Here’s how federal judge Terry Doughty yesterday described the digital censorship controversy at which pundits a half-year now have repeatedly rolled eyes, dismissed, and mocked as a nothingburger: “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” — Matt Taibbi Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Courts
See You in Hell, Kaepernick
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals — Here is Colin Kaepernick’s opinion on the recent Kyle Rittenhouse verdict: This only further validates the need to abolish our current system. White supremacy cannot be reformed. Abolish our current system! What a great idea! What should we replace it with — a system that only renders verdicts that Colin Kaepernick likes? I’ll say one thing for this kid Rittenhouse, he was a lot more accurate under pressure than Kaepernick was during a 3-16 streak that got him replaced as a starting NFL QB by Blaine Gabbert. Blaine Gabbert! Of course, he blames that on white supremacy as well. Of the three people Rittenhouse shot, one was pointing a gun at him, one was trying to grab the rifle out of his hands and one was clubbing him in the head with a… Read more →
Dershowitz on Maxine Waters
[Maxine Waters’] message was clearly intended to get to the jury. If you acquit, or if you find a charge less than murder, we will burn down your buildings. We will burn down your businesses. We will attack you. This was an attempt to intimidate the jury. It’s borrowed precisely from the Ku Klux Klan of the 1930s and 1920s when the Klan would march outside of courthouses and threaten all kinds of reprisals if the jury ever dare convict a white person or acquit a black person. And so efforts to intimidate a jury should result in a mistrial. — Alan Dershowitz Rep. Waters lives in a nice house in the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park. Her mansion is valued at $6 million. I guess living outside the boundaries of the district you represent is allowed, because Hancock Park is outside of her South Central LA district,… Read more →
But At Least They Removed Trump
A sex trafficking victim has filed a lawsuit against Twitter in a U.S. district court in California, alleging that the social media giant knowingly received and distributed child pornography. According to the court filing, John Doe said he was solicited and recruited for sex trafficking as a minor. After his escape, material depicting his abuse was disseminated on Twitter. “When Twitter was first alerted to this fact and John Doe’s age, Twitter refused to remove the illegal material and instead continued to promote and profit from the sexual abuse of this child,” the plaintiffs allege. John Doe and his parent contacted Twitter multiple times about the content, but Twitter allegedly didn’t suspend the accounts distributing those materials until a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent intervened. Read more →
Harvey Weinstein’s Lead Defense Attorney the “Ultimate Feminist”?
Insider has an interview with Harvey Weinstein’s lead defense attorney, Donna Rotunno, who calls herself the “ultimate feminist.” Feminists and Weinstein accusers say they’ve been repulsed by her comments, accusing her of victim blaming. Rotunno says women have fought for decades to be viewed as equal to men, and now they need to start taking on some of the responsibility that comes with it. Some excerpts: In addition to fighting for Weinstein’s acquittal, Rotunno is waging a broader crusade against both the #MeToo movement and a culture she believes infantilizes women and rewards victimhood. . . . The problem with women today, Rotunno told Insider . . . is that they don’t take responsibility for their decisions. . . . “Everybody says, ‘Oh, are you telling women that if they go to hotel rooms they deserve to be raped?’ No,” Rotunno said. “What I’m saying is that after having drinks… Read more →
19 Insane Tidbits From James Damore’s Lawsuit
The Federalist recently published 19 insane tidbits about the Google office environment gleaned from the James Damore lawsuit. Keep in mind I’m a programmer, not a lawyer, when I say that Damore has a prima facie case of illegal retaliation: he engaged in protected activity — i.e., exercising the right to improve working conditions — by opposing several discriminatory practices, and was fired from his job. Damore wrote in his famous (or infamous) memo that “Google has created several discriminatory practices.” Classic case of opposition to an unlawful employment practice. The law does not require that the employment practice actually be unlawful, only that the employee believes the practice to be unlawful. Read more →
I Paid My Debt to Society
I paid my debt to society by reporting in for jury duty today. Jury duty is worse than losing a limb. In my experience, if you pick 12 Americans at random, you get nine good, clear-thinking citizens and three people who are like, “Well, anything’s possible.” For example, the last time I served on a jury, the case involved a defendant who was driving drunk and crashed a car with passengers into a tree. There were photos taken after the crash showing the defendant pinned behind the steering wheel of the car. His defense? He wasn’t the person driving the car. He didn’t testify himself but that was the defense presented by his attorney. And three of the jurors were like, “Yeah, that’s possible.” Hung jury. Today I survived three rounds of random juror calls in the morning and by lunchtime they started calling names of people to go… Read more →
Feb. 5, 1917: Immigration Act Passed Over Wilson’s Veto
On this date in 1917, Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the previous week and passed the Immigration Act of 1917, which, among other provisions, introduced a period of near complete exclusion of Asian immigration to the United States. Not that life was a bed of roses for Asian immigrants before 1917. Asian laborers were sought out for demanding and dangerous railroad jobs involving explosives. The phrase “Chinaman’s chance,” meaning little to no chance at all, dates from this period. Asians were not allowed American citizenship and were frequent victims of hostility and violence with no legal recourse. For example, in 1854, George W. Hall was convicted of murdering a Chinese man. On appeal to the State Supreme Court the decision was overturned because all of the evidence against him was from Chinese individuals. According to the Supreme Court ruling, the Chinese “recogniz[ed] no laws … except through necessity,… Read more →
The People v. O.J. Simpson
There’s a miniseries coming out called The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. I’m not going to watch it, not for any singular reason — I don’t watch other TV shows either — but I don’t remember the Simpson trial having a great deal of entertainment value. The trial proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Simpson was guilty, even though a guilty verdict was not returned. Eight of the 12 trial jurors were black women. The prosecution believed that the jurors would identify with the female victim. The defense team believed that the jurors would identify with the black murderer. The defense was right. Conventional wisdom says that anyone who can’t get out of a lengthy term of jury service is not very bright. Only two of the Simpson jurors had a college degree. One never finished high school. The prosecution bored and confused them with DNA evidence. The… Read more →
Let’s Get Drunk and See How Fast We Can Drive My Expensive Car
According to the California Highway Patrol, [Kurt Duncan] Naegele, [Ryan Robert] Doheny, Doheny’s brother-in-law Darren William Dahlman, 38, of Pasadena, and Christopher H. Pennell of Los Angeles, had been drinking as guests invited to a birthday party on the San Simeon ranch on Sept. 18, 2009. They drove to the airstrip to find out how fast Naegele’s Range Rover could go, something a CHP investigator claims Doheny later told him was a bad idea because it was pitch black out and Naegele was driving very fast and erratically. Around 11 p.m., the Range Rover rolled several times before falling down a steep embankment 300 feet off the runway on the north side of the airstrip. The crash killed Dahlman, seriously injured Naegele (who had to be extricated from behind the steering wheel) and also injured Pennell and Doheny. Naegele and Doheny estimated to officers that they had been traveling 35… Read more →
On the Bright Side
Twitter: 2009-08-20
Orange County Superior Court case search — more addictive than crack! http://tinyurl.com/ypkfqn # Read more →