#litigation jihad

[eretzyisrael]

University of Pennsylvania Must Stop All Its Sponsorship Of, and Stop the Use of Its Facilities and Its Logo, to Host The “Palestine Writes” Event, for the Following Reasons:

University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) receives federal funds, and is therefore required to provide a harassment-free learning environment for its Jewish students under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The “Palestine Writes” festival incites harassment and attacks on Jewish and pro-Israel students. Holding “Palestine Writes” is therefore a civil rights violation that may result in UPenn losing its federal funding.

The university cannot guarantee protection of Jewish students in an environment influenced by the unabashed antisemitic operatives speaking at this event, including:

a convicted Palestinian-Arab terrorist;

many speakers who support designated terrorist groups, including Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Turkish terror group IHH, the Fatah/PLO Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades;

many speakers who support and have assisted convicted terrorists;

many speakers who incite and call for Intifadas (terror wars against Jews, in which thousands of Jews have been murdered and maimed); and

notorious antisemites, such as Roger Waters, who uses Nazi imagery to malign Jews.

Removing this event from U. Penn would not inhibit free speech. “Free speech” does not require the university to host or support hate speech, or speech that it disagrees with. The university has the right to decide who to sponsor and who uses its facilities to speak.

UPenn has already set the precedent of punishing speech that it disagrees with, contradicting its claim that it is unable to exercise any authority over the “Palestine Writes” event. Another event also makes clear that Penn is selective about which “free speech” it protects. For example, UPenn has taken, or tried to take, actions against Professor Amy Wax, M.D., JD due to her controversial statements about Black law students’ achievement. The university took a class away from her, tried to sanction and fire her despite her tenure, and harassed her. We are not saying that we agree with Wax’s views but the University never defended Amy Wax’s controversial statements under their freedom of speech thesis. UPenn is therefore obligated to take action against the “Palestine Writes” hate-fest, or else must admit to endorsing antisemitism and accept the consequences, in accordance with U.S. law.

The university is failing to take responsibility for its own department(s) that are co-sponsoring “Palestine Writes.” UPenn gives funds to these departments, which in turn are co-sponsoring and providing resources to “Palestine Writes.”

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)’s UPenn and Temple U branches are co-sponsors of “Palestine Writes”, and many speakers are involved with SJP. As ZOA explained in its open letter to UPenn leaders: SJP activists systemically intimidate, harass and have even physically assaulted Jewish and pro-Israel students. SJP aggressively disrupts pro-Israel events – and screams for Israel’s destruction and “Intifada! Intifada!” (The murder of Jews). Hosting any event with SJP is antithetical to allowing free speech, and the university would be well within its rights to not allow the event. In fact, Fordham University successfully denied SJP official club status on its campus, and won the ensuing litigation for this very reason. The New York State Appellate Division opined that Fordham University’s decision to deny official club status to SJP was appropriate because “the proposed [Fordham SJP] club, which would have been affiliated with a national organization [SJP] reported to have engaged in disruptive and coercive actions on other campuses, would work against, rather than enhance, respondent’s commitment to open dialogue and mutual learning and understanding. . .” (Awad, et al v. Fordham Univ., N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dept., Dec. 20, 2022.)

“Palestine Writes” is not actually about promoting arts. The content that is being celebrated and called “art” (films, children’s games, poems, etc.) consists of numerous speeches by Jew-haters, and is all being used for the purpose of promoting hatred against Israel and Jews, and annihilating Israel and replacing Israel with “Palestine.” (See details in ZOA’s open letter about the “Palestine Writes” program and speakers confirming this.) The Palestinian Authority pays terrorists to murder Jews; and Hamas’ charter calls for the murder of every Jew. These are the entities that “Palestine Writes” wants to replace Israel with.

Holding “Palestine Writes” at UPenn sets a dangerous precedent that will inspire more Jew-hatred and attacks on Jews around the country.

UPenn will have a dramatic drop in donations. Many donors are vowing to not give UPenn another penny ever, due to this hate-fest, and the value of this prestigious Ivy League university will plummet.

For more details, see ZOA’s open letter to UPenn leadership.

See ZOA’s Action Alert for the names and contact information of UPenn leaders to write to, to demand that they stop supporting and hosting this dangerous antisemitic Israel-bashing event.

In addition to any demanding that the university stop supporting and hosting “Palestine Writes” with the help of the talking points outlined above, please consider approaching additional sponsors of the “Palestine Writes” event, including:

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation – Supporting and Promoting the Arts at the University of Pennsylvania;

Swarthmore College Peace and Conflict Studies;

The Wolf Humanities Center – Penn’s main hub for interdisciplinary humanities research and public programming;

Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (a Pennsylvania government entity); and

Australia Council on the Arts (an Australian government entity).

For more details, see ZOA’s open letter to UPenn leadership.

[nityarawal]

12/17/2023

Yodeling For The Kids

Morning Songs

Birthing A New Home

Birthing My Babies

Back

Birthing A New Universe

If You Don't Belong

Get Out

This Is My Bathroom

My Closet

My Spa

My Sleeping Bag

Camp California

I Love My Family

Making

Harmony Waves

Love

Against The Odds

If You Don't Like

My Yodle

Then Write Your Own

Song Please

Life Is Short

Just An Infinitude

Of Time

Prudence

Use It Wisely

If You Feel Bad

Ask Yourself Why

#4BillionMothersStrong

Waiting On Heavy

Traffic Of Bribes

You Woo Me Elon Bond

Like So Many Before

You

Quite Special

With Freshness

Of The Skies

But Would I Want

To Compromise

My Children

Risking Your Teams

Lies

Millions Of Cops

Cons

Riding Your Coattails

Kidnapping

Canceling Moms

Kids Abducted

On Frankensteins

New Experiment

Labs

Litigating

Yeah Mars Sounds

Better Than That

But Earth Is Here

Now

Where We Gonna Dream

Write Poetry

Manifest Path To

Stars

Where You Gonna

House These Moms

Where You Gonna

Feed Their Kids

How You Gonna

Close Tesla

Pimping Children

In Sweden

How You Gonna Stop

Fake Jihad

How You Gonna

Stop World War 4

Hurtling Towards

Italy

Meant To Be For

Art And Science

Instead

My Womb Hurts

Have You Sold

Our Heads Again

How Many Times

Will AI Lie

Hounded By "Meanies"

