#Delaware Law

[nationallawreview]

Caremark Liability Following the SEC’s New ESG Reporting Requirements

Caremark Liability Following the SEC’s New ESG Reporting Requirements

Recent developments in the Court of Chancery concerning a corporate board’s duty to monitor and provide oversight over a corporation’s operations, so-called Caremark claims, are likely to intersect with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) proposed new ESG disclosure obligations to create a new category of corporate risk.  In this article, we discuss the recent trends in Delaware law…

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

gotta say I'm with the pilgrims when it comes to domestic abuse. men who beat their wives should be publicly flogged.

[raeathnos]

.

[sleepyleftistdemon]

Around 3:55 p.m. on Tuesday, right after announcing that an unexpected settlement had been reached in the libel case filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, Judge Eric Davis looked over at the 24 jurors and alternates who had been selected that very morning for what everyone had expected to be a lengthy trial. “If you’re thinking your presence was a waste of time, it wasn’t,” Davis said. “The situation was resolved, and it was resolved because of you.”

I think Davis actually meant it. While looks can certainly be deceiving, and while I do not mean to speculate on any of the jurors’ political orientations, the majority-minority jury that was empaneled at the very least did not appear to be a demographically favorable one for Fox News, whose audience is, basically, old and white. Was the prospect of a jury which featured seven Black members and only one white male enough to push Fox back to the negotiating table? Or was the simple fact of the jury’s swearing-in—and the ensuing realization that the trial was really, finally happening—itself enough to jolt Rupert Murdoch into signing off on a deal?

[petnews2day]

Dogs removed from Delaware County Ohio property after cruelty reports

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/LHTfs

Dogs removed from Delaware County Ohio property after cruelty reports

The Delaware County Sheriff’s office is assisting the county animal warden in removing several dogs from a property there after receiving numerous reports of animal cruelty, according to the sheriff’s office, county dispatchers and a county spokeswoman. “Dogs are being removed from the property,” Delaware County spokeswoman Jane Hawes said in a brief emailed statement […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/LHTfs #DogNews #Oh, #Animal, #AnimalCruelty, #AnimalNeglect, #AnimalWelfare, #County, #Crime, #CrimeU0026Justice, #Cruelty, #Delaware, #DelawareCounty, #Dogs, #Enforcement, #Justice, #Law, #LawEnforcement, #Local, #LocalNews, #Neglect, #Neutral, #News, #Overall, #OverallNeutral, #U0026, #Welfare

[jnkay]

The financial stakes for pension funds can bring larger paydays—and prestige—for law firms.

Last year, the attorneys who negotiated a steamfitters’ pension fund’s $1 billion settlement with Dell Technologies Inc. over a 2018 stock conversion were awarded a $266.7 million fee.

The court’s chief judge, Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, currently is considering whether the lawyers representing the pension fund that pushed Tesla to agree to a $919 million settlement over board compensation deserve a $230 million fee award.

Tesla argues $63.5 million in legal fees would suffice. McCormick has said her decision whether to approve the settlement and attorneys’ fees will depend on how she decides what fees are reasonable for the lawyers in the other case where they successfully challenged Musk’s executive compensation. Those attorneys asked to be paid with over 29 million Tesla shares worth about $6 billion.

Both fee award requests are likely to raise similar legal arguments, McCormick said in a Jan. 31 letter to the parties in the board pay case.

The lawyers who take on these kinds of lawsuits—seeking to hold directors accountable for fiduciary duties—accept a high level of risk, said Paul Regan, a professor at the Widener University Delaware Law School.

Many such lawsuits get dismissed, or the court may only award modest fees. Working with pension funds enhances a law firm’s credibility, he said.

“A client with a stake that’s big enough to say to the court, ‘Look, I’m here for the long haul, I’m highly invested in how this goes, and I have the resources to monitor it as the lead plaintiff,’ probably makes an impact,” Regan said.

[nationallawreview]

Delaware Legalizes Recreational Marijuana

Delaware became the latest state to legalize recreational marijuana on April 23, 2023 when the state’s Governor failed to veto two bills that allow for the legalization of marijuana, effective immediately.  Individuals who are 21 years of age and older may possess and use up to one ounce of marijuana.  It will be taxed in a manner similar to alcohol. The law provides that nothing in the law is…

[zvaigzdelasas]

President Joe Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency,” according to a final report released Thursday by a Department of Justice special counsel.

But special counsel Robert Hur said he was declining to prosecute Biden over his handling of that material.

The FBI found that material in the garage, offices, and basement den in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home. It included documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Biden’s entries about national security, the new report said.

“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Hur wrote.

“He knew he kept classified information in notebooks stored in his house and he knew he was not allowed to do so.”

But that evidence “does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” the special counsel wrote.

Hur in his nearly 400-page report wrote, “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” the report said. [...]

Hur was blunt in detailing lapses in Biden’s memory when he was interviewed for the probe.

“He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 - when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’),” the report said.

“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him,” Hur wrote.

“In a case where the government must prove that Mr. Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice presidency and chose to keep those documents, knowing he was violating the law, we expect that at trial, his attorneys would emphasize these limitations in his recall,” the special counsel added.

