Tag: law

We Have a Deal

Some guy of whom I’ve never heard before, who apparently appeared in some television shows I’ve never watched, is forbidding everyone who doesn’t celebrate child abuse from watching him do whatever it is he does.

Michael Imperioli is among many actors in Hollywood speaking out against the Supreme Court, with the “Sopranos” star making a statement against the group’s ruling in favor of a Christian web designer who sought legal protection to discriminate against same-sex marriages due to her religious beliefs.

Imperioli shared a screenshot of a news story about the ruling on Instagram, with the headline “Supreme Court protects web designer who won’t do gay wedding websites,” along with a caption railing against the decision.

“I’ve decided to forbid bigots and homophobes from watching ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘The White Lotus,’ ‘Goodfellas’ or any movie or TV show I’ve been in,” Imperioli wrote Saturday morning. “Thank you Supreme Court for allowing me to discriminate and exclude those who I don’t agree with and am opposed to. USA! USA!”

Sounds great! I love the smell of Freedom of Association in the afternoon. And I can’t help but wonder, in the aftermath of the Bud Light, Target, and Disney debacles, how many producers and directors are going to be eager to hire actors and actresses who have antagonized the greater part of the entertainment market?

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The End of Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court rules college admissions cannot take race into account:

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the affirmative action admission policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional.

The ruling is a massive blow to decades-old efforts to boost enrollment of minorities at American universities through policies that took into account applicants’ race.

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion, which all five of his fellow conservative justices joined in.

Conservatives will celebrate this as a great legal victory, and perhaps it is. But the reality is that the damage has already been done, as university educations and the lifelong debt they entail are best avoided by everyone of any color.

However, if the ruling can be successfully applied to an employment context, that could be significant indeed.

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Why “Posterity” Matters

Six years ago, I debated Col. Tom Kratman on the topic of what the word “posterity” means in the context of the U.S. Constitution, specifically, the preamble which declares to whom the Constitution and the Bill of Rights applies.

I was correct, of course, to point out that posterity meant only the American Revolutionaries and their descendants, which is why the rights protected by the U.S. Constitution do not apply to many U.S. residents and even citizens. If you are not a direct descendant of an American Revolutionary, then the Constitution does not apply to you, no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court might claim.

The importance of correct interpretation of historical legal terms can be seen in the recent protest by the Global Times against sovereign U.S. States passing laws against foreign entities buying up their land.

CNN reported on Monday that “a growing number of states are considering or have passed measures this legislative term to ban ‘foreign adversaries’ and foreign entities – specifically China – from buying farmland.” These bills could violate the US Constitution, and also fuel an atmosphere of racism and anti-China sentiment.

Against the backdrop of increasingly strong anti-China sentiment in the US, it seems the “land purchase ban” is an inevitable product. Regarding the “land purchase ban,” several US-China relations experts interviewed by CNN warned against knee-jerk responses and called for lawmakers to act on evidence, not suspicion. There are certainly some rational people in the US who can see that this approach violates the US Constitution. However, in the current political atmosphere in the US, all anti-China actions are politically correct domestically, those who are willing to come out and speak up are the minority and their voices are often ignored.

The Posterity for whom the Constitution is intended to defend the Blessings of Liberty consists solely of the genetic descendants of the People of the several and united States. Posterity does not include immigrants, descendants of immigrants, invaders, conquerors, tourists, students, Americans born in Portugal, or anyone else who happens to subsequently reside in the same geographic location, or share the same civic ideals, as the original We the People.

Nor does it include sovereign foreign governments.

But as you can see, once the definition of “posterity” is expanded past its true and proper meaning, there is no reason it cannot be further expanded into a universal principle. Which, of course, is complete nonsense, and thereby demonstrates the practical impossibility of every other interpretation.

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The End of He Said – She Said

Donald Trump is found guilty of sexual abuse, injury, and defamation in a civil trial:

A jury has found that Donald Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll.

The panel of six men and three women also found that Trump injured advice columnist Carroll in a Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman dressing room and defamed her when he called her a liar, ordering the former President to pay $5million in damages.

But they ruled after just three hours of deliberation that the evidence did not show that the former president had raped her.

Clown World is getting clownier and clownier by the day. But Trump can hardly complain. This is what happens when you chicken out at the Rubicon. It’s clearly been declared open season on him and he’s going to be found guilty of anything anyone can dream up and put before a jury of those who hate him.

The imaginary dialogue is risible. When people are retroactively writing their own lines, they can never resist making themselves sound smart, cool, and quippy.