On The Web

They Target Our Wombs

Our Children

Bring Doom

We Want More For

All Of You

And Us

A Little Yodeling

From Switzerland

Italy

Irany

America's

Please

A Little Yodeling

For The Kids Please

Yodle Yodle

Yes Indeed

Please

Peace,

Nitya Nella Davigo Azam Moezzi Huntley Rawal

[creepingsharia]

Muslim sues State Department, Pompeo for refusing to let her work from home during Ramadan

Former State Dept. employee Azza Zaki wanted to work from home during The Month of Jihad. Like she did under Obama.

A Muslim State Department ex-employee is suing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the agency for allegedly refusing to let her work from home on Ramadan.

Azza Zaki, 62, says she asked to telecommute twice a week during the Muslim holiday in 2017, according to the federal lawsuit she filed in June in Washington, D.C., seeking $500,000.

Zaki, who worked in the department responsible for handling complaints from foreign au pairs working in the United States, said she routinely made the request during Ramadan and had not had any issue for the previous seven years.

The suit alleges that after Zaki made her request, she was “subjected to ridicule” and “harassing emails” as well as “eye-rolling, dirty looks, huffing and puffing when she spoke [and] being overly criticized about her work product.” Zaki says she was also unfairly placed on “performance improvement plan,” something her attorney said was part of an effort to ultimately fire her.

“It was humiliating. It was insulting. It was something I have never experienced,” Zaki told The Post. “They are ignorant about the religion. This is discrimination and ignorance. Nobody bothered to come talk to me and ask why is this important. Why is it that you need to be at home. I would have explained.”

She retired in 2018 less than a year after filing an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint against her supervisors, saying tension at work had become too much.

“I could not go through being sick all the time and stressed all the time. Not sleeping,” she said. “I was constantly thinking about all the problems at work and really doubting myself.”

Reps for Pompeo declined to comment, although an August filing from his attorneys insisted that the “defendant had legitimate, non-discriminatory, and non-retaliatory reasons for its actions.”

[phroyd]

Democracies used to collapse suddenly, with tanks rolling noisily toward the presidential palace. In the 21st century, however, the process is usually subtler.

Authoritarianism is on the march across much of the world, but its advance tends to be relatively quiet and gradual, so that it’s hard to point to a single moment and say, this is the day democracy ended. You just wake up one morning and realize that it’s gone.

In their 2018 book “How Democracies Die,” the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Bit by bit the guardrails of democracy were torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of the ruling party, then were weaponized to punish and intimidate that party’s opponents. On paper these countries are still democracies; in practice they have become one-party regimes.

And the events of the past week have demonstrated how this can happen right here in America.

At first Sharpiegate, Donald Trump’s inability to admit that he misstated a weather projection by claiming that Alabama was at risk from Hurricane Dorian, was kind of funny, even though it was also scary — it’s not reassuring when the president of the United States can’t face reality. But it stopped being any kind of joke on Friday, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement falsely backing up Trump’s claim that it had warned about an Alabama threat.

Why is this frightening? Because it shows that even the leadership of NOAA, which should be the most technical and apolitical of agencies, is now so subservient to Trump that it’s willing not just to overrule its own experts but to lie, simply to avoid a bit of presidential embarrassment.

Think about it: If even weather forecasters are expected to be apologists for Dear Leader, the corruption of our institutions is truly complete.

Which brings me to a much more important case, the Justice Department’s decision to investigate automakers for the crime of trying to act responsibly.

[For an even deeper look at what’s on Paul Krugman’s mind, sign up for his weekly newsletter.]

The story so far: As part of its jihad against environmental regulation, the Trump administration has declared its intention to roll back Obama-era rules mandating a gradual rise in fuel efficiency.

You might think that the auto industry would welcome this invitation to keep on polluting. In fact, however, automakers have already based their business plans on the assumption that fuel efficiency standards will indeed rise.

They don’t like seeing their plans upended — in part, one suspects, because they understand that the reality of climate change will eventually force the reinstatement of those rules. So they have actually opposed Trump’s deregulation, which they warn would lead to “an extended period of litigation and instability.”

And several companies have gone beyond protesting. In a remarkable rebuke to the administration, they have reached an agreement with the State of California to comply with standards nearly as restrictive as the Obama rules even if the federal government is no longer requiring them.

Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department is considering bringing an antitrust action against those companies, as if agreeing on environmental standards were a crime comparable to, say, price-fixing.

This would be disturbing even if it came from an administration that had previously showed some interest in actual antitrust policy. Coming from people who heretofore haven’t indicated any concerns about monopoly power, it’s clearly an attempt at weaponizing antitrust actions, turning them into a tool of intimidation.

And it’s also clear evidence that the Justice Department has been thoroughly corrupted. In less than three years it has been transformed from an agency that tries to enforce the law to an organization dedicated to punishing Trump’s opponents.

Who’s next? In at least two cases, Trump appears to have tried to use his power to punish Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, which the president considers (like this newspaper) to be an enemy. First he pushed for an increase in the post office’s package shipping rates, which would hurt Amazon’s delivery costs; then the Pentagon suddenly announced that it was re-examining the process for awarding a huge cloud-computing project that Amazon was widely expected to win.

In each case it’s hard to prove that these were efforts to weaponize government functions against domestic critics. But who are we kidding? Of course they were.