Biden in a statement said, “I was pleased to see they reached the conclusion I believed all along they would reach – that there would be no charges brought in this case and the matter is now closed.”[...]

Trump was charged in June with 37 felonies, including willful retention of national defense information, a violation of the Espionage Act.

Trump had hundreds more classified documents in his possession than Biden did — more than 300 in total, including 102 that were seized during an FBI raid on Trump’s Palm Beach resort home in August 2022. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Hur’s report Thursday said that the materials recovered from Biden spanned his career in national office from 1973 when he became a U.S. senator, and through his two terms as vice president under former President Barack Obama from 2009 through early 2017.

Biden during his career “has long seen himself as a historic figure,” and during that time collected papers and artifacts that were connected to “significant issues and events in his career,” the report said.

“He used these materials to write memoirs published in 2007 and 2017, to document his legacy, and to cite as evidence that he was a man of presidential timber,” Hur wrote.

Well we're officially never gonna hear the end of this one huh [8 Feb 24]

[reasonsforhope]

For all the concern in recent years that U.S. democracy is on the brink, in danger or under threat, a report out Tuesday offers a glimmer of good news for American voters worried that casting a ballot will be difficult in 2024.

Put simply, the new data shows that voting in America has gotten easier over the past two decades. More voters have the ability to cast a ballot before Election Day, with the majority of U.S. states now offering some form of early in-person voting and mail voting to all voters.

"Although we often talk in a partisan context about voter fraud and voter suppression and whether voters have access to the ballot, the reality is, over the past 25 years, we've greatly increased the convenience of voting for almost all Americans," said David Becker, the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), which authored the new report...

The data shows that, despite real efforts by some Republican-led legislatures to restrict access at the margins, the trend in the U.S. since 2000 has been toward making it easier to vote: Nearly 97% of voting-age American citizens now live in states that offer the option to vote before Election Day.

"The lies about early voting, the lies about voting machines and efforts in some state legislatures to roll back some of the election integrity and convenience measures that have evolved over the last several decades, those efforts almost all failed," Becker said. "In almost every single state, voters can choose to vote when they want to."

Forty-six states and Washington, D.C., offer some form of early in-person voting, the report tallied, and 37 of those jurisdictions also offer mail voting to all voters without requiring an excuse...

In 2000

In 2024

Infographic via NPR. If you go to the article, you can watch an animation of this map that shows voting availability in every election since 2000.

There are some political trends that show up in the data. Of the 14 states that don't offer mail voting to all voters, for instance, 12 have Republican-led legislatures.

-via NPR, March 19, 2024. Article continues below.

But maybe the more striking trends are geographic. Every single state in the western U.S. has offered some form of early and mail voting to all voters since 2004, according to the data. And those states span the political spectrum, from conservative Idaho to liberal California.

"It's really hard to talk about partisanship around this issue because historically there just hasn't been much," Mann said. "We've seen voting by mail and early in-person voting supported by Republican legislatures, Democratic legislatures, Republican governors, Democratic governors. We see voters in both parties use both methods." ...

In 2020, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts all made changes to make voting more easily accessible, which have since partially or fully become permanent. Delaware is currently embroiled in a legal fight over whether it can implement early and mail voting changes this election cycle as well.

The South, with its history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, has long lagged behind when it comes to voting access. The CEIR data shows that, although some states have slowly started expanding options for voters, generally it is still the most difficult region for voters to cast a ballot.

As options nationwide have become more widely available, voters have also responded by taking advantage.

In the 2000 election, 86% of voters voted at a polling place on Election Day, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In 2020, during the pandemic, that number dropped to less than 31% of voters. It went back up in 2022, to roughly half of the electorate, but was still in line with the two-decade trend toward more ballots being cast early.

...in reality, Becker says, more voting options actually make elections more secure and less susceptible to malicious activity or even human error.

"If there were a problem, if there were a cyber event, if there were a malfunction, if there were bad weather, if there were traffic, if there were was a power outage, you could think of all kinds of circumstances. ... The more you spread voting out over a series of days and over multiple modes, the less likely it's going to impact voters," he said...

-via NPR, March 19, 2024

[the-final-sif]

There's a post from someone outside of the US about how people in the US don't put their country down and just put down their state and something about US people being US centric, and part of it has always kind of bothered me because I think that people outside of the US don't really understand how states work for us or why people think their state should be enough. Some of it is being US centric for sure, but I honestly don't think that's the main reason.

It's because the US is a bunch of countries in a trench coat. I've compared it before to the EU, and I really do think that's accurate. It's literally a union of states. Each state has it's own government and laws and we have the federal government too but day to day a lot more of your life comes down to the state laws. Your driver's license, license plate, wage and a lot of employment protect (and enforcement), vast majority of court experiences, etc all go through the state. Moving to different states can mean being subject to wildly different laws, tax rates/methods, and forms of discrimination (ie florida trying to ban queer people while other states are explicitly adding protections for them).

Like, you'll notice that streamers often tend to be clustered in certain states in the US, and a lot of that has to do with certain states not having an income tax. Depending on what state they're registered in, companies can be subject to wildly different laws. Hence why Delaware is so popular for businesses. Bankruptcy law works differently in every state.

