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ABA task force sounds alarm on democracy threats, takes action

Two prominent former chief executives of global organizations urged the legal community to mobilize to defend the principles and processes of U.S. democracy while also underscoring the need of collective action to educate the public and business during a packed Aug. 2 luncheon at the American Bar Association 2024 Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The luncheon kicked off the ABA Democracy Summit, a half-day series of events that focused on what ABA President Mary Smith called in opening remarks “the most consequential issue of our time – threats to democracy.”

The former CEOs – Carly Fiorina who headed technology giant Hewlett-Packard and Ken Frazier of pharmaceutical Merck – discussed the challenges facing democracy in America today with moderator Judy Woodruff, longtime television journalist best known for her work at PBS NewsHour. All three are members of the ABA Task Force for American Democracy, which earlier in the day released a statement outlining the critical role lawyers should play in restoring trust in our democracy.

Woodruff opened the conversation by noting she is working on a news project focused on why “America is so divided” and observed that the polarization might be the greatest since the Civil War more than 160 years ago. She pointed to the “disagreement of the facts whatever the issue is” and that “people today more than ever have different places they go to for news.”

In their discussion, both Fiorina and Frazier praised the ABA for its efforts in seeking to preserve democratic principles and processes. The task force and Democracy Summit were developed by President Smith as signature priorities of her term.

Fiorina and Frazier also explored the reasons for the strong divisions in the U.S. and what can be done about them. Frazier is a lawyer and longtime ABA member; Fiorina said she dropped out of law school in her first year before rising to become a corporate executive.

“We do not know our history,” Fiorina said, suggesting that is one of the reasons the country is divided. She said most citizens don’t know American ideals, principles, processes and the rule of law.

Frazier, who retired as CEO in 2022 after 30 years at Merck, observed that lawyers need to take a stand on the “defense of democracy and defense of the rule of law.”

“If lawyers don’t take a stand for those two things,” he said, “who else will do it?”

At the luncheon, ABA President Smith praised the work already being done to protect U.S. democracy. She honored 22 individuals and organizations with the democracy task force’s Unsung Heroes of Democracy medals and awarded Presidential Citations to Frazier, as well as task force co-chairs Jeh Johnson, former secretary of U.S. Homeland Security, and retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig.

Beyond the mobilization of legal professionals, Fiorina and Fraser urged businesses ── small and large── to become more involved in promoting democracy as well as its principles and processes in a nonpartisan way. They embraced ideas of giving employees time off to vote, work the polls and generally educate their workforces on democracy.

“Businesses can and should remind people of our fundamental principles and processes,” Fiorina said, noting that people listen to local business pillars as well as global CEOs.

Frazier also offered an idea for corporate America: establish an organization to “preserve democracy and the rule of law,” similar to the Business Roundtable that lobbies for big business issues such as tax policy. He said a new coalition was needed to “counter” the distrust and anger that many Americans feel toward a variety of institutions today that he said is “unprecedented in my lifetime.”

Both urged American corporate leaders to find a collective voice in a nonpartisan way.

“There is safety in the herd,” Fiorina said, urging leaders generally to “stand up” for democratic principles and processes.

About Judge Cannon

I'll probably go on referring to judges like Aileen Cannon as "Trump's own", but I want to keep in mind that while 45* had to sign off on all of their appointments - for the sake of official protocol - most of these Smarmspace Rangers are on the bench now because The Federalist Society and Mitch McConnell put them there.

Trump is simply a pile of partially animated meat with just enough sentience to hold a pen and sign his name. IOW, he's exactly the schmuck that guys like Grover Nordquist have been salivating for all these years.

That said, looking at her Wikipedia page, I think we get a fair idea of why she's where she is, and what she was put there to do.

FWIW - this was a lame duck confirmation

So anyway -

(pay wall)

A thorough rebuke of Judge Aileen Cannon’s pro-Trump order

From a panel that was two-thirds comprised of fellow Trump-nominated judges, no less.

As U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon ruled twice in the Mar-a-Lago documents case for the former president who nominated her to the bench, many legal experts — including conservatives and executive-power advocates — have strained to understand how she could have reached such conclusions about Donald Trump’s claims.

On Wednesday night, two fellow Trump nominees joined with another judge to provide the rebuke of Cannon’s jurisprudence that those experts suggested might be coming.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit was rather unsparing in unanimously granting the Justice Department a reprieve from Cannon’s order barring them from reviewing documents with classified markings seized from Mar-a-Lago. The stay is temporary, but the reasoning is firm.

They repeatedly rejected not just the Trump legal team’s lack of arguments, but also Cannon’s acceptance of them. Indeed, they suggested it was inexplicable that Cannon ruled for Trump even by her own logic.

The ruling really kicks into gear when the judges address what a 1977 Supreme Court case considered the “foremost consideration” in deciding whether a court such as Cannon’s should exercise jurisdiction in such a case: whether the government “displayed a callous disregard for … constitutional rights” in its seizure.