The point is that this is how the slide to autocracy happens. Modern de facto dictatorships don’t usually murder their opponents (although Trump has been fulsome in his praise for regimes that do, in fact, rely on brute force). What they do, instead, is use their control over the machinery of government to make life difficult for anyone considered disloyal, until effective opposition withers away.

And it’s happening here as we speak. If you aren’t worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention.

Phroyd

[pumabydesign001]

Texas: Clock Boy’s Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed

Texas: Clock Boy’s Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed

  Creeping Sharia by creeping

An update on one of the earlier “fake news” memes perpetrated by the media. Another Obama flunky goes down in flames.

Source: Victory: Clock Boy’s Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed; AFLC Lawyers Ask Court to Award Sanctions | American Freedom Law Center

Dallas, Texas (January 10, 2017) – Following a nearly three-hour hearing held yesterday, newly appointed District Court…

[tumbirus]

Kerala ,India under litigated peopls are stay ,in this belive full of India and world under voice truth .but today be uneducated and non sense humans and religious communities are stay in kerala ,drinkers and cheaters very big hub is kerala. Indian country under fake hindutwa and uneducated religious and political leaders making one issues and public life violation is 101%also.criminal political leaders ,uneducated hindu fake sanyasis ,uneducated muslim mullahs fake faith belive and power hungry is all issues fundation ,litigated peopls kerala state under how illiterate peopls are stay,so how kerala is 100%literacy one peopls state.education is knowlge and life decency ,equal education is truth.femails education development want to in the world ,any women's life dignity respectful making one universe good and god blessings one sence. But kerala state under many uneducated or middle educated burocracy life one mullahs are girls and boys joint combine classes aganist issues opening to today ,children's life under humanity and brotherhood making one our next generation goodness aganist many inhuman Muslim mullahs ideolgy ,education under not religious and political leaders are not any job ,Karnataka under hihjab issues making one many Taliban criminals system thinking one bledy Muslim leaders any activities no more want to India ,combined education aganist issues making one Muslim mullahs and leaders are our own female children's are not send to school and collage ,actuly Muslim communities are where seeking to knowledge or sence ,fake Islam faith belive is danger in the world ,terrorism and jihad joint human life killing ones are threat in the world. Kerala government are social justice warning ,any education campus under command classes only ,knowledge want to attend to classes and join to school ,no own faith mullahs bledy study is must ,education system disturb one punishable.by WHRC.Mail:rightcommitte@gmail.com (at Mumbai, Maharashtra) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgXT6AKB6oi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[bluebuzzmusic]

Dr. Luke Fires Back At Kesha, Details Defamation Claim In Letter to Press

It’s been years of back and forth between Kesha and her manager Dr. Luke, but now the tables have turned. What was once a sexual abuse case has flipped into a counterclaim of defamation.

In the original court documents, the “True Colors” singer said she fell victim to Dr. Luke’s sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender violence — but those claims were ultimately dismissed by a New York judge. She ended up dropping charges in Los Angeles, too.

Kesha said, “this lawsuit [has been] so heavy on my once free spirit, and I can only pray to one day feel that happiness again.”

Now, Dr. Luke is firing back. In a statement blasted out by the music executive’s legal team, a very different story is detailed. The letter cites a “bogus,” “false claim” of rape against Dr. Luke and reveals email exchanges that suggest there was a conspiracy to take down his business.

The statement from Dr. Luke’s legal team states:

By 2012, Kesha was a superstar with smash-hit records and huge success working with Dr. Luke. That year, Kesha wanted a new deal, and demanded more money and better contract terms.

When Dr. Luke did not agree to her contract terms, Kesha maliciously plotted to destroy Dr. Luke’s business and reputation to pressure him to give in. Kesha’s powerful managers, Jack Rovner and Ken Levitan, along with Irving Azoff, discussed in emails their “jihad” to “ruin” Dr. Luke “in the press” and “take down his business”. These documents obtained in litigation speak for themselves.

Screenshots appear to back up those claims:

The letter from Dr. Luke’s team closes as so:

There is nothing worse than abuse and sexual assault. Dr. Luke supports any woman or man who seeks to address sexual abuse in the legal system. That is not what happened here. It is also horrendous to falsely accuse someone of a heinous act. That is what has happened here. Kesha’s voluntarily dismissed rape claim has caused great harm to Dr. Luke, his family, and his businesses. 

  More via Rolling Stone

This article was first published on Your EDM. Source: Dr. Luke Fires Back At Kesha, Details Defamation Claim In Letter to Press

source https://www.youredm.com/2018/08/28/dr-luke-kesha-defamation-claim/

[podcastpalace]

Lars Larson National Podcast 050218 by Lars Larson National Podcast .... Marc Thiessen - Fellow at AEI. Op-Ed Columnist at Washington Post Dr Angela Logomasini - senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) Brian Westbrook - Tech Expert Steve Moore -Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Project for Economic Growth at The Heritage Foundation, co-author of “Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy” John Chambers - "Mr Constitution" and Author of The Constitution of the United States: A Study Guide Timothy Sandefur - Goldwater Institute VP of Litigation Sebastian Gorka - National Security Strategist for Fox News, contributor to the Hill, former Adviser to President Trump and NYTimes bestselling author of “Defeating Jihad”

[mwsa-member]

MWSA Interview with David Tunno

Date of interview: 14 July 2020 David Tunno graduated cum laude from the University of Portland (OR) with a B.A. in theater and an M.A. in communications. His career path passed through high school teaching, TV news cinematography/writing for Oregon State University, radio news writing & broadcasting and corporate communications and video production for a large utility company before he left Oregon for southern California and found a new career in trial consulting with a national firm.