Lawyers are licensed to practice by state, and while they can move to different states, it's difficult and depending on their area of law they may be totally out of their field. Even small states like Delaware have totally different laws from a place 15 minutes to the left like New Jersey.

The largest single state by population is California which has nearly 40 million people. That is more than the entire population of Canada. It's roughly on par with Poland. Give or take a million people.

Ohio has about 11 million people, about 1 million more than Sweden. Florida has 22 million, over double Greece's population. New York and Romania both come out to about 19 million each.

Our smallest state by population, Wyoming, which has about 500k people, still has about 200k more people than Iceland.

Fucking Russia literally does not have half the population of the US. It sits at 144 million while we're at 333 million.

To give a sense of landmass/scale, France is the largest EU state by landmass with 630k square km. Texas alone is 695k. Alaska is 1.7 million square km. The US in total is 11.3 million square km. The entire EU has 4.2 million square km.

The US is 1) fucking huge and 2) so much less cohesive than a lot of non-Americans assume.

So why would someone from the US just put down their state? For the same reason that most people from the EU don't write down "Germany in the EU". Your state is where you're actually from, the USA is the weird umbrella you live under.

[grimesgirll]

like your weapons trainings or conditioning, getting to rick’s place for bedtime had become a nightly duty.

and okafor stressed the importance of being on time to you. after all, he needed his best soldier bright eyed and bushy tailed in the mornings.

you had to have your ass in rick’s bed by the time he was ready to hit the hay. it didn’t matter if he was planning on fucking you that night or just enjoying having another warm body around. okafor had clocked that you somehow increased the average hours of sleep rick gained each night and assigned you to a semi-permanent sleepover.

you watch from your elbows as the handsome man in front of you brushes his teeth.

this isn’t the first time okafor’s utilized your “girlish charm” or whatever the fuck he sees in you to get what he wants.

this is the farthest he’s ever asked you to go however. it was always innocent before; distracting important people, taking advantage of certain perversions to finish the mission. you shouldn’t complain. okafor did get you the job of your dreams, all things considered.

where else could you spend hours designing maps, establishing operation routes, and do it all with the help of formerly world renowned military engineers and some of the most advanced technology still left on the planet?

besides, the lieutenant colonel had kept his word; there isn’t a thing you want for at the moment. aside from the occasional homesickness which was gradually dulling into a numb, nearly nonexistent feeling, you didn’t yearn for much - only rick.

so now you spend your days in your new state of the art geospatial mapping studio and on your rare but highly anticipated surveying trips. okafor had reviewed your past surveying maps of the delaware valley with general beale and other senior staff - including rick - and your work proved fruitful enough to allow you a small team to continue surveying operations under the umbrella of logistics.

in all reality, okafor’s rewarding you handsomely.

and so is rick.

his southern drawl breaks you from your staring.

“huh?” utterly oblivious, you fall under his deep blue gaze.

“i asked you if i can turn the lights off." he repeats, fingers hovering over the light switch.

you nod. "yeah, i'm ready for bed."

the bed dips with rick's weight and like routine, you're drawn into his crushing embrace. rick liked to cuddle before bed. you don’t ask but there has to have been some wife or some woman somewhere who used to be in your position.

the soldier is stoic and stands on business, but that sour expression had begun to soften since you’d first seduced him on his sofa. little bits and pieces of a southern, east coast kind of background popped up through the twang of rick’s accent. anyone with a history with law enforcement instantly picked up on his past as a cop. you’d playfully asked if he had to cuff anyone before and just received a dim smile that started to sour until you threw yourself into his lap and cast away whatever storm clouds you’d brought on with kisses.

he’ll never outright tell you why he sleeps better with you or how he slept before he was even a consignee, but you don’t mind. the cozy embrace really gets you conked out every night, without fail. his dick does too.

that’s how you end up backing against him and tempting the hard outline that never seemed to disappear due to his size.

rick chuckles behind you but doesn’t move, just pulls you closer. "good night." he says with a kiss to the back of your head.

"night," you return, like you’re not jutting your ass backwards into him.

you’re shocked that he hasn’t said anything. rick doesn’t always take your touch so lightly. he’d punished you for teasing him in front of some of the air fleet’s officers by fingering you until you were begging to come in the repurposed law library next door just the other day.

the man only speaks up once your tight ass is rounding indisputable, deep circles against his groin. you couldn’t be anymore obvious with the gasp that flies out of you like a kite as soon as rick’s newly throbbing length twitches through his sleep pants.

“honey.”

“please, rick!” you pull out the begging already, having expected you would be fucked silly tonight.

“tonight’s not the night, darlin’.”

needy and craving the man beside you, your knees squirm. it’s only when you’re lightly kicking rick that he pays you any mind; your legs are shut closed by the force of his human hand and the prosthetic digging into your soft flesh.

the look he gives you is lacking patience. “now, what’re you doin’?”

