#belligerent litigant

[agentfascinateur]

“If a blog post is evidence of collaboration, that’s a stance that’s somewhat hostile to the First Amendment”

The company filed in the Northern District of Texas, where it will appear before Judge Reed O’Connor, who holds $15,000 of stock in Tesla, Musk’s other company. (Earlier this week, Media Matters lost its bid to have O’Connor recuse himself.) Media Matters has also filed to dismiss the case, which O’Connor has not yet ruled on; in the meantime, he has ordered that Media Matters must comply with an expansive discovery request from X’s lawyers.

[mariacallous]

Remember when Donald Trump told people that they’d get tired of winning once he was in office? If you are a Trump Administration lawyer, it surely doesn’t feel that way. Based on the useful litigation tracker compiled by the group Just Security, the Trump Administration, in its second incarnation, has lost in thirty-six of fifty-six cases decided so far in the federal district courts and not yet subject to appellate rulings. It has lost in ten of fifteen cases that have been decided at the next level of review, the federal circuit courts of appeals. These numbers are especially striking because the cases are at a preliminary stage, when the hurdles are high for those seeking to block an Administration action.

With six emergency petitions challenging four different Administration policies now before the Supreme Court, the coming days should provide a better sense of how Trump will fare there. The early indications are not good for the Administration: the Court effectively rebuffed a request for emergency intervention involving the U.S. Agency for International Development, albeit by a vote of 5–4. In another case, a challenge to Trump’s order restricting birthright citizenship, the Court set a briefing schedule so languid—those opposing the Administration’s position were given two full weeks to respond—as to send the unmistakable message that the Justices did not share Trump’s view on the urgency of the situation.

These statistics don’t merely indicate that the Administration is on the wrong side of the law. They also reflect bad lawyering. The Administration’s hyper-aggressive litigation strategy combines maximalist assertions of the scope of Presidential power with the insistence that any potential intrusion on executive authority necessitates emergency relief. It is belligerent in tone, treating federal judges like junior associates at law firms, when not asserting that they are biased partisans. It dispatches attorneys like so much legal cannon fodder, to defend the Administration’s actions with little or incorrect information about the underlying facts. It is grudging, if that, on compliance with court orders, all but inviting judges to find the Administration in contempt of court. Add to this Trump’s out-of-court behavior, which has included assailing a respected district-court judge as a “radical left lunatic,” calling for his impeachment, and going after Big Law with blatantly unconstitutional executive orders. An Administration that is going to want the vote of Chief Justice John Roberts might do well to recall that Roberts spent years in private law practice.

One lawyer leading the anti-Trump advocacy surmised that the Justice Department is “trying to play to Trump, and Stephen Miller,” the deputy White House chief of staff. “It’s a very bad strategy,” the attorney added. “We’re by the day gaining more credibility with the Supreme Court by just not being crazy about court orders and judges.” Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School and a senior official in the Justice Department under George W. Bush, has reached the same conclusion. The Trump Administration’s “open disrespect toward and aggressive political attacks on lower court judges will surely have a negative impact on the way that some and maybe most Supreme Court Justices approach the legal issues coming to the Court,” Goldsmith wrote last month on his Substack, Executive Functions. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

One possible explanation for this self-defeating behavior is that the Trump Administration doesn’t actually care about winning—at least, not about winning in court. It cares about inflicting damage, as swiftly and brutally as possible—putting agencies “into the wood chipper,” for example, as Elon Musk boasted about U.S.A.I.D. Perhaps the Administration will eventually lose in court, but the harm already done will be irreparable. Meanwhile, this argument goes, the Administration reaps political benefit by picking fights on base-friendly issues such as immigration and transgender rights, and by waging rhetorical war against judges. Calls for impeachment now, impeachment forever will result in zero actual impeachments, but they serve as invigorating rallying cries.

Maybe this is the Administration’s approach; in that case, it’s important to acknowledge that there can be a divergence between the tactics that sober-minded lawyers would prefer and the demands of their hot-headed clients. When your hot-headed client is the President of the United States, you can do only so much. That reality was evident in February, early in the litigation wars, when the acting Solicitor General, Sarah Harris, felt compelled to drop a soothing footnote in an emergency request that the Supreme Court block a lower-court order reinstating Hampton Dellinger as the head of the Office of Special Counsel. “The Executive Branch takes seriously its constitutional duty to comply with the orders of Article III courts,” Harris, a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, assured the Justices. (Dellinger has since withdrawn the appeal, which he appeared destined to lose.)

This observation was no random aside—it followed the President’s alarming statement, on social media, that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law. ” In an earlier post, Vice-President J. D. Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School, asserted that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” Proclamations like these are not helpful when you are trying to convince judges that the executive is making a legitimate assertion of power. In the end, as Chief Justice John Marshall declared in Marbury v. Madison, “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”

Putting aside the prospect that Trump will resort to open defiance of the Court, the fact is that the courts will be the final arbiter of whether Trump can revoke the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, unilaterally shutter departments created by Congress, fire commissioners at independent agencies without cause, ban trans people from serving in the military, punish law firms because of whom they hire or what clients they represent, or—well, the list goes on. On some of these initiatives, such as the power to control independent agencies, the Administration is likely to encounter a receptive audience, especially before the high court. On others, such as birthright citizenship, the Administration has a tougher path to victory. Making preposterous arguments, employing disrespectful language, and treating judges like obstreperous obstacles rather than life-tenured members of a coequal branch does nothing to help its cause.

In one case—which challenges the removal of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members, under the supposed authority of the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that has only been used in wartime—U.S. District Judge James Boasberg unloaded on a lawyer for the government for using “intemperate and disrespectful language I’m not used to hearing from the United States.” In a hearing Thursday, Boasberg, saying the government had “acted in bad faith,” appeared inclined to find it in contempt of an order he had issued not to remove the migrants.

In another case, involving Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled for the Administration, but she admonished lawyers for being disingenuous about the extent of DOGE’s authority over personnel actions. “Defense counsel is reminded of their duty to make truthful representations to the court,” Chutkan wrote in a footnote. Another judge in the District of Columbia, Ana Reyes, was even sharper in response to the government’s argument that its executive order barring transgender individuals from serving in the military applied only to people with gender dysphoria—notwithstanding a tweet from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Defense Department’s official account asserting flatly, “Transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.”

“I am not going to abide by government officials saying one thing to the public . . . saying what they really mean to the public and coming in here to the court and telling me something different, like I’m an idiot,” Reyes said. “I am not an idiot.” The Justice Department lawyer, Jean Lin, persisted with this ludicrous distinction. “Your Honor, we respectfully submit that the inference that this is a broad transgender ban is incorrect,” she said.

This kind of lawyering takes a toll. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where many of the cases challenging Trump Administration actions are headed, refused to block Boasberg’s order preventing the Administration from removing alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang from the United States. Notably, the Administration came before a panel of two Republican-nominated judges—one, Karen LeCraft Henderson, named by George H. W. Bush; the other, Justin Walker, by Trump—and one Democratic appointee, Patricia Millett, named by Barack Obama. In other words, this panel looked to be stacked in the Administration’s favor. And Henderson’s prior cases underscored her willingness to defer to the government on matters of national security and her scant sympathy for the plight of migrants.

But the Trump Administration managed to lose Henderson’s vote in Trump v. J.G.G., as she joined Millett in refusing to lift Boasberg’s temporary restraining order. To read Henderson’s opinion is to get a glimpse of her impatience with the audacity of the Administration’s arguments, which included the claim that federal courts had no business reviewing Trump’s actions because of his authority over national security and foreign relations. “Sensitive subject matter alone does not shroud a law from the judicial eye,” she observed. As to the Administration’s assertion that the Alien Enemies Act could be stretched to cover the actions of a gang, not a government, at a time when there is no declared war or military invasion, Henderson was tart. “The text and its original meaning say otherwise,” she wrote.

