🧵When I see the "Is this what you voted for" posts re: immigration, my response is well, yes, it is. It is, however, not in the way the person posting that means. I mean that this is what I have voted for in every election since 1988, the first year in which I could vote. The laws which make up Title 8 of the US Code are those which have been negotiated in Congress, voted on and passed by Congress, and then signed by whichever President was in power at the time. While those laws obviously are not all to my liking, they are the ones duly passed.

🧵In all the discussions of amnesty re: immigration, there is a fundamental question I basically never see asked, let alone answered: what are those who are advocating for amnesty offering as a compromise to get support for that position? What, specifically, is the deal? That's how compromises work. You want something that I don't want to give you. In order for me to give you that, you have to give me some incentive. If not, all you are making is a demand for pure capitulation on my part. If you want it all your way? All you are is Veruca Salt.

Good morning and welcome to Twitter Law School. Today we will be discussing disparate impact, the insane Sheetz case, and yet another attempt to win via judiciary that which cannot be won via legislation. Grab caffeine conveyance beverage of choice and let's get it. So what is disparate impact? Disparate impact is the legal doctrine by which discrimination can be shown not by specific actions against specific people but rather by a statistical showing that group B does worse than group A under what appears to be neutral criteria.

🧵1986 was 39 years ago. I do not mention this for my usual wailing about the passage of time. I mention this to point out that we are now on two generations of people old enough to vote who have no living memory of the 1986 amnesty bill because they were not alive then. Let me be very generous and set 14 as the age when a person starts paying attention to and at least somewhat understanding politics. That means anyone under the age of 53 really and truly does not understand, other than academically, what the 1986 reference means re: immigration.

🧵Long thread with story times. All of these happened at my last firm. First is one I've told before. Client's insane ex wife, and by ex I mean they'd been divorced for several years when this happened, got a protection order saying he hit her. She also filed for criminal charges against him. Cops showed up to serve the order, the summons, and to take his guns. He said this is impossible, I was out of state the day this supposedly happened. Cops said don't care, we are just here to serve the papers and take the guns.

🧵Arguments as to what level of due process is owed to those who entered the country illegally and/or are remaining in the country illegally after removal orders assume that some level of due process is owed. That fundamental assumption is now being questioned, as was inevitable. I state, routinely, that due process is nigh to a miracle which has taken centuries for mankind to even approach respecting as it flies in the face of human nature. I also state, routinely, that people should stop running around waving lit flares in rooms full of kerosene.

🧵Somewhere I have a copy of a letter sent to the Psychopaths signed by all three judges of an appellate court panel stating that the appellate brief and oral argument were among the finest that the panel members ever saw. Collectively, the panel had over 90 years on the bench. I did all the research and wrote about 95% of the brief. One of my bosses did the oral argument. It is surpassingly rare for an appellate panel to send a letter like that. Why is this not framed and hanging on my office wall even 20 odd years later? Because we lost the appeal.

🧵If US companies have off shored manufacturing due to US laws and regulations, why is it acceptable for those same companies to import the goods back to the US with impunity? The companies are point blank avoiding US laws in doing so. That's what's at issue. When you drill down, all the way down, into the matters that people flatly refuse to address directly, that's what is going on. It's too expensive to make whatever in the US due to the US laws so we'll go somewhere those laws don't exist and then just bring the stuff back.

🧵Yesterday there was another round of oh look the Girls on SCOTUS ruled together, what did you expect. I couldn't help but notice the minor bit about Justice Barrett who joined in portions of the dissent. Thus I went to see what Barrett actually did. Here's the link to the decision. There's no need for PACER, it's nicely publicly available, anyone can go and look at the original source to see what, exactly, Barrett did. Here you go.

supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf…

🧵 In the Era of the Golden Scalp Weasel came the Great Unmasking.

What do I mean by this? Well, get yourself a snack and beverage of choice and I shall explain.

All set?

Let's get it. The Golden Scalp Weasel is Trump's hair. I thought this was obvious, however, I've had questions. So. That.

What, however, is the Great Unmasking?

The Great Unmasking is that people are being forced to state their actual positions, not simply make mouth noises about issues.

🧵 Since oh noes Trump and Elon are going to cut and destroy Social Security and Medicare is going around, no matter how many times both of them deny planning or wanting to do any such thing, I am reminded of one of the many reasons I call the Psychopaths, the Psychopaths. The Managing Partner, hereinafter B, got it in her head that I did a certain thing that not only did I not do, it was not possible for me to have done this, as I was not in the office when this occurred. Despite this, she was adamant I did this thing.