“i need you tonight, rick,” you state plainly.

he scoffs and lets go of your thighs. “c’mon, honey, why don’t you just lay down and get a good night’s rest?” the gears are turning in your head and you’re lifting your legs and shifting between his legs before he can even try to draw you back to your pillow. he croaks your name when you start pawing at the drawstring of his pants. “honey, you need to-,”

“you need this,” you insist.

you’re not giving him enough time to complain with his sensitive head already on your tongue. rick curses his traitorous groans, and himself when he does nothing to fight against the firm hand you're utilizing to usher him onto his back.

"so, you want to relax?" he manages, despite the shudder inducing way in which fully go for it and swallow around him. midway down your throat, a light thrust and a near gag from you is all he needs to know your answer.

rick can only lean back and take what you give him. he's pretty sure that you're going to have him coming in your mouth but before he knows it, you’re face to face again. there’s no reason to be disappointed by the firm hold you still have on him with your hand. a few more sluggish licks and you’re readjusting, straddling him to tease his tip with the slick of your entrance.

"what about you?" rick’s rasping, not yet prepared after you removed him from your sweet mouth.

"what if i told you i came here ready?"

the statement has his cock jumping. you swivel slightly, clit bumping his own sensitive slippery skin. spit strewn, his head falls back at the feeling of his dick dipped into your engulfing heat - even half an inch.

“you sure, honey?”

“mhmm,” you confirm with a kiss and a grind onto him.

“really wanted it, didn’t you, darlin’?”

your confirmation comes out as a whimper. "i just wanna be full before bed. i wanna be full of you rick," and once those words leave your mouth, rick is decided and sending you from your knees to your back. he could never say no to those watery eyes.

a courtesy finger and some intricately placed kisses on your knees, thighs, and clit have you straining upwards. you're not burning for long because rick is ready to indulge you just as you wished tonight. without warning - not that you were wanting it tonight - rick fit himself as far inside your thick muscle as he could on the first thrust.

the stretch is familiar but striking enough for you to nearly double over onto him. you won’t fold in the face of your reward - at least not yet. determined to hold on, you plant two hands on the older man’s chest as you sink onto his thick length. his groans and your steady breaths are enough to lower yourself, and even fuck yourself you and down on him.

"thank you for fucking me tonight, rick." you cry through swollen lips and damp lashes. "i really need you to fall asleep," you confess in a tone no higher than a hushed hiss.

you don't know if you're expecting an answer but the quickened pace is to be expected. without a doubt, the man is sinking deeper inside of you as he forces his hips flush to yours.

"does this satisfy being full enough to fall asleep?"

the jolt he’s sending through your abdomen with each maddening plunge into you, has you fluttering around him.

“rick!”

you wake up with a hand on your ass and a breath behind you in your hair. it doesn’t last though. rick is gone before you know it and you’re left aching, craving him. you get him out of your system with your early morning physical training - pt - and a meal with your favorite fellow soldiers.

you’re not expecting to see rick again soon.

the office facing the arboretum and the airfield is typically a still place, plagued by the constant thrum of the planes and helicopters, yes, but those who worked in the building had grown accustomed to the white noise. you're so grateful everyone in your division is out at lunch when rick slams the thick wooden door open.

stirred from your half drafted map of the midwest, your head surges up. you don't have time to open your mouth before rick is talking at you in his sergeant's voice.

“there are ten minutes until i need to be down at the helicopter hanger. you need to get me off in eight.”

stunned, the command doesn't urge you to your feet just yet. it's the sudden slamming of the door that jostles you from desk to the plaid loveseat where you settle onto your knees on a cushion facing sideways.

rick shakes his head. "no, i want you on your knees on the floor in front of me. now." you sigh and carry yourself down to the polished wooden floors. "i don't have time to sit."

"why?"

"because what i said was an order. don't question it."

with that preamble, you waste no time finding his belt and expertly undoing the buckle in record time. your hands move as fast as they can given all of the work this bulky uniform requires. somehow you breeze through the layers and ignore the ache growing in your knees. your second pt of the day is going to destroy you.

as you strip down rick's thermal boxers, you wonder if he's keen on fucking you now too. perhaps you'd gotten your allotted pounding last night and this would be it for the week. you really can never know with rick.

the issue of time returns to your mind however, so when you grip his length, you only lick up and down enough to get him taking coordinated breaths through his nose and tautening.

“you’ve been demandin’ lately, doll.”

your thighs squeeze together at the nickname.

“maybe i want to be a little demandin’ of you.”

a gloved hand shoves your head down. the incentive to keep your moans quiet doubles when you hear commotion outside your office. right on time; your colleagues are returning to lunch.

“think you can quiet that big mouth enough?”

no words leave your mouth, you just swallow around his length, glancing up into his expanded pupils; almost void of blue. hollowing your cheeks, you remember the time crunch he’s in and put a little more pep into your step. this leads to you rocking a bit on your knees.

rick snorts once he catches sight of the development. “so needy, even just with a cock in your mouth, huh?” his teasing is cut off by the orgasm building up as he throbs against your tongue.

putting in the effort to counter more than a couple of gags, you allow your jaw to slack so rick can enjoy the unobstructed tightness of your throat - perfect for him to come without the mess, leaving it to your mouth.

you weren’t prepared to suck rick off in your office today but you’re determined to leave no trace of this interaction. when he spills down your throat, only a little bit remains on your reddened puffy lips. you wipe your mouth nonchalantly once rick flops out of your mouth, still gazing down at you.