Millett was even more unsparing. She went out of her way to defend Boasberg, noting that the “district court has been handling this matter with great expedition and circumspection, and its orders do nothing more than freeze the status quo.” And she called out the government for arguing to Boasberg that it didn’t have to comply with his verbal order to turn around planes carrying the Venezuelans because only the written one mattered, and then asking her court to review the same verbal order on appeal. “Heads the government wins, tails the district court loses is no way to obtain the exceptional relief of a [temporary restraining order] stay,” Millett wrote.

That day, the U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell displayed similar impatience in rejecting the Administration’s request that she step aside from overseeing a case brought by the law firm Perkins Coie, which argues that Trump’s executive order targeting the firm violates its constitutional rights. Her action was no surprise—judges don’t tend to be well disposed toward efforts to bump them off cases, which is why prudent litigants are wary of making such requests. But Howell’s opinion denying the motion is worth paying attention to, because she used the opportunity to send a message to the government about what she termed its “rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attack.”

The opening sentence of the Administration’s filing asking her to step aside, she noted, emphasized “the need to curtail ongoing improper encroachments of President Trump’s Executive Power playing out around the country.” Howell pushed back. “This line, which sounds like a talking point from a member of Congress rather than a legal brief from the United States Department of Justice, has no citation to any legal authority for the simple reason that the notion expressed reflects a grave misapprehension of our constitutional order,” she wrote. “Adjudicating whether an Executive Branch exercise of power is legal, or not, is actually the job of the federal courts.”

The Trump Administration’s frustration with the quantity of litigation against it, she continued, “is a testament to the fact that this country has an independent judiciary that adheres to an impartial adjudication process, without being swayed merely because the federal government appears on one side of a case and the President wishes a particular result.”

My point here isn’t that judges bristle at the Administration’s actions and reflexively decide to rule against it. The judicial process is more subtle than that. But judges are people, too. They talk among themselves in courthouse corridors and lunchrooms. They witness the disrespectful treatment of colleagues they know deserve respect. They encounter extreme arguments and become understandably wary of the credibility of the Administration making them. Appellate judges surely noted, for example, that the Administration took the extraordinary step of asserting the “state secrets” privilege to shield information about the Venezuelan migrants case and then dismissed as no big deal the far more sensitive information discussed by senior officials on a Signal chat, to which they had accidentally added The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.

Paul Freund, the legendary Harvard Law School professor, famously said that “the Court should never be influenced by the weather of the day, but inevitably they will be influenced by the climate of the era.” A climate of hostility to the judiciary is one of the Trump Administration’s own creation, but it cannot be conducive to the President’s desired outcome. For that, at least, we should be grateful.

[thatstormygeek]

A democratically-elected President supported by a majority of his people faced the press in the Oval Office today. Unfortunately, his brief stay was interrupted due to the incessant, belligerent barking of two neutered dogs sent by Russia. I’m of course talking about Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s shameful “meeting” with Donald Trump and his reek, JD Vance, who was briefly allowed outside the kennel to pummel an ally.

To this day, MAGA has been unable to answer why Trump, who mocks everyone from Republicans to the press to US allies to women to Black people, is incapable of saying one single bad word against Putin and why he continues to repeat all of his talking points. All of this history is to say that what happened today at the White House was certainly shocking but shouldn’t be surprising.. The Oval Office meeting, often a ceremonial performance for the press, transformed into a WWE ambush whose script seemed penned in the Kremlin by Putin. For the first time in this presidency, Donald Trump awoke from his lethargic slumber. He showed more passion and energy to defend Putin than he has for thousands of federal workers fired by Musk. Both Trump and Vance publicly berated Zelensky for not being grateful for U.S. support. When Zelensky reminded the men that Putin broke the ceasefire, Vance jumped in like a little Russian poodle and told Zelensky to not “litigate this in front of the American media.” Trump said refused to take a side in the conflict but always seems to side with Putin. “You see the hatred [Zelensky’s] got for Putin,” Trump said. “That’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate.” The spectacle ended with Zelensky departing and Trump cancelling their planned news conference. On cue, other Russian poodles decided to bark and spin the debacle in favor of Trump. Marco Rubio, who attending the meeting in the Oval Office, slumped and broken with a face that looked like it had just smelled the world’s most toxic fart, appeared on CNN to demand that Zelensky apologize to Trump. Senator Lindsay Graham, another shameless reek who has sold his soul for access and relevance, called for Zelensky’s “resignation.” Karl Rove at least admitted the entire meeting was a disaster and only helped Putin. For his candor and honesty, he was trolled and ridiculed all day by the MAGA cult.

The sad truth is that we have a thoroughly compromised and transactional Trump Presidency that is torpedoing the post WW2 democratic order in subservience to anti-American authoritarians. The White House is open for business to the highest bidder. It’s the Putin First, Musk Second, and Billionaires Third. America is dead last. Tragically, European countries, especially Ukraine, recognize this new, dangerous reality and are now uniting and preparing to treat America as a potential threat. As far as Americans are concerned, it’s clear that our President is a dog that belongs to Russia.

[gastronomasonoma]

The spirit of the road house is alive at Buck’s Place in Sonoma.

On the west side of town there is a new yet old restaurant and bar called ‘Buck’s Place.’

Its recent incarnation as Buck’s is relatively new. But as an old building on the corner of Grove Street and Riverside Drive, it can be traced back over 115 years.

As noted by the Sonoma Historical Society in the early days of the 20th Century many families made their way to the El Verano area upValley to a restaurant and dance hall called “Little Switzerland.”

Built in 1906 it was the place to go especially during summer, to enjoy good food, libations and lots of dancing, mostly variations of the polka.

Named in honor of the scores of Swiss immigrants who made Northern California home after the Gold Rush, “Little Switzerland” continued in operation with different owners “off & on” so to speak, until 2017 when it became The Reel Fish House & Grill.

Before automobiles were ubiquitous across America, a train would bring people from San Francisco and surrounding towns into the valley for the summer season.

Still, even as people began to travel more by car into the 1920s & ‘30s, the essential ‘roadhouse’ was a destination that attracted both local and out-of-town visitors.

Something akin to a “Public House” or “wayside inn” in Europe, roadside places were common throughout North America from the late 19th Century onwards.

As historian Doug Beckstead noted on his Roadhouse history website. “Roadhouses sprang-up along the Yukon River in the 1890s to accommodate travelers.”

“At least eleven roadhouses once existed, he said, along the trail between Eagle and Circle in what is now Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve.”

“Many roadhouses doubled as a homebase and supply point for fur trapping and mining operations,” said Beckstead. “Others roadhouses were also woodcutting locations and fuel stops for the wood-burning sternwheelers plying the river in summer months,” he added.

With many rural areas in Northern California, some semblance of a roadhouse persisted and this was especially so for an area like Sonoma County. Russian River, Bodega Bay and winding stretches of road leading to Mendocino were ideal for something like a roadhouse or a roadside cafe to emerge.

Enter into the scene, just after World War II, an unusually “flamboyant” personality like that of Texas-native, Juanita Hudspeth Musson.

She and her husband Richard opened a restaurant in Sausalito that garnered as much notoriety as it did acclaim.

Over the next 10 years or more, ‘Juanita’ as she was simply called by everyone, moved her “Galley Restaurant” establishment to several locations.

Financial difficulties and contract disputes, including investigations by the IRS followed her as Juanita was a poor manager.

