Judge Cannon Makes Another Terrible Decision

From The Washington Post:

The federal judge overseeing the classified documents charges against former president Donald Trump has dismissed the indictment on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed, according to a court filing Monday.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ruling is a remarkable win for Trump, whose lawyers have attempted longshot argument after longshot argument to dismiss the case. Other courts have rejected similar arguments to the one that he made in Florida about the legality of Smith’s appointment.

The Justice Department is highly likely to appeal the decision, a legal fight that could end up at the Supreme Court.

Even if Cannon’s ruling is eventually overruled, the decision to dismiss Trump’s indictment adds to a string of legal victories for him in recent weeks, including a sweeping Supreme Court ruling on July 1 that gives former presidents broad immunity for their official acts while in office.

Trump’s legal team has long considered the classified document case to be the strongest of the four criminal cases against him — in part because the acts in question mostly occurred after he left the White House — and the one they were most worried about.

The former president was charged with 40 counts of illegally retaining classified defense information and obstructing government efforts to retrieve the material. Some of the documents found in an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club, contained information about top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them, The Washington Post reported last year.

Judges Are Making Decisions Affecting Stocks They Own

 

We hear about presidents (like Trump) and members of Congress that own stocks, and make regulations or laws that affect those stocks (making themselves richer). It's not supposed to happen, but the laws governing it are too weak to effectively prevent it. There is a bill in Congress (the protecting Democracy Act) that would help curb these abuses.

But there is a branch of our federal government that won't be covered in that law -- the judiciary. And they are also sometimes doing the same thing -- making decisions that affect stocks they own. This needs to be stopped. In fact, all federal judges and Supreme Court justices should be required to divest themselves of any individual stocks before being allowed to assume office.

Here is part of what Richard W. Painter has to say about this at MSNBC.com:

In recent years, the United States has experienced an unprecedented number of financial conflicts of interest in its executive and legislative branches. Thanks to recent reporting by The Wall Street Journal, we now know how bad financial conflicts of interest are in the federal judiciary. According to the newspaper’s report, 131 federal judges broke the law by participating in 685 cases in which they had a financial interest, chiefly because of their holdings in individual stocks. This is a violation of the disqualification statute for United States judges prohibiting them from deciding cases in which they have a financial interest.

We have an ethical crisis across all three branches of government because those holding high office have been unwilling to divest from assets that conflict with their official duties. . . .

The 131 federal judges mentioned in the Wall Street Journal report, judges holding stocks in companies affected by cases before them are required to recuse themselves. It’s likely that some judges aren’t watching their portfolios or their spouses’ portfolios or aren’t aware that many larger publicly traded companies have multiple subsidiaries. The identify of those subsidiaries is unknown to the many investors (judges included) who don’t read the parent company’s annual report. Other judges simply may not care about complying with a statute that requires recusal.

This problem could easily be avoided if judges, like most Americans who invest for their retirement, invested in the “mutual or common investment funds” that are specifically exempt from the conflicts of interest provisions under federal law. It is unlikely that a single case would affect the value of an entire fund. For whatever reason — perhaps the belief that they can beat the market because they have more information than professional fund managers — some judges, like some members of Congress, insist on owning, and sometimes actively trading, individual stocks.

Some judges may think that, when the occasion arises, they can sell a stock so they can participate in a case. Not so fast. If the judge has any inside information from the court about how the case might come out, selling the stock while in possession of that information could expose the judge to prosecution under federal criminal insider trading laws. The judge who has a conflict of interest in a case may be stuck with a stock by the time the conflict is noticeable.

Matters get worse on the Supreme Court. At least three justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito — own individual stocks, and all three have recused themselves from cases because of their stock holdings. The problem is, unlike on the lower federal courts, there are no replacement justices to take their place. A case could be decided by eight justices or seven justices because of recusals. This is problematic for the Supreme Court, which often grants review in certain cases not just to resolve a particular dispute but to clearly state what the law is going forward. A Supreme Court decision that does not have the support of at least five justices has little value as a precedent because the ruling could be reversed in a future case in which none of the justices recuse themselves.