“clean me up.”

an order is an order.

exhaustively, you trace patterns from his base to the spit covered tip that’s still twitching. “fuck,” he utters when you take him into your mouth again. “don’t have time for this,” he’s scolding and palming himself back into his pants, grabbing your hand to stand you up with him for some scattered kisses across your forehead.

he presses a kiss to your temple, traveling lower to embellish purple marks on your collarbone. you’re sure he’s about to do more than just wantonly groping your perky tits but a few more moan inducing punches for your nipple and he’s sealing the interaction with one wolffish kiss. you’re nearly stumbling after him when he pulls away, tugging the last of his belts on.

the door is flung shut and that’s that. rick’s gone.

you’re on rick’s bed before he retires for the night.

“good to see you again today.” you purr, nearly kicking your feet. “i’m feeling spoiled seeing you three times in one day.”

the soldier rolls his eyes. he drops his tactical bag on the ottoman in front of the bed. “you here to sleep? or mess around?”

you shrug. “your choice.”

hints of a sly smile are on the sergeant’s face but he walks away shaking his head before you can call him down to bed just yet.

you could just sleep tonight. rick had been turning you on enough for you to take a night off, preferably drifting off in his arms until you had to wake for your quarterly river survey with the geologists, engineers, and biologists in your neighboring divisions. you had a lot to prepare for come the morning. it wouldn't be terrible to unwind by getting off tonight.

the thought's put on pause once rick's arms wrap around you as he sinks into the soft, bedding. smelling of fresh toothpaste and some kind of beard balm, he’s more than ready to hold onto you like a vice for the night.

“hey.” you coo.

“hey there,” an arm escapes you to turn out the wall light still on over on his side of the bed. only the dim glow of the hallway light touches the darkened room now.

you turn slightly so rick can at least see the outline of your face - your eyes, nose, and lips in the dark. “what was that all about early?”

“hmm?”

"the asshole act earlier?"

“you needed to remember rank.”

an exasperated heave almost sends you to a seated position. “rank?”

“yes.”

the lack of playfulness in your voice has you wondrously thankful that he can’t see your eye rolls in the dark.

“that’s kinda fucked, rick.”

“says the one who just loves getting fucked.”

you shut up.

“getting on her knees, i don’t remember you complainin’ once i got you beneath me earlier today.”

you can’t say that you recall complaining either.

it feels like muscle memory when he gets you onto all fours.

set up on his knees with your cunt under his nose, rick licks a devastating stripe from top to bottom. then he’s coming back up again and squeezing muffled shrieks from you.

“you like that, honey?”

“i do, rick,” you reply breathlessly. you dig a clenched fist into the comforter. “fuck!” tears threaten your waterline already.

“like my tongue?”

“mhmm,” you writhe as he makes it his mission to bury his warm, wriggly appendage as far inside of you as he can. he’ll never be as deep as his cock but the difference in sensation has you nearly folding into the mattress.

the added finger has you squirming in conjunction with the taunting, flickering tongue working back out to your clit. eventually there’s a two pronged attempt to open you up. you’re clenching around his fingers when you hear him ask, “do you think you’re ready?”

“one hundred percent,” you breathe.

“‘kay, i need you to be one hundred percent sure of that, soldier.”

you tease on top of him at the mention, nearly jumping once you feel him at your entrance. lust centered, you nod your head assuredly. “yes, sergeant. i’m ready for your cock. ready to fulfill the mission.”

rick’s smirk and tousled curls are the last thing you see before you’re manhandled like a rag doll into the mattress.

then that rhythm that had you so worked up is paling in comparison to how full you feel with just a few inches of rick. whispering sweet praise and reminding you of the task at hand, you exhale and puff soft cheeks. the biting kisses from rick as he settles inside of you have your eyes already rolling back. his newfound rhythm only fulfills the trance you knew only ne could put you in.

crammed tight full of cock, you’re chanting his name and he’s petting your hair, praising you as you squeeze around him just excellently.

“you gonna come on my cock, soldier?”

“only if you’ll let me, sergeant.”

his balls slap against your clit, wonderfully matching the dull tap he’s testing on your cervix. it doesn’t matter though as he’s repositioning constantly and brushing the forlorn parts, placing his fingers in a painstakingly strategic position on your clit.

“want you so bad, rick.” the words tumble out as rick brings another hand from the fat of your ass to your tit. the touch has you arching, gasping and clawing at the sheets. “rick, rick!”

“love hearin’ you say my name,” he’s grunting into your hair when he lowers himself down to fuck you deeper.

this new angle that rick’s fucking you at has you incoherent. hips pistoning you into the mattress and closer to the mounting heat in your core that was threatening to ruin rick’s sheets. the pressure has tears cascading down your cheeks. if it was lighter you’d see them on the sheets but your bleary eyes only take in pillow, as your cunt takes all of rick.

a palm pushing down on the flat of your back. you sink further into the bed, allowing rick to penetrate you deeper. this newfound depth has you face down with a single trembling clawed hand to the sheets.