Four years later, he left the firm to form Tunno & Associates Trial Consulting, a practice he recently retired from, but not before penning a non-fiction critique of the American jury system entitled, Fixing the Engine of Justice: Diagnosis and Repair of Our Jury System. The book and his trial consulting career are detailed on his website, www.tunno.com. During the course of his career, he consulted his attorney clients in many high-profile cases throughout the U.S. and was a television and newspaper commentator for trials, including; the O.J. Simpson, Rodney King, Unibomber and Michael Jackson cases. He was a guest lecturer at the Anderson School of Business (UCLA), many bar associations throughout the U.S. and the American Bar Association’s annual litigation conference, which also published a condensed version of his training manual of expert witnesses, previously published by Lawyers & Judges Publishing.

Going back as far as high school, continuing through college and many years thereafter, David was an actor with stage, TV and film experience and is a member of the Screen Actors Guild. In 2006, he wrote a screenplay, Constitution, about a fictional adventure involving that ship (“Old Ironsides”) in modern times. He has since adapted that screenplay into the novel, Intrepid Spirit, and is currently engaged in seeking both agency representation and publication by an independent publisher. MWSA: How did you find out about MWSA? David Tunno: In conducting research connected with my manuscript for Intrepid Spirit, I purposely sought out associations of agents, publishers and writing contests. I was delighted to find MWSA. The “mission” of MWSA couldn’t target my goals for my novel any more closely and I’m hoping my connection with other writers in this genre will be rewarding. On that score, I also hope to offer tips from my own experience that might be helpful to others. MWSA: What is Intrepid Spirit about? David Tunno: In a sentence, it pits the crew of USS Constitution, in a modern-day epic battle against a terrorist group bent on igniting a world-wide jihad. The story takes place against the backdrop of pending mid-east peace talks. The hero is a navy lieutenant who get into hot water and is unjustly punished for an action seen as jeopardizing those talks. He’s “banished” to command of Constitution, currently in Italy on a goodwill PR tour of the Mediterranean – purgatory, if you will, for a man of action. That action leads to his redemption when, by chance and circumstances, he, the ship, and its crew are the only fighting force in a position to rescue the US Vice President from a terrorist group bent on lighting the fuse on a world-wide jihad launched by the assignation of the VP. One of the twists in the story is the fact of Constitution in a battle with the progeny of her historic foes, the Barbary Coast pirates. The hook is that she’s still a commissioned US warship, the oldest in the world. So, we have a battle between the crew of Constitution, with nothing but their antique weaponry, against a well-armed force, requiring a great deal of ingenuity on the part of hero and bravery on the part of the crew. MWSA: How did you come up with that idea? David Tunno: It started out as a screenplay idea not long after 9/11. I knew the history of the ship from when I was a kid and read everything I could find about it. Built the model, like a lot of other boys. I knew she was built to fight the Barbary Coast pirates and it occurred to me that, here we are 200-years later at war in the same region with the same enemy. I also knew her status as a commissioned warship and that the navy had just put the ship through an extensive refit and thought those ingredients, together, made for a story. I wrote the screenplay, had an agent for it, and made considerable progress toward selling it, but all that fell through years ago. Not giving up on the story, I decided to turn it into a novel. MWSA: What has been your experience with the manuscript so far? David Tunno: I’ve been in the agent search phase for some time. The difficulty with this novel is that it is an upmarket piece, meaning it has been written with considerably more literary qualities than a typical action/adventure military novel. That means it doesn’t fit so neatly into the category that is filled by so many other books in the genre. At this writing, I’m waiting on responses from a good many agents and every once in a while I discover a new one that seems appropriate. MWSA: What else have you done to market your manuscript? David Tunno: I’ve also been researching independent publishers that don’t require agents. There are lot of good ones out there. I’ve created a list and have prioritized them for submission. I’m working my way through that list and waiting on them as well. Like the agents, every once in a while I find a new one. Along the way, I have solicited reviews to help in finding either an agent or a publisher and have entered contests. The manuscript has received great reviews and, at this writing, is a semifinalist in the Adventure Writers Competition. I'm hoping to advance to the next round. MWSA: What is your connection with the military? David Tunno: My father was a career marine. He enlisted before WWII and, with a private pilot’s license, entered the “flying sergeants” program, was sent to Pensacola and eventually became a Corsair fighter pilot in the south Pacific. He also served in the Korean War and retired after his 21 years. The biplane in the photo was his. I inherited it from him and it was he who taught me how to fly it, my having a private pilot’s license at the time. It’s a US Navy built N3N, the same type he flew at Pensacola. It’s now in the museum at the Great Park in Irvine, California at the former El Toro Marine Base, where my father’s Corsair squadron was commissioned.

[biofunmy]

His White House Engulfed, Trump Keeps California in the Cross Hairs

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WASHINGTON — President Trump has never been one to dive into the details of policy, especially now, as an impeachment inquiry threatens to engulf his administration. In recent days, he has allowed his son-in-law to lead a major policy shift in the Middle East and has backed away from a high-profile promise to ban flavored e-cigarettes.

But even as his presidency teeters, one of the few policy issues that has maintained Mr. Trump’s personal focus is not one central to his political appeal, like immigration or trade.

It is the state of California.

The state has been a political fixation since the early days of his presidency, but that was heightened this autumn. Mr. Trump has attended meetings, asked detailed questions at briefings and pressed aides to find ways to use policies to go after the most populous state in the union, according to three people familiar with the matter. Aides say that Mr. Trump remains deeply involved on immigration policy, like a recent decision to slash the nation’s refugee program nearly in half, and on trade. But they describe him as obsessed with narrow policies that directly affect California. Beyond those three policy matters, little else has penetrated the swirl of impeachment.

Two Californians, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Adam B. Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, are leading the impeachment investigation. The state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has been unsparing in his criticism and his legal challenges.