She was known to be of “eccentric” temperament which often resulted in her becoming either kind and hospitable or rude and belligerent to customers as well as staff.

Regardless, her presence in the San Francisco Bay Area was legendary.

In 1964 upon leaving Sausalito, she reestablished her restaurant to the El Verano area, near Fetters Hot Springs resort. For the next 40 years into old age, Sonoma was her home.

Still, just like what happened in Sausalito, Juanita’s in Sonoma would also have praise for good food, yet there also would be chaos that accompanied it. In 1969 her restaurant was damaged in a fire.

Eventually bouncing back by reopening again, Kathleen Hill, the food & wine editor for the Sonoma Index-Tribune noted.

“Regulars would either be shocked or thrilled to see a monkey on her shoulder. If not a monkey then a parrot here or there, or – when Juanita was so moved – a hoisting of her muumuu to show off her enormous bosom.”

When Juanita died in 2011, a memorial gathering was held at “Little Switzerland.”

Ironically, as “Little Switzerland” became yet another new restaurant venue in 2019 as “Reel & Brand,” new owners and business-partner investors became entangled in litigation in 2022.

Hopefully the “ghost of Juanita” and the chaos that underlined her restaurant ventures in Sonoma will finally be put to rest as Buck’s Place takes over such a storied spot.

The ambiance is welcoming as the food is delicious. Basic Italian-American food, with a bit of artesian sensibility. The Italian meatball sandwich is very satisfying, especially with fresh basil and a sesame seed toasted roll.

With a glass of sparkling red wine out on the back patio listening to live music, what could be better on a summer afternoon or evening!

Yes! The spirit of the road house continues. Any visitor to Sonoma, may this be an invitation. If it so happens that the upscale experience of a winery tour, is tiring- that of the “tasting room experience,” then dear visitor, get-away from the plaza, to relax and be more easy-going of a different place and time, like the rural Sonoma of sentimental legend. Make a visit to Buck’s Place at 401 Grove Street on “the springs-side of town, El Verano. See Buck’s Place website for details.

[koherston]

Failure to Produce Discovery Results in Dismissal of Nashville, Tennessee Lawsuit: Plofchan v. Hughey

What sanctions can a court impose for failing to produce discovery in Tennessee?

Facts: This isn’t a family-law case, but it offers important lessons for family-law attorneys and litigants. Man was drinking at a bar during a bachelor party when he met Woman. Later, Man and Woman were confronted by a police officer. According to the officer, Man was extremely intoxicated, hostile, and belligerent. More officers were called to the scene. Man insulted the officers when they…

[my-name-is-dahlia]

Vocabulary (pt.dcccxli)

Words taken from Mercy (2001) by Julie Garwood:

mercy killing (n.) = euthanasia.

expostulate (v.) make a protest; remonstrate earnestly.

hypochondriac (n.) a person suffering from hypochondria.

belligerence (n.) aggressive or warlike behaviour.

auditor (n.) a person who audits accounts.

étouffée (n.) a spicy Cajun stew made with vegetables and seafood.

pro bono (adj.) North American. law. (of legal work) undertaken without charge.

appendix (n.) anatomy. (in full vermiform appendix) a small outgrowth of tissue forming a tube-shaped sac attached to the lower end of the large intestine.

litigate (v.) take a claim or dispute to a law court; be a party to a lawsuit.

ventricular fibrillation (n.) a heart rhythm problem that occurs when the heart beats with rapid, erratic electrical impulses. This causes pumping chambers in your heart (the ventricles) to quiver uselessly, instead of pumping blood. [x]

[chicago-geniza]

tried talking to a relative i really like about, uh, their fairly recent fairly aggressive posts re: Electoral Politics (tm), basically saying as gently as possible, as a mutual friend of ours put it, ‘voting party line because it’s necessary doesn’t mean swallowing that line,’ & criticisms of h*rris are not simply “buying into the hype,” they come from a place of deep concern, especially when a driving force of this protest movement has been the demand to defund police (as a step toward abolishing the police altogether), bound up in a much larger critique of the carceral state, & on-the-ground grassroots organizing + mobilizing with an aim to PIC abolition. she got very belligerent & said i was falling for propaganda and “should be smarter than this” & screamed at me (in caps lock) to “fucking VOTE” & that she didn’t want that kind of negativity “ON [HER] GODDAMN PAGE” then deleted all those replies, my original comment, & tagged me in a bunch of fb posts about h*rris & why we should support her. now i’m :((( & will henceforth be abstaining from discussion of contemporary american politics with family. only re-litigating petty internecine disputes among russian jewish leftist factions following the 1905 revolution

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Bill Gates: if we break up Big Tech, we'll just have more bad companies

In an interview with Bloomberg, Bill Gates dismissed the idea of breakups as a remedy for Big Tech's monopolistic market concentration; Gates said that breaking up an abusive company will just produce more abusive companies. Instead, Gates believes that specific monopolistic activities should be banned.

Gates has some company in this position: For example EU competition commission Margrethe Vestager (recently blessed with a surprise reappointment) says that attempts to break up Facebook will turn into protracted litigation boondoggles, and instead, she just wants to go on extracting massive fines from tech companies that misbehave (though these fines are also the subject of high-stake litigation).

But it's not just Vestager and Gates: Mark Zuckerberg wants to see regulation for Facebook. He says that clear rules will help him steer his company without daily, ghastly scandals.

The problem with this model is that expensive, difficult-to-implement compliance rules are tantamount to permanent licenses to dominate the internet: if you have to be a giant to afford to comply with the law, then we'll only get giants.

The other problem is that giants who extract monopoly profits from their suppliers and customers have plenty of money left over to lobby governments to let them get away with progressively worse behavior (which improves their profitability, leaving more money to lobby with, lather, rinse, repeat). This is why the first trustbusters focused on breaking up the giant companies (which were run by executives who were no less wicked than Big Tech's supposedly benevolent dictators): they didn't just want to have fairer, more competitive markets, they wanted to hamstring the industries' ability to corrupt democratic governance.

Gates is practicing a form of tech exceptionalism here: implicit in his view is that tech is intrinsically corrupting, and that the companies behave badly because it is in their nature to do so, not because we let them get away with it.

But he should know better. Tech's rise coincided precisely with the decline of antitrust enforcement (literally: Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail the same year the Apple ][+ went on sale, and one of his first acts after the election the next year was to gut antitrust enforcement).

Companies that had been around for a while either had first-hand experience of the truly unpleasant experience of being targeted for antitrust enforcement, or had watched it happen to others close up. Senior counsel for these companies trained juniors to warn execs that monopolistic behavior would produce brutal, extended legal trouble.

But not tech: the fresh Stanford Law grads who went to work for the startups their EE and Comp Sci colleagues had dropped out to found had not direct experience of antitrust, and when the execs they worked for proposed monopolistic conduct that would have been severely punished under pre-Reagan antitrust, these lawyers did not pump the breaks -- they hit the gas-pedal. And every time they did this, they were rewarded: the companies they worked for enhanced their profits by buying or crushing nascent competitors, by merging with major rivals, by cornering entire vertical markets. Corporate counsel went from being the adult supervision in board-rooms full of unexceptionally greedy and atavistic executives to being enthusiastic enablers of these execs' worst impulses.

Cue the Microsoft antitrust investigation. Bill Gates put in a legendarily terrible performance for his deposition, one of the first-ever corporate depositions to be video-recorded and released to the public, going viral as best as it could given the technology of the day. The sight of Gates, stimming and rocking and displaying belligerent arrogance with every word, was deeply traumatic to both Gates and Microsoft's executives.

