Category Archives: law

Irrelevant

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In the ongoing struggle between Progressive-Democrat-run States and the Federal government, the Attorneys General of New York, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont have filed suit in the DC District Court in an attempt to undo an administration deal with TotalEnergies that has the latter ceasing its US-centered offshore wind projects and instead starting work on developing US oil and natural gas projects.

The Progressive-Democrat AGs’ argument centered on this:

We are fighting back to stop this illegal agreement that threatens to erase over a thousand union jobs and cheat millions of New Yorkers out of clean, affordable energy[.]

The “illegal agreement” bit is nakedly conclusory and has no merit in any guise. Stipulate the other factors are accurately presented. They are, though, purely business decisions made within a political and economic framework that is solely within the purview of the political branches—i.e., those two which are elected by We the People—and regarding which, the courts have nothing legitimate to say.

The AGs’ argument is wholly irrelevant and without merit in court. It is worthy of debate in the Congress and the White House only.

The role of judges. and of Justices who are a subset of that group and sit at the group’s top, under our form of government is to check the political branches from excess. Their means of doing so are at once powerful and limited. Judges must apply our Constitution as it is written, and must assess the constitutionality of any statute before them in a particular case. If the judges determine the statute to be constitutional, they must apply it as it is written. If they find the statute unconstitutional, they must strike it.

In particular, judges may not alter or disregard any part of our Constitution in favor of their own view of what it ought to be in order to achieve their own view of societal needs or of justice. Nor are they permitted to alter in any way the statute before them to suit those personal views of societal needs or of justice; they must strike it or apply it.

The deal between the administration and TotalEnergies is entirely legitimate from a legal standpoint, and it should be upheld in the district court, the DC Circuit, and at the Supreme Court.

Misbehavior of a Federal District Judge

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A short while ago as such things are measured, a Federal district judge was given a private reprimand for having sex in her chambers with a local police department senior-level cop. Many folks, experts as well as my august self, consider that wholly inadequate.

The judge has since been identified as Northern District of Georgia judge Eleanor Louise Ross, and the (still individually unidentified) senior-level cop as a member of the Atlanta Police Department. Furthermore, her relationship with the cop has been identified as an extramarital one, lasting for two, or so, years, and the relationship included repeated sexual encounters in her judicial chambers, generally within earshot of her clerks and other staff.

That private reprimand, though, is all she got, because she’s sorry, and she apologized, so it’s all good.

Pfft.

The article outlined a number of more serious outcomes for her misbehaviors, leading off with impeachment. That, though, would take a majority of the House voting to impeach and a two-thirds majority of the Senate to convict in order to get her off the bench. The article acknowledged the unlikeliness of that outcome, but without suggesting why. I claim the reason is this: even were impeachment a serious possibility, there aren’t enough Progressive-Democrats in the Senate willing to convict one of their own, the Obama appointee who is Ross.

The article also outlined a number of alternative consequences, but while potentially financially expensive in terms of opportunity cost, they would leave her on the bench. The worst realized outcome of all these would be this:

Recusal motions are the sharpest instrument available. …
The Justice Department has already moved to disqualify Ross from a high-profile voter-roll case, citing both the misconduct findings and her attendance at Fani Willis’s 2024 primary victory party. If that pattern continues, she could find herself a judge in title only.

Judge in title only. That actually is nice work for anyone who can get it. Ross’ pay in 2025, just for being a Federal judge, was nearly a quarter of a million dollars. That puts her income higher than 96% of the rest of us working stiffs.  Nice work, indeed, especially for someone whose word—professional or personal—is worthless.

A Misapprehension

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Former Vice President Mike Pence (R) is the one misapprehending this time, and he laid it out early in his Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Where conservatives have historically viewed politics as the art of the possible, progressives see politics as a path to alter society beyond recognition in a quest for material equity, environmental nirvana, or other alleged perfections. Progressives invariably try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

That last sentence lays bare his misunderstanding. Perfecting our society has nothing to do with today’s progressives’ goals, goals hard-sought after by today’s Progressive-Democratic Party and epitomized by that sentence. Were Party interested in perfection, it would adopt a more patient approach and seek to bring along those presently disagreeing with them. Instead, Party politicians try to destroy whatever stands in their way.

For further proof, see Party’s plans, annunciated by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D, NY) remarks and his chief minion for this, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D, MD):

The Supreme Court is a disgrace. In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court, and let me be very clear: everything is on the table—everything to deal with this corrupt MAGA majority.

And, as paraphrased by the WSJ‘s editors:

[Raskin] recently introduced a bill that would deny the Justices the power to choose which cases they hear. Under the SCCOTUS Act, petitions would be reviewed by a rotating committee of 13 random appellate judges. This is such a radical change that it’s hard to imagine all the implications.

