Saturday, September 7, 2024

Trump's 2020 election admission revisited; Federal court rot update; Update on the Russkis

The reaction to Trump's most recent comments from some far-right activists and influencers has been unusually stark.

White nationalist Nick Fuentes blasted Trump Sept. 4 for admitting that he lost the 2020 election, and said that he will work to get voters not to back Trump.

"So, why did we do Stop the Steal? Why did did anyone go to Jan. 6? Why did any one go to jail? ... It would have been good to know that before 1,600 people got charged," Fuentes said on his podcast, referring to the criminal charges for those who invaded and ransacked the Capitol. "It would’ve been good to know that before (I) had all my money frozen, put on a no-fly list, banned from everything, lost all my bank and payment processing.”

Fuentes, a podcaster and Holocaust denier who dined with Trump and the notorious rapper Ye at Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2022 went on to call it a "tremendous betrayal" and "callus indifference to the sacrifices that his supporters made on his behalf."
That is weird. Some White nationalists are in a snit because DJT is pretending to be more or less moderate. They are too stupid to know that everything DJT says is a lie to get re-elected. What a bunch of idiots.
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A couple of recent fun-filled items remind us of the long-lasting damage DJT inflicted on the federal courts with his radical and/or incompetent judge picks. Well, at least the radical right authoritarian Federalist Society and Leonard Leo are happy about the presence of radical authoritarian crackpot Trump judges on the federal bench.

Ninth Circuit Judges Sick And Tired Of Unqualified Trump Judge's 
Spamming The Record With Irrelevant Screeds

Lawrence VanDyke is unqualified to be a United States Circuit Judge. The ABA warned everyone about this, noting that VanDyke was “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules.” But Leonard Leo and Donald Trump rammed VanDyke onto the Ninth Circuit anyway and he’s used his tenure to confirm the ABA’s prescience.

He’s used his dissents to compare his colleagues to criminals or claim that they are “possessed.” The former included a lampshading footnote explaining that he preferred to not cite any caselaw, instead just insulting the rest of the court.

Eventually Judge Andrew Hurwitz penned a pointed concurrence chastising the VanDyke’s unprofessional language as the province of “pundits and partisans” and inappropriate for a legal opinion.

Alas, this is a feature not a bug, these rambling dissents emanating from VanDyke’s corner and designed to stake his claim to MAGA Supreme Court papabile [worthy of being or eligible to be pope] should Judge Ho [a radical authoritarian far more dangerous than the blithering but compliant idiot VanDyke] lose his touch for disingenuous bullshit that exists merely as writing samples for Leonard Leo to ruminate over between calling the cops and causing wrongful arrest settlements.
That's wonderful, right? Not? OK. Another article by Above the Law reports about another delightful authoritarian radical crackpot DJT judge:
Trump Judge Very Sad About Being Called 'Trump Judge' 
When He Does Stuff Only Trump Judges Do

Judge strikes down Illinois law banning concealed weapons from public transit as unconstitutional... but he would prefer you not mention how he got that job

Yesterday, Judge Iain Johnston of the Northern District of Illinois struck down a law banning guns from Chicago’s trains. State law included a provision that a concealed carry license did not cover bringing a weapon onto public transit. If you thought fireworks on a train platform were dangerous, imagine an errant gunshot. Alas, Judge Johnston isn’t worried about these safety concerns.

What Judge Johnston is worried about is the possibility that people might connect his conversion of NRA talking points into a published opinion to him being a Federalist Society-vetted (member 1995-1998!) Trump appointee. And rather than just suck that up, he decided to lampshade it off the top with a footnote, I guess to guilt some reporter into not hurting the judge’s fee-fees with an accurate headline.

“Trump-appointed judge allows firearms on Illinois public transit” is a likely chyron for this decision. That’s unfortunate. Federal judges—including those who will review this decision—engage in exacting, thoughtful, and careful analyses that are not results oriented or reducible to headlines and chyrons. We’re doing the best we can.

Counter: You’re not.
.... No one wants to be saddled with the same title as Aileen Cannon. But if the robe fits, you know?

However, let us heed Judge Johnston’s call and not render this opinion “reducible to headlines and chyrons.” How does the opinion stand on its own intellectual merits?

To describe this decision as “exacting, thoughtful, and careful” does grave violence to the English language. It is an amateurish trainwreck… pun obviously intended. Just a collection of clumsy examples, contradictory arguments, and “historical” chestnuts gathered by FedSoc academics and published in student journals dumped beneath a caption.
Since Judge Johnston is so convinced that governments cannot exclude guns from their property [public transit in this case], folks you might think people could try to bring shotguns into his courtroom sometime and see how that goes for them. The answer would be NOT WELL! That’s because, having decided that the Second Amendment would cover regulating government property generally, the burden shifts to whether the government can categorize the location as a “sensitive place.” And for any would-be courtroom cowboys, Justice Thomas explained in Bruen that while other people can and should dodge bullets on their way home from work, he and his fellow judges personally exist in a sensitive place.
Judge Johnston sounds like more fun than a barrel of enraged, heavily armed monkeys! MAGA to that. Gun fights on the choo-choo and in busses sound like a lot of fun for all involved, participants and audience alike!


The 9th Circuit is the big purple blob on the left
with 9 states included in it, incl. AK and HI

The 5th Circuit, TX, LA, MS, is
where Trump judges really dominate with most
major MAGA anti-democracy appeals now coming from there
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Those darned Russkis are at it again. They like to participate in US elections. Vox reports:
The right-wing podcasters turned Russian 
propaganda dupes, explained

The DOJ says Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and others were unwitting Russian stooges

A cadre of right-wing online personalities including Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and Lauren Southern have all allegedly become unwitting agents of Russian information warfare and its activities in the United States, according to an alarming 32-page federal indictment unsealed by the US District Court of the Southern District of New York on Wednesday.

The group of far-right and right-leaning influencers, most of whom are known for podcasts and YouTube shows, are all members or former members of Tenet Media, a Nashville-based content creation company co-owned by yet another well-known conservative media pundit, Lauren Chen.

The Department of Justice is alleging that since its founding in 2022, Tenet has served as a front for Russian agents to spread Russian state-directed content using each of these pundits’ platforms.

“The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Merrick Garland? Hey Merrick! Why not prosecute Trump? Oh right, you're protecting him. Never mind.

Good ole' American radical right authoritarian pundits. They are either dumb as a sack of rocks, cynical authoritarian liars and manipulators or both. While I still can, I vote for the latter. 

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