Tag Archives: responsibilities

A Misbehaving Judge

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Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis went on an epic rant Thursday against the white-shoe firm Kirkland & Ellis for sending a rookie lawyer to defend media giant Facebook against two lawsuits filed by more than 20,000 plaintiffs accusing the social network of facilitating terrorism.

How dare they!?  Don’t they know that Garaufis is important?

He filled in that gap in their knowledge, though.

You tell your folks back at Kirkland & Ellis that if they think so little of this court that they didn’t send a partner here to talk about this kind of problem which implicates international terrorism and the murder of innocent people in Israel and other places.  I think it’s outrageous, irresponsible, and insulting.

I’m important, dammit!

Then he gave away his ruling on the case—developed even before the case had been heard in his august court.

Garaufis suggested that Facebook has a “social responsibility” to solve the problem raised in the suits. But when Burcher blandly replied that a lawsuit was not the proper vehicle, the judge unliked that answer.

“I’ve been a lawyer for 41 years and a judge for 16 years and I’m not having this discussion with you,” he said.

Never mind the importance of that particular discussion in this pretrial conference.  The judge is a very important man, and Facebook’s lawyer just wasn’t a big enough deal to be worthy of His Eminence’s presence.

This is a judge who needs to be removed from the case, and very likely should be removed from the bench.

Security Issues

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In the end, it seems that former Secretary of State and present Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton isn’t the only one who has them.  Amazingly, former JCS Chairman and former Secretary of State Colin Powell has them, also.

Of course, it’s only Israel, though, so who cares?  Not this reluctant (or so he says) Clinton supporter.

In a private email exchange last year leaked this week by hackers, former Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed Israel’s nuclear weapons capability with a friend, saying the country has 200 warheads.

To be clear: that’s a private, unclassified and unsecured email exchange.  Not even treated as FOUO (which such information plainly is not).

The existence of its weapons program is considered classified information by both the Israeli and US governments.

Naturally,

Powell…told The Associated Press on Friday through a spokeswoman he was referring to public estimates of Israel’s nukes.

Sure.  Of course he was.

Even President Barack Obama’s (D) State Department knows better than this:

Asked about the issue at a briefing Friday, State Department spokesman John Kirby also declined to comment.

“I’m not going to discuss matters of intelligence,” Kirby said.

Again I ask: do any Democrats, Democrat supporters, or closet Democrats care about security?  Other than Admiral Kirby, I mean?

Respect for our Nation

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Here is an illustration of what the Left—what Democrats—think of our nation.  Recall NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s “protest” against our flag and our nation, wherein he shows his disdain by kneeling during our national anthem.  Now the infection has spread to a State government.

State Senator Jamilah Nasheed, a St Louis Democrat, refused to stand while her colleagues recited the Pledge of Allegiance in the state Capitol. She said her silent protest on the Senate floor was intended to show solidarity with the San Francisco 49ers quarterback.

Democrats just don’t like our nation, apparently.

Pardon Me?

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There is a campaign afoot by folks like George Soros, Daniel Radcliffe, Susan Sarandon; other guys of the Left including Steve Wozniak and Jimmy Wales; the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International to get President Barack Obama (D) to pardon Edward Snowden.  It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, either; recall President Bill Clinton’s (D) pardon frenzy in his last days in office.

Anthony Romero, ACLU’s National Director, even acknowledges that Snowden broke the law, but that shouldn’t matter—there are mitigating circumstances.

No.  If Snowden truly believes what he did was a righteous act of civil disobedience or an act of whistle-blowing or that there are mitigating circumstances, let him come back to the US, stand trial for his actions, and make his case to the nation and to its representatives in his case, the jury of his peers.

Symbolism Matters

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But so do actions.

Alex Taunton asked if he should take a knee, too; he decided not.

Kaepernick taking a knee can be a useful symbol—but with what concrete action is he linking it?

As Taunton noted, acts of protest need at least to be connected to the thing protested, they need to be concrete as well as symbolic.

To which I add, acts of protest are not that when all they are are acts of ego.

Read Taunton’s piece at the link above.