A federal judge on Monday threw out a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X that had targeted a watchdog group for its critical reports about hate speech on the social media platform. In a blistering 52-page order, the judge blasted X’s case as plainly punitive rather than about protecting the platform’s security and legal rights. “Sometimes it is unclear what is driving a litigation,” wrote District Judge Charles Breyer, of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, in the order’s opening lines. “Other times, a complaint is so unabashedly and vociferously about one thing that there can be no mistaking that purpose.” “This case represents the latter circumstance,” Breyer continued. “This case is about punishing the Defendants for their speech.” X’s lawsuit had accused the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) of violating the company’s terms of service when it studied, and then wrote about, hate speech on the platform following Musk’s takeover of Twitter in October 2022. X has blamed CCDH’s reports, which showcase the prevalence of hate speech on the platform, for amplifying brand safety concerns and driving advertisers away from the site. In the suit, X claimed that it had suffered tens of millions of dollars in damages from CCDH’s publications. CCDH is an international non-profit with offices in the UK and US. Because of its potential to destroy the watchdog group, the case has been widely viewed as a bellwether for research and accountability on X as Musk has welcomed back prominent white supremacists and others to the platform who had previously been suspended when the platform was still a publicly-traded company called Twitter.

United States Federal Court Structure

“Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.”- Earl Warren, 14th Chief Justice of the United States The United States court system is a dual system (USC, 2023). The dual court system refers to the separate federal judicial and state judicial court systems (USC, 2023). The two court systems…

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Genesis and COVID Litigation - Interesting Update

Genesis is one of the country’s largest SNF and assisted living providers so naturally, it saw its share of COVID cases throughout the pandemic. Like other similar providers across the same industry, cases involving COVID infections are just now hitting the courts.  Back in October, I wrote about the advancement of litigation involving COVID.  There are two relevant…

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Perspectives: From the president to the Bundys, the political press is becoming obsolete

…Closer to home, that lack of trust in the self-styled “legitimate” media can be seen in the information divide that has emerged in the trial of Cliven Bundy, his sons and a handful of supporters currently underway in Las Vegas. NPR recently bemoaned that “parallel universes” were emerging in which established news outlets reporting on the case are being upstaged by Bundy family supporters using…

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Inevitability

…how do you spell that?

US District Court and Minneapolis Grain Exchange 5/27/22 by Sharon Mollerus

A visualization of the 94 Federal District Courts of the United States.

Last week, the U.S. Senate confirmed Judge Melissa DuBose to the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island, making her the first person of color and the first openly LGBTQ judge to serve on this Court.

Judge DuBose is also the 100th Black woman ever confirmed to a lifetime federal judgeship in the United States. 

Making history during Women’s History Month? Period! 👩🏾‍⚖️🏛️🤩

Barely a day after former President Donald Trump was indicted for the third time, some Senate Republicans are already trying to undermine the credibility of the federal judge who was randomly assigned to preside over his trial.

Here’s a detail they’re hoping you won’t notice: They unanimously voted to confirm her.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), speaking on his podcast on Wednesday, accused U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan of being “relentlessly hostile” to Trump and claimed that she has “a reputation for being far-left, even by D.C. District Court standards.”

But Cruz voted to put Chutkan into her seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in June 2014. So did every other Senate Republican when she was unanimously confirmed, 95-0.

That includes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who nonsensically claimed Wednesday that “any conviction in D.C. against Donald Trump is not legitimate.”

“The judge in this case hates Trump,” Graham said in a Fox News interview. “You can convict Trump of kidnapping Lindbergh’s baby in D.C. You need to have a change of venue. We need a new judge. And we need to win in 2024 to stop this crazy crap.”

Aides to Cruz and Graham did not respond to requests for comment on how the senators square their votes to confirm Chutkan with their criticisms of her ability to be a fair judge.

Tuesday’s federal indictment of Trump accuses him of serious crimes related to the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Chutkan, a Jamaica-born former assistant public defender and an appointee of former President Barack Obama, has already been overseeing cases related to the Jan. 6 attack. She’s handed out some of the most aggressive sentences yet to rioters who took part in the violence that day. Of the 11 cases that have come before her, she imposed tougher sentences than those sought by the Justice Department seven times and matched what the Justice Department was seeking four times, according to an Associated Press review.

In all 11 cases, Chutkan sentenced the defendants to prison time.

This is what is likely driving the GOP attacks on Chutkan: They know she’s not likely to go easy on Trump now.