Jeffries sees the Court, especially the conservative Justices, as corrupt because the majority seeks to adhere to what our Constitution and any statute before them actually say, rather than what the other Justices too often insist: that, in the manner of former Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Court should rule on what they want and expect the law to catch up, with the added fillip that if the law isn’t catching up quickly enough, these Justices will rewrite them from the bench.

Raskin would actually corrupt our Court by packing it to thirteen Justices because thirteen appellate circuits. He ignores in his revisionism the history that the number of appellate circuits had been growing beyond nine long before Congress set the number of Justices at nine. In fact, though, that’s just his covering excuse for adding four activist, progressive men and women to the Court, men and women who view our Constitution and statutes as suggestions to be ignored or modified as they see fit.

Pence’s piece loses its import with his lack of understanding of the underlying problem, even as he’s entirely correct in his conclusion: it’s time for Republicans, and especially the dismayingly meek Republicans, to get up off their backs and address these problems loudly and firmly. In particular, this includes Vice President JD Vance (R), who’s busily toadying up to Big Labor in his desperation to become our next President.

Else we lose our Republic.

The Nub of the Matter

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An article concerning the nature of “sex work” and the debate over whether it ought be decriminalized and destigmatized, there was this characterization:

On [one] side are those arguing for total decriminalization, which lifts all laws regulating the buying and selling of sex acts.

And this, from a woman who ultimately escaped from the environment:

Prostitution is someone using their money and power to get someone else to provide a service for them. You’re literally paid to be a product that is used and discarded.

There it is, in all its glory, from the life of an individual once in the environment and from the broad movement looking to decriminalize “sex” work. It isn’t about sex; it’s about faceless male gratification, for whom the woman isn’t even a human being; she’s just a body temperature, organic inflatable sex doll. It’s not even a matter of buying a selling sex; it’s only renting a warm doll for a hour or a night, otherwise akin to renting a power tool.

Say, though, that in an amoral yet otherwise ideal world, this work is entirely legalized. On what basis would we believe the women involved really are engaging in it on their own initiative and entirely free of coercion? Pimps will still be there, now legalized as agents or brokers for the firms renting these commodities. And they’ll still control the women, who they engage with, what they’ll do—be required to do under the terms of their employment—during those engagements.

Would a woman be free to leave one…employer…for another whenever she chose to do so? Would she be free to leave the…industry…altogether and seek employment doing other things wholly apart from being a rented sex doll? Those answers seem obvious.

Tellingly, too, the movement wholly ignores the men who are trafficked or pimped out as male prostitutes, and worse, the movement wholly ignores the children, of both sexes, who are trafficked for sex.

The answer to “sex work” isn’t to legalize it. It’s a multipart question: help the women (and the men and children) recover from the damage done by their present strait and then learn other means of earning a living—a legitimate living and one in which they keep all of their wages. In parallel, hammer severely the traffickers and pimps making these victims—and that’s what the women (and men and children) are to five nines significance—”available.” Hold criminally liable the customers of these pimps and traffickers for receiving illegal goods. They’re certainly not customers of the women; they’re receivers of the pimps’ and traffickers’ product. And publicly shame those customers for their abuse of the women whose bodies are the product they rented.

The “Anti-Weaponization” Fund

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I have some thoughts on this and how it might work. Of course, I’m speculating; no criteria for eligibility or payout have been set, the five-person “adjudication” panel has not been stood up, and it’s possible the funding will not survive Congressional purse-control oversight. Within that, here I go again.

Payouts, I expect, will be limited to actual loss, with no add-ons related to punitive matters. In many respects, this will be straightforward, but there are a number of areas where losses are not clearly specifiable and/or the alleged losses are highly subjective. These latter include losses from loss of jobs, loss of business revenue, closure of the business. Courts have gotten fairly adept, if widely variable across jurisdictions, in assessing this sort of loss.

Even hazier are things like loss through death of a spouse, loss of the spouse’s income (which is separate from his/her death, even if the income loss resulted from the death), loss of conjugal relations or alienation of affection resulting from divorce or the affair that led to the divorce—and yes, some divorces have occurred as a result of many of the J6 prosecutions and, in the present context, persecutions. Courts make guesses at these losses, but only guesses; they’re not very good at it.

The next, and the overwhelmingly most important, problem, though is this. Given provable or even merely articulable loss that meets fund eligibility criteria to this point, it’s going to be deucedly hard to prove the political targeting, lawfare nature of the cases for which an applicant is seeking recompense. At best, satisfying a court, most likely satisfying the succession of courts, appellate courts, the Supreme Court, with the potential for remands to lower courts for further consideration or for reconsideration, will take years and years to reach a final decision. And that decision may well be that the matter at hand was not, in fact, political targeting, and so no payout is due.

And one more question. Given a final decision, whence the monies for the legal costs of getting to one? Will the Fund pay the government’s legal costs apart from any payout ordered? If not, where will the government’s funding come from?