This is also a problem that could be easily solved if justices were to invest the same way most Americans invest their retirement funds — in broadly diversified mutual funds. . . .

Last month, Congress introduced the Protecting Our Democracy Actto curb abuses in the executive branch. The bill, among other things, provides for enforcement of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by the Department of Justice and Congress. Never again should concerned citizens have to wait four years, as we did in the CREW litigation, while a president openly flouts the financial conflicts of interest laws. . . .

The Protecting Our Democracy Act also needs to include a provision requiring presidents, vice presidents, members of Congress and all federal judges to divest from individual stocks and any other investments that pose conflicts of interest with their official duties. House and Senate leadership may not like such a divestment mandate, perhaps because they also own individual stocks, but they need to do it anyway. Investments in broadly diversified mutual funds are good enough for most individual investors, and they should be good enough for federal officers at the pinnacle of all three branches of our government.

Virtually every other federal employee is prohibited by criminal statutes from participating in matters in which they have a conflict of interest. Holders of the highest federal offices — executive, legislative or judicial — should be required to do the same.

Judge's Obamacare Decision Could Spell Big Trouble For GOP

Last week, a federal Texas judge ruled that the entire Obamacare law was unconstitutional. Obamacare remains in place (at least the portion not overturned by the GOP Congress), but it will disappear if an appeals court or the Supreme Court doesn't overturn the judge's ruling.

President Obama was not happy with that ruling. He knows it would cost about 20 million Americans their health insurance, and raise premiums exorbitantly on many millions of others (particularly those with a preexisting health condition). He said:

“[Y]ou might have heard about a federal court decision on a Republican lawsuit trying to strike down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. That can be a scary thing to hear, particularly if you or someone you care about has a pre-existing condition. And that’s why it’s so important for you to know that last night’s ruling changes nothing for now. As this decision makes its way through the courts, which will take months, if not years, the law remains in place and will likely stay that way. . . But all of this should also be a reminder that Republicans will never stop trying to undo all that. If they can’t get it done in Congress, they’ll keep trying in the courts, even when it puts people’s pre-existing conditions coverage at risk.”

Donald Trump's reaction was quite different. In a tweet (see above), he rejoiced at the judge's decision. He doesn't seem to care about hurting the health care of millions of Americans -- even though neither he nor his Republican cohorts have any plan to replace Obamacare.

But while Trump can afford to be an idiot about the decision, it should worry any other Republican holding office. Health care was a big issue in the 2018 campaign, and the GOP efforts to overturn Obamacare cost the Republicans 40 seats in the House of Representatives (and control of that body).

If this lawsuit, brought by Republican attorney generals in several states (and supported by the White House) stands, it would probably cost them millions of votes in the 2020 election.

Here's just part of what Jennifer Rubin wrote about this GOP dilemma in The Washington Post:

Republicans ran in 2018 insisting they were committed to protecting people with preexisting conditions from being priced out of the health-insurance market. However, when a district court judge last week in Texas struck down the entire Affordable Care Act, including the protection for preexisting conditions, Trump celebrated.

Other Republicans, however, looked somewhere between uncomfortable and mortified by the result. None has more reason to be squeamish than Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who voted to strip out the individual mandate in the tax bill, providing the basis for Republican governors to sue and strike down (temporarily) Obamacare. Her performance on the talk shows was cringeworthy. . . .

On “Meet the Press,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) didn’t fare any better. . . .

Republicans are the proverbial dog who caught the bus. They are to blame if the law, with no alternative, is not revived by a higher court; they are to blame if either by litigation or administrative action those with preexisting conditions are priced out of the market.

We just had an election that turned on this precise issue. Democrats overwhelmingly carried the day by accusing Republicans of seeking to sabotage protection for preexisting conditions. Now that Collins, Blunt and others have made a mess, it is up to them to fix it — or face the wrath of the voters in 2020.

GOP Judges More Unfair In Sentencing Than Dem. Judges

(This graphic image is from Colorado Peak Politics.)

I have been called a bleeding-heart liberal. That's OK. But I also worked in various aspects of law enforcement for nearly 30 years, and I believe crime should be punished (especially crimes against the safety or property of others) -- and I believe serious crimes should come with a prison sentence.

