#above the law

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

#class war #class warfare #classism #the royals #the royal family #the queen #queen elizabeth #above the law #one law for them #parasite

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Chris Williams

New Yorkers are known for having a temper. Some blame it on the traffic and dirty water hog dogs. Personally? I blame it on the cost of living. If you compare the value of $20 in 1970 New York to $20 in the Big Apple now, the cost of living has gone up a whopping 677.46%. A big part of that increase has been housing. Back in 2012, a man ran an entire campaign premised on the rent being too damned high. But, man, if you thought New Yorkers were pissed about rent prices back then… wait until they really can’t afford rent.

Before we even get to the obvious ethical issues involved with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito sitting on this case despite receiving lavish gifts from landowners with a vested interest in this matter, it is worth taking a second to reflect on the Supreme Court’s drift from just a decade ago.

It would still be newsworthy if the Court decides to even hear the case. A little over a decade ago, James Harmon tried to bring a very similar case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the New York’s rent stabilization law constituted a taking. The Court ultimately decided against hearing Harmon’s case. With that in mind, read an assessment given based on that case a decade ago in The Tenant:

“If the Supreme Court chooses to consider the Harmons’ lawsuit, it would mean that four Justices—presumably Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito—believe there is a valid argument for a radical expansion of property rights, that destroying legal protections for tenants is as much an idea whose time has come as abolishing racial segregation was in 1954.”

It can be startling to see how quickly opinions on the judiciary can change. In framing the above quote, the author brought up the importance of precedent, citing cases like Roe, Brown, and Lawrence v. Texas. The thinking at the time was that even if the Court wasn’t the biggest fan of a given outcome, it’d respect the decisions of the jurists before them. Clearly written before Dobbs and Sackett, but the rest ages pretty well.

Now we’ve subbed Gorsuch into that foursome that couldn’t come together… and added Kavanaugh and Barrett.

The YOLO Court era has arrived. Because who’s to stop them?

If the Court gets rid of rent control, it is hard to understate the significance it would have on the lives of New Yorkers. From Lever News:

“Samuel Stein, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society, an anti-poverty organization in New York, said if the Supreme Court were to overturn the rent stabilization law, ‘It’s the end of New York City.’

‘Rents would go up significantly around the city,’ he continued. ‘There will be a tremendous amount of displacement. You will have a lot of people leaving New York City, you will have a lot of homelessness, you’ll have a lot of overcrowding.’”

There was a point in time you could rely on the Court to respect stare decisis. Dobbs and Bruen show that’s no longer the case. If ever a Court was willing to get rid of the 50+ years of rent control, it would be the Roberts court.

We should find out if they will hear the case by the end of September.

#us politics #news #above the law #op eds #2023 #us supreme court #scotus #new york #rent control #twitter #tweet #david sirota #JusticeClarence Thomas #justice samuel alito #James Harmon #The Tenant #Lever News #justice neil gorsuch #justice brett kavanaugh #Justice amy Coney Barrett #rent stabilization laws

[be-side-my-self]

Made another Above the Law patch back in August, because I still had some smaller pieces of fabric after a bigger project. This one does not glow in the dark. I also used three strings of yarn (out of six) and a more coarse fabric. The pattern was created by @prurientpuddlejumper

#The Quarry #The Quarry game #Above the Law #Patch #Embroidery #cross stitch #Supermassive Game

[genevanheathen]

-> https://ichichundunddudu.bigcartel.com/product/g-funk-1992-hat

#old school #rap #hip hop #music #g funk #west coast #1992 #90s #polo ralph lauren #polo #above the law #dr. dre #snoop dogg #vintage #westcoast #fashion #style #dad hat

[vintagehiphopmusic]

#above the law #atl #ruthless #1991 #90s hip hop #west coast #new york #cold 187um #kmg #go mack #dj total k-oss

[khenti-renaissance]

#atl #hip hiop #above the law #legends #black mafia life #g funk

[theactioneer]

Above the Law (Andrew Davis, 1988)

#above the law #steven seagal #80s action movies #gif

[smbhax]

From "The Torch Goes Wild!" in Strange Tales #119, April 1964. Stan Lee script, Dick Ayers co-plot, pencils, and inks, Stan Goldberg(?) colors, Sam Rosen letters. Photoshop color reduction.

