mkwt

joined 3 years ago
[–] mkwt@lemmy.world -1 points 5 hours ago

In the United States, if you're going to call a man a pedo, you really need to make sure your shit is buttoned up tight. Because if it's not, you're going to have a tough time defending the libel lawsuit.

Now, if you're a homeless person on the street, or an anonymous Internet poster with "dozens" of views, you probably won't get sued. Because the chances are you don't have enough money to make a lawsuit worthwhile.

For a company that has money that could be collected in such a lawsuit, it's a lot easier and cheaper to just not say that.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The fine is $998 per day for "willfully" failing to depart after a final order of removal. $3,000 for failing to depart after voluntarily agreeing to do so, per incident. $250 for entering the United States not at a port of entry (increased to $5,130 after 4 July, 2025).

The per-day fines accrue to a limit of $1.8 million per individual.

The $998 per day fine was part of the 1996 immigration reform package. Previous administrations didn't bother with it too much, because how the heck are going to collect the money from people you've already deported to foreign country? And how will people pay you hundreds of thousands if they're already poor and broke?

This administration doesn't care about the practical limits of collection, and I suspect they don't care too much about proving the "willfully" part of it either.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Who needs most of the Pacific fleet anyway?

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The problem with lethal injections is they use untrained or low trained prison guards to do the injections. If board certified anesthesiologists were doing it, it would be much more painless, and complications could be handled and responded to.

Anesthesiologists don't become executioners because they all swore to the Hippocratic oath.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The drug protocol was a massive single dose of pentobarbital, which is a barbiturate. Followed by a second backup dose of the same size if required.

This is a different and simpler protocol than the 3 drug combo of, like, midazolam, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. The barbiturates work solely off of sedative-like effects, and lethality is achieved by using a massive overdose.

This is what I've pieced together from news and court filings:

This drug works well if it gets into the blood stream. If it goes into the muscles and other parts of the body besides the veins, it doesn't have its psychoactive sedative effects. The drug is very basic, as in high pH, so it causes burns.

Injecting not into vein also causes pain and swelling simply from mechanically forcing a largish volume of liquid into the body where there's not a lot of free space to accept it.

So the story seems to be that the execution people struggled for a long time to get a good needle stick into a vein. The victim had prewarned them and the court that she has tiny veins, like a lot of people. It seems like they possibly gave up on the vein and just dumped two whole vials into what was effectively an intramuscular injection.

There was a witness report that one of the multiple needles that were removed from her arm was bent at a 90 degree angle.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

My gut feeling is that access to lawyers matters more than the number of procedural steps available.

Death row inmates seem to have much better ability to be represented by pro bono attorneys' who will go to the mat on every single hail Mary motion.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ladies and gentlemen, Justice Kavanaugh's solo concurrence from Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo:

Immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of U. S. immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations. In this case, however, the District Court enjoined U. S. immigration officers from making investigative stops in the Los Angeles area when the stops are based on the following factors or combination of factors: (i) presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like; (ii) the type of work one does; (iii) speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; and (iv) apparent race or ethnicity.

...

Under this Court’s precedents, not to mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States. Importantly, reasonable suspicion means only that immigration officers may briefly stop the individual and inquire about immigration status. If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter. Only if the person is illegally in the United States may the stop lead to further immigration proceedings.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 56 points 2 days ago (13 children)

Okay. Now go to File Explorer and right click to create a new text file and try to name it "con". That's three letters: con. You can't do it. Not allowed. Because CON has been reserved (in every directory on every drive) for piping to and from console since MS-DOS 2 or so. (I think 2 is when they stole pipes from Unix)

Okay. Now, open just about any kind of desktop window and double click in its upper left corner. In > 9 windows out of 10 that action still closes the window even though the "close window" button was moved to the upper right corner by Windows 3. Even though a bunch of modern applications don't even have any icon there at all any more.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

What the lawyers say is not under oath unless they go to the witness stand and swear in. The main reason is that lawyers mainly are in the court to make opinionated arguments, not to give facts.

Lawyers do have a "duty of candor" to the "tribunal" at all times, however. This is because they have taken an oath (different from the witness oath) to become "officers of the court". This means they cannot knowingly misstate facts or law to the court.

But the maximum exposure on a duty of candor violation is court sanctions, like fines or adverse court outcomes, possibly contempt, and bar discipline, and so on. It's not the crime of perjury.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago

There is a rule that covers fake citations, AI or not. But it's not immediate.

What's happens is the court makes a disciplinary referral to the state bar association, which handles barring and disbarring. At minimum there's some kind of additional bar discipline hearing before adverse action.

Each federal court, district or appellate, can also independently revoke admission to the bar of that individual court.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

I've had that happen in Rome and Barcelona. The sing and dance was invariably followed by a tipping phase where they sent ten year olds around to pass the hat while also trying to pick my pocket.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

I believe that "self exclusion" is a feature where you tell the gambling company you don't want them to do business with you for the specified period. Then they won't do business with you during the period, even if you try to come back to them later.

In some jurisdictions this kind of voluntary blacklist can also be done at the gambling regulator, in which case it would apply to all gambling establishments in the jurisdiction.

 

This is the third time that the Supreme Court has decided this question on the emergency docket. The Court had some words for the 8th circuit panel that necessitated this decision.

But on September 21, 11 days after this Court’s most recent order, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ordered the District Court to enter a permanent injunction in effect requiring use of the 2025 map instead of the 2022 map in the 2026 election. Given this Court’s two prior orders in this litigation, our conclusion that this was error should come as no surprise.2

The final two sentences are also extremely blunt by Supreme Court standards. (Also, notice the belt-and-suspenders wording: do not prohibit, and do not require).

The District Court and Court of Appeals should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit the use of the 2022 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri. And the District Court and Court of Appeals should not order or otherwise require Missouri to use the 2025 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.

 

Courthouse News has identified nearly 100 cases this year in which the government was ordered to pay attorney’s fees to an immigrant it unlawfully detained, totaling more than $1.1 million.

 

The Trump administration has dropped its case against a former Olympic canoeist charged in connection with damage to the Reflecting Pool, acknowledging their allegations against David “Davey” Hearn don’t hold water.

officials obtained information that undermined “the evidentiary basis for the indictment” against Hearn.

 

After the supreme court denied Trump's petition for cert in the $5 million defamation case, the district judge has ordered the clerk to pay out the now $5.8 million judgement to E Jean Caroll's lawyers.

The original judgement was for $5 million, and it earned about $800k interest during the appeal. The money is coming directly from the court because Trump earlier paid the full amount into the court registry in lieu of posting an appeal bond.

Trump immediately appealed the pay-out order. But since there's no stay, it's still effective.

E Jean Caroll also has a separate judgement against Trump for about $80 million. That case is still on appeal.

 

Washington, DC resident Sam O'Hara noticed a couple of national guard soldiers patrolling the streets, and he decided to follow them around playing the Star Wars "Imperial March" on a portable speaker.

For this he was handcuffed and detained for about 20 minutes. Now he has reached a settlement where the government will pay him an undisclosed amount of money in compensation.

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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by mkwt@lemmy.world to c/Epsteinfiles@lemmy.world
 

Breaking now, Judge Emmet Sullivan has granted a preliminary injunction that orders the Department of Justice to either release a number of specific Epstein files to the public, or to "show cause" why they shouldn't.

The government has until July 2 to file responses.

Lawyer and journalist Katie Phang filed suit to enforce the Epstein Transparency Act. The judge has evidently determined that she has suffered harm from being unable to report on the unreleased files, and therefore has standing to sue.

This decision seems like it might be headed for an appeal, but Judge Sullivan declined to stay, or delay implementation, to allow the government time to appeal. So the clock to July 2 is currently ticking.

Bates numbers that are mentioned:

Ordered to unredact names:

  • EFTA00749245
  • EFTA01187999
  • EFTA01930501
  • ETFA01928255
  • EFTA00628112
  • EFTA02648868
  • EFTA02504630
  • EFTA01022356
  • EFTA01703108
  • EFTA00038227

Ordered to produce underlying FBI notes:

  • EFTA01245620
  • EFTA02858481
  • EFTA02858491
  • EFTA02858495

Opinion: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.291779/gov.uscourts.dcd.291779.16.0_2.pdf

Full court docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73246595/phang-v-blanche/

UPDATE: July 2 is now here. In a move that should surprise absolutely no one, the government decided to produce no additional documents, and they filed a lengthy response explaining reasons why they should not. Short version:

  • All of the redacted email addresses are either victims; or the email address appears in both the name and email fields (like "jsmith@gmail.com" jsmith@gmail.com); or in one case Thomas Massie already outed the guy, so there's no need for the government to comply with the court order (?)
  • The government claims that they count people as "victims" if they started out as victims, but later performed reprehensible acts (according to the files)
  • One indictment was over-redacted, but they claim it's okay because they unredacted some of the same names in some other documents. Another indictment only contains redacted "victims."
  • No need to produce FBI interview notes because the FBI always types up exactly the stuff in their notes into the final report.
  • Reviewing foreign language documents for release is just too darn hard to do.
  • The government plans to publish the redaction log as required, but the law doesn't put a deadline on that, so the judge shouldn't either.
 

A lawyer working with the Minnesota attorney’s office said she just wants some sleep, after working so hard to try to get ICE to follow court orders.

“I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep,” Le said. “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need.”

Edit clarification: This attorney works for the federal government, not the State of Minnesota.

 

Over the weekend, Judge Nachmanoff made it clear that a large amount of discovery material is to be delivered to James Comey today. The prosecution team from North Carolina seem to be engaging in a series of stall tactics to delay this.

The eastern district of Virginia is known informally as the "rocket docket" because of its fast resolution times for cases.

 

While sitting for a deposition in a defamation lawsuit that she filed, Laura Loomer was asked to explain under oath what she meant by the phrase "Arby's in her pants" (which she earlier penned in a tweet).

Transcript:

Q  Can you explain to me what it means to say to her that "the Arby's in her pants"?
A  Well, Arby's --
    MR. KLAYMAN:  Objection.  Relevancy.
BY MS. BOLGER:
Q Answer the question.
A  Arby's sells roast beef.
Q  Right.  Can you tell me what -- why you were talking about "the Arby's in her pants"?
A  Well, it's just a -- an expression.
Q  What is the expression trying to convey?
A  It conveys the reason why she got a divorce by her own admission.
Q  Because she had roast beef in her pants?
A  Yeah.
Q  She'd put roast beef in her pants; that's what you're trying to say there?  You're literally saying she put Arby's in her pants?
A  I'm saying she literally -- it's so ridiculous.  I'm saying she literally put Arby's in her pants.  Yes.
    MR. KLAYMAN:  Objection.  Relevancy.
BY MS. BOLGER:
Q  You're not making a slur about her?
A  No.
Q  You're literally saying she put an Arby's sandwich in her pants; is that right?
A  Yes.  That's correct.  That's correct.
Q  Why are you laughing?
A  Because I just think it's so funny.
Q  What is your basis for saying she put Arby's in her pants?
A  I just think it's so funny.  I just think it's so funny.
Q  What is your basis for saying she put Arby's in her pants?
A  She carries roast beef in her pockets.
Q  What is your basis for saying she puts roast beef in her pockets and in her pants?
    MR. KLAYMAN:  Objection. Relevancy. Harassment.
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