She told the jury that she was on her way out of Bergdorf Goodman when she saw Trump coming in. ‘Hey you’re that advice columnist’, he told her. She fired back: ‘Hey you’re that real estate guy’.

The $2.7 million for defamation is particularly ridiculous. If I was able to collect $2.7 million from everyone who falsely called me a liar and worse, I’d be a billionaire.

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End No-Fault Divorce

Ending no-fault divorce would be a very, very big winner for Republicans if they are smart enough to fully embrace the issue:

Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, Republicans are already looking ahead to their next moral crusades, and it sure looks like they’ve found one in… divorce. A new report from Media Matters for America shows a rising trend of right-wing influencers and Republican leaders and politicians, including U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, advocating for the end of no-fault divorce—a policy that allows people to end a marriage without being required to prove wrongdoing by their partner, including adultery, abuse, or desertion.

No-fault divorce, which was first enacted in California in 1969, has always been a feminist issue. It’s allowed domestic abuse victims to leave a bad marriage without onerous barriers, and it certainly empowers women and all people to escape legally binding situations with someone they don’t love. One would think no-fault divorce is a no-brainer—a completely non-controversial issue decided half a century ago.

But Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe very clearly opened the door for further rights, particularly around marriage, to be reversed. “We have a duty to correct the error established in those precedents,” he wrote, while specifically calling the Griswold v. Connecticut (1965, birth control), Lawrence v. Texas (2003, same-sex intimacy), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015, same-sex marriage) decisions “demonstrably erroneous.” And already, the Texas Republican Party—the same people currently suing the Biden administration for the right to let pregnant people die—includes a proposal “to rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws and support covenant marriage and to pass legislation extending the period of time in which a divorce may occur to six months after the date of filing for divorce” in its 2022 party platform.

Ironically, marriage is one of the only contracts into which one can enter without being held liable to the terms of the agreement. Using an Internet site is literally more contractually binding, which only underlies the absolute absurdity of the legality of divorces that allow one party to unilaterally break the contract for no reason and without any penalties.

The fact that the feminist media is already worried about this possible development demonstrates how effective a wedge issue it would be for Republicans.

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Blocking the Bowdlerizers

An English playwright who is already experiencing requests for revisions by SJWs plans to protect his work from his literary heirs in his will:

Martin McDonagh has revealed he may use his will to ensure there are no Roald Dahl-style posthumous edits to his work.

The acclaimed playwright, 53, told how some theatre companies have refused to put on productions of his plays because he refused language changes to make the performances more ‘palatable’. The filmmaker, who wrote and directed The Banshees of Inisherin, described the practice of writers being asked to change what they have written for sensitivity-related reasons ‘problematic’.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Martin said: ‘That’s why I’ve got to make sure in my will, the wording of that is very, very specific too. A theatre has got every right not to put a play on. The major problem is that they ask you or another writer to change it to make it more palatable to them or what they think their audience is.’

The playwright’s words come after it emerged that Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s books are being rewritten by sensitivity gurus to remove language they deem offensive. Publisher Puffin hired sensitivity readers to rewrite chunks of the author’s text to make sure the books ‘can continue to be enjoyed by all today’, resulting in extensive changes across Dahl’s work.

It’s a good idea. My initial thought is to include a codicil stating that if the heirs sell any of the rights associated with the work or publish the work with any posthumous edits, the work immediately reverts to the public domain.

Obviously, this requires some careful thinking and precise language, as one does not want to harm an honest literary heir like Christopher Tolkien who did a remarkable job preserving and even extending his father’s literary legacy. But no self-respecting author wants to see what is happening to the work of Road Dahl and other deceased authors happen to his work.

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Devil Mouse in Danger

The Dark Herald explains how Disney CEO Bob Iger has placed the wicked corporation in a perilous legal position concerning the nature of the relationship between the Walt Disney Company and the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

This was clearly and obviously a legal fiction.

HOWEVER, it was a legal fiction that Disney absolutely and under all circumstances had to observe. The Chinese wall separating the Walt Disney Company from the Reedy Creek Improvement District had to be as big as the Great Wall of China.

And yesterday Bob Iger bulldozed through it.

During the question-and-answer portion of the Disney Annual Investor Meeting, an already flustered Bob Iger answered a question that at first seemed like it was from a friendly or at least neutral quarter.

An Ameriprise Financial Advisor asked, ‘What are you doing to protect stockholder value because of the Reedy Creek problems with the State of Florida?’

