Finally Friday Reads! Putting the Lousy in Lousyiana

“Of course, Donald gets his cake and eats it too. SCOTUS gives him a nice birthday gift.” John Buss, @Repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

It’s a busy news day.  The Supremes and the Loose Cannon are busy slowing down the many prosecutions of Donald the Traitorous.  Today is the second anniversary of the Dobbs Decision.  The Court released another decision today that was sound. “Supreme Court Upholds Law Disarming Domestic Abusers. The justices rejected a Second Amendment challenge to a federal law that makes it a crime for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders to possess a gun.”  This was reported today in the NYT by Adam Liptak.

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the government may disarm a Texas man subject to a domestic violence order, limiting the sweep of its earlier blockbuster decision that vastly expanded gun rights.

That decision, issued in 2022, struck down a New York law that put strict limits on carrying guns outside the home. It also established a new legal standard for assessing laws limiting the possession of firearms, one whose reliance on historical practices has sown confusion as courts have struggled to apply it, with some judges sweeping aside gun control laws that have been on the books for decades.

The new case, United States v. Rahimi, explored the scope of that new test. Only Justice Clarence Thomas, the author of the majority opinion in the 2022 decision, dissented.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that Second Amendment rights had limits.

“When a restraining order contains a finding that an individual poses a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner, that individual may — consistent with the Second Amendment — be banned from possessing firearms while the order is in effect,” he wrote. “Since the founding, our nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms.”

The case started in 2019 when Zackey Rahimi, a drug dealer in Texas, assaulted his girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone, leading her to obtain a restraining order. The order suspended Mr. Rahimi’s handgun license and prohibited him from possessing firearms.

Mr. Rahimi defied the order in flagrant fashion, according to court records.

He threatened a different woman with a gun, leading to charges of assault with a deadly weapon. Then, in the space of two months, he opened fire in public five times.

Now, if gun dealers would just follow the law.  We’re still waiting for the big decision on absolute immunity.  It’s now unlikely Donald will be put to trial for his insurrection.  We also remember the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner as they fought for voting rights.  If you haven’t watched the movie Mississippi Burning, you really should.   Here’s a link to the FBI site and information on the case.

60 years later, we still struggle to achieve the ability to vote for every eligible voter.

And in other news, the state of Louisiana is getting national attention for going after the separation of Church and State.  When people think of Louisiana, they usually think of good food, music, and fun!  It’s a beautiful, diverse state in terms of geography and people. Now we’re in the headlines for this utter idiot that a very small number of people voted into the Governor’s House.  The biggest lesson here is to go vote no matter what!  Despite SCOTUS’s decisions over the years, he’s itching to take this case to court.  Governor Klandry wants the state to create posters of the White Christian Nationalists’ version of the 10 commandments in every Louisiana public school classroom. The funny thing is the bill that’s now signed into law has 11 commandments.  There are so many versions that you wonder why the Calvinist version always takes precedence. Oh, yes, White Christian Evangelicals want the ones positing the most control.

Still, I wonder if having a rainbow in your classroom is “grooming,” why is having to explain adultery to a kindergartner something else?  Given the Dobbs Anniversary today, I’m not sure we rely on stare decisis.  Remember when the late and not-so-great Roy Moore tried to get them displayed at Alabama courthouses?  That didn’t go over so well with the court.  Neither did the attempt to put them in classrooms in 1978. This current law violates longstanding Supreme Court precedent and the First Amendment. Stone v. Graham, the Supreme Court overturned a similar state statute.   The finding stated that the First Amendment bars public schools from posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.  That was over 40 years ago. But remember, they ignored all kinds of precedents to dump Roe and are gunning for birth control. We need to vote and be vigilant

I found this CNN interview with Louisiana State Representative Lauren Ventrella conducted by Boris Sanchez. She actually makes Marjorie Taylor Greene seem a bit less unhinged. She screams and interrupts so much that it’s difficult to watch. At one point, she attacks the interviewer personally. (Check the tape at 2:54)   I can’t believe these Republican women are getting more obnoxious than Michelle Bachman. At least this one wears professional clothing well do performance politics.  Moses was that the first historical law giver. That would be Babalyonia’s Hammarubi about 500 years prior to the entire mountain event.  The first time I went to the Louvre I had my exhusband take a picture of me standing next to a stone displaying his code.  He presented 282 case laws over all kinds of subject areas too.  That’s how impressed with it I was when I was studying ancient history in grade school and at university.