The judges say Cannon conceded that it hadn’t displayed such disregard, but then disregarded that consideration all the same — and say she thus “abused” her “discretion.”

“Here, the district court concluded that [Trump] did not show that the United States acted in callous disregard of his constitutional rights. No party contests the district court’s finding in this regard,” the judges write. “The absence of this ‘indispensab[le]’ factor … is reason enough to conclude that the district court abused its discretion in exercising equitable jurisdiction here.”

The judges continue, rather dryly: “But for the sake of completeness, we consider the remaining factors.”

Cannon might wish they hadn’t.

On the second test — whether Trump has an interest in the documents marked classified at issue — the judges note that Cannon ruled Trump had an interest in some of the documents seized.

“But none of those concerns apply to the roughly one-hundred classified documents at issue here,” the judges write, before twisting the knife a little more: “And the district court made no mention in its analysis of this factor as to why or how Plaintiff might have an individual interest in or need for the classified documents.”

Indeed, Cannon’s apparent lack of curiosity — best exemplified by her acceptance of the Trump legal team’s claims that the documents might have been declassified without actually stating as much — was a feature of the remainder of the opinion. The judges repeatedly note Trump’s lawyers weren’t even compelled to furnish arguments on some of the crucial matters at hand. And they say that even if they had been, it might not have mattered.

“Plaintiff has not even attempted to show that he has a need to know the information contained in the classified documents,” they write. “Nor has he established that the current administration has waived that requirement for these documents. And even if he had, that, in and of itself, would not explain why Plaintiff has an individual interest in the classified documents.”

They go on to not only rebuke Cannon’s ruling, but the very idea that Trump’s public, out-of-court claims (which his lawyers have conspicuously declined to echo) that he declassified the documents even matters — a crucial point that shouldn’t be lost in all of this.

“Plaintiff suggests that he may have declassified these documents when he was President. But the record contains no evidence that any of these records were declassified,” the judges write. “And before the special master, Plaintiff resisted providing any evidence that he had declassified any of these documents.”

They add: “In any event, at least for these purposes, the declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal. So even if we assumed that Plaintiff did declassify some or all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them.”

It’s an opinion that brings home virtually all of the criticism of Cannon’s ruling and even of the significance of the underlying dispute over the classification status of the documents. It’s saying both that she got it wrong — and that it’s beside the point.

But Cannon is hardly the only one to suffer a rebuke in the opinion. Trump has publicly claimed he declassified all of the documents, but his lawyers watered that down to suggest merely that he might have, and Cannon accepted that evidence-free claim as rendering the documents’ status as in dispute. Yet judges signaled that they have no time for any of it. Rather, they repeatedly refer to the documents as classified, without qualifying that description in any way.

They refer to “the roughly one-hundred classified documents at issue here” and repeatedly to “the classified documents.” And in their concluding sentence, they twice flat-out call them classified: “The district court order is STAYED to the extent it enjoins the government’s use of the classified documents and requires the government to submit the classified documents to the special master for review.”

It’s the second time in two days that judges have undercut the Trump legal strategy that Cannon accepted, after the special master, Raymond J. Dearie, pressed Trump’s legal team much more than she had on its unsubstantiated declassification claims.

And for the second time in two days, it comes from judges Trump himself recommended.

How Stuff Works

This is how a lot of gnarly complicated shit gets worked out. Let the courts decide.

I just wish I had more confidence in a Roberts court to make a human-friendly decision when the majority thinks corporations are people.

BBC:

Mexico sues US gun manufacturers over arms trafficking

The Mexican government has sued some of the biggest US gun manufacturers, accusing them of fuelling bloodshed through reckless business practices.

The lawsuit alleges that the companies knew they were contributing to illegal arms trafficking, which has been linked to many deaths.

Officials say Mexico is seeking as much as $10bn (£7.2bn) in compensation, though any amount would be decided by the court.

The companies have not yet commented.

They include Smith & Wesson and Barrett Firearms, among others. The BBC has contacted both companies for comment.

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday in the US state of Massachusetts.

It says the Mexican government took the action "to put an end to the massive damage that the [companies] cause by actively facilitating the unlawful trafficking of their guns to drug cartels and other criminals in Mexico".

The gun manufacturers "are conscious of the fact that their products are trafficked and used in illicit activities against the civilian population and authorities of Mexico", the Foreign Ministry said in a document related to the lawsuit.

Mexico said the companies had used "marketing strategies to promote weapons that are ever more lethal, without mechanisms of security or traceability".

Mexican officials said that some of the guns made by Colt appeared to target the Mexican market in particular, such as a pistol engraved with the face and name of Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata.

Mexico has strict rules regulating the sale of weapons and they can only be purchased legally at one shop located on an army base in the capital.

As a result, those who want to buy weapons often get them from the US.

According to a Mexican government statement, criminal organisations buy thousands of pistols, rifles, assault weapons and ammunition in supermarkets, on the internet and at arms fairs in the US which are then used to commit crimes in Mexico.