#the torch goes wild #strange tales #strange tales 119 #marvel #marvel comics #johnny storm #human torch #the human torch #above the law #stan lee #dick ayers #sam rosen #comic #comics #comic book #comic books #comic panel #comic panels #take it like a man #1960s

[sonjackcarl]

#Zhí Fǎ Xiān Fēng #Righting Wrongs #Above The Law #Cynthia Rothrock #Karen Sheperd #gif #film #tt

[brody75]

Righting Wrongs (1986)

#Righting Wrongs #Biao Yuen #Cynthia Rothrock #Melvin Wong #Corey Yuen #Zhi fa xian feng #above the law #Hong Kong #hong kong cinema #80s action movies #martial arts #filmedit #80s movies #80s film #80s

[meandmybigmouth]

#donald trump #congress #retrumplicans #scotus #above the law

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

BY JOE PATRICE

In United States v. Rahimi, the Fifth Circuit ruled that a guy who voluntarily agreed to a court order — entered to resolve a domestic violence claim — barring him from owning guns cannot be criminally convicted for violating a court order prohibiting him from owning guns because of the Second Amendment. In doing so, the court reasoned — as we’ve seen before — that since domestic violence existed in the 18th century and the Framers didn’t punish abusers for having guns then, it can never pass a law to do it now.

No, seriously, that’s the logic. See Rahimi at 11.

But there’s a lot being written about the majority opinion. Let’s focus on the concurrence because that’s where Judge James Ho shines. And by “shines,” we mean turns in shoddy research that would get a first-year associate fired.

As a recap, here are the facts of the case:

Between December 2020 and January 2021, Rahimi was involved in five shootings in and around Arlington, Texas. On December 1, after selling narcotics to an individual, he fired multiple shots into that individual’s residence. The following day, Rahimi was involved in a car accident. He exited his vehicle, shot at the other driver, and fled the scene. He returned to the scene in a different vehicle and shot at the other driver’s car. On December 22, Rahimi shot at a constable’s vehicle. On January 7, Rahimi fired multiple shots in the air after his friend’s credit card was declined at a Whataburger restaurant.

That’s not a fact-pattern, that’s 15 minutes in GTA Online.

The spree resulted in law enforcement searching his home and finding firearms. However, Rahimi had voluntarily agreed to a court order barring him from possessing firearms to settle a domestic violence claim lodged by his ex-girlfriend. Having been found with guns despite a court order (again, an order that he agreed to) prohibiting him from having guns, a grand jury indicted Rahimi under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8). He would then plead guilty because he was, you know, guilty. Then he realized that he lived within the Fifth Circuit and launched a broadside against the constitutionality of his conviction, which the court approved.

Now to the concurrence.

Judge James Ho, thirsty as a lost wanderer in the Mojave for any opportunity to ingratiate himself to any future Republican administration that might elevate him to the Supreme Court, writes separately:

The right to keep and bear arms has long been recognized as a fundamental civil right. See, e.g., Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763, 784 (1950) (describing the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments as the “civil-rights Amendments”); Konigsberg v. State Bar of Cal., 366 U.S. 36, 49–50 n.10 (1961).

It’s always difficult for conservative judges to find support for their “deeply historical” analysis of the Second Amendment since it doesn’t exist. Even the majority opinion explicitly notes that, “In Emerson, we held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms—the first circuit expressly to do so.” Since Emerson was decided in 2001, this is just letting pride get in the way of Originalist gaslighting. Come on, Fifth Circuit! You can’t go around admitting that the individual right to gun possession is barely old enough to drink.

So kudos to Judge Ho for trying to build a historical case! Unfortunately, neither of these cited opinions have much to do with the Second Amendment.

And they both… prove the opposite of what he’s arguing.

Eisentrager is about federal jurisdiction over Nazi war criminals. The Second Amendment does come up, but in a very particular way. Eisentrager concludes that war criminals held in Germany, who have never been inside the US, do not have access to US constitutional rights. By way of analogy, Justice Jackson explains that extending rights in this way would justify giving guerrilla fighters unchecked access to guns.