And the president’s response appears to be personal. Beyond the name-calling — “Shifty” Adam Schiff and “Nervous Nancy” Pelosi — he has held California Democrats responsible even for the state’s natural disasters.

“The Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has done a terrible job of forest management,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter this month, adding a threat: “Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing — and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor.”

Governor Newsom’s ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, now a Trump campaign adviser and girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., has joined in the criticism on Twitter and at campaign events. And the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, has often counseled Mr. Trump on the politics of his state.

In a statement, a White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said, “California leaders continue to support destructive liberal policies that kill jobs, increase housing costs, provide sanctuary to criminal illegal aliens, and ignore longtime environmental issues.”

Since the beginning of his presidency, Mr. Trump has been enthusiastic about his administration’s push to roll back Obama-era rules on climate-warming auto pollution, framing it as a signature move to save an iconic industry from burdensome red tape. For most of that earlier period, Mr. Trump stayed away from the complex regulatory details involved in undoing the regulation, according to two current and two former White House officials.

That changed with Governor Newsom’s deal with the automakers. Suddenly Mr. Trump was delving into policy details.

The administration and Justice Department have pushed an unusual series of legal and policy moves against California and the auto companies that backed the state’s climate change plan.

Last month, the Justice Department filed suit to force the state to drop Quebec from its central effort to limit greenhouse gases from power plants, arguing that a state could not conduct foreign policy. In September, the Environmental Protection Agency threatened to withhold federal highway funding from California if it did not address a decades-long backlog of air pollution control plans.

Also in September, the administration opened an antitrust investigation into the four automakers that sided with California over Mr. Trump in the dispute over fuel efficiency standards.

When aides told Mr. Trump that the final details of his rollback of the auto emissions rule would most likely not be completed before the end of this year, he demanded faster action. Officials at the E.P.A. and the Department of Transportation responded by separating out California’s portion of the rule and releasing it in September.

Mr. Trump announced the new rule on Twitter while in Los Angeles for a fund-raiser.

That night, Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that his administration would issue a notice of environmental violation against the city of San Francisco because of its homelessness problem.

On Twitter and in speeches, Mr. Trump has frequently seemed to find ways to disparage his West Coast target. In a Nov. 12 appearance at the Economic Club of New York, Mr. Trump responded to a broad question about climate change with a detour into California: “Los Angeles? What a — what a mess that is.”

Barry Rabe, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan who is writing a book about the history of the state-federal relationship, said there were no historical parallels for the president’s obsession.

“I cannot think of another president who sustained a political jihad against a specific state,” he said.

Professor Rabe expressed particular surprise about the administration’s Oct. 23 lawsuit to block California’s climate change program with Quebec, since that relationship has been in place for a decade.

“This is a pretty established policy,” he said. “It’s never had a serious legal challenge, and it’s not like it’s something the Trump administration came in with a plan to pursue.”

“This is like going out of your way to find something to bring against the state,” Professor Rabe added.

If anything, the president’s attacks on California have helped his fund-raising from Republicans in the state. On a visit in September, Mr. Trump raised around $15 million for his re-election effort, according to Republican officials.

“This is great support from a lot of people who have financially contributed to the campaign,” Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said.

Xavier Becerra, the California attorney general, said he was undeterred by the president’s personal attention. The state has already filed over 60 lawsuits against the Trump administration — more than any other filed by a single state against any administration, according to Paul Nolette, a political scientist at Marquette University who maintains an online database of state litigation and activity by attorneys general. (The runner-up is Texas, which has sued the Obama administration 48 times over eight years.)

Last week, Mr. Becerra’s office filed its second lawsuit to block the administration’s effort to revoke California’s authority to regulate tailpipe emissions.

“He’s a bump in the road of what we’re trying to do,” Mr. Becerra said. “So I’m just figuring out, do I go over the bump or around the bump?”

For more news on climate and the environment, follow @NYTClimate on Twitter.

Sahred From Source link Science

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[duaneodavila]

The Limits of Empathy In The Law

Nebraska Senior District Judge Richard Kopf took Adam Cohen to task for his review of a book about the enigmatic Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts. What purpoted to be a book review devolved into a polemic:

Given the court’s current composition, anyone who does not want the law to lurch to the right in civil rights, gay rights, abortion and other areas has to hope Roberts will hold it close to its current course — either based on actual beliefs, or to protect the Supreme Court as an institution. Roberts could become the court’s new moderate center. But Obama’s insight about Roberts’s deep-seated bias against the weak, which rings powerfully true, suggests that may not be the way to bet.

Or as Judge Kopf expressed it more succinctly, “Simple enough. Roberts hates the less fortunate and that is what animates his jurisprudence.” The appeal in Cohen’s review is directed in two directions, similarly but not exactly the same. First, it’s about the law lurching to the right. Second, it’s about “deep-seated bias against the weak.” In his prefatory phrase about the court’s “current composition,” he appears to be dogwhistling about the conservative majority that has become a constant in progressive descriptions of the how courts and judges work, as being labeled conservative is tantamount to being inherently evil in the world of wokeness.

And if you’re not sufficiently aware of the issues at hand, Cohen provides the short list to drive his point home: civil rights, gay rights, abortion.

This is a set up for the intellectually challenged, a threat to general policies they support and believe by this “current composition” led by a man with a “deep-seated bias against the poor.” Or, as President Obama called it, a lack of “empathy.”

What does this mean? Any time a corporation and marginalized individual get into a legal beef, the corp loses? But what if the corporation did everything right, nothing wrong, complied with the law in all respects and acted in a wholly honorable fashion? Is it unempathetic to rule for the corporation, because the other litigant is marginalized? Or is an individual? What is the individual was wrong, but weaker than the adversary? Do we rule for the wrong person because he’s also the weaker person?

What if the other individual has a particularly sad story through no fault of his own? Do we ignore the law and rule for the sadder, the weaker, of the litigants? As every lawyer knows too well, many cases don’t involve an evil litigant, but merely a disagreement about how the vicissitudes of life work out.