Microsoft insider accounts claim that this traumatic experience, as well as the years and millions Microsoft spent fighting the DoJ (successfully, for the most part) changed the microeconomics of Microsoft's decision-making. Like every other large institution, Microsoft is (and was) composed of people with a variety of views on the wisdom and fairness of different courses of action, but the people who'd argued for monopolistic conduct had won every argument, because whenever the company followed their advice, it grew more profitable and faced no consequences.

But, after having faced lengthy antitrust action that was both personally and financially traumatizing, the naysayers in the board room gained a powerful new argument: "If we do this, they'll put Bill back on the stand."

Those same Microsoft insiders say that this caution is what allowed Google to emerge, without being crushed using the underhanded, unethical, monopolistic tactics Microsoft used on every other upstart that threatened its dominance.

This effect wasn't confined to Microsoft, either: for a brief moment in the early 2000s, the whole industry discovered a new forebearance, during which the ecosystem became more diverse, weirder, more interesting and more competitive than it had ever been, before or since.

(This same dynamic may be the reason that the IBM staffers who argued that the first PCs should be built from commodity components, and that Phoenix should be left in peace to clone its ROM chips won their arguments, despite IBM's usual practice of building systems out of proprietary components and subcomponents, and the bullying, monopolistic tactics that mired them in DoJ litigation for more than a decade, at the end of whic the company produced its first PC)

Gates wants us to believe that Tech is Different, and that anyone who runs a tech company will be so intrinsically rapacious and villainous that they will behave as he did when he was growing Microsoft; but the reality is that Gates and his fellow monopolists past and present are totally unexceptional in their willingness to cheat and bully their way to dominance. They're no less and no more rotten than Carnegie or Rockefeller or the Sacklers. The thing that let these garden-variety sociopaths get away with their bad behavior was not their exceptional brilliance: it was the state's deliberate decision to let them get away with it.

Gates's prescription is for governments and tech companies to create state monopolies, a new kind of industrial constitutional monarchy, in which companies like Microsoft (and Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, etc) are guaranteed eternal rule over their sectors, in exchange for suffering themselves to be draped in golden chains by a regulatory aristocracy drawn from their own executive ranks, who will ask them to exercise noblesse oblige and throw some crumbs to us peasants laboring in their digital fields.

But even if breakups take a long time and even fail in the end, they're still worth pursuing. DoJ antitrust litigation changes the way companies operate, puts them on their best behavior and puts a giant thumb on the scales for the internal angels of the companies' better natures when they joust with their amoral board-room rivals.

https://boingboing.net/2019/09/21/deposition-trauma.html

[hardingfirm]

Divorce Mediation Expert

Why Should You Consider Divorce Mediation?

How long after mediation is a divorce final?

Every situation is different, so this is hard to answer as a blanket statement in a blog post. However, mediation, in general, resolves much faster than going to court. If you are looking for the fastest resolution and both sides are willing to compromise, divorce mediation is definitely a path that should be considered. The Harding Firm provides experienced divorce mediation services in Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler, Queen Creek, and the surrounding east valley.

What happens in mediation?

Mediation is a unique process that is catered to both parties. The parties can meet together, or separately with the mediator. In the beginning, the mediator will explain that this process is voluntary and could result in a partial or full agreement, which can save the parties thousands of dollars. 

Both parties can choose to stay in the same room during mediation, at any time, one party can ask to speak to the mediator privately. Meeting privately with the mediator is called “caucusing.” The goal is to resolve the disputes, in an amicable manner. This process usually results in an amicable result. If at any time a party appears to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol,  becomes irate, or belligerent, the mediator has the authority to end the mediation.

When the parties reach an agreement

the mediator will read and record the agreement. 

The mediator will write up a summary of the agreement

Then both parties will sign the agreement and receive a copy. 

Both parties will leave with a copy of the agreement. The mediation will end with both parties knowing that they have resolved their dispute without spending additional time and money on litigation. 

Benefits of Divorce Mediation

  We have talked a little bit about the process of divorce mediation. Below are some additional benefits:

Mediation is generally much less expensive than a series of hearings or going through a court trial.

Mediation does not leave a public record and is confidential

Mediation gives you the opportunity to arrive at a resolution bot5h parties agree to rather than having a solution imposed on one or both parties based on impersonal legal guidelines.

You can still have your lawyer present to give you advice, but if you are looking to avoid additional costs the parties can agree to not have lawyers present. It is generally advisable to have an attorney present, however.

The process is controlled by both parties and not the court.

The process can improve communication between you and your spouse helping to avoid future conflicts especially when kids are involved.

Something important to remember is that you should come to a mediation proceeding with an open mind as you will expect your spouse to do the same. Compromise on both sides of the aisle are crucial to obtaining a successful divorce mediation. Since mediation agreements take on a different nature than traditional divorce proceedings, you should make sure you are working with a lawyer who is experienced in working with divorce mediation. 

from The Harding Firm https://www.hardingfirm.com/divorce/divorce-mediation-expert/

[xproblematicdaddyx-blog]

5 Secrets of Criminal Defense Attorneys

It's one of the more unpleasant occupations in the legitimate field. Criminal protection lawyers, who remain alongside customers blamed for everything from minor offenses to mass homicide, must mount the best barrier of their customer conceivable regardless of how appalling the wrongdoing. While their work upholds an individual's established appropriate to a reasonable preliminary, a few spectators reprimand them for speaking to society's scoundrels.

In their view, that is overlooking what's really important. Notwithstanding ensuring the balances of equity are adjusted, criminal safeguard lawyers discover fulfillment in handling cases with high stakes. "It's a win or bust amusement," says Jeffrey Lichtman, a New York-based lawyer who has spoken to John A. Gotti and blamed Mexican medication ruler Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. "It's success or lose. There is weight, energy, and duty in being a criminal litigant's solitary defender and support."

To show signs of improvement comprehension of this frequently sincerely depleting work, Mental Floss talked with three prominent safeguard legal advisors. Notwithstanding Lichtman, we conversed with Chris Tritico—the subject of the main scene of Oxygen's In Defense Of docuseries debuting June 25, and who spoke to Oklahoma City aircraft Timothy McVeigh in 1997—and in addition Bryan Gates, rehearsing in North Carolina. This is what they shared about existence as a belligerent third party.

1. Lawyers DON'T ALLOW THEIR PERSONAL FEELINGS TO TRUMP DUE PROCESS.

A few respondents have obviously perpetrated horrendous wrongdoings, yet regardless they have protected rights—so lawyers don't give their own emotions about a wrongdoing a chance to hinder a customer's resistance. "There will never be been multi day I defended somebody blamed for a wrongdoing where I would embrace that wrongdoing," says Tritico. "I don't legitimize the demonstration of exploding a building and slaughtering 168 individuals. Be that as it may, McVeigh must be ensured and his rights must be secured. Individuals like me must will stand up and state, 'I will defend you.' You do it for McVeigh and you do it for everybody."

2. Holding WITH CLIENTS IS KEY, REGARDLESS OF THE CRIME.

It very well may be elusive shared belief with somebody blamed for offenses that could arrive them life in jail or even a capital punishment, however guard lawyers state that there's generally an approach to identify with their customers as people—and the case will be in an ideal situation for it. Lichtman turned out to be cordial with Gotti by talking about family; Tritico observed McVeigh to be genial. "I needed Tim to like me and I needed to like him," he says. "I needed him to confide in my choices. It doesn't occur inevitably, yet by far most of the time, I like them."