If the Fifth Amendment confers it rights on all the world except Americans engaged in defending it, the same must be true of the companion civil rights Amendments, for none of them is limited by its express terms, territorially or as to persons. Such a construction would mean that, during military occupation, irreconcilable enemy elements, guerrilla fighters, and “were-wolves” could require the American Judiciary to assure them freedoms of speech, press, and assembly as in the First Amendment, right to bear arms as in the Second, security against “unreasonable” searches and seizures as in the Fourth, as well as rights to jury trial as in the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

The Court’s point here is to highlight the absurdity of extending these rights to foreign combatants to prevent the military from blanket disarming enemy troops. It’s a stretch to extend this to support the claim that the Court thought that the Second Amendment doesn’t countenance regulations that would bar criminals from having guns within the United States. Indeed, several of the Justices on this opinion were on the Miller opinion that directly laid out that this was not the meaning of the Second Amendment.

But as bad as that citation may be, Konigsberg is somehow worse.

Konigsberg is about swearing that you aren’t a communist to get admitted to the bar (maybe that’s what we need to deal with all these woke Biglaw lawyers!). But the funny part of this citation is that the specific footnote Ho points to… reaches the opposite conclusion. While the case is about the First Amendment, Justice Harlan ends this footnote with the sentence, “In this connection, also compare the equally unqualified command of the Second Amendment: ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'” This ignores the whole “well regulated” part, which is dictionary definition of a qualification, but set that aside.

Judge Ho appears to have seen “unqualified command of the Second Amendment” and called it a day. EXCEPT that’s the antithesis of the whole footnote.

The sentence attached to the footnote is: “At the outset, we reject the view that freedom of speech and association, as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments, are ‘absolutes,’ not only in the undoubted sense that, where the constitutional protection exists it must prevail, but also in the sense that the scope of that protection must be gathered solely from a literal reading of the First Amendment.” Footnote 10 in full:

That view, which, of course, cannot be reconciled with the law relating to libel, slander, misrepresentation, obscenity, perjury, false advertising, solicitation of crime, complicity by encouragement, conspiracy, and the like, is said to be compelled by the fact that the commands of the First Amendment are stated in unqualified terms: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble. . . .” But as Mr. Justice Holmes once said:

“[T]he provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is vital, not formal; it is to be gathered not simply by taking the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.”

Gompers v. United States, 233 U. S. 604, 233 U. S. 610. In this connection, also compare the equally unqualified command of the Second Amendment: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” And see United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174.

Justice Harlan contends here that just because the First Amendment reads as “unqualified,” it doesn’t mean that the law treats it as such. He then throws in the Second Amendment specifically for the purpose of underscoring this point. It’s included to convey: “See, this is written to be unqualified too and literally no one is stupid enough to think the Constitution intends to create an unfettered individual right to guns.”

How did something so sloppy end up in an appellate opinion? Obviously, there’s a dearth of historical precedent for the proposition that the Second Amendment affords an individual right to gun ownership, but armed with AI-facilitated caselaw search tools all he could come up with for pre-2001 support is an opinion from 1961 that concludes the opposite way?!?!

This guy needs to stop boycotting elite law school clerks, because he needs some serious research help.

#us politics #news #above the law #op eds #Joe Patrice #us fifth circuit court of appeals #United States v. Rahimi #domestic violence #gun rights #gun control #gun violence #second amendment #Judge James Ho #texas #Johnson v. Eisentrager #Konigsberg v. State Bar of Cal. #United States v. Miller #Gompers v. United States #us constitution #United States v. Emerson #fifth amendment #2023

[be-side-my-self]

Above the Law Cross-Stitch patch with glow in the dark yarn.

The pattern was created by @prurientpuddlejumper

#The Quarry #above the law #Patch #myart #embroidery #Ending #The Quarry Game

[cinemajunkie70]

Rest In Peace Henry Silva!

#henry silva #megaforce #ghost dog the way of the samurai #alligator #code of silence #buck rogers #above the law #sharkys machine #movies #oceans 11 #the manchurian candidate

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Steve Brodner, Full Court Press

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 12, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 13, 2023

Last night, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide Trump’s claim that he is immune from any and all criminal prosecution for anything he did while in office. That claim is central to Trump’s defense; he has requested the charges against him be dismissed because of that immunity. 

When Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the case in which Trump is charged with trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, dismissed this claim, Trump’s lawyers appealed and asked for the case to be frozen while the appeal worked its way up through the courts. By going straight to the Supreme Court, Smith appears to be trying to stop Trump from delaying the trial until after the 2024 election.  

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether it will hear the case. So far, Justice Clarence Thomas refuses to recuse himself, even though his wife Ginni was deeply involved in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. His refusal suggests that the Supreme Court’s new ethics rules are as toothless as their opponents charged.

