan political reasons and he’s not even trying to hide it. One of his spokespeople said three weeks ago that “Trump has been impeached from operating the ice rink.”

Like a bad dart player who always misses the bullseye, Bill de Blasio has misfired yet again and hit the wrong target. He’s not doing all that much “punishing” of the Trump organization because they were going to be out in less than ten weeks anyway. But in his haste to generate another headline as a hero of the #RESISTANCE, the Mayor shut down the skating operations without having anyone lined up to take over and run them. So the rest of the skating season in Central Park has been “canceled” rather than Donald Trump.

As we discussed here when Bill’s plan was originally announced, Hizzoner has probably set the city up for some legal and financial problems while simultaneously icing out anyone who enjoys skating. Eric Trump had already made it clear that he would be going to court if de Blasio made good on his threat and terminated the contract early.

The Mayor claims that the contracts contain a provision allowing for early cancellation if the contractor is found to be engaged in “illegal activity.” The entire basis for his claim of illegal activity is the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill. But Donald Trump hasn’t been convicted of any crime related to that, nor even charged in a court of law. (Impeachment doesn’t count and he wasn’t convicted in that “court” either.) On top of that, Trump doesn’t personally operate the division of the company that runs the skating rinks. His son does.

The article notes that if Eric Trump sues the city and wins, the taxpayers will be on the hook for the damages. New York City has paid a high price for electing Mayor de Blasio, and it appears that the price is about to go higher.

 

Making Progress Two Weeks At A Time

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Yesterday The Epoch Times reported:

A federal judge in Texas extended the suspension of President Joe Biden’s 100-day moratorium on deportations until Feb. 23.

U.S. District Court Judge Drew Tipton in the Southern District of Texas on Tuesday ruled that the federal government cannot make immigration enforcement changes without consulting Texas. As a result, he extended the temporary restraining order by another 14 days, asserting that the state of Texas would face more harm than the federal government if the extension wasn’t granted.

”The irreparable harm that would accrue to Texas if an extension of the [temporary restraining order] is not granted before consideration of its motion for a preliminary injunction is more substantial than any harm incurred by the defendants,” wrote Tipton in his ruling, adding that his ruling will give parties more time to “provide for a more fulsome record” to assist the court in “adjudicating Texas’s motion for a preliminary injunction.”

This is the information on the lawsuit that has resulted in the suspension:

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, sued the Biden administration over its order to pause some deportations, asserting that the White House would violate its agreement with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S.-Mexico border security, and instead requires 180 days’ notice to change immigration policy.

“On its first day in office, the Biden Administration cast aside congressionally enacted immigration laws and suspended the removal of illegal aliens whose removal is compelled by those very laws. In doing so, it ignored basic constitutional principles and violated its written pledge to work cooperatively with the State of Texas to address shared immigration enforcement concerns,” Paxton’s lawsuit said. “This unlawful reversal will cause Texas immediate and irreparable harm if it is not enjoined.”

So why is a secure border important? Well, Mexico has a high rate of the coronavirus–if Americans are being told to wear masks, socially distance, and get the vaccine, why are we letting unmasked, unvaccinated groups of illegals potentially create a ‘super-spreader’ event? Why are we letting the cartels bring drugs and human trafficking victims across the border unchecked? Why are we allowing potential terrorists into the country without being screened? The Biden administration’s immigration policy is not only a threat to the safety and security of Americans, it will also result in higher unemployment for Americans. We need more states to sue and more judges to stand up for the rule of law.

This Is Not Good For Our Country

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John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog today about the lawsuit brought by the Trump campaign against the State of Pennsylvania. The law firm handling one aspect of the case has been pressured by anti-Trump types to withdraw from participation in the lawsuit.

The article reports:

A law firm representing the Trump campaign in its challenges to the Pennsylvania election results gave notice that it’s withdrawing from one of the cases.

Lawyers with Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP submitted a filing late Thursday stating they were withdrawing as counsel in a federal suit seeking to block Pennsylvania from certifying its vote. No reason was given. In a statement issued Friday, the firm confirmed the filing but did not say why it was exiting the case.

The Trump campaign issued the following statement:

“Leftist mobs descended upon some of the lawyers representing the President’s campaign and they buckled,” said Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the campaign. “If the target were anyone but Donald Trump, the media would be screaming about injustice and the fundamental right to legal representation. The President’s team is undeterred and will move forward with rock-solid attorneys to ensure free and fair elections for all Americans.”