However, I also believe that when justice is meted out, it should be done fairly -- with no regard for race, ethnicity, gender, or economic status. But too often our courts do not operate that way. Some judges give Blacks harsher sentences than Whites for the same crimes  -- and women are given lesser sentences than men for the same crime. This is unfair, and makes a mockery of the "equal protection" clause of the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment.

Unfair sentencing is wrong, whether the offending judge is a Democrat or a Republican. But a new study shows that Republican Judges are more unfair in sentencing than Democratic judges -- significantly so. The study was done by Harvard Law School professors Alma Cohen and Crystal S. Yang. They studied 1,400 federal judges over a period of 15 years.

What they found was very disturbing, but not surprising. It seems that Republican judges gives Blacks harsher sentences than Whites, and they also give women lesser sentences than they give men -- all for the very same crimes. They found:

Linking approximately half a million defendants to their sentencing judges, we find that Republican-appointed judges sentence black defendants to longer prison terms than non-black defendants compared to Democratic-appointed judges.

Republican-appointed judges also sentence female defendants to shorter prison terms than males compared to Democratic-appointed judges.

These racial and gender disparities by political affiliation emerge at both the fact-finding and sentencing stages of the criminal justice process, and are robust to controlling for other judge and court characteristics, such as judge race, gender, and proxies for racial attitudes.

We also find that differences in disparities by political affiliation, particularly racial gaps in sentence length, expand when judges were given more discretion after the mandatory Guidelines were rendered advisory. Moreover, these enlarged differences cannot be solely explained by differences in the willingness of Republican-appointed and Democratic-appointed judges to depart from the Guidelines. These results suggest that a consequence of the advisory Guidelines system is an expansion of sentencing disparities by judge political affiliation.

Republican and Democratic-appointed judges treat defendants differently on the basis of their race and gender given that we observe robust disparities despite the random assignment of cases to judges within the same court. Our results also indicate that these disparities are not solely due to differences in the treatment of certain offense types by judge political affiliation as we find large racial and gender gaps even within specific crimes such as drug offenses. More speculatively, our results are consistent with some judges holding discriminatory attitudes given that we find larger disparities among judges who serve in courts from states with higher racial bias, which are disproportionately located in the South.

Our results suggest that a judge’s political ideology may affect how he or she views the dangerousness or blameworthiness of different defendants by race and gender.

According to our findings, racial disparities in sentencing would be almost halved if federal district courts were comprised of all Democratic-appointed judges, and reduced by more than five percent if courts were comprised of ten percent more judges appointed by Democratic presidents. In recent decades, the typical president has appointed roughly 160 district court judges in a four-year term.16 Under  the current composition of the federal court system, these appointments could change the partisan composition of district courts by 15 to 20 percentage points, which could substantially alter gender and racial disparities in the criminal justice system depending on the political affiliation of the appointing president. The potential to affect disparities is even larger for two-term presidents.

Texas GOP's Voter ID Law Was Intended To Discriminate

(Photo of U.S/ District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos is from The Victoria Advocate.)

Last year, U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos found the Voter ID law passed by the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature was discriminatory to minorities -- and that the Republicans had INTENDED for the law to be discriminatory (to keep minorities away from the polls).

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld her judgement that the law was discriminatory, but sent to case back to her to re-examine whether the discrimination was intentional or not. She re-examined the accusation, and heard evidence from the state defending the law -- and now she has issued her opinion. That opinion once again ruled that not only was the Voter ID law discriminatory, but that it was intended to discriminate against minorities (who tend to vote for Democrats in large percentages).

The important part of this decision is whether Texas should once again be put under federal government supervision under the Voting Rights Act. That supervision was removed a couple of years ago when the Supreme Court ruled that there was no evidence that the states under supervision had not rectified their discrimination.

But this ruling shows there is now evidence that Texas has NOT stopped discriminating against minorities. In fact, it continues to intentionally discriminate. Texas should once again be supervised by the federal government on all matters regarding elections (and changes to any election laws). They have shown they still cannot be trusted to be fair to all voters.

Here is the concluding paragraph of Judge Ramos' decision: