I have avoided watching much national media "news" shows to keep my blood pressure from not skyrocketing[no joke] But, I caved to curiousity as to whether our media might mention that Kirk had horrendous views about blacks, browns, immigrants in general, and Jewish people. On ABC last night not one word as the news legitimated Trash calling him a martyr and saint who would get the Medal of Honor posthumously. For all I know, Kirk was a good family man who loved his wife and children. No reason to ignore their terrible loss just because their Dad

There are so many different disasters and screw ups by all of Trump's cabinet officials and their staff that its hard to keep up with all of the damage being done. When we get overwhelmed by the constancy of terrible losses and harms, the strength of our emotional reactions can diminish over time. Just as we expect that Trump will lie whenever he opens his mouth, the constancy and repetition can slowly diminish our negative reactions to his perfidy. For that reason, I want to highlight the constancy of another daily occurrence. The leaders of all our

Note about whether MENENDEZ BROTHERS DESERVE TO BE PAROLED: When I covered both of their trials for ABC NEWS, I learned how much national media coverage is dictated by whatever consensus exists for their audience. In short, our media focuses on gaining audience share by legitimating their audience's perspective. In my interviews, I tried to explain several crucial points about their defense: 1] they were not pleading self defense. Instead, their attys offered what is called "unreasonable self defense" that accepts they did not respond to an

Last night's phone call from a life long British friend who is in the upper hierarchy of their intelligent service. Paraphrase his opening line: "Peter, I can't understand why your national media failed to report what most NATO countries and Israel have known for over a decade: Compelling evidence that Putin's KBG secured compromat information of Trump's life long pedophilia. It has become apparent to all of us that your national media lack the will to investigate because of the oligarchs who control them. Yet, the fact that the Wall Street Journal has

Every Congressional Republican should be forced to listen to the reading of a deposition of one of Trump's underage victims. He first forced her to engage in a sexual act with another underage girl while he watched. Then he raped her. When his victim begged him to wear a condom, he refused and then after finishing, he threw some cash at her and told her she should get an abortion if he had impregnated her. This vile monster should be serving a long prison sentence instead of being treated like a GOD by his brain dead MAGA cult. I am so angry that he has

Once again, Trump is caught in a transparent lie. He repeatedly denied that AG Bondi had informed him that his name was repeatedly noted in the Epstein files. Bondi also lied for him. While admitting she possessed the Epstein files in a May Fox interview, she subsequently claimed that there was nothing in the files implicating Trump. What I find most frustrating and terrifying is the lack of any national outrage that we have a President who raped young girls. Nixon's crimes that led to his coerced resignation by his own party pale in comparison to Trump's

A prediction about how Trump will use Pam Bondi and Ghislaine Maxwell to create the false appearance that the DOJ will release Epstein's client list and all other Epstein files. Fact/Dot #1 Maxwell's atty has delayed pushing forward on the appeal of her federal conviction for sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping Epstein procure under age girls. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence. #2 fact/dot Speaker Johnson has delayed a vote on a Congressional request to release all Epstein files until September to give the administration time to work

When I was a teenager in the early 60's, I experienced discrimination first hand as white antisemitic bullies mistakenly thought I was Jewish so they took pleasure harassing me physically. That experience prompted me to take racial discrimination against the few black teenagers I knew from school seriously. These friends of mine defended me when I needed it and invited me to participate with them in voter registration drives in Alabama and Mississippi. So I grew up knowing that our country had a very serious dark side to the American dream with its racism

Some of my former law students who follow me here posted very similar questions to me this past week. Many of them felt the need to apologize to me because they had felt I was probably exaggerating the negative consequences flowing from USSCT opinions we were discusssing in class. All of them asked me what I have found most surprising and shocking since Trump took office. Despite my cynicism about many of the USSCT decisions I taught in the 2002-2013 period, I never would have predicted the SCT's decision to place Trump beyond legal

Sadly, most Americans have no clue about what is happening in LA. My wife's son was shopping at a Home Depot Sunday when ICE agents engaged in a massive sweep of the store where they detained many customers with brown skins. I have urged Mia's three adult children to carry their drivers licenses and passports with them at all times. The fear and hysteria in LA has become so widespread that black and brown Latinos who always shop at public swap meets to purchase bargain items have become "ghost" spaces because of the fear of ICE detention.