The article concludes:

Not many years ago, every terrorist in Guantanamo Bay was represented by one of a group of America’s top law firms. For free. No one batted an eye. Now, the President of the United States is having trouble getting lawyers to represent him in asserting perfectly legitimate claims. Some dictator.

This is the latest instance of the most troubling trend in American culture, leftist bullying. Rare is the company (or, as in this case, the law firm) with the courage to stand up against it. It is a serious threat to the liberty of all Americans.

Regardless of your political leanings, you need to look at this carefully. If a law firm can be bullied into not representing someone because of political pressure, what chance do you and I have for equal justice under the law? These are mafia tactics that will only get worse if they are not stopped.

 

The Voters File A Lawsuit

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The Epoch Times is reporting today that three Wisconsin voters have filled a lawsuit against three of the state’s counties.

The article reports:

Three voters in Wisconsin have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to exclude Nov. 3 election results in three of the state’s counties that helped push Joe Biden ahead of President Donald Trump. The action, if successful, would invalidate over 792,000 votes cast across the state.

The civil action (pdf), filed on Thursday, alleges that there is “sufficient evidence that illegal votes were counted” in Milwaukee, Dane, and Menominee counties “to change or place in doubt the results” of the presidential election in the counties. The voters asked the court to declare that the counties’ results “must be invalidated” and to block the counties from certifying their results.

All three counties lean heavily Democrat, with Milwaukee and Dane being among the most populous and heavily Democratic counties in the state. For the three counties, Biden holds a lead of 365,289 votes over Trump. In the state overall, Biden holds a lead of about 20,540 votes at 49.6 percent, compared to Trump at 48.9 percent as of Saturday. The Trump campaign has signaled it will request a recount.

The article includes some of the claims made in the lawsuit. One claim has to do with analyzing the data:

The lawsuit states that plaintiffs “possess advanced technical capability to conduct statistical analyses identifying errors and anomalies such [as] double votes, votes by non-registered persons, votes by persons who are deceased or moved out of state, and the like.”

“Plaintiffs have persons with such expertise and data-analysis software already in place who have begun preliminary analysis of available data to which final data, such as the official poll list, will be added and reports generated,” the suit said, suggesting that the results will show that “sufficient illegal ballots were included in the results to change or place in doubt the Nov. 3 presidential election results.”

They said that the expert report will “identify persons who cast votes illegally by casting multiple ballots, were deceased, had moved, or were otherwise not qualified to vote in the Nov. 3 presidential election, along with evidence of illegal ballot stuffing, ballot harvesting, and other illegal voting.”

The plaintiffs are seeking “immediate production of registration, election, and other data to conduct and present those analyses to the court.”

I have read other articles stating that there are statistical anomalies in some of the voting numbers in a few states. It will be interesting to see as this lawsuit continues exactly what those anomalies are and how they impact the total votes. I suspect we will see similar legal action on other states where the election totals are questionable.

This Is Becoming More Obvious

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Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about a group of black pro-life people who have filed a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood charging the organization with racial discrimination.

The article reports:

According to an announcement released last week at Christian Newswire, the National Black Pro-Life Coalition filed the racial discrimination claim with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).

Catherine Davis, president of the Georgia-based Restoration Project, said in a statement:

Systemic racism and abortion intersect at the door of Planned Parenthood, an organization that has targeted Black women and their babies for almost five decades. These intentional actions violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made it illegal for recipients of federal assistance to discriminate on the basis of race.

The article notes:

Walter Hoye, founder of the Issues4Life Foundation, observed abortion has become “the leading cause of death for Blacks,” an outcome that has led to a 1.8 fertility rate, less than the 2.1 rate needed to replace the population.

“At this rate, by 2050 the total Black fertility rate will be 1.3 or lower, a rate that is irreversible,” he said.

In recent months, some Planned Parenthood employees have accused the organization of a racist environment in some workplaces.

Alexis McGill Johnson, the CEO of Planned Parenthood, said in response to the accusations of “misconduct, abuse, racism and more, do not align with Planned Parenthood’s standards or our values.”

“We are taking steps internally to address” the allegations, she added. “[O]ur country is in the middle of a racial justice reckoning – one that includes Planned Parenthood.”