3. THEY RESEARCH JURORS' BACKGROUNDS.

Analyzing a potential hearer, known as voir desperate, is a workmanship. Both protection and arraignment need individuals in the jury box who can be influenced, however conditions are generally stacked against the safeguard. "The jury is coming in prepared to convict, as nobody for the most part bolsters wrongdoing," Lichtman says.

When testing would-be members, Lichtman talks quick: "I'm talking at an incredible rate, hoping to get the conceivably hazardous legal hearers to either purposely or accidentally uncover their regular inclinations with the goal that I can get them commenced the board for cause. The members of the jury who I think can keep a receptive outlook or are against police I won't address by any means, since I'm apprehensive they'll uncover those inclinations and get struck by the investigator when he utilizes an authoritative test [an complaint to a juror]."

Once in court, Lichtman centers around finding the one individual in the container of 12 to interface with. "I look into the foundations of attendants," he says. "I'm searching for anything out of sight I can abuse so as to tailor my summation to something that is occurred in their lives."

4. THEY'RE ALWAYS WATCHING THE JURY'S BODY LANGUAGE.

Watching a jury implies having the capacity to survey which bearing they're inclining. Lichtman says non-verbal communication can reveal to him a great deal. "You can feel how a preliminary is going," he says. Members of the jury who chuckle or grin at his jokes are his ally. Hearers getting some distance from him are most certainly not. "You can tell who's tailing you. They're empowered by your contentions."

Assessing how attendants are responding permits Lichtman to make continuous acclimations to his contentions. "As I'm scrutinizing an observer or entreating the jury amid a summation, on the off chance that I see somebody get some distance from me, I remember that legal hearer and what may have turned the person in question off, and attempt to correct or address it not far off," he says. "On the off chance that I have somebody chuckling, I realize that there's a member of the jury who may not be clearing my customer but rather the individual in question is at any rate open to it, so I invest a ton of energy chipping away at them."

5. THERE'S A REASON THEY STAND SO CLOSE TO THEIR CLIENTS.

The picture of a lawyer standing up by their customer as the decision is being perused is normally translated as an indication of solidarity, however legal counselors may have another reason. Tritico says that right off the bat in his profession, he went up against a customer accused of bothered burglary. In spite of Tritico's recommendation to take a supplication deal, the man took his risk at preliminary—and lost. His sentence was 40 years. "I was taking a gander at the jury as the decision was being perused and felt something moving," he says. "He had gone out. Starting now and into the foreseeable future, I generally snatch my customer by the arm to ensure that doesn't occur once more."

Some of the time, the lawyer may require the help. As indicated by Tritico, hearing a man being condemned to death, as he did with McVeigh, "may be the most calming thing you'll ever hear in your life." If you are looking for more information about Criminal Lawyer In Toronto and GTA - David Genis visit  right away.

[sanjosenewshq]

Starbucks Employees Sue Firm For Defamation Over Kidnapping Allegation

A bunch of Starbucks staff in South Carolina have sued the corporate for defamation after a retailer supervisor accused them of assault and kidnapping throughout a office protest. The lawsuit filed in South Carolina state courtroom revolves round an Aug. 1 incident at an Andersonville retailer the place staff approached their supervisor and gave her a letter demanding increased wages ― a standard tactic in labor organizing often known as a “march on the boss.” The supervisor later filed a police report alleging that the employees refused to let her go away the shop till they received a pay hike, and that one among them assaulted her ― accusations the employees and their union denied. A spokesperson for the native sheriff’s workplace later informed The State that “not one of the allegations” from the supervisor had been true. Starbucks stated in an announcement Monday that it was reviewing the lawsuit. “No Starbucks companion has been or will likely be disciplined for supporting or participating in lawful union exercise — however curiosity in a union doesn’t exempt companions from following insurance policies and procedures that apply to all companions,” the corporate stated. A TikTok video of a portion of the incident reveals staff lined up round a desk the place the supervisor is seated on a cellphone. She will get as much as go away and bumps a employee who’s in her path alongside the desk. “Why are you pushing him?” a voice asks the supervisor. (It’s not clear whether or not the supervisor ever used the time period “kidnapping,” or whether or not that was simply the cost that match her allegations.) The eight staff who filed the lawsuit declare Starbucks injured their reputations by “falsely stating or insinuating that that they had engaged in prison assault and kidnapping and engaged in threatened conduct.” They are saying they’ve suffered emotional misery on account of the allegations. The employees named Starbucks as a co-defendant within the swimsuit, saying the supervisor consulted with higher-ups on the submitting of her report and took half in a “coordinated response.” “[Her] assertion to police was false ― no worker blocked the exit, and no worker assaulted her,” their grievance states. Starbucks suspended the employees pending an investigation, and barred them from occurring different Starbucks properties. Based on the lawsuit, an lawyer for Starbucks contacted the employees’ union, Employees United, following the incident and accused one member of “abusive, belligerent, and menacing conduct.” That employee, Aneil Tripathi, stated Monday that “Starbucks knew precisely what they had been doing when it smeared our popularity, portray us as criminals.” “This case is about greater than defamation,” Tripathi stated. “It’s about highlighting the disgusting and outright abuse Starbucks will stage at their very own staff.” The spat in South Carolina is a part of a broader battle between the corporate and the union marketing campaign, Starbucks Employees United. Employees at greater than 200 Starbucks shops have unionized in a matter of months. Starbucks has opposed the marketing campaign all alongside, and union members have accused the corporate of retaliating towards them by firings, suspensions and retailer closures. The overall counsel of the Nationwide Labor Relations Board has discovered benefit in most of the staff’ claims, submitting greater than 20 complaints towards the corporate alleging labor legislation violations. These instances are actually being litigated. Originally published at San Jose News HQ

[freehawaii]

HEREʻS THE ARTICLE MENTIONED ON FREE HAWAI`I TV YESTERDAY

  NEA Today - October 1, 2018 - By Chris Santomauro

In his message to the Congress on December 18, 1893, President Grover Cleveland acknowledged that the Hawaiian Kingdom was unlawfully invaded by United States marines on January 16, 1893, which led to an illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian government the following day. The President told the Congress that he “instructed Minister Willis to advise the Queen and her supporters of [his] desire to aid in the restoration of the status existing before the lawless landing of the United States forces at Honolulu on the 16th of January last, if such restoration could be effected upon terms providing for clemency as well as justice to all parties concerned (U.S House of Representatives, 53d Cong., Executive Documents on Affairs in Hawaii: 1894-95, p. 458).”

What the President didn’t know at the time he gave his message was that Minister Willis succeeded in securing an agreement with the Queen that committed the United States to restore her as the Executive Monarch, and, thereafter, the Queen committed to granting amnesty to the insurgents. International law recognizes this executive agreement as a treaty. The President, however, did not carry out his duty under the treaty to restore the Queen, and, consequently, the Queen did not grant amnesty to the insurgents. The state of war continued.

Insurgency Continues to Seek Annexation to the United States

President Cleveland acknowledged that those individuals who he sought the Queen’s consent to grant amnesty were not a government at all. In fact, he stated they were “neither a government de facto nor de jure (p. 453).” Instead, the President referred to these individuals as “insurgents (Id.),” which by definition are rebels who revolt against an established government. Under Chapter VI of the Hawaiian Penal Code a revolt against the government is treason, which carries the punishment of death and property of the convicted is seized by the Hawaiian government.

On July 3, 1894, the insurgents renamed themselves the Republic of Hawai‘i and continued to seek annexation with the United States. Article 32 of its so-called constitution states, “The President, with the approval of the Cabinet, is hereby expressly authorized and empowered to make a Treaty of Political or Commercial Union between the Republic of Hawaii and the United States of America, subject to the ratification of the Senate.” The insurgents always sought to be annexed by the United States.

