"Our party egged people on to storm the Capitol, murder a police officer, and appear to have ensured that the Capitol was under-protected in an effort to overturn a legitimate election.

You've... pointed that out. And demanded accountability.

So who is REALLY at fault here?"
This would be pathetic, if it weren't such clear evidence that the GOP not only have learned nothing from this, but is doubling down on its culture of right-wing victimhood.

It's just going to keep getting worse.

But seriously: this is disgusting and pathetic--and dangerous.
And again: I don't want to hear any GOPers talk about the need to "take personal responsibility" ever again.

Having stoked an insurrection, they now equate demands for accountability with "playing politics."

Such bald (and yes, unsurprising) hypocrisy.
And yeah, this is stunning. Also stunning is that I've seen this formulation so many times already that I sort of mentally glossed over it this time until it was made so obvious here:

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More from @JohnFPfaff

11 Jan
I'd like to second, third, and fourth this.

Every time I argue that less-harsh sentences are the better ones that all should receive, I hear this: "leniency for all requires severity for all first."

This strikes me as a complete miscomprehension of the politics of punishment.
Once you pass a harsh law, it's really hard to be That Guy who repeals it.

It's also why I think we should emphasize leniency when DAs set plea deals over expanding parole.* It's easier to set a shorter sentence up front than shorten a long one.
When Obama commuted Chelsea Mannings sentence, there was a lot of outrage.

But it was fascinating outrage. No one that I saw said "7 years is too short." Everyone said "1/3 of her 21 years is too short."

If the orig sentence had been 8 yrs, bet far far less outrage.
Read 9 tweets
8 Oct 20
So this disability q is fantastic. The 25A and the Presidential Succession Act do not define "disability" and provide no method for automatically removing authority from an unwilling President.

Pence was a total coward for not answering.

Tho we know the answer.

#VPDebate
Trump will never voluntarily concede authority to any VP.

The 25A says that the VP and the cabinet can take authority, but only until POTUS writes a letter saying he's good. Which Trump would do instantly.

At that point, takes 2/3 House and Senate to put VP back in charge.
In short, neither the Constitution nor the Presidential Succession Act are remotely prepared for a Mad King scenario.

Even when POTUS is on a drug known for delusions and views of grandeur, we have no way to make the President step down/step back.
Read 4 tweets
7 Oct 20
We should stop calling it "Court Packing" and instead call it the "Court Modernization Act."

Which, to be fair, it is. Does it make sense to keep running SCOTUS the exact same way we did before penicillin, the car, the computer, pretty much all of modern life?
Expand the Court, and set it at an even number (which is Originalist too, since the first Court had six).

And professionalize it too. Nothing in the Constitution requires the Justices' only real assistants to be recent law school graduates.
If you think abt it, the current design is utterly bonkers (sorry, many of my colleagues; but it is).

We call on Justices to decide antirust one day, crim justice the next, employment law then the history of gun ownership after that.

Aided by 4 20-something legal generalists.
Read 5 tweets
6 Oct 20
Wait, when I applied to clerk, back in the summer/fall of 2001, this was the basic (if new) rule. Guess it quickly fell apart?
Which reminds me: I had a judge email me the afternoon (!!) of 9/11/01 to say he was grounded in Chicago and could just interview me then. And I said yes, bc... young, and you “don’t say no”! And so I sat in a hotel bar, watching the towers fall on repeat and just... it went bad.
With hindsight, I mean... who emails a law student to conduct an interview bc he might as well, given he’s grounded due to a national catastrophe we are STILL working thru.

He looked out the hotel window. I looked at the bar, and thus at the TVs. It was surreal. And wrong.
Read 4 tweets
28 Sep 20
It's hard to care right now for a lot of reasons, but:

The 2019 Uniform Crime Reports just posted.

The takeaway:

• Murder up baaaarely--by 0.3% (51 cases)
• Rape (-3%) and robbery (-5%) down
• Agg assault up--by 1%

• All prop crimes down, tot pop down 4%.
Of course, these stats are:

• Pre-COVID
• Pre-lockdowns (formal and unofficial)
• Pre-Floyd protests, pre-"Defund"-going-national

They are a picture of a past that has little bearing, it seems, on the present.
I tried to see if any improvements happened with clearance rates (percent of reported crimes ending in arrest), but no data there yet.
Read 23 tweets
27 Sep 20
Um, wow. KY’s AG had said that Breonna’s boyfriend, Walker, had to be the one who hit the officer, bc the bullet was 9mm and officers only had .40 cal.

Turns out Harkinson, the only officer charged, had been issued a 9mm as well. Bullet could be his.

courier-journal.com/story/news/loc…
Also, AG said he didn’t charge officers bc they had right to defend themselves.

One fired 16 bullets. And it took me 5 minutes of looking at KY law to see that acting “wontonly” (recklessly) negates self defense claims for wonton crimes: like wonton or reckless homicide.
Now, to be clear, I’m not a KY lawyer. Maybe there are judicial holdings around this wanton-negation that make it inapplicable here.

But for a grand jury proceeding—where the standard isn’t “reasonable doubt” but “sufficient evidence”—seems like enough to go forward.
Read 4 tweets

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