As you consider this lawsuit, there is something you need to keep in mind.

According to the Britannica website:

Planned Parenthood traces its beginnings to the birth control movement led by Margaret Sanger and her colleagues, who opened the nation’s first birth control clinic in 1916 in a poverty-stricken neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. Created to free women from the “chronic condition” of pregnancy and the dangers of self-induced abortion, the clinic was shut down by police after only 10 days. Sanger and the others were imprisoned for violating the anti-obscenity Comstock Act of 1873. Sanger’s continuing efforts led to the foundation of both the American Birth Control League in 1921 and the Birth Control Federation of America in 1939, which became Planned Parenthood in 1942.

Please investigate the writings of Margaret Sanger. The foundation of Planned Parenthood is based on her work and writings. Even a slight glance at her writings reveals a woman who believed that White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants in America were racially superior to other races and that other races should be limited in their right to reproduce.

This lawsuit has been a long time coming, but at last someone has decided to take action against racism in its most obvious form.

This Could Get Very Interesting

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Yesterday Julie Kelly at  American Greatness reported that Lin Wood, the attorney who represented Nick Sandmann and the other Covington High School students in their defamation lawsuits against various media outlets, has been hired by Carter Page.

The article reports:

On Sunday, Wood confirmed he will represent another innocent person maligned and defamed by the American news media: Carter Page, the Trump campaign associate who James Comey’s FBI accused of acting as an agent of Russia. 

Page was the target of four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants. The most powerful, invasive government tools—usually reserved for suspected foreign terrorists—were unleashed against Page as a way to infiltrate and spy on Team Trump.

But the FISAs were only part of Page’s personal hell. Tipped off by Democratic operatives as a way to seed the concocted Trump-Russia collusion hoax before the presidential election, journalists started harassing Page in the summer of 2016. 

His first call, Page told me in 2018, was from a Wall Street Journal reporter hounding Page about an alleged meeting with a “senior Kremlin official” and the existence of compromising material that Russia allegedly had on Trump and Hillary Clinton. (Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson was a Journal reporter for years.)

In an interview with Page in 2018, he told me that his real nightmare began in September 2016 after Michael Isikoff, a veteran political journalist and writer for Yahoo News, reported that Page was under federal investigation for his ties to the Kremlin. 

“U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials—including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president,” Isikoff disclosed on September 23, 2016. “The activities of Trump adviser Carter Page, who has extensive business interests in Russia, have been discussed with senior members of Congress during recent briefings about suspected efforts by Moscow to influence the presidential election.”

The article includes a tweet from Lin Wood which lists the targets of the lawsuits he is planning. Please follow the link to the article to see a list of targets the author of the article thinks should be added to the current list.

Very Interesting

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On Monday, Judicial Watch posted the following Press Release:

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation against the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for communications and other records of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Deputy Director H. Clifford Lane with and about the World Health Organization (WHO) concerning the novel coronavirus (Daily Caller News Foundation v. U.S. Department Justice (No. 1:20-cv-01149)).

The suit was filed after HHS failed to respond to an April 1, 2020, FOIA request seeking:

  • Communications between Dr. Fauci and Deputy Director Lane and World Health Organization officials concerning the novel coronavirus.
  • Communications of Dr. Fauci and Deputy Director Lane concerning WHO, WHO official Bruce Aylward, WHO Director General Tedros Anhanom, and China.

The time period for the request is January 1, 2020 to April 1, 2020.

Additionally, the DCNF requested and was granted expedited processing of its request.

In March 2020, Fauci praised the work of the WHO and their chairman, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying: “Tedros is really an outstanding person … I mean, obviously, over the years anyone who says that the WHO has not had problems has not been watching the WHO. But I think under his leadership they’ve done very well.”

In April, President Trump announced a halt to funding the World Health Organization. According to the president, the WHO put “political correctness over lifesaving measures.” Additionally, President Trump said: “The WHO failed in this duty, and must be held accountable,” adding that the WHO ignored “credible information” in December 2019 that the virus could be transmitted from human to human.

Daily Caller News Foundation Co-Founder and President Neil Patel said: “This virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people and turned the whole world upside down. We know that China and WHO could have done a lot more to prevent or reduce this catastrophe. We therefore have a legitimate and urgent news purpose for seeking these documents regarding U.S. officials’ communications with WHO and demand that the agencies in question stop stalling and start following the law that entitles us to this vital information.”