After President William McKinley succeeded President Cleveland in office he entered into a treaty of annexation with the insurgents on June 16, 1897, in Washington, D.C. The following day, Queen Lili‘uokalani, who was also in Washington, submitted a formal protest with the State Department. Her protest stated:

“I, Liliuokalani of Hawaii, by the will of God named heir apparent on the tenth day of April, A.D. 1877, and by the grace of God Queen of the Hawaiian Islands on the seventeenth day of January, A.D. 1893, do hereby protest against the ratification of a certain treaty, which, so I am informed, has been signed at Washington by Messrs. Hatch, Thurston, and Kinney, purporting to cede those Islands to the territory and dominion of the United States. I declare such a treaty to be an act of wrong toward the native and part-native people of Hawaii, an invasion of the rights of the ruling chiefs, in violation of international rights both toward my people and toward friendly nations with whom they have made treaties, the perpetuation of the fraud whereby the constitutional government was overthrown, and, finally, an act of gross injustice to me.”

Additional protests were filed with the State Department by two Hawaiian political organizations—the Men and Women’s Hawaiian Patriotic League (Hui Aloha ‘Aina), and the Hawaiian Political Association (Hui Kalai‘aina). President McKinley ignored these protests and was preparing to submit the so-called treaty for ratification by the Senate when the Congress would reconvene in December of 1897.

This prompted the Hawaiian Patriotic League to gather of 21,169 signatures from the Hawaiian citizenry and residents throughout the islands opposing annexation. On December 9, 1897, Senator George Hoar of Massachusetts entered the petition into the Senate record.

Under the Queen’s instructions, the delegates from the two Hawaiian political organizations who were in Washington began to meet with Senators who supported ratifying the so-called treaty. Sixty votes were necessary to accomplish ratification and there were already fifty-eight commitments. By the time the Hawaiian delegation left Washington on February 27, 1897, they had successfully chiseled the fifty-eight 

Senators in support of annexation down to forty-six.

Unable to garner the necessary sixty votes, the so-called treaty was dead by March, yet war with Spain was looming over the horizon, and Hawai‘i would have to face the belligerency of the United States once again. American military interest would be the driving forces to fortify the islands as an outpost to protect the United States from foreign invasion.

Annexation by Legislation

On April 25, 1897, one month after the treaty was killed, Congress declared war on Spain. The Spanish-American War was not waged in Spain, but rather in the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba in the Caribbean, and in the colonies of the Philippines and Guam in the Pacific. On May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines.

Three days later in Washington, D.C., Congressman Francis Newlands submitted a joint resolution for the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to House Committee on Foreign Affairs on May 4. On May 17, the joint resolution was reported out of the committee and headed to the floor of the House of Representatives.

On June 15, 1898, Congressman Thomas H. Ball from Texas emphatically stated, “The annexation of Hawai‘i by joint resolution is unconstitutional, unnecessary, and unwise. …Why, sir, the very presence of this measure here is the result of a deliberate attempt to do unlawfully that which can not be done lawfully (31 Cong. Rec. 5975).”

When the resolution reached the Senate, Senator Augustus Bacon from Georgia sarcastically remarked that, the “friends of annexation, seeing that it was not possible to make this treaty in the manner pointed out by the Constitution, attempted then to nullify the provision of in the Constitution by putting that treaty in the form of a statute, and here we have embodied the provisions of the treaty in the joint resolution which comes to us from the House (31 Cong. Rec. 6150).” Senator Bacon further explained, “That a joint resolution for the annexation of foreign territory was necessarily and essentially the subject matter of a treaty, and that it could not be accomplished legally and constitutionally by a statute or joint resolution (31 Cong. Rec. 6148).”

Despite the objections from Senators and Representatives, it managed to get a majority vote and President McKinley signed the joint resolution into law on July 7, 1898. The military buildup began in August of 1898 with the first army base in Waikiki called Camp McKinley. Today there are 118 military sites throughout the Hawaiian Islands and it serves as the headquarters for the United States Indo-Pacific Command.

Many government officials and constitutional scholars could not explain how a joint resolution could have the extra-territorial force and effect of a treaty in annexing Hawai‘i, a foreign and sovereign state. During the 19th century, Born states, “American courts, commentators, and other authorities understood international law as imposing strict territorial limits on national assertions of legislative jurisdiction (Gary Born, International Civil Litigation in United States Courts, p. 493).”

In 1824, the United Supreme Court explained that, “the legislation of every country is territorial,” and that the “laws of no nation can justly extend beyond its own territory (Rose v. Himely, 8 U.S. 241, p. 279),” for it would be “at variance with the independence and sovereignty of foreign nations (The Apollon, 22 U.S. 362, p. 370).”

In violation of international law and the treaties with the Hawaiian Kingdom, the United States maintained the insurgents’ control until the Congress could reorganize the insurgency so that it would look like a government. On April 30, 1900, the U.S. Congress changed the name of the Republic of Hawai‘i to the Territory of Hawai‘i. Later, on March 18, 1959, the U.S. Congress, again by statute, changed the name of the Territory of Hawai‘i to the State of Hawai‘i.

In 1988, Acting Assistant United States Attorney General, Douglas W. Kmiec, drew attention to this American dilemma in a memorandum opinion written for the Legal Advisor for the Department of State regarding legal issues raised by the proposed Presidential proclamation to extend the territorial sea from a three-mile limit to twelve (Opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel, vol. 12, p. 238-263). After concluding that only the President and not the Congress possesses “the constitutional authority to assert either sovereignty over an extended territorial sea or jurisdiction over it under international law on behalf of the United States (Id., p. 242),” Kmiec also concluded that it was “unclear which constitutional power Congress exercised when it acquired Hawaii by joint resolution. Accordingly, it is doubtful that the acquisition of Hawaii can serve as an appropriate precedent for a congressional assertion of sovereignty over an extended territorial sea (Id., p. 262).”

Kmiec cited United States constitutional scholar Westel Woodbury Willoughby, who wrote in 1929, “The constitutionality of the annexation of Hawaii, by a simple legislative act, was strenuously contested at the time both in Congress and by the press. The right to annex by treaty was not denied, but it was denied that this might be done by a simple legislative act. …Only by means of treaties, it was asserted, can the relations between States be governed, for a legislative act is necessarily without extraterritorial force—confined in its operation to the territory of the State by whose legislature enacted it (Id., p. 252).”

In 1910, Willoughby wrote, “The incorporation of one sovereign State, such as was Hawaii prior to annexation, in the territory of another, is…essentially a matter falling within the domain of international relations, and, therefore, beyond the reach of legislative acts (Willoughby, The Constitutional Law of the United States, vol. 1, p. 345).”

United Nations Acknowledges the Occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom

In a communication to the State of Hawai‘i dated February 25, 2018 from Dr. Alfred M. deZayas, a United Nations Independent Expert, the UN official acknowledged the prolonged occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom. He wrote:

“As a professor of international law, the former Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee, co-author of book, The United Nations Human Rights Committee Case Law 1977-2008, and currently serving as the UN Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, I have come to understand that the lawful political status of the Hawaiian Islands is that of a sovereign nation-state that is under a strange form of occupation by the United States resulting from an illegal military occupation and a fraudulent annexation. As such, international laws (the Hague and Geneva Conventions) require that governance and legal matters within the occupied territory of the Hawaiian Islands must be administered by the application of the laws of the occupied state (in this case, the Hawaiian Kingdom), not the domestic laws of the occupier (the United States).”

