The Supreme Court will be hearing arguments regarding an Ohio man whose parody page of his local police department led to criminal charges. The Onion, the widely read satirical publication, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court. It’s awesome. It’s certainly the most amusing legal document I’ve ever read. It starts like this: The…
The political landscape is about to shift for Democrats. It’s unlikely they’ll control both houses of Congress after the November midterm elections. So in the lame-duck sessions that follows the election, they should kill the filibuster, pass major legislation, increase the size of the Supreme Court, and nominate four new justices. Oh yeah. And Joe…
Yesterday, the Supreme Court stopped consideration of all lawsuits in the 2020 election. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. I think he has a point. I just wish he’d made it better. Before you decide to have my innards roasted on a spit, let’s talk about principle. My principle is to evaluate arguments regardless of whether I…
In a one-sentence ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the Trump administration’s plea to overturn the election result in Pennsylvania. But what a sentence! The background: U.S. Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania filed a document to overturn the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and nullify the election result in Pennsylvania, where…
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says there’s a reason why it’s okay to push through confirming a Supreme Court Justice now, just before the election, and it wasn’t when Barack Obama nominated a Justice in his last year as president. Let’s examine his justification and see if there’s any way it makes logical sense. The…
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on sex. But in a 6-3 Supreme Court opinion published yesterday, Justice Neil Gorsuch, usually a reliable conservative, joined Chief Justice John Roberts and four liberal justices to show that the law also prohibits discrimination against gay and transgender people. Let’s look at parts of his…
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh defended himself in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He says you can trust him to be impartial. Did he undo the damage he did during his hearing last week? Just a reminder: the purpose of this blog is to reveal what’s really going on with written communications. I’m…
Regardless of what happens when Christine Blasey Ford testifies in the Senate today about Brett Kavanaugh assaulting her in high school, we now have a written opening statement from her to review. It’s straightforward and detailed. If you have a difficult story to tell, you could learn from this. I’m under no illusions about this…
The New York Times described Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court as “an Echo of [Antonin] Scalia in Philosophy and Style.” But where the late Justice Scalia’s writings were sarcastic and passive-aggressive, Gorsuch’s are straightforward, logical, and clear. Because he writes often in the first-person, his arguments come across as direct rather than snide or veiled. Let’s…