“rick,” you’re croaking, crying out for him.

one more thrust of his hips and you swear he’s going to break you.

he mutters a “fuck” and croons deep;

“michonne.”

pt. 1

[collapsedsquid]

If you’re stuck in the abandoned twitter HQ just wanted to let you know that under Delaware admiralty law (where twitter is registered) all persons stuck in an abandoned vessel (company) are entitled to salvage rights for the entire company, customarily each getting an equal share.  You’re going to need to present your case in an admiralty court but it should be a lock.

[simply-ivanka]

Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means Committees Release Report on Impeachment Inquiry Finding Joe Biden Has Committed Impeachable Conduct

Below are key findings from the impeachment inquiry report. The 291 page report can be found below.

From 2014 to the present, as part of a conspiracy to monetize Joe Biden’s office of public trust to enrich the Biden family, Biden family members and their associates received over $27 million from foreign individuals or entities. In order to obscure the source of these funds, the Biden family and their associates set up shell companies to conceal these payments from scrutiny. The Biden family used proceeds from these business activities to provide hundreds of thousands of dollars to Joe Biden—including thousands of dollars that are directly traceable to China. While Jim Biden claimed he gave this money to Joe Biden to repay personal loans, Jim Biden did not provide any evidence to support this claim. The Biden family’s receipt of millions of dollars required Joe Biden’s knowing participation in this conspiracy, including while he served as Vice President.

Joe Biden used his status as Vice President to garner favorable outcomes for his son’s and his business partners’ foreign business dealings. Witnesses acknowledged that Hunter Biden involved Vice President Biden in many of his business dealings with Russian, Romanian, Chinese, Kazakhstani, and Ukrainian individuals and companies. Then-Vice President Biden met or spoke with nearly every one of the Biden family’s foreign business associates, including those from Ukraine, China, Russia, and Kazakhstan. As a result, the Biden family has received millions of dollars from these foreign entities. 

The Biden family leveraged Joe Biden’s positions of public trust to obtain over $8 million in loans from Democratic benefactors. Millions of dollars in loans have not been repaid and the paperwork supporting many of the loans does not exist and has not been produced to the Committees. This raises serious questions about whether these funds were provided as gifts disguised as loans.

Under the Biden Administration, the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) afforded special treatment to President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.Several witnesses acknowledged the delicate approach used during the Hunter Biden case, describing the investigation as “sensitive” or “significant.” Evidence shows that Department officials slow-walked the investigation, informed defense counsel of future investigative actions, prevented line investigators from taking otherwise ordinary investigative steps, and allowed the statute of limitations to expire on the most serious felony charges. These unusual—and oftentimes in the view of witnesses, unprecedented—tactics conflicted with standard operating procedures and ultimately had the effect of benefiting Hunter Biden.

The Biden Justice Department misled Congress about the independence of law enforcement entities in the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden. Biden Administration political appointees exercised significant oversight and control over the investigation of the President’s son. Witnesses described how U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware and now-Special Counsel David Weiss, who oversaw the investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden, had to seek (1) agreement from other U.S. Attorneys to bring cases in a district geographically distinct from his own and (2) approval from the Biden Justice Department’s Tax Division to bring specific charges or take investigative actions against Hunter Biden. Despite the clear conflict of interest, Weiss was only afforded special counsel status after the investigation came under congressional scrutiny.

The White House has obstructed the Committees’ impeachment inquiry by withholding key documents and witnesses. The White House has impeded the Committees’ investigation of President Biden’s unlawful retention of classified documents, by refusing to make relevant witnesses available for interviews and by erroneously asserting executive privilege over audio recordings from Special Counsel Hur’s interviews with President Biden. In addition, the White House is preventing the National Archives from turning over documents that are material to the Committees’ inquiry.

See report at the below link

[jnkay]

"Two former law clerks who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe their time working in Laster’s Wilmington, Del., chambers said it was more intellectually grueling than anything they’ve since done in legal practice. The judge, they said, had a blunt but constructive way of shredding their writing.

After his clerks finish working for him, Laster likes to hand out a token of his appreciation: a gag T-shirt, often in a loud color.

The souvenirs sometimes feature the faces of legal scholars notable only in Delaware. One, in hot pink, said, “I did it sua sponte,” a Latin legal term for a court acting on its own initiative—something for which Laster gets his fair share of criticism.

The dorky jokes reflect the judge’s reputation as a monkish scholar of Delaware law who expects that attorneys come to his courtroom highly prepared—even if only to see him make quick work of their arguments."

My latest for Bloomberg Law, a profile of the legendary Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster of Delaware's Court of Chancery.

[streda]

Buster Keaton

Born Joseph Francis Keaton on October 4, 1895, was an American director and actor who became famous for various comedy scenes that are still repeated in films today. You may recognize him from the nickname "the man with the stone face". He is known as a director, screenwriter and actor in famous silent comedies such as "The General" and "The Navigator".