In another filing last night, Smith revealed that the government expects to introduce the testimony of three experts who will speak to the use of cell phones by Trump and one other person after the 2020 election, including on January 6, a revelation that Los Angeles Times legal analyst Harry Litman suggested must “have the Trump camp totally freaked out.”

Inflation slowed again in November, dropping to 0.1% as gasoline prices fell, so that the annual inflation over the past year has dropped to 3.1%. 

Fallout continues from the Texas Supreme Court’s decision that a woman carrying a fetus with a fatal condition cannot abort that fetus even though it threatens her own health and future fertility. President Joe Biden promised today to continue to fight to protect access to reproductive health care, saying: “No woman should be forced to go to court or flee her home state just to receive the health care she needs. But that is exactly what happened in Texas thanks to Republican elected officials, and it is simply outrageous. This should never happen in America, period.”

But for all the importance of these major stories, the outstanding story of the day is that the Republican Party appears to have decided to undermine financial support for Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion. 

This is simply an astonishing decision. Majorities in both the House and the Senate want to pass supplemental aid to Ukraine, which both protects North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries and provides jobs in the United States, but an extremist minority in Congress is stopping passage of a measure that would provide more weapons to Ukraine.

There is no doubt previous funding has been effective. A newly declassified intelligence memo shows that Russia had an army of 360,000 before the war and that thanks to the Ukraine resistance it has lost 315,000 troops—87% of its army—forcing it to squeeze more recruits out of its civilian population. It has also lost 2,200 out of 3,500 tanks, forcing it to turn to Soviet-era equipment. 

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Washington, D.C., today to try to convince Republicans to pass such a measure, noted that Ukraine has regained half the land Russia seized in the February 2022 invasion, forced Russian warships out of Ukrainian territorial waters, and opened export corridors to get Ukrainian grain to countries that desperately need it. At the same time, he said, Ukraine’s economy is growing at a 5% rate, suggesting it will be less dependent on foreign aid going forward. 

In The Atlantic, David Frum, who has criticized Democrats on immigration policy, pointed out that Biden and the Democrats have made a real effort to negotiate with extremist Republicans but the Republicans are simply refusing to engage. Frum concluded that Republicans do not want to make a deal. Either they want to perform a ritual in which Republicans demand and Democrats comply, or they want to keep the border as a campaign issue, or they actually oppose aid to Ukraine. And yet, Frum reiterates, majorities in both the House and the Senate want the supplemental aid package to pass.  

Republicans appear to want to keep the issue of immigration front and center in 2024, hoping that people will focus on it rather than on abortion, especially in states like Texas.

Poland’s newly elected prime minister Donald Tusk today vowed that he would “loudly and decisively demand the full mobilization of the free world, the Western world, to help Ukraine in this war,” but Russia expert Fiona Hill told Politico’s Maura Reynolds that U.S. funding will be key to determining whether Ukraine wins back control of its territory. That decision, she says, is really about our own future.

Permitting Putin to win in Ukraine, she says, would create a world in which the standing of the U.S. in the world would be diminished, Iran and North Korea would be strengthened, China would dominate the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East would be more unstable, and nuclear weapons would proliferate. 

“Ukraine has become a battlefield now for America and America’s own future—whether we see it or not—for our own defensive posture and preparedness, for our reputation and our leadership,” Hill told Reynolds. “For Putin, Ukraine is a proxy war against the United States, to remove the United States from the world stage.”

“The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front,” Hill said. “People are incapable now of separating off ‘giving Biden a win’ from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden. In that regard,” she said, “whether they like it or not, members of Congress are doing exactly the same thing as Vladimir Putin. They hate that. They want to refute that. But Vladimir Putin wants Biden to lose, and they want Biden to be seen to lose as well.”

Today, Biden noted that Russian media outlets have been cheering on the Republicans. "If you're being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you're doing,” he said. “History will judge harshly those who turned their back on freedom's cause."

Congress is set to leave for the holiday break on Thursday, returning in the second week of January. Biden urged Congress “to pass the supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess—before they give Putin the greatest Christmas gift they could possibly give him.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Christian nationalism #Moses #House Speaker Mike Johnson #Steve Brodner #Putin #Letters From an American #Heather Cox Richardson #Russia #Ukraine #SCOTUS #Jack Smith #Rule of Law #above the law

[thamacaveli]

Above The Law, 1994

#above the law #90s hip hop #west coast hip hop #1994