Nonetheless, decisions must be made, and they will serve as precedents, guidance for how the rest of us are to conduct our affairs so as to remain on the right side of the law, If the weaker person wins this time, does that mean the rule won’t serve to make the stronger litigant win under slightly different circumstances?

As Judge Kopf noted in a reply comment, the ancient Greeks established that there are three forms of persuasion, ethos, pathos and logos. Each has its place, determined by whether it will be effective in achieving the desired outcome. For the advocate, the best means of persuasion is the one that will work, and that may well mean that all three have their role in argumentation. even if it isn’t a “winner” argument per se. As I noted, I will play to empathy not because defendants necessarily have a sad story, particularly in comparison to the victim of their crime, but in juxtaposition to the bias in favor of the more empathetic victim.

Which raises the question, who is more deserving of empathy? If a defendant was poor and hungry, does he not deserve some empathy? But what if he stole from a shopkeeper who is barely able to pay the rent, provides jobs to five ex-addicts and has two adopted children from a war-torn country? Now who wins the empathy Olympics?

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” He had a way with words, but this is one of those vagaries that seems to justify the rejection of principle in favor of outcomes, when it suits us. Logic can produce harsh outcomes, failing as it does to weigh the relative strength or weakness of the parties in any particular case, instead weighing only the logic of the argument, even if it means a marginalized person fighting a particularly despicable adversary ends up loosing. Does anyone want that to happen?

Well, yeah. Not the outcome, necessarily, as we all have feelings of propriety and sensibility, and can’t help ourselves from hoping the the good guy wins over the bad guy, even if good and bad are merely our own biases at work. But then, we’ve seen how empathy turns on a dime and morphs from the savior of empathy to its harshest inquisitor.

Remember Brock Turner, and then the subsequent jihad against Judge Persky for being empathetic to an unacceptable defendant? Or the “slap on the wrist” handed to Paul Manafort, the proxy for Darth Cheeto, which caused whiplash through progressivedom as they were constrained to rationalize why their devotion to mercy for criminal defendants should be turned upside down. The easier solution to these obvious and irreconcilable conflicts is that people felt more empathy toward the victim in the Turner case than Turner. As to Manafort, they just hated him so much that there was no room left for empathy.

Is that what the law should be? If I can beat a case by appealing to empathy, you can bet I will, but appeals to empathy are a two-way street. My experience, Justice Holmes, is that such appeals are not merely inherently inconsistent, but are more likely to bite my client in the butt then serve his cause. More importantly, as a person, they provide me with no guidance as to how to conduct myself, my actions, since I can never be sure that I’ll be the more empathetic soul in the courtroom.

The question isn’t whether we all harbor biases (we do), or whether there is any room for empathy in the law (there is), but which is to be master, pathos or logos. Empathy is an unreliable mistress, and appealing as it may be to passionate folks like Cohen, who care nothing about how we arrive at his chosen policy outcomes as long as we get there, experience reminds us that our favorite outcomes change all the time for reasons that make little sense.

While we may not be so pure as to always decide without fear or favor, that’s what we must aspire to do to the extent our humanity allows.

    The Limits of Empathy In The Law republished via Simple Justice

[creepingsharia]

Feds Give Up - Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is Not A Federal Crime

The sharia wins again. DOJ gives in, therefore FGM is…constitutional. Alan Dershowitz was on the sharia team.

And with two new sharia supremacists in Congress – and their dhimmi accomplices, how likely is a new, stricter law against FGM?

Source: Feds abandon female genital mutilation fight

Federal prosecutors will not appeal a judge’s order dismissing female genital mutilation charges in the first criminal case of its kind nationwide, concluding the law is weak and needs to be rewritten.

The decision delivers a setback to international human-rights groups opposed to female genital mutilation that have closely followed a case that has raised awareness in the U.S. of a controversial procedure and prompted Michigan to enact new state laws criminalizing the procedure.

“Although the department has determined not to appeal the district court’s decision, it recognizes the severity of the charged conduct, its lifelong impact on victims, and the importance of a federal prohibition on FGM committed on minors,” Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote in a letter to Congress on Wednesday.

The decision comes six months after U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman delivered a significant, but not fatal, blow to a novel criminal prosecution involving a team of Metro Detroit doctors accused of mutilating the genitalia of nine girls at a Livonia clinic since 2015.

Friedman concluded the law is unconstitutional and concluded Congress had no authority to enact a law criminalizing female genital mutilation.

“There is nothing commercial or economic about FGM,” Friedman wrote in a 28-page opinion. (Female genital mutilation) is not part of a larger market and it has no demonstrated effect on interstate commerce. The Commerce Clause does not permit Congress to regulate a crime of this nature.”

The Justice Department has submitted a legislative proposal to Congress that would, among other things, amend the federal law and make it a crime when a defendant or victim crosses state lines to undergo the procedure.

The case emerged in April 2017 when Dr. Jumana Nagarwala of Northville was arrested and accused of heading a conspiracy that lasted 12 years, involved seven other people and led to mutilating the genitalia of girls as part of a religious procedure practiced by some members of the Dawoodi Bohra, a Muslim sect from India that has a small community in Metro Detroit.

Prosecutors say the girls — four from Michigan, two from Minnesota and three from Illinois — underwent female genital mutilation, but defense lawyers say the procedure performed on the girls was benign and not female genital mutilation. They have accused the government of overreaching.

Prosecutors have alleged that two girls’ clitorises were completely removed, but the evidence of female genital mutilation involving all of the girls is lacking, Nagarwala lawyer Shannon Smith said.