If you have access to the NYT, do yourself a favor and read Dr. Parsons op-ed yesterday about how the Trump administration has instructed West Point to stop teaching courses that explore critical race theory, gender studies, and any ethical theory that explains why the military must always remain politically neutral. Professors must submit research proposals to West Point administrators for approval to guarantee that their articles conform to the Trump administration's ideological views. Dr. Parsons is a professor of philosophy at at West Point, where

Shout out to my good friend @Teri_Kanefield She has a brilliant mind and incredible intellectual curiousity. Her blog is a must read. She just wrote a superb summary of political neuroscientist Zmigrod's book "The Ideological Brain.." If you want to understand how even reasonably intelligent MAGATS think and why they fall victim to ideological blindness, you should read Teri's summary of this brilliant book. Here are a few quotes from her blog entry that captures some of Zmigrod's insights.

I want to share with my followers some insightful analysis of how and why we are failing to defend our democracy from Trump's onslaughts against all our civic institutions. Thomas Edsall wrote a very important NYT op-ed today where he asked several professors to explain Trumps' tactics to attack our institutions one by one and why most of them appear to be failing us. Public policy Professor Justin Gest described Trump's strategy: His "key method is to, one by one, eliminate as many independent institutions as possible that are free enough to

Note: Listing all the reasons why the majority of Americans [Magas and far too many blue voters] do not understand that we have already fallen into a fascist abyss: consider the primary building blocks and guardrails for any democracy: 1] the separation of powers doctrine, 2]the constitutional limits on executive power, 3] what executive orders are illegal because they require Congressional authorization like Trump's absurd tariff war and paying a foreign dictatorship millions to imprison American citizens and legal residents, 4] the meaning of the due

I am glad that I grew up in a working class family. My Dad was an atty that none of the rich Boston law firms would hire because he was Italian. For the first decade of his practice, he represented Italian immigrants who frequently could not pay him with $$. If his client was a butcher, we would eat Prime Rib or New York Strip steak for a week. If his client was a cook at an Italian restaurant, we would dine on lasagna or ravioli. My Dad was basically a legal aid lawyer before such entities were created for lower income clients. He always worried

My followers will notice that I might only post Red Sox messages for now. Honestly, I have never been deeply depressed in my life; simply not part of my usually sunny Italian nature. But, what Trump has done to a country I love in just 3 short months has been devastating to me. Then, to add insult to injury, he robbed my soon to be 40yr old son of a decent future by cutting fed grants of funding to state adult group homes. I had anticipated that possibility so I bought a large[for me, not for an affluent person] position in NVDA because I thought it

A dangerous and growing trend in our culture: the lack of reliance on and deference to relevant expertise. One obvious example is Paul Krugman: a brilliant economist who knows far more about the impact of tariffs wars on the world's economy than the dolts and sheep who "advise" Trump. In today's op-ed in the NYT, Krugman explains how Trump's absurdly high tariffs will generate a trade war that will devastate the world's economy as it did in the 1930's. Trump's claim that it will generate billions to the US is not only false, it's irrational. Tariffs

This site generates considerable cognitive dissonance for my beliefs about the future of our democracy. On the one hand, all the hateful MAGA replies to my posts reflect a shocking degree of anger, vitriol, and character assassination. All of them embody a complete absence of any rational analysis about how much Trumps' federal policies and executive orders will badly damage our national economy and undermine MAGAS' economic self-interest. Perhaps what terrifies me the most is that half of our country lacks the capacity to see what is transparently

Last night, a distant relative from the US visited us for dinner. He graduated HLS one yr after I did and went the corporate route that most HLS graduates choose for the lucre. I had not seen him for at least 20 yrs and was surprised by his unannounced arrival in our Mexican rural village that is not exactly a tourist location. Over dinner, I learned that he had been reading my posts here and was very disturbed by their anti-Trump tone. The objective of his visit was to explain why I was not seeing "the big picture"[his words] Despite the presence of

I am a big fan of Mark Twain's common sense and wisdom about human nature; character traits that are in short supply in today's polarized political culture. Thanks to one of my followers [@MLeeBaxter1], I was reminded of one of Twain's remarks that sadly apply all too well to our bi-polar culture. Twain dryly observed that: "It ain't
what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." MAGA supporters of Trump, most especially the Christian nationalists' segment, have never understood and/or appreciated our

SAD NOTE FOR TODAY-Why aren't Americans appalled that Musk bought Trump's election so he could be Trump's puppeteer? Musk demands a govt shutdown if the debt ceiling is not lifted and Trump follows his marching orders. Why are our national media silent about how a private billionaire who can't even run for POTUS is now our DEFACTO President? Ignorance and Indifference explain why a majority of Americans don't care about the loss of our democracy. I keep waiting for younger Americans [18-30] to wake up and engage in massive peaceful civil