Iger went into a long and rambling answer that demolished fifty years of carefully cultivated legal fiction. He briefly and biased covered the history of the Florida Anti-Grooming law and Disney’s hysterical reaction to it. And then said, ‘The governor of Florida got angry and decided to retaliate’, (here is the kill quote) “including the naming of a new board to oversee the property and the business.”

Disney’s Chinese Wall was completely blown up.

Done.

It is ended. It is over.

Bob Iger acting in his capacity Chief Executive Officer at an official stockholder function effectively admitted that the Reedy Creek Improvement District was directly connected to the Walt Disney Company. There was no effort at conflation at all. “…oversee the property and business.” He has now stated that the two were inseperable. It was unbelievable.

The real question now is if Gov. DeSantis and the Florida legislature are simply posturing for conservative voters or if they are serious about dismantling one of the primary engines of evil in the country. Because Bob Iger has foolishly handed them the very tool they need to do it if they have the will.

Read the whole thing, which is a rather fascinating lesson in how corporations have managed to literally place themselves above the law in some states.

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The Clownfoolery Intensifies

The judicial clowns of Clown World actually convicted a meme lord for posting memes on Twitter:

A self-styled far-right propagandist from Florida was convicted Friday of charges alleging that he conspired to deprive individuals of their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election.

Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Florida, was convicted in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Ann M. Donnelly after a one-week trial. On the internet, he was known as “Ricky Vaughn.”

In 2016, Mackey had about 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked by the MIT Media Lab as the 107th-most important influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election, prosecutors said. He had described himself as an “American nationalist” who regularly retweeted Trump and promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud by Democrats.

Mackey, who was arrested in January 2021, could face up to 10 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Aug. 16….

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a release that the jury rejected Mackey’s cynical attempt to use the First Amendment free speech protections to shield himself from criminal liability for a voter suppression scheme.

“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality,” he said.

The government alleged that from September 2016 to November 2016, Mackey conspired with several other internet influencers to spread fraudulent messages to Clinton supporters.

Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that Mackey urged supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media, knowing that those endorsements were not legally valid votes.

The absurdity of putting Ricky Vaughn in jail for a tweet that was an obvious joke is self-apparent, particularly in light of what has been ruled “free speech” and “free expression” as well as the massive quantities of voter fraud in the 2020 election alone.

But it is also a serious warning about the way in which the clowns genuinely intend to utilize any excuse to use the institutions and agencies of government to harm Americans in every way they possibly can.

This conviction further demonstrates the wisdom of refusing to engage with the US political system any longer. The less contact one has with Clown World and its retarded inmates, the better. It’s not as if Americans are going to vote their way out of chaos.

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President Trump Indicted

President Donald Trump has been indicted in New York:

A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump over hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump becomes the first former president to face criminal charges, which are expected in the coming days. It marks the end of a years long investigation into hush money paid to adult movie star Stormy Daniels in 2016, allegedly to buy her silence about their affair.

The indictment means he is the first former president to be charged with a crime and it takes the country into uncharted legal and political territory, with a candidate for president now facing arrest and the prospect of humiliating court appearances.

It marks a victory for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which has been probing a $130,000 hush money payment made by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, to Daniels, 44, during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Doesn’t exactly shock the world, but we’ll see if they actually follow through and arrest him.

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Devil Mouse Shenanigans

Disney is going through some massive legal contortions in order to avoid being accountable to the duly-elected state government of Florida after the state removed the special status of the Reedy Creek Improvement District that allowed the Devil Mouse to do whatever it wanted without oversight for most of the last 50 years.

On the very last day of the Reedy Creek Improvement District’s existence on Earth, they gave all of their powers to do, planning approval, building code oversight, construction permitting, and well pretty much everything including building a nuclear power plant if they feel like it, to the Walt Disney Company.

AND…

These agreements shall remain in effect until 21 years after the death of the last decedents of King Charles III of Great Britain as of this date.

Are you fucking kidding me!?!?!

The Disney lawyers must have gone through all of Florida’s legal history going back to when it was owned by Spain and found something that was still on the books as a valid legal precedent.

When the new oversight board was convened, they were shocked to discover that they had almost no power to do anything because of agreements made “in open public forums in compliance with Florida’s Sunshine Law.”

Disney Gives Florida the Finger Again, The Dark Herald, Arkhaven

It’s always fascinating to see how the ticket-takers are never held accountable, in any way, by anyone, even as they fold, spindle, and mutilate the law in order to control the behavior of others. This is pure wickedness in action, and demonstrates why conservative appeals to “the law” are not only blitheringly stupid, but totally irrelevant.

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