“The defense is pleased to see the Justice Department has reached the same conclusion as Judge Friedman, however, the case will still be heading to trial on the remaining charges,” Smith wrote in a text message to The News on Friday. “At trial the defense is confident a jury will agree that there was no female genital mutilation in this case and see that the prosecution relied on an unreliable medical expert in pursuing this case.”

Women’s rights groups blasted the judge’s opinion, calling it a setback for women and girls.

“It’s a giant step backward in the protection of women’s and girls’ rights,” said Shelby Quast, the Americas director of equality for the rights organization Equality Now. “Especially when there is a global movement to eliminate this practice.”

The Justice Department’s decision not to pursue and appeal drew an outcry on social media Thursday, including reaction from Hillary Clinton.

The criminal case is is pending because Friedman left intact conspiracy and obstruction charges that could send Nagarwala and three others to federal prison for decades.

The case prompted a new law in Michigan criminalizing female genital mutilation.

In June 2017, Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation that carried up to 15 years in prison for those convicted of mutilating female genitalia or transporting girls to other states for the procedure.

Twenty-three states do not have laws criminalizing female genital mutilation.

During a hearing last fall, Nagarwala lawyer Molly Sylvia Blythe said Congress lacked authority to enact a law criminalizing female genital mutilation in 1996. Congress lacked authority under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution because the procedure has nothing to do with interstate commerce, she said.

Prosecutors say prepubescent girls were cut at a Livonia clinic owned by Dr. Fakhruddin Attar. His wife, Dr. Farida Attar, also is charged in the case.

Female genital mutilation is an internationally recognized violation of human rights.

Some members of the Dawoodi Bohra community who have spoken against the procedure say the surgery is performed to suppress female sexuality, reduce sexual pleasure and curb promiscuity, according to court records.

The procedure is most common in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, along with migrants from those regions, says the World Health Organization.

There are four major types of female genital mutilation, including a partial or total removal of the clitoris.

As we noted in 2017, at the end of this post, there is a network of dozens of mosques across the U.S. that promote – and in some cases pay or facilitate – what the Muslim defendant’s lawyer referred to FGM as a religious practice.

[stimulintellect]

Islamic terror-tied hate group Hamas-CAIR goes after Samsung: Litigation jihad is a huge industry, and American companies are being held hostage by Muslim workers and Hamas-CAIR. https://t.co/hHf9MaMzYO pic.twitter.com/bzqFtQX0sr

— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) October 27, 2018

[austindailyglobe-blog]

US To Require Would-Be Immigrants To Turn Over Social Media Handles

The Trump administration plans to require immigrants applying to come to the United States to submit five years of social media history, it announced Thursday, setting up a potential scouring of their Twitter and Facebook histories.

The move follows the administration’s emphasis on “extreme vetting” of would-be immigrants to the US, and is an extension of efforts by the previous administration to more closely scrutinize social media after the San Bernardino terrorist attack. According to notices submitted by the State Department on Thursday, set for formal publication on Friday, the government plans to require nearly all visa applicants to the US to submit five years of social media handles for specific platforms identified by the government — and with an option to list handles for other platforms not explicitly required.

The administration expects the move to affect nearly 15 million would-be immigrants to the United States, according to the documents. That would include applicants for legal permanent residency. There are exemptions for diplomatic and official visas, the State Department said. The decision will not take effect immediately — the publication of the planned change to visa applications on Friday will start a 60-day clock for the public to comment on the move.

The potential scouring of social media postings by potential immigrants is sure to rankle privacy and civil liberties advocates, who have been vocal in opposing such moves going back to efforts by the Obama administration to collect such information on a more selective and voluntary basis. Critics complain the moves, amid broader efforts by the administration, are not only invasive on privacy grounds, but also effectively limit legal immigration to the US by slowing the process down, making it more burdensome and making it more difficult to be accepted for a visa.

Federal authorities argue the moves are necessary for national security. In addition to requiring the five years of social media history, the application will also ask for previous telephone numbers, email addresses, prior immigration violations and any family history of involvement in terrorist activities, according to the notice. Since its early days, the administration has been telegraphing a desire to more closely dig through the backgrounds and social media histories of foreign travelers, but Thursday’s move is the first time that it will formally require virtually all applicants to come to the US to disclose that information.

After the San Bernardino terrorist attack in 2015, greater attention was placed on immigrants’ social media use, when it was revealed that one of the attackers had advocated jihad in posts on a private social media account under a pseudonym that authorities did not find before allowing her to come to the US. The move by the Trump administration stops short of requiring passwords or access to those social media accounts, although then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly suggested last year that it was being considered. The administration has been pursuing “extreme vetting” of foreigners as a centerpiece of its immigration and national security policy, including through the contentious travel ban that remains the subject of heavy litigation.

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US To Require Would-Be Immigrants To Turn Over Social Media Handles was originally published on Austin Daily Globe

[tumbirus]

Kerala ,India under litigated peopls are stay ,in this belive full of India and world under voice truth .but today be uneducated and non sense humans and religious communities are stay in kerala ,drinkers and cheaters very big hub is kerala. Indian country under fake hindutwa and uneducated religious and political leaders making one issues and public life violation is 101%also.criminal political leaders ,uneducated hindu fake sanyasis ,uneducated muslim mullahs fake faith belive and power hungry is all issues fundation ,litigated peopls kerala state under how illiterate peopls are stay,so how kerala is 100%literacy one peopls state.education is knowlge and life decency ,equal education is truth.femails education development want to in the world ,any women's life dignity respectful making one universe good and god blessings one sence. But kerala state under many uneducated or middle educated burocracy life one mullahs are girls and boys joint combine classes aganist issues opening to today ,children's life under humanity and brotherhood making one our next generation goodness aganist many inhuman Muslim mullahs ideolgy ,education under not religious and political leaders are not any job ,Karnataka under hihjab issues making one many Taliban criminals system thinking one bledy Muslim leaders any activities no more want to India ,combined education aganist issues making one Muslim mullahs and leaders are our own female children's are not send to school and collage ,actuly Muslim communities are where seeking to knowledge or sence ,fake Islam faith belive is danger in the world ,terrorism and jihad joint human life killing ones are threat in the world. Kerala government are social justice warning ,any education campus under command classes only ,knowledge want to attend to classes and join to school ,no own faith mullahs bledy study is must ,education system disturb one punishable. (at Mumbai, Maharashtra) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgXT6AKB6oi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[nancydhooper]

Why the U.S. War on ISIS Is Illegal

No court has ever addressed the government’s justifications for military force in so many places. Now, one will.