A state of peace between the Hawaiian Kingdom and the United States was transformed to a state of war when United States troops invaded the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 16, 1893, and illegally overthrew the Hawaiian government the following day. Only by way of a treaty of peace can the state of affairs be transformed back to a state of peace. The 1907 Hague Convention, IV, and the 1949 Geneva Convention, IV, mentioned by the UN official regulate the occupying State during a state of war.

[eugene114]

Dissension

POS

: Noun

HYPHEN

: dis=sen=sion

OXFORD DICTIONARY

Dissension

, n. disagreement giving rise to discord.

EtymologyME f. OF f. L dissensio (as DIS-, sentire sens- feel)

THESAURUS

Dissension

aggressiveness, agreement to disagree, alienation, altercation, antagonism, antipathy, apostasy, argument, argumentation, bad blood, bellicosity, belligerence, bickering, clashing, collision, combativeness, competition, conflict, contention, contentiousness, contradiction, contrariety, contrariness, controversy, counter-culture, cross-purposes, difference, disaccord, disaccordance, disagreement, disapprobation, disapproval, discord, discordance, discordancy, discrepancy, disharmony, disparity, dispute, dissatisfaction, dissent, dissentience, dissidence, dissonance, disunion, disunity, divergence, diversity, dropping out, enmity, faction, factiousness, flak, fractiousness, friction, hostility, inaccordance, inequality, infighting, inimicalness, irascibility, irritability, jarring, litigiousness, minority opinion, negation, negativeness, nonagreement, nonassent, nonconcurrence, nonconformity, nonconsent, noncooperation, obstinacy, opposition, oppugnancy, partisan spirit, partisanship, perverseness, pugnacity, quarrel, quarrelsomeness, recalcitrance, recusance, recusancy, refractoriness, rejection, repudiation, repugnance, rivalry, secession, shrewishness, strife, uncooperativeness, underground, unharmoniousness, variance, vying, withdrawal, wrangle

ROGET THESAURUS

Dissension

Disagreement

N

disagreement, discord, discordance, dissonance, dissidence, discrepancy, unconformity, incongruity, incongruence, discongruity, mesalliance, jarring, dissension, conflict, bickering, clashing, misunderstanding, wrangle, disparity, mismatch, disproportion, dissimilitude, inequality, disproportionateness, variance, divergence, repugnance, unfitness, inaptitude, impropriety, inapplicability, inconsistency, inconcinnity, irrelevancy, misjoining, misjoinder, syncretism, intrusion, interference, concordia discors, fish out of water, disagreeing, discordant, discrepant, at variance, at war, hostile, antagonistic, repugnant, incompatible, irreconcilable, inconsistent with, unconformable, exceptional, intrusive, incongruous, disproportionate, disproportionated, inharmonious, unharmonious, inconsonant, unconsonant, divergent, repugnant to, inapt, unapt, inappropriate, improper, unsuited, unsuitable, inapplicable, not to the point, unfit, unfitting, unbefitting, unbecoming, illtimed, unseasonable, mal a propos, inadmissible, inapposite, uncongenial, ill-assorted, ill-sorted, mismatched, misjoined, misplaced, misclassified, unaccommodating, irreducible, incommensurable, uncommensurable, unsympathetic, out of character, out of keeping, out of proportion, out of joint, out of tune, out of place, out of season, out of its element, at odds with, at variance with, in defiance, in contempt, in spite of, discordantly, a tort et a travers, asinus ad lyram.

Discord

N

discord, disagreement, discord, disaccord, dissidence, dissonance, jar, clash, shock, jarring, jostling, screw loose, variance, difference, dissension, misunderstanding, cross purposes, odds, brouillerie, division, split, rupture, disruption, division in the camp, house divided against itself, disunion, breach, schism, feud, faction, quarrel, dispute, tiff, tracasserie, squabble, altercation, barney, demel_e, snarl, spat, towrow, words, high words, wrangling, jangle, brabble, cross questions and crooked answers, snip-snap, family jars, polemics, litigation, strife, warfare, outbreak, open rupture, declaration of war, broil, brawl, row, racket, hubbub, rixation, embroilment, embranglement, imbroglio, fracas, breach of the peace, piece of work, scrimmage, rumpus, breeze, squall, riot, disturbance, commotion, bear garden, Donnybrook, Donnybrook Fair, subject of dispute, ground of quarrel, battle ground, disputed point, bone of contention, bone to pick, apple of discord, casus belli, question at issue, vexed question, vexata quaestio, brand of discord, troublous times, cat-and-dog life, contentiousness, enmity, hate, Kilkenny cats, disputant, strange bedfellows, discordant, disagreeing, out of tune, ajar, on bad terms, dissentient, unreconciled, unpacified, contentious, quarrelsome, unpacific, gladiatorial, controversial, polemic, disputatious, factious, litigious, litigant, pettifogging, at odds, at loggerheads, at daggers drawn, at variance, at issue, at cross purposes, at sixes and sevens, at feud, at high words, up in arms, together by the ears, in hot water, embroiled, torn, disunited, quot homines tot sententiae, no love lost between them, non nostrum tantas componere lites, Mars gravior sub pace latet, discord, discordance, dissonance, cacophony, want of harmony, caterwauling, harshness, Babel, Dutch concert, cat's concert, marrowbones and cleavers, discordant, dissonant, absonant, out of tune, tuneless, unmusical, untunable, unmelodious, immelodious, unharmonious, inharmonious, singsong, cacophonous, harsh, jarring.

[orbemnews]

Theodore football coach surrenders on assault charge Eric Collier Sr., the Theodore High School football coach, denies allegations that he participated in an assault.  BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. (WALA) – Theodore High School football coach and athletic director Wayne Eric Collier Sr. on Wednesday turned himself in on a misdemeanor assault charge stemming from an incident almost two weeks ago. The Mobile County Public School System indicated Wednesday that it has placed Collier on administrative leave. Three people who earlier got into a confrontation with one of Collier’s relatives on Dauphin Island that same day on May 8 accuse the football coach and three others of assaulting them when they returned by boat. One of the accusers, Hunter Hinton, is a defendant in the Dauphin Island case. He has turned himself in on the misdemeanor assault charge in that case, according to his lawyer, Jeff Deen. As for Collier, his lawyer reiterated to FOX10 News that the coach has done nothing wrong. “I don’t want to litigate the facts right now, but I can assure you that he is gonna be exonerated from any criminal responsibility for whatever went on down there,” attorney Dennis Knizley said. Collier’s brother, Shawn Jerome Collier, turned himself in Tuesday. It’s unclear what the status is for the other two defendants – Eric Collier’s son, Wayne Eric Collier Jr. and Hayden Aaron Collier. The Bayou La Batre Police Department did not immediately return a call seeking information about the matter. Deen, meanwhile, contended that the bad blood started because a “drunk, belligerent” relative of the Colliers who was on Dauphin Island got upset about something that happened involving Hinton on the island’s West End. That man “was picking fights with people,” Deen said. “He didn’t like what happened to him. So he whined and complained on his way back to Bayou La Batre on is cell phone.” That person is the one who accused Hinton of assault. He has a trial date in July. Deen said he does not know the specific injuries that his client stands accused of causing. But he added, “It’s much more extensive what happened in Bayou La Batre than anything that happened in Dauphin Island.” All of the charges are misdemeanors, with a maximum penalty of one year in jail. Updated at 12:47 p.m. to include that Collier has been placed on administrative leave.  An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Eric Collier Sr. was on Dauphin Island.  All content © 2021, WALA; Mobile, AL. (A Meredith Corporation Station). All Rights Reserved. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '799069027340147'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); Source link Orbem News #aaroncollier #Accused #Assault #Charge #Coach #criminallaw #football #footballcoach #hunterhinton #jeffdeen #Law #misdemeanor #surrenders #Theodore #wayneericcolliersr.