Beyond trying to discredit the judge, some Republicans, like Graham, are parroting Trump’s absurd demand for a change of venue. The former president has called for moving his case to the “more diverse” and “politically unbiased nearby State of West Virginia!” (Virginia and Maryland are much closer to D.C., for what it’s worth.)

Not a single Republican raised concerns about Chutkan during her nomination hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2014. In fact, only one GOP member of the committee even showed up to the hearing: Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who was only there to rave about a separate Texas judicial nominee on the schedule. He left before Chutkan was up.

Cruz and Graham were both members of the committee at the time.

Neither attended Chutkan’s hearing.

A federal judge sticks it to those who characterize January 6th defendants as "persecuted patriots" or "hostages".

Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia is a Republican who was appointed by Ronald Reagan to the federal bench in the 1980s. But Judge Lamberth has had it with defendants and others who attempt to portray January 6th criminals as martyrs.

This is an excerpt from Judge Lamberth's Notes for Resentencing (PDF) for defendant James Little dated January 25th.

The Court cannot condone the shameless attempts by Mr. Little or anyone else to misinterpret or misrepresent what happened. It cannot condone the notion that those who broke the law on January 6 did nothing wrong, or that those duly convicted with all the safeguards of the United States Constitution, including a right to trial by jury in felony cases, are political prisoners or hostages. So let me set the record straight, based on what I’ve learned presiding over many January 6 prosecutions, hearing from dozens of witnesses, watching hundreds of hours of video footage, and reading thousands of pages of evidence. On January 6, 2021, a mob of people invaded and occupied the United States Capitol, using force to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power mandated by the Constitution and our republican heritage. This was not a protest that got out of hand. It was a riot; in many respects a coordinated riot, as is clear from cases before me including Hostetter (21-cr-392) and Worrell (21-cr-292). “Protestors” would have simply shared their views on the election—as did thousands that day whon did not approach the Capitol. But those who breached and occupied the Capitol building and grounds halted the counting of the Electoral College votes required by the Twelfth Amendment. The rioters interfered with a necessary step in the constitutional process, disrupted the lawful transfer of power, and thus jeopardized the American constitutional order. Although the rioters failed in their ultimate goal, their actions nonetheless resulted in the deaths of multiple people, injury to over 140 members of law enforcement, and lasting trauma for our entire nation. This was not patriotism; it was the antithesis of patriotism. And the rioters achieved this result through force. Not everyone present that day was violent, but violence is what let them into the Capitol. At first, a police line protected the Capitol, but eventually law enforcement was subjected to such force by such a mass of people that the rioters pushed through. Upon entering the Capitol, many rioters vandalized and looted, some hunted for members of Congress.

This was a federal judge calling January 6th a "coordinated riot". We all know who was the mastermind of that riot.

This is a Chicago Jump Out Squad

In DC this sort of thing is normal too.

People need to understand. I have spent my adult life in driving distance between the urban centers where this slave catcher ass policing style is the reality, and the prison(s) where massive prisoner populations are rented out to governments and corporations for literal pennies to the inmates.

-and this article is from 2014

Perspectives: From the president to the Bundys, the political press is becoming obsolete

“…Closer to home, that lack of trust in the self-styled “legitimate” media can be seen in the information divide that has emerged in the trial of Cliven Bundy, his sons and a handful of supporters currently underway in Las Vegas. NPR recently bemoaned that “parallel universes” were emerging in which established news outlets reporting on the case are being upstaged by Bundy family supporters…

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You don't understand how unhinged I feel trying to construct an ending for Bleach that I personally would enjoy while knowing Bleach does not deserve my time and also not remembering enough to actually make anything coherent. And yet here I am.

sometimes it hits me all over again that there was a time when a woman could actually attempt to file for divorce from her emotionally abusive husband and be turned down by a judge in the employ of the state, like literally she could have figured out that it was never going to get better and that for the wellbeing of herself and especially of her two young children she absolutely non-negotiably had to get out and the state could literally just say no actually being further traumatized by the monster you had the misfortune to marry when you were 22 is just something you need to put up with forever because you have not successfully proven a degree of suffering we find acceptable, and that that time was 1994 and that woman was my mom

Yesterday I debated on sharing screenshots of various news sites when the Dems won the senate and then decided not to since for some reason I could not imagine anyone not knowing already, so since I have been proved wrong since then-

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/12/us/politics/jim-marchant-nevada.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/13/trump-republicans-rivals-2024/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/12/desantis-florida-midterms-2024-trump/