🧵I do not know how to type this gently so I'm just going to type this. American judicial legitimacy is already gone. It does not matter how SCOTUS rules on the various and sundry cases addressing Article II powers. Whatever side loses will consider the rulings illegitimate. I will also say this, I have no idea how those rulings are going to turn out and neither does anyone else. I know how at least 4 justices are likely to rule due to Alito's dissent in the USAID TRO issue. I can WAG about what Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett will do.

🧵Good morning and welcome to Twitter Law School where I discuss how the legal profession very much needs to take seriously concerns of the Normies (here used in a non pejorative sense to mean those without a legal background) as to the speed of appeals. Get caffeine and let's go Since Roberts decided to make let the appellate process play out the official commentary by SCOTUS on *gestures wildly* what the District Courts are doing, it is rather incumbent on those in the legal profession to understand why that sounds like kicking the can down the road.

🧵I haven't fully worked this through yet though I do think there is something here.

The battle over Federal employees having to return to the office and being asked to provide a brief report on prior week's work is a proxy battle for accountability on the Federal level at all There has been building for decades an immense frustration by the general public over how those who work for the Feds only ever seem to fail upwards. I look at matters from the perspective of the Right, due to my personal political beliefs. It is not only from the Right.

🧵Pigs get fed. Hogs get slaughtered.

The deal for moving from a spoils system to a civil service system for government workers contained exchanges. The government workers were paid less than in the public sector. In exchange, they received job protections and a pension. The exchange on the workers' side was that they were accepting that they were to be politically neutral in the carrying out their jobs. Since their jobs were no longer dependent on pleasing the politician that got them the job, they were to be neutral.

🧵I think it's very important for people to comprehend that substantial numbers of Democrats and nearly the entirety of the Left and, sadly, far too many supposedly on the Right, don't consider what we are seeing with, say, USAID as being fraud. They see it as being morally just. This is not due to getting kickbacks or working for an NGO or getting government grant money to run studies or pick your favorite here. It is because that group believes that what is being done is, in fact, what the US government is supposed to do.

🧵A warning to all my legal peeps, most notably myself, that we are ignoring the Normies' responses to the lawfare at our own peril. The Normies are sick of all of this with reason. So grab your coffee, which we all know has a solid 80% chance of being Irish, and let's get it. We, the legal peeps, are going on about having to respect the legal process and sure, sure, it may take a bit and that's annoying but the mills of God grind slowly but fine and just you wait, Thomas is going to benchslap the national injunctions, don't you worry about it!

Thread with long post warnings with screenshots:

The wonderful thing about PACER is that anyone can have access to it, it's cheap to pull documents, and, other than matters under seal, it's all public record.

So since, as we all know, I'm a law geek and since I wanted to know just who it was that drafted the language that was just in Judge Engelmayer's TRO on the Treasury access case, I did the obvious thing and looked it up.

Here's the screenshot showing the initial filing of the proposed order to show cause with emergency relief along with the screenshot of the proposed order and, because I love this so much, the screenshot showing this was served at 7:32 p.m. on February 7, 2025. This is also known as 7:32 p.m. on a Friday night.


Here is the actual order issued by the Court on Saturday, February 8, 2025 which includes that it must be served by email by noon on that Saturday.

🧵I see, and have seen for years and years and years, all the comments about how employees are entitled and they don't want to work and they expect everything handed to them and no one is entitled to a job. Well. An employer isn't entitled to an employee either. There is, and has been for as long as I can remember and I'm upper end Gen X, this undercurrent in discussions about employment that employers are entitled to employees, that when a company is hiring, potential employees should be grateful that is even occurring.

🧵To build on the first principles discussion, let us have a chat about how people refuse (or are unable) to articulate the specifics of their position. I will focus on the Americans must compete globally for jobs discussion (and I am being gracious calling it so). Let's get it. The purported discussion is that this is a global economy and Americans should be prepared to and expect to compete against those from other countries for jobs. Okay. Fine. Before we have that discussion, let us define what is being discussed.

🧵 Nearly all of our current discussions are pointless because people do not articulate, let alone understand, the first principles from which they are arguing, to say nothing of understanding the first princples of those with different views. This is a major problem. What are first principles? First principles are the principles which provide the foundation for all other positions that flow from them. In other words, the fundamental way a topic is viewed determines how and what each side is arguing.