“It is urgent that the NIH follow transparency law during the coronavirus crisis,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is of significant public interest to learn what WHO was telling our top medical officials about the coronavirus that originated in China.”

This Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone

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The Epoch Times posted an article today about a sexual assault case in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. The alleged assault took place in a gender-neutral bathroom in a high school. I sincerely question if the people who came up with the idea of gender-neutral bathrooms were ever teenagers. Unfortunately we don’t live in a world that can safely support the idea of gender-neutral bathrooms. I’m not sure that world ever existed, but it does not exist now.

The article reports:

According to News 9 WOAW, 18-year-old Austin Sauer was arrested on Thursday on charges of child enticement, fourth-degree sexual assault, and exposing genitals to a child, the sex of whom has not been reported.

The Wisconsin state law defines fourth-degree sexual assault as “sexual contact with a person without the consent of that person.”

An officer from the Oneida County Sheriff’s Department told the local ABC affiliate that the incident took place in a gender-neutral bathroom at Rhinelander High School. The school has promptly closed that bathroom.

In a statement released to WOAW, Rhinelander School District Superintendent Kelli Jacobi said that “both students went into the bathroom voluntarily.”

“This was not a random incident, as both students went into the bathroom voluntarily,” she said. “The male student will no longer be able to be on school grounds, and the gender-neutral bathroom is no longer available to students.”

The article concludes:

Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision in a privacy lawsuit against a public school district in Dallas, Oregon. A panel of three judges ruled in favor of the school district, saying that it did not violate federal law or constitutional rights with a “student safety plan” that allows transgender students to use bathroom, locker, and shower facilities that “match their self-identified gender.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court last May refused to hear an appeal in a case from Pennsylvania, in which lower federal courts upheld a school district’s policy of permitting transgender students to use restrooms or locker rooms matching their gender identity. Four students, who felt uncomfortable with the policy, sued the school district on the basis that it violated their privacy rights and federal laws under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

It seems to me that common sense needs to be part of this discussion. The majority of our high school students are not transgender. Those students are entitled to privacy. There is no reason for a student with male genitals to be in a high school girls’ locker room. I don’t know exactly what provisions would have to be made, but I wouldn’t want my granddaughters to have to deal with boys in their locker room. If they still have their male body parts, they are boys and do not belong in the girls’ locker room. If they no longer belong in the boys’ locker room, then other facilities need to be made available.

An Attempt At Justice

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about lawsuits brought by Carter Page. It seems to be common knowledge that before being targeted by the Obama administration as a back door to spy on the Trump campaign, Carter Page had done a lot of work for three-letter government agencies and was regarded as a reliable source of information.

The article reports:

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court against the Democratic National Committee, law firm Perkins Coie and its partners tied to the funding of the unverified dossier that served as the basis for highly controversial surveillance warrants against him.

…“This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” attorney John Pierce said Thursday. “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.”

He added: “This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high. … The rule of law will prevail.”

The lawsuit will be heard in the Federal District Court in Northern Illinois.

The article concludes:

Page could sue Steele, except that Steele is in England and has made it clear that he doesn’t plan to visit the U.S., ever again. Nearly all potential defendants other than Steele–Comey, Clapper, McCabe and the like–would try to erect a firewall by denying any knowledge that the Steele dossier was a fraud.

Whether such guilty knowledge could be proved is doubtful. At a minimum, Page will have to get far enough to conduct meaningful discovery against the existing defendants. Do the DNC’s or Perkins Coie’s emails contain evidence of a conspiracy to lie about Carter Page, for the purpose of damaging Donald Trump? Who knows? If the participants were careful, they don’t; then again, those who were talking to each other in 2016 and 2017 probably didn’t foresee that their actions might one day be exposed in court. So perhaps they were careless. Maybe, too, any such communications were deleted or destroyed long ago.

There is at least one obvious exception to the above analysis–the DOJ lawyer who misrepresented a CIA email to the FISA court. The email said that Carter Page was a CIA asset. The lawyer changed it to say that Page was not a CIA asset. That guy, who has been fired and I assume will be criminally prosecuted, has no defense other than causation. He likely would argue that he was just a cog in a giant wheel of lies, and that Page would have been equally defamed, surveilled and harassed even if he hadn’t lied about the CIA email. Which undoubtedly is true, although it is questionable as a defense.