Much of the political press is yammering on about Trump’s big fundraising leap and speculation about the VEEP Sweepstakes with folks even saying Marco Rubio might be a game changer.  However, let’s not forget the main point about Trump which is what my state did when the looked at the last govenor’s race and sat it out. his is from Stephen Robinson writing at Public Notice. ” Don’t be gaslit: Trump’s corruption is unparalleled. His egregious self-dealing is disqualifying no matter how much Republicans yell about Hunter Biden.”  The author calls the move “classic swift-boating.”

“While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses,” Trump tweeted on November 30, 2016.

It quickly became clear, however, that Trump’s divestment plan was a joke: He merely turned over active control to his two sons, Don Jr. and Eric, which hardly satisfied ethics experts. For instance, Richard Painter, former ethics counsel to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, argued that Trump should “put all his conflict-generating assets in a true blind trust run by an independent trustee.”

Trump held a press conference a week before his inauguration that was supposed to clarify how he planned to hand the family business over to his sons. However, the documents placed next to him as evidence of his complex financial preparations were just props, binders filled with blank paper.

There’s no way we can face any more of his monkey business in the Oval Office.  However, there’s another court trying slow down the application of Justice.  This is from Politico. “Is Jack Smith’s appointment constitutional? Trump’s Florida judge is set to decide. A hearing starting Friday will delve into Trump’s claim that the special counsel lacks authority.”  It’s hard to see such frivolous issues tie things up.  This is written by Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump for allegedly stealing national security secrets is on trial Friday — just not in the way Smith intended.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has punted the case indefinitely and seems many months away from preparing it to go before a jury (assuming the case even makes it that far). Meanwhile, she has scheduled a multi-day hearing in her Fort Pierce, Florida, courtroom focused on whether Smith, the prosecutor leading the case, was unconstitutionally appointed or is otherwise acting without legal authority.

The claim is a far-fetched bid by Trump to scuttle the case altogether. Numerous courts have rejected nearly identical constitutional challenges to other special counsels.

And in a case that has moved like molasses for a year, Cannon’s decision to devote substantial time and resources to the argument is just the latest, and perhaps most blatant, example of her unusual approach. Her management of the case has frustrated the special counsel’s team and prompted critics to accuse her of being in the tank for Trump, who appointed her to the bench during his final year in office.

And in a case that has moved like molasses for a year, Cannon’s decision to devote substantial time and resources to the argument is just the latest, and perhaps most blatant, example of her unusual

The hearing on Trump’s challenge to Smith’s authority is set to begin Friday and to continue Monday morning. Later on Monday, Cannon plans to hear arguments on Smith’s request for an order barring Trump from lying about the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago that led to the criminal charges in the case. And then, on Tuesday, Cannon has scheduled an additional hearing on another Trump motion that could derail the case.

This comes after it was reported that at least two colleagues approached her to ask her to not take the case. Here’s some information on that.  This is from LA Magazine. “Judge Aileen Cannon Rebuffed Senior Colleagues’ Plea to Step Aside From Trump’s Classified Documents Case. Cannon is the first judge in American history to preside over a criminal trial of the president who nominated that judge.”

New reports came out Thursday from the New York Times that Judge Aileen Cannon was encouraged to step aside by senior judges from her position as the assigned judge to ex-president Donald Trump’s classified documents case.

In June 2023, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon was just two years and seven months into her tenure as a federal judge for the Southern District of Florida, her first job as a judge, when she was assigned one of the highest-profile cases of our time — namely, the prosecution of Donald Trump in the classified documents case.

After Cannon was assigned the case a year ago, private expressions of Cannon-related concerns were raised across the courthouse due to her experience and lack of impartiality by her own colleagues.

Two senior judges — Chief Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga was one — waged an extraordinary effort to privately urge Cannon to step aside and allow a judge with more time on the bench to take over the case. Cannon refused.

Since then, Cannon has slow-walked pretrial motions and delayed the trial indefinitely — declining to set to a date for the trial to begin — although prosecutors have said they are prepared to start.

Well, that’s it for me!  Have a great weekend!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?