[dipulb3]

New Jersey attorney general is investigating claims that police officers repeatedly punched an Arab teen without provocation

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/new-jersey-attorney-general-is-investigating-claims-that-police-officers-repeatedly-punched-an-arab-teen-without-provocation/

New Jersey attorney general is investigating claims that police officers repeatedly punched an Arab teen without provocation

Osamah Alsaidi, 19 at the time, was assaulted and arrested by police officers with the Paterson Police Department in New Jersey in December, his lawyer Diego Navas said in a pre-lawsuit notice of claim.

Alsaidi was walking down Madison Avenue in Paterson just after midnight December 14 when a vehicle approached him, according to video footage released by the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

In the video, two Paterson police officers are seen briefly talking to Alsaidi before grabbing him and punching him repeatedly.

The video came from a surveillance camera across the street that Navas said they were “lucky” to find.

“If it wasn’t for that camera, it’d be the word of our client against the word of the officers,” Navas said in a news conference Tuesday.

Appradab reached out to the department for a statement but has not received a response.

Alsaidi, who was on his way to his 1 a.m. shift at Amazon, sustained multiple physical injuries as a result, Navas said, including head trauma, a concussion and multiple cuts and bruises, as well as anxiety, stress and depression.

A spokesperson for St. Joseph’s University Medical Center, Pamela Garretson, confirmed Alsaidi was treated and released December 14.

A police report detailing the encounter states Alsaidi approached the officers “screaming profanities and acting belligerent.” Officers ignored Alsaidi, the report says, but then Alsaidi took an “aggressive fighting stance by blading his body and clutching his fist,” before punching one officer in the chest and starting an altercation with him. The officers charged Alsaidi with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, according to the report.

But Alsaidi, in a Facebook post detailing the incident, claims the report is false.

“These officers came out of nowhere to block me from walking and beat me up on my own block,” he wrote Friday. “Then (one officer) assaults me at the hospital away from cameras and people to avoid witnesses. I made a complaint to Internal Affairs and two months have passed and they still haven’t done anything.”

He continued, “I was beaten up and arrested for no reason. I was 19 at the time and have no criminal record. I was humiliated and treated like an animal. I thought they were going to kill me at the police station. I can’t even walk IN MY OWN TOWN without being afraid these cops will attack me again.”

In Tuesday’s news conference, Selaedin Maksut, CAIR New Jersey’s executive director, called on the officers involved to be fired and prosecuted for aggravated assault and official misconduct for allegedly making the false report.

The Attorney General’s Office and the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office announced Monday they are investigating the allegations.

Navas said in the news conference Tuesday he is “glad to hear” the Attorney General’s Office is investigating and hopes they will conclude the officers are guilty of criminal conduct, saying what the officers did is “flat-out assault.”

“The incident report authored by these officers does not match what’s on that video,” Navas said in the news conference. “These officers, when they wrote the report, made my client sound like the aggressor, they made it sound like they approached him, that he’s yelling profanities at them, and that they are taking some type of a police action.”

“That is not what occurred,” he continued.

While he said he didn’t want to share too many details of the case because of pending litigation, he said he expects Alsaidi will be “exonerated of those what I can only say are false charges.” Navas said they are also filing a civil suit.

“I’m hoping that this kind of community getting together and discussing these issues will result in that, and that we can bring some real change to the police department, because they sorely need it,” Navas said.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago "Cocky" romance novelist embarks on a second career as a trademark troll: will romance writing fall from grace?

Over the past 20 years, the world has become a lot more cognizant of the risks of unbalanced copyright, as what was once a way to help creators gain leverage over publishers, studios and labels became a rubric for mass surveillance, unaccountable censorship and monopolism.

Trademark trolls haven't gotten as much attention, but they, too, are on the rise. Trademark -- like copyright -- has a sound underlying purpose: trademark lets companies sue rivals when they sell products or services in ways that deceive the public. When you buy a ticket to "Hamilton," you want to see the actual Hamilton, and not some knock-off that has deceptively advertised itself in order to trick you in the door.

But, thanks to the absurd euphemism of "intellectual property", trademark -- like copyright -- has expanded in both its scope and its abuse over decades, creating trademark trolls who insist that trademark is the right to own commonly used words and threaten people who utter them in vain, and not merely a way to protect the public from fraudulent usage.

Ground zero for this the craft beer industry, whose shenanigans are so bizarre that they've spawned a whole genre of Techdirt posts. Craft beer brewers use puns to name their beers, and they use similar visual conventions in their marketing and trade dress, and every craft brewer is seemingly convinced that they were the first person to come up with a timeworn pun or illustration, with the result being that these brewers are spending more time threatening and suing each other than they are brewing actual beer.

The contagion has spread to romance novels. The genre is similar to craft beer in some ways: its practictioners are largely independents who are passionate about their work, enjoy a close relationship with their customers, and are inventing a new craft practice that is rising up to compete with a huge industry dominated by a few giant corporations.

Like craft beer, fans and pros in the romance sector are largely collegial, trading tips and helping one another along in a spirit of camaraderie.

But ever garden has a serpent, and romance's fall from grace came thanks to Faleena Hopkins, a romance author who trademarked the widely used word "Cocky" in connection with romance titles, and who has been aggressively threatening and censoring her industry colleagues who use the term without ever having heard of her or her work.

Hopkins is a classic trademark troll: belligerent and half-educated about trademark law, full of half-truths about the "defend it or lose it" principle that allegedly puts trademarks at risk of "genericide" if the trademark holder doesn't terrorize any who even thinks about using the mark. In classic trademark troll fashion, she has seemingly abandoned writing or promoting her books in favor of making a nuisance of herself by threatening her colleagues and hectoring them about how easy it is for other people to simply give up on using a widespread, longstanding title convention.

And Hopkins's victims are similar to craft brewers in that none of them really understand what's going on, they can't afford lawyers, they'd rather be plying their trade than litigating, and none of them were paying attention to the Federal Register in order to challenge spurious trademark applications.

The Romance Writers of America is working with an attorney to see about challenging Hopkins's trademark, and there are other challenges pending, as well as a petition to cancel the mark.

That's all very good to hear, but here's my fear: for every thousand romance writers who are aghast at Hopkins's theft of the language, there is one sociopath who is thinking about how great it would be if they, too, could lay claim to a common word and make it their "intellectual property." You know, the kind of person who hasn't yet figured out that every sentence that contains the word "brand" is almost certainly bullshit. It doesn't take many of these creeps to create a trademark thicket -- think of how a handful of patent trolls sent tens of thousands of legal threats, casting a wide net to fish for frightened small businesspeople who'd pay them ransom that was priced to be cheaper than contacting a lawyer.

The thing is, there's a fine line between the cooperative, entrepreneurial scenes that you get with craft beer (and open source hardware, and independent romance publishing) and a kind of manic, tunnel-visioned, amoral drive to lay sole claim to the thing you've all built together and build an empire on it. In 1976, a young programmer who'd copied a widely used product, put his name on it, and decided to sell it sent a letter to his fellow hobbyists telling them that he was enclosing their commons and they'd better not try to take down the barbed wire he was stringing up all over the range they'd enjoyed together -- and then he founded Microsoft, the first digital monopolist.

Faleena Hopkins's claims to own the word "cocky" could be the "Letter to Hobbyists" of the independent romance scene: the original sin that turns a cooperative industry full of individual practitioners who like and help each other into a race to see who can monopolize the sector and claim it for their own.

https://boingboing.net/2018/05/09/faleena-hopkins.html