The United States’ war with al-Qaida has gone on so long, and has metastasized into so many different uses of U.S. armed forces around the globe, that it may be surprising to learn that the federal courts have only addressed the legality of a very small piece of it.

After the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed a statute authorizing the executive branch to use military force against those groups directly connected to the attacks: al-Qaida and the Taliban. But today, the United States claims the authority to use armed force under that statute not just in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Syria — against not just al-Qaida and the Taliban, but also al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Shabab in Somalia, and now the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

But no court has ever addressed the government’s legal justifications for military action in so many different parts of the world. Now, in a case brought by the ACLU, one court will. The federal district court in Washington, D.C., will address whether the executive branch can use its elastic and open-ended assertion of wartime authority to imprison indefinitely an American citizen with no connection to 9/11.

In September 2017, Kurdish forces detained an American citizen in Syria and quickly transferred him to U.S. custody. On Sept. 14, the Daily Beast reported the detention, and the government confirmed it was holding the citizen as a “known enemy combatant” for ISIS. For weeks, the government refused to reveal any public details about the detention, to bring that person before a judge, or charge him with a crime. The ACLU went to court on the unnamed citizen’s behalf, demanding that the government justify his detention to a federal court. Since the court ruled in December that the government must allow the ACLU to meet with the citizen, we have represented him as our client.

Weeks ago, the government filed — under seal, and not available to the public — its legal and factual reasons for holding the citizen without charge or trial. (It will be filing a public, partially redacted version soon.) Today, the ACLU filed a response, explaining why under the Constitution and laws of the United States, the government lacks the authority to continue holding our client as a military detainee. At this stage, our client is challenging only the government’s arguments concerning its legal authority to detain him assuming that he was a member of ISIS at the time of his detention. While that accusation is simply wrong — our client was actually kidnapped and imprisoned by ISIS, tried to escape, and never took up arms against the U.S. or anyone else — a detailed refutation of the government’s allegations will come at a later stage, if necessary. At this stage, because the government has not filed any criminal charges against him, litigating the government’s accusations would prolong his unlawful detention and strip him of the safeguards afforded by criminal court proceedings.

The government’s arguments regarding its legal authority to detain our client are breathtaking in their scope.

First, the government claims that a 2001 statute, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, gives it the power to detain our client. But that statute, which was passed in the days following 9/11, expressly limited its authorization of force to those responsible for the attacks — in other words, al-Qaida and the Taliban. Moreover, when Congress gave that authority to President Bush, it rejected the executive branch’s attempts to convince Congress to grant it open-ended authority to take military action against future threats without returning to the legislative branch.

Even so, the government now claims that the 16-year-old AUMF authorizes the detention of a U.S. citizen who is totally unconnected to the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaida, or the Taliban. It does so by attempting to draw a daisy-chain of connections between al-Qaida in Afghanistan and a terrorist group founded in 2003 in Iraq called Jam’at al-Tawhid wa’al Jihad, which later renamed itself al-Qaida in Iraq. The government says that the Iraqi group was started by an “associate” of Osama bin Laden, “aligned” with al-Qaida sometime after 2003, and then effectively morphed into ISIS around 2006. According to the government, the 2001 AUMF covers ISIS because, more or less, ISIS is al-Qaida.

The government’s argument falls apart on examination. In determining whether detention is lawful under the 2001 AUMF, the courts have thus far looked only to whether that detention was lawful at the time of capture. Whatever relationship al-Qaida had with ISIS was torn asunder in 2014, and now the two groups are in open armed conflict with each other in Syria. The government’s allegations against our client, who was captured in September 2017, thus fall nowhere near the scope of the 2001 AUMF.

The government also claims two other sources for its detention authority. First, it construes a 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq as authorizing detention to combat any and every threat emanating from Iraq, effectively indefinitely. But the 2002 statute does not remotely allow such an extension — and in 2014, the government openly abandoned all reliance on it.

Second, the government reprises one of the most extreme arguments of the Bush administration: that the president has inherent authority as commander-in-chief to detain U.S. citizens, anywhere and everywhere, as he sees fit. No court has ever suggested, let alone held, that the president has unilateral authority to imprison an American citizen without trial — unless Congress suspends habeas corpus (the legal right to be brought before a judge to challenge the legality of one’s detention) which, of course, it has not done.

Our client’s case will be the first time the government’s theory concerning its ability to use force against ISIS gets tested in court. When the Obama administration first announced that it claimed such authority in 2014, responses across the political spectrum were scathing. Jennifer Daskal, who had served in the Justice Department in that administration, wrote that “re-interpretation of laws in totally implausible ways shakes the principles of legality at its core.” Jack Goldsmith, who worked in the Bush Defense and Justice Departments, called the theory “breathtaking,” explaining that if ISIS’s “remarkably loose affiliation with al Qaeda brings a terrorist organization under the 2001 law, then Congress has authorized the President to use force endlessly against practically any ambitious jihadist terrorist group that fights against the United States.”

As the Supreme Court has famously said, Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes.” It certainly did not hide an extraordinary authority to engage in indefinite and limitless global war in legislation explicitly tied to a single terrorist attack 16 years ago.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/why-us-war-isis-illegal via http://www.rssmix.com/