Keaton was born into a vaudeville family in Piqua, Kansas. His name Joseph didn't come out of nowhere, it was a family tradition from his father's side. The nickname Buster was invented by Harry Houdini (a friend of his parents) when little Buster fell down the stairs and instead of crying or reacting in any way, he got up and moved on (The nickname was also a reference to the fact that he often caused trouble as a child). At the age of three, Keaton began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons. He first appeared on stage in 1899 in Wilmington, Delaware. The act was mainly a comedy sketch. Despite his run-ins with the law, Keaton was a rising and relatively well-paid theater star. He stated that he learned to read and write late and was taught by his mother. When he was 21, his father's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family actor, 20, so Keaton and his mother Myra went to New York, where Keaton's career quickly moved from vaudeville to film. Keaton served with the American Expeditionary Forces in France in the United States Army's 40th Infantry Division during World War I. His unit remained intact and was not broken up to provide replacements, as had been the case with some other late-arriving divisions. While in uniform, he contracted an ear infection that permanently damaged his hearing. Keaton was such a natural in his first film, "Butcher Boy," that he was hired on the spot. Finally, he asked to borrow one of the cameras to see how it worked. He took the camera back to his hotel room, where he disassembled and reassembled it by morning. He appeared in a total of 14 Arbuckle shorts, running into 1920. They were popular, and contrary to Keaton's later reputation as "The Great Stone Face", he often smiled and even laughed in them. In 1920, The Saphead was released, marking Keaton's first starring role in a feature-length feature film. After Keaton's successful collaboration with Arbuckle, Schenck gave him his own production unit, Buster Keaton Productions. He made a series of 19 two-reel comedies, including One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), and The Electric House (1922).

The more adventurous ideas called for dangerous stunts, performed by Keaton at great physical risk. During the railroad water-tank scene in Sherlock Jr. (gags written by Clyde Bruckman), Keaton broke his neck when a torrent of water fell on him from a water tower, but he did not realize it until years afterwards. A scene from Steamboat Bill, Jr. required Keaton to stand still on a particular spot. Then, the facade of a two-story building toppled forward on top of Keaton. Keaton's character emerged unscathed, due to a single open window. The stunt required precision, because the prop house weighed two tons, and the window only offered a few inches of clearance around Keaton's body. The sequence furnished one of the most memorable images of his career. Aside from Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), Keaton's most enduring feature-length films include Three Ages (1923), Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924), Sherlock Jr. (1924), Seven Chances (1925), The Cameraman (1928), and The General (1926). The General, set during the American Civil War, combined physical comedy with Keaton's love of trains, including an epic locomotive chase. Employing picturesque locations, the film's storyline reenacted an actual wartime incident. Though it would come to be regarded as Keaton's greatest achievement, the film received mixed reviews at the time. It was too dramatic for some filmgoers expecting a lightweight comedy, and reviewers questioned Keaton's judgment in making a comedic film about the Civil War, even while noting it had a "few laughs." it was an expensive dud, His distributor, United Artists, insisted on a production manager who monitored expenses and interfered with certain story elements. Keaton endured this treatment for two more feature films, and then exchanged his independent setup for employment at Hollywood's biggest studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Keaton's loss of independence as a filmmaker coincided with the coming of sound films (although he was interested in making the transition) and mounting personal problems, and his career in the early sound era was hurt as a result.

I guess that's it for Buster's success.

Keaton died of lung cancer on February 1, 1966, aged 70, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Despite being diagnosed with cancer in January 1966, he was never told he was terminally ill. Keaton thought that he was recovering from a severe case of bronchitis. Confined to a hospital during his final days, Keaton was restless and paced the room endlessly, desiring to return home. In a British television documentary about his career, his widow Eleanor told producers from Thames Television that Keaton was up out of bed and moving around, and even played cards with friends who came to visit the day before he died. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California.

Keaton was presented with a 1959 Academy Honorary Award at the 32nd Academy Awards, held in April 1960. Keaton has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: 6619 Hollywood Boulevard (for motion pictures); and 6225 Hollywood Boulevard (for television).

Three Ages (1923)

Our Hospitality (1923)

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

The Navigator (1924)

Seven Chances (1925)

The Cameraman (1928)

Go West (1925)

Battling Butler (1926)

The General (1926)

College (1927)

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)

Spite Marriage (1929)

-¤-

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 22, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 23, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris has continued to rack up endorsements and delegates since President Biden’s surprise announcement yesterday that he would not accept the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. As of tonight, Harris has the support of at least 2,471 delegates, more than the 1,976 she will need to secure the nomination.

Endorsements have also continued to mount, with the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Victory Fund, and the Latino Victory Fund all endorsing her. 

Labor unions have also backed her: the AFL-CIO, which represents 12.5 million workers, endorsed Harris. So did the Service Employees International Union, with 2 million workers, as well as the United Steelworkers, which represents 850,000 metal workers and miners, and the Communications Workers of America. Other unions endorsing Harris include the American Federation of Teachers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. 

Money continues to roll in. Since Biden’s announcement, Harris and the Democrats have raised about $250 million in donations and pledges. More than 888,000 were from small-dollar donors. Volunteers are also joining the Harris campaign, which said that more than 28,000 people have signed up to work on the campaign in the day since Biden passed the torch. Today, Beyoncé gave Harris permission to use her song “Freedom” as a campaign song, and TikTok users have jumped on the Harris trend.