What Carter Page is doing is noble. Let’s hope he succeeds in shedding light on the biggest political scandal, by far, in American history.

Finally, a fun fact: Page is represented by the same lawyers who are representing Tulsi Gabbard in her defamation case against Hillary Clinton, who called Gabbard a Russian asset. Which, of course, is what she and her minions also called Carter Page, an equally absurd lie.

Stay tuned.

This Is Getting Ridiculous

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No, this isn’t a post about impeachment (although that, too, is getting ridiculous). Scott Johnson posted an article today at Power Line Blog about a lawsuit brought by Representative Tulsi Gabbard against Hillary Clinton. This is interesting–a few years ago, no one would have dared bring a lawsuit against the ‘powerful’ Clinton family.

The article reports:

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has sued Madam Hillary Clinton for defamation in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Gabbard’s press release is posted online here; Gabbard’s Complaint is posted online here.

Clinton defamed Gabbard as a “Russian asset” in a statement that did not call her out by name, though I don’t think there can be any doubt that Clinton’s statement was “of and concerning” Gabbard. Identification of the plaintiff in the defamatory statement is of course an essential element of the cause of action for slander or libel. Gabbard’s Complaint addresses the issue in paragraph 28 et seq.

Is the statement that Gabbard is a “Russian asset” protected as a statement of opinion (rather than one of fact)? I hope not. See generally Complaint paragraphs 26-46.

The Complaint recites Gabbard’s request for a retraction from Clinton. Madam Hillary has declined to retract. See Complaint paragraphs 23-25.

The article concludes:

In the second sentence of her Complaint Gabbard asserts: “Tulsi Gabbard is running
for President of the United States, a position Clinton has long coveted, but has not been able to attain.” I look forward to checking out Clinton’s response on this point when she files her Answer.

Let the good times roll.

This is interesting because it puts Hillary Clinton in the spotlight (not in a positive way) at a time when some of the Democrats running for President are sidelined by the impeachment. There is still some conventional wisdom that sees a brokered Democrat convention with Hillary Clinton emerging as the candidate. The next six months are going to be very interesting.

This May Be The Only Way To Deal With Fake News

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Yesterday Power Line Blog posted an article about Nick Sandmann and his lawsuit against CNN.

The article reports:

Nick Sandmann is an innocent kid who was waiting for a bus with a group of his fellow high school students in Washington, D.C., when he was accosted by an Indian activist who, accompanied by a gang of his followers, aggressively and obnoxiously beat a drum in his face. Sandmann committed the apparently unpardonable sin of standing still in the face of this activist onslaught, which caused him to be viciously smeared by media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post. Happily, Sandmann’s family retained a good lawyer and has sued several of the media outlets that lied about him.

Now the first domino has fallen: CNN has settled Sandmann’s case against it:

CNN agreed Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann.

The amount of the settlement was not made public during a hearing at the federal courthouse in Covington, Kentucky.

Sandmann’s lawsuit sought $800 million from CNN, the Washington Post and NBC Universal. Trial dates are still not set for Sandmann’s lawsuit against NBC Universal and the Washington Post.

The amount of the settlement has not been disclosed, which is evidently not unusual in this type of court case.

The article concludes:

In this instance, I am pretty sure that it was CNN, one of the main malefactors, that didn’t want the world to know how much it paid Sandmann as a result of its pathetically biased reporting. Now Sandmann’s lawyers can use CNN’s contribution, likely in the mid six figures, to fund their ongoing battle against the Washington Post, NBC and any others who slandered the boy. That is how the system works, and in this case, it appears to be working for the good.

This may actually be the only way to deal with fake news.

How Many Times Do Voters Have To Pass This To Make It Law?

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A 2016 article at CNN reported:

A federal appeals court Friday overturned parts of North Carolina’s 2013 voting law, including provisions that required voters to show a photo identification card, saying they were enacted “with racially discriminatory intent” in violation of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.

“We cannot ignore the record evidence that, because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Diana Motz wrote.

This was the third federal court ruling against voter identification laws this month. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled July 20 that Texas’ voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act, and federal judges softened a Wisconsin law on July 19.

The voters responded by passing an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution in November 2018 that required voter id.

The Carolina Journal continues the story today:

 A federal court gave North Carolinians who adopted a constitutional amendment requiring voter ID a late lump of coal.

