The Fake Filibuster: A Clear and Present Danger to Democracy
Judging by much of the debate over the Senate filibuster rule, you’d think it was some honorable tradition worth keeping — “an elegant weapon of a more civilized age,” as Obi-Wan Kenobi described the lightsaber to Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars. Not so. The filibuster is a dangerous relic with a deeply destructive [...]
Trump Fails to See How Blackwater Pardons Could Fuel Retaliation for Soleimani's Death
As usual, Trump doesn’t see the link between his Blackwater pardons and potential retaliation on Soleimani’s death anniversary. US President Trump does not understand foreign policy. As usual, he cannot fathom the links between his at-first-sight isolated decisions and the larger US foreign policy and security picture. Look no further than his recent Blackwater pardons [...]
US President Donald Trump granted Tuesday full pardons to 15 individuals and commuted part or entire sentences of another five individuals. Among those pardoned are George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan, both convicted of making false statements to the FBI as part of the Mueller investigation. The White House emphasized that these were “process-related crimes” and [...]
After President-elect Joe Biden takes office and Donald Trump exits the White House, federal and state prosecutors will have to decide whether to charge the former president based on ongoing criminal investigations. Prosecuting a former head of state is no small matter and would be unprecedented in the United States. But the egregious nature of [...]
What If Trump's Electoral Defeat Coincides with a Nuclear Crisis?
“The masses have followed the magicians again and again…Socrates and Plato were the first to take up the struggle against them in clear awareness of what was at stake.” – Karl Jaspers, Reason and Anti-Reason in our Time (1952) On absolutely all matters of existential survival, individual or collective, candor is indispensable. In connection with [...]
The coronavirus pandemic has created a cascade of horrible effects. As of April 10, there have been half a million cases and 18,000 deaths in the United States (1.5 million cases and over 100,000 deaths worldwide). The pandemic has also created widespread economic hardship, with 17 million Americans newly unemployed within the past three weeks. And [...]
Mexican drug kingpin El Chapo sentenced to life in US prison
US District Judge Brian Cogan on Wednesday sentenced Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán, known as “El Chapo,” to life in prison plus 30 years and ordered him to forfeit 12.6 billion dollars. Guzmán ran one of the largest narco-cartels in Mexico and as recently as 2009 was listed on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest [...]
Blackwater security guard murder retrial ends with hung jury
A jury failed to reach a verdict Wednesday in the retrial of former Blackwater security guard Nicholas Slatten, ending weeks of deliberation in a mistrial. “We have reexamined our views and continued our discussions about the evidence and determined that individually we cannot ‘surrender honest conviction as to the weight or effect of evidence solely [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists, Sarah Wetter and James G. Hodge, Jr. of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University, discuss preemptive legal schemes that deprive states and localities of opportunities to implement efficacious interventions to advance public health......
Here's the domestic legal news we covered this week: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called Christmas Day bomber, filed a lawsuit Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of Colorado alleging violations of his constitutional rights. Abdulmutallab,...