Harris is keeping some of the key infrastructure of Biden’s campaign. She has announced that Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez-Rodriguez and Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon will remain in their positions. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer announced today that she, too, will stay on as co-chair for Harris’s campaign as she was for Biden’s.

Harris spoke today at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, smoothing the transition from Biden’s campaign to her own. “I know it’s been a rollercoaster and we’re all filled with so many mixed emotions about this,” Harris said. “We love Joe and Jill. We really do. They truly are like family.” Biden called in to the meeting from Delaware, where he is isolating as he recovers from Covid, to thank the staff. “I know it’s hard, because you’ve poured your heart and soul into me, to help us win this thing,” Biden told them, but added: “The name changed at the top of the ticket. The mission hasn’t changed at all.” Biden told Harris: “I’m watching you kid, I love you. You’re the best, kid.”

Harris went on to indicate that she will be taking the fight for the presidency aggressively to Trump, highlighting his criminal behavior. “Before I was elected as Vice President, before I was elected as United States Senator,” she said today, “I was the elected Attorney General, as I've mentioned, to California, and before that, I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.”

She was clear, though, that the fight is not just about Trump; it is about “two different versions of what we see as the future of our country…. Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights. But we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.” She promised to continue the work of building the middle class, protect abortion rights, enact commonsense gun safety legislation, and protect voting rights. She contrasted the Democrats’ vision of “a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law” with the Republicans’: “a country of chaos, fear, and hate.”

Biden’s announcement and Harris’s rapid consolidation of support and money appear to have blindsided the Trump-Vance campaign. MAGA Republicans have responded with scattershot arguments that suggest they had not thought through a scenario in which Biden would step down, an omission so astonishing it perhaps suggests they could not imagine a presumptive nominee voluntarily giving up power. 

Without a coherent strategy, MAGA Republicans today have been all over the map, suggesting among other things that Biden’s voluntarily stepping down from his presumptive nomination is a “coup” and that Harris is a “D[iversity] E[quity and] I[nclusion] hire.” 

For a party that is offering voters a popular set of policies, the opposing party’s nominee shouldn’t matter all that much, but Trump policies and the Trump campaign’s Project 2025 are both so unpopular that operatives intended to run not on policy but by firing up their base against Biden himself. In The Atlantic yesterday, journalist Tim Alberta explained that the entire Trump campaign apparatus was focused on Biden and that putting extremist Ohio senator J.D. Vance on the ticket “was something of a luxury meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter.”

Now the energy appears to have shifted. As Anne Applebaum wrote today in The Atlantic, operatives staged the Republican National Convention of just last week to project strength and power, and Trump’s rambling and incoherent performance there seemed “deranged, sinister, and frightening.” Now, Applebaum wrote, “it just looks deranged,” as Biden’s decision to step away from power contrasts powerfully with Trump’s desperate attempts to cling to power with the Big Lie while he calls up his threadbare descriptions of national carnage.

The change Applebaum identified dovetailed neatly with a new political action committee started by conservative lawyer George Conway to highlight Trump’s “mental unfitness for office.” Frustrated by the apparent unwillingness of the press to cover Trump’s mental health while it focused on President Biden’s, Conway formed the “Anti-Psychopath PAC” to highlight Trump’s mental state. “The failure to treat Trump’s behavior as pathological has led the media and the country, perversely, to treat it as normal,” Conway told The Independent, and said that Project 2025 should be seen as an extension of Trump’s malignant narcissism “because basically he wants to turn the government into a mechanism for retribution.”

A post on Trump’s social media feed tonight suggested that Trump recognizes that being the oldest candidate ever nominated for the presidency is a campaign issue. The post said that “Lyin’ Kamala Harris…has absolutely terrible pole [sic] numbers against a fine and brilliant young man named DONALD J. TRUMP! Be careful what you wish for, Democrats???”

Today, Trump’s vice presidential pick Vance gave his first campaign speech at his former high school in Middletown, Ohio. There, dressed in a blue suit with a red tie that echoed Trump’s signature look, Vance spoke of his history in the town and promised that he and Trump are “ready to save America.” But his lack of experience on the campaign trail showed in his delivery, and the Fox News Channel, which was covering the speech, cut away from it while he was speaking. 

Media outlets gave more attention to the Ohio state senator who preceded Vance, George Lang, who began a chant of “fight, fight, fight” and told the audience: "I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County's JD Vance are the last chance to save our country politically. I'm afraid if we lose this one, it's going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved." He later posted on social media that he regretted his “divisive remarks.” 

Later in the day, Vance spoke in Radford, Virginia, where he said that “[h]istory will remember Joe Biden as not just a quitter, which he is, but as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States of America.” He continued: “Kamala Harris is a million times worse and everybody knows it. She signed up for every single one of Joe Biden’s failures, and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president.”

Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer of the Washington Post reported today on a different kind of jockeying in the 2024 presidential race. Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently been in talks with Trump about dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump in exchange for a position in a Trump administration. Kennedy, who opposes vaccines, is interested in a portfolio that covers health and medical issues.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON