For anyone familiar with "true threat" doctrine under the First Amendment, I'm interested to know if you think the video below amounts to a "true threat."
I'll put up a poll so you can vote mediately below this tweet.
The Supreme Court will hold argument in Lange v. California, a 4th Amendment case on the hot-pursuit exception, on Wednesday morning.
I haven't focused much on this case, but here are some tentative thoughts for those interested. supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?fi…
And my apologies: I know this will be hard to follow for those not already steeped in 4th Amendment law, but it's 3am and I don't have the time to bring everyone up to speed on the context. On the theory it's better to speak to a small audience than not speak at all, here goes.
Lange considers the "hot pursuit" exception to the warrant requirement applies to a misdemeanor crime. Is it it judged on a case-by-case basis, or should there be a bright line rule that hot pursuit searches of a dwelling where a misdemeanant has entered is reasonable?
Minor question about the Jeffrey Clark DOJ story: Does it matter to our assessment of Clark's culpability if he genuinely believed the conspiracy theories of the 2020 election?
Like a lot of readers, I was astonished by the Clark story. My immediate reaction is to think (a) Clark is obviously smart enough to realize that the conspiracy theories were total BS, and (b) using them as cover was an outrageous affront to the rule of law.
And maybe it's that simple. But I wonder about another possibility.
If you're wondering if the Senate has the power to order social media to preserve online accounts in response to the Capitol Riot, I have just the article for you: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Here Warner seems to be acting as a single Senator, though, not as an agent of the Senate as a whole. Can he do that? The 2703(f) authority is granted to any "governmental entity," defined in relevant part as "a department or agency of the United States." Can 1 Senator do that?
As I read Warner's letter, though, he's probably not trying to formally invoke 2703(f): It's more an informal request to help the (likely already issued) formal requests from law enforcement.
A few thoughts on Twitter's suspension of Trump's account, a thread.
Twitter is a private company and it can do what it wants. Twitter is selling a product in a free market, and it's up to Twitter what the product is like. If they want to enforce certain rules, even unfairly, that's their call. They're a company, not the government.
True, companies like Twitter impact what today's media
environment is like. As a citizen, it's easier to reach a large audience if you play by the rules of the big tech companies. So the inevitable editorial decisions of the providers will shape that media environment.
The incredible part, as always, is not that Trump did this. It's who he is and has always been. Rather, the incredible part is how many Americans will think this is totally fine, if not pretty awesome. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…