U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs and Magistrate Judge Patrick Auld issued a notice Thursday, Dec. 26, saying the court will put the law implementing the constitutional amendment on hold. They’re presiding over a lawsuit challenging the law requiring voters to present a state-approved form of identification at the polls. The court said it will issue an order next week.

…What happens next is anyone’s guess. The defendants in the lawsuit who have standing to file an appeal may choose not to, jeopardizing the voter ID requirement for the March 2020 primary.

The N.C. chapter of the NAACP filed the lawsuit a year ago, saying the 2018 implementing law was too much like earlier voter ID attempts that were ruled unconstitutional. Senate Bill 824 became law Dec. 19, 2018, over Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.

But in its lawsuit, the NAACP didn’t include the General Assembly among the defendants, even though legislators passed the law being challenged. The only defendants are Cooper (who vetoed S.B. 824) and the members of the State Board of Elections.

Legislative leaders asked the court in January to join the lawsuit. Biggs rejected the request, saying the elections board could defend the law.

County elections boards were told Thursday the voter ID informational mailing was scrapped.

It is significant that the only defendants are Governor Cooper and the State Board of Elections. My guess is that the Governor will choose not to oppose the ruling and we will have to vote for voter id again. The legislature passed voter id laws a few years ago, and the voters amended the Constitution to require voter id last year. The court is taking away the rights of the voters and of the legislature. That should not be allowed to stand.

I Guess There Just Isn’t Any Truth In Advertising These Days

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Yesterday Hot Air posted an article about a recent lawsuit against ice cream makers Ben & Jerry. Ben & Jerry’s owners are liberals who very openly support liberal causes. Their advertising claims that in harmony with their ideas about the humane treatment of animals ans the environment, their ice cream is made from milk from happy cows. I never really considered the emotional well being of the cows that supplied the milk for my ice cream, but I suppose it is a somewhat valid concern. Well, evidently all of the milk does not come from happy cows.

The article reports:

Since most of this week in Washington is already shaping up to be a festival of the ridiculous, we may as well toss a few more logs on the bonfire. Up in Vermont, Ben & Jerry’s, the famously liberal ice cream company, is being taken to court over fraudulent advertising, along with its parent company, Unilever. But this suit has nothing to do with the quality or safety of their product. An environmentalist is suing them because of their advertisements claiming that their creamy products are made from milk from “happy cows.” Not so, says the plaintiff! Apparently, many of the cows are simply miserable.

Ben & Jerry’s and parent company Unilever are being sued for false advertising by an environmental advocate who claims the milk and cream used to make flavors like Phish Food are deceptively marketed as coming from “happy cows.”

In a complaint filed Oct. 31 in federal court in Burlington, Vermont, where Ben & Jerry’s was founded, environmental advocate James Ehlers accuses the company and Unilever of deceiving consumers who buy the ice cream because of its pastoral and progessive image.

“During the past several years, Unilever has breached consumer trust by representing the Ben & Jerry’s Products as being made with milk and cream sourced exclusively from “happy cows” on Vermont dairies that participate in a special, humane “Caring Dairy” program,” the lawsuit claims.

The complaint alleges that less than half of the milk used is from the “Caring Dairy” program.

The article explains the program (and the problem):

USA Today looked into the question and found that the Caring Dairy program is indeed real. In order to qualify, farms have to follow certain regulations for how the cows are raised and what sort of environmental “carbon footprint” the operation has. But it’s not all that large, with only 65 farms in the Netherlands and the United States qualifying.

Even if Ben & Jerry’s had cornered the market on all of them, they probably wouldn’t produce enough milk to meet their needs. The company claims they “hope” to work with more farms like these going forward, but it certainly sounds as if they’re not using 100% “happy cow” milk. So maybe the plaintiff is correct.

I am strongly in favor of treating animals humanely. However, I also believe that animals are not people. What we need here is a sense of balance.

When Our Legal System Abandons Common Sense

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NJ.com posted an article recently about a seven-year legal case involving a junior varsity baseball coach.

The article explains:

John Suk sits with shoulders slouched and his head down at the defendant’s table in Courtroom 301, a stuffy wood-paneled space inside the Somerset County judicial complex. The 31-year-old middle school teacher scribbles in a notebook as his reputation is shredded.

The plaintiff’s attorneys in Civil Docket No. L-000629-15 have spent two full days portraying the co-defendant as an inattentive and unqualified lout. He is, they argue, a villain who destroyed the future of a teenager he was supposed to protect.

So what horrible crime is this man charged with?

The article continues:

“He must be held accountable for what he did,” one of the plaintiff’s two attorneys tells jurors during opening arguments.

The attacks intensify when Suk takes the witness stand to defend himself on a split-second decision he made seven years earlier. He is accused of taking a reckless course of action that showed a callous disregard for another person’s safety.

He sounds like an awful person. Then you remember what Suk did to end up here.

He instructed a player he was coaching during a junior varsity baseball game to slide.

Not into an active volcano.

Not into a shark tank.

Into third base.

This is the crux of the story:

The visiting team was leading, 6-0, in the top of the second inning when Mesar, batting for the second time, laced a line drive over the left fielder’s head.

Two runs scored. Mesar rounded second and headed for third. And next, a sickening sound echoed across the diamond as he hit the ground.

“POP!”

As Mesar wailed in agony, Suk (pronounced SOOK) rushed to his side. So did the player’s father, Rob Mesar, who was keeping the scorebook in the dugout. An ambulance arrived. No one knew it then, but that promising freshman — two innings into his high school career — would never play another baseball game.

“I felt bad for my parents,” Jake Mesar, now 22 and attending Rutgers, testifies on the second day of the trial. “They would never be able to see me play.”

Baseball was the least of his worries. Even after three surgeries, the ankle was not improving — one doctor even presented amputation as a possible outcome. A specialist from the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, Robert Rozbruch, found post-traumatic arthritis and signs of necrosis — evidence the bone was dying.

Mesar needed two more surgeries, including one to inject stem cells into the ankle tissue, and he was fit with an external fixator, a stabilizing frame to keep the bones properly positioned. The injury improved, but Rozbruch told the once-active teenager to avoid high-impact activities. Even jogging.

When it comes time for Rozbruch to testify, he abandons the clinical language of his profession and makes it clear that Mesar’s baseball dreams died on third base that day.

“He will never recover fully,” the doctor says.

It is more than a physical injury. Mesar has endured frequent bouts of depression and a pair of panic attacks, including one that sent him from a family party on Christmas Eve to the emergency room. The injury is, as his lawyer tells the jury, “something he has to live with every minute, every hour, every day of his life.”

All of this, to use a decidedly non-legal word, sucks. How can anyone sit here, listen to his story and not have your heart break?

Still, injuries happen. That is at the cold reality of sports. Did the coach sitting with his head down at the defense table really ruin this kid’s life?

The coach won the case, but the article asks an interesting question at the end:

I ask him (John Suk) to consider the other scenario: What would have happened if he lost?

“It’s the end of high school sports,” he says. “The coaching profession would be under heavy scrutiny for everything that happens. Coaches are going to have to have insurance like doctors have for malpractice. School districts are not going to want to take the risk of having sports.”

He takes a long pull from his bottle of water.

The clouds that had covered the sky for most of the day are clearing, giving hope that North Brunswick’s summer team might not lose another day off the calendar to bad weather.

The case is closed. The weight is lifted. He checks his watch, shakes my hand, then heads off to find his car. He has to hurry.

He has a baseball game to coach.

People get injured in sports. Coaches do what they can to prevent injuries, but injuries happen. This lawsuit should have been dropped the moment it showed up in court.

Holding The Media Responsible

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Yesterday Breitbart reported that a federal judge has reversed his previous ruling and allowed Covington Catholic pro-life student Nick Sandmann to proceed with his defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post.

The article reports:

Judge William O. Bertelsman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, a Jimmy Carter appointee, partially reversed his previous ruling in which he dismissed Sandmann’s $275 million lawsuit. The reversal will permit the Covington student’s lawsuit to proceed, reported LifeSiteNews.

Following the March for Life in Washington, DC, in January, many media outlets alleged a video depicted Sandmann, wearing a red “Make American Great Again” cap, and fellow students from Covington Catholic High School, as intimidating Native American activist Nathan Phillips near the Lincoln Memorial.

As Breitbart News reported, Sandmann “became the focus of the anti-Trump media” as an extended video and additional in-person reports of the confrontation showed it was Phillips who had intimidated Sandmann while the teen and his fellow classmates were simply performing school cheers as a group of Black Hebrew Israelites shouted racist insults.

The article concludes:

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said in a statement to Breitbart News that, each day, her organization “defends the free speech rights of students to stand for life in public in what is supposed to be a free society.”

She continued:

The mistreatment of students as they attended the March for Life should offend all Americans who believe that each of us is protected when we act on our own consciences. It’s a good thing when a judge decides to respect students’ rights to be heard and to be seen with respect.

“As someone who works every day to defend the rights and needs of mothers and their preborn children, I know that the media often ignores and mischaracterizes pro-life Americans,” Hawkins added. “But our system of justice should protect the rights and freedoms of Americans who stand for the weakest among us, those whose life exists in the womb and who don’t have a voice or a vote.”

Hopefully the courts will hold the media for their total mischaracterization of the Covington High School students.

Who Gets To Vote For President

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Only American citizens can vote for President according to No, 18 USC 611[1], passed in 1996, which prevents aliens from voting in federal ( though not necessarily state) elections. This presents a problem for states and municipalities that are allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections. How do you set up your voting rolls to separate those qualified to vote in local elections from those qualified to vote in federal elections? That is the problem that California is now facing.

One America News posted the following video on May 28:

California is facing a new lawsuit over errors in its voter registration system. One America’s Pearson Sharp spoke with Mark Meuser, an election attorney, who said the secretary of state is violating federal law by opening the door for non-citizens to vote.

When America was founded, only property owners were allowed to vote because they were considered to be people who had a stake in the outcome of the election. Men only were allowed to vote because they were considered to represent their households. While I am glad those rules have changed, there was some logic to them. Intact families provide a stable foundation for our communities. People in families tend to be responsible and in the habit of thinking about others. I am not sure that I could say that about all of today’s voters.

 

Child Abuse In Our Schools

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about a lawsuit filed by some parents against an Oregon school district. The case began with an 8-year-old boy with a stomach issue and ends with that child being encouraged to be a girl.

The article reports:

Parents in Woodburn said their 8-year-old son was held back from recess multiple times for one-on-one conversations about his gender identity – and they had no idea.

The mother and father in Woodburn are now suing a school district for nearly a million dollars after they say a second-grade teacher singled out their son by asking him if he was transgender. The parents say the teacher had inappropriate conversations with the child at school without their permission. …

The parents say this all started when their son started using the staff restroom because of a stomach problem. They say their son was uncomfortable using the boy’s bathroom because of his medical condition. However, they believe the teacher assumed their son was uncomfortable because he was transgender.

“Still today, a year later, if he plays with my niece, he’s a girl in that moment… if he plays with my nephew, he’s a boy,” said the mother.

The mother says her son was left confused and hurt after being singled out. Now, a year later, the 9-year-old is taking anxiety medication and going to therapy, according to his parents. The family says the boy’s confusion and emotional distress has also affected the entire family. The father says he’s suffering from panic attacks and the mother says she’s now on medical leave, suffering from anxiety and depression, and staying home from work.

It is entirely possible that the panic attacks and anxiety on the part of the parents might be something of an overreaction, but their complaint is certainly valid.

The article notes:

There’s video at the link, but it’s not embeddable here. Bear in mind that this wasn’t a teenager, which might be bad enough, but an eight year old with a stomach problem. Even granting the best of possible intentions, why wouldn’t the first step in dealing with suspicions of gender dysphoria be to contact the child’s parents? It’s not as if the parents in this case are social neanderthals, at least from the perspective of Academia. They tell reporter Bonnie Silkman in the video that they aren’t concerned about what identity he chooses as long as he chooses it, and not get indoctrinated into it by an activist teacher.

The article concludes:

The most impressively loco part of this story is that the teacher still works at the school — a full year after the school confirmed the parents’ story. The only correction the teacher received was to be reminded of the district’s policies on “controversial issues” and to notify parents and the school when she “alters a student’s regular school day.” Meanwhile, this family will be dealing with the aftershocks of her actions for years.

The school district declined to comment on the story because of the lawsuit, but they might owe an explanation to the other parents in the district, especially to those whose children are within this teacher’s supervision. How many other children has she attempted to indoctrinate into transgender identities? And how many of the parents in this school district — and elsewhere — might start considering private schools or home-schooling to protect their children from predatory behavior?

If I had children in that school district, this article would cause me to consider seriously the option of home-schooling.