The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found that 70% of firearms recovered in Mexico between 2014 and 2018 which were submitted for tracing had come from the US.

In 2019 alone, more than 17,000 murders in Mexico were linked to trafficked weapons.

One official told reporters the damage caused by trafficked guns would be equal to around 1.7% of Mexico's gross domestic product (GDP).

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said: "We are going to win the trial and we are going to drastically reduce illicit arms trafficking to Mexico."

Mexican officials stressed that the lawsuit was not aimed at the US government. Mr Ebrard said he believed that President Joe Biden's administration was willing to work with Mexico to curb arms trafficking.

But experts have cast doubt on Mexico's likelihood of success with the lawsuit.

Lorenzo Meyer, an emeritus professor at the College of Mexico, told AFP news agency that US law "makes it almost impossible for gun manufacturers to be held responsible" for the illegal trade.

So even though the suit is probably destined to fail, it can be an important step on our road back to sanity.

Here Comes Trouble

There's a kind of really stoopid shit that swirls around Qult45 - and swirls around all of us because of Qult45.

And like the Salem Witch Trials, it ends when somebody finally says "enough" and sues the fuck outa the fuckups.

Deadline Hollywood:

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs aired a segment on Friday that amounted to a fact-checking refutation of claims that he and guests have made about an election tech company Smartmatic and its role in the 2020 presidential election, after the company threatened legal action.

Other similar segments will be shown on Justice with Judge Jeanine on Saturday and Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, a Fox News spokesperson said. Lisa Boothe will host Judge Jeanine, as Jeanine Pirro is off for the holidays

Earlier this week, Smartmatic announced that it had threatened legal action against Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network “for publishing false and defamatory statements,” after talking heads on the outlets have pushed claims of election fraud, including unfounded conspiracy theories of rigged voting machine companies.

Smartmatic sent legal demand letters to the networks, arguing that “these organizations could have easily discovered the falsity of the statements and implications made about Smartmatic by investigating their statements before publishing them to millions of viewers and readers.” The company said that its role in the 2020 election was limited to working on Los Angeles County’s publicly owned voting system, even though anchors and guests have advanced claims that it had a much greater role.

On Friday, Dobbs opened a segment by saying that there were “lots of opinions about the integrity of the elections, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and software.” He then went to Eddie Perez, global director of technology development and open standard for the Open Source Election Technology Institute.

In the segment, an unidentified off-camera voice asks Perez, “Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the U.S. in this election?”

Perez responded, “I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to delete, change, alter anything related to vote tabulation.” He also said that he was not aware of them having any other direct customers with election officials beyond Los Angeles this cycle. He also said that Smartmatic and another company that has been targeted by President Donald Trump, Dominion Voting Systems, are “two completely separate companies.”

- the piece goes on, but you get the picture.

Here's the segment DumFux news aired rebutting their own assertions:

And then - CNN:

President Donald Trump convened a heated meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, including lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter said, describing a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump's aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn's more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.

Flynn had suggested earlier this week that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election that he lost to President-elect Joe Biden -- an idea that arose again during the meeting in the Oval Office, one of the people said. It wasn't clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully pushed back and shot it down.
The meeting was first reported by the New York Times.

White House aides who participated in the meeting, including White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and counsel Pat Cipollone, also pushed back intensely on the suggestion of naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud allegations Trump's own administration has dismissed (or, as seems more feasible, hiring her in the administration for some kind of investigatory role). Powell has focused her conspiracies on voting machines and has floated the notion of having a special counsel inspect the machines for flaws.

- snip -

Shortly after that meeting, Trump's campaign staff received a memo from the campaign legal team on Saturday instructing them to preserve all documents related to Dominion Voting Systems and Powell in anticipation of potential litigation by the company against the pro-Trump attorney.

The memo, viewed by CNN, references a letter Dominion sent to Powell this week demanding she publicly retract her accusations and instructs campaign staff not to alter, destroy or discard records that could be relevant.

A serious internal divide has formed within Trump's campaign following the election with tensions at their highest between the campaign's general counsel, Matt Morgan, who sent the memo Saturday, and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Though the campaign once distanced itself from Powell, Trump has been urging other people to fight like she has, according to multiple people familiar with his remarks. He has asked for more people making her arguments, which are often baseless and filled with conspiracy theories, on television.

So hey there, USAmerica Inc - maybe you shouldn't be trying so hard to strip away the 1st amendment right that guarantees us all access to the courts - the right to petition the government for redress.

And maybe the general citizenry should be paying a bit more attention as the Corporation-Owned Coin-Operated Politicians continue to blame us as they try fuck us out of that right.

Too Many Dots

Just thinking a little semi-randomly.

There's an empty seat at SCOTUS, and many empty seats thru the Federal Judiciary, and practically no discernible intent coming from Mitch McConnell to get any of that filled any time soon.

Also, after shitloads of Anti-Abortion laws coming out of the states, plus the Anti-Voting stuff, now we have this growing tide of Anti-Equal Rights legislation.

Recently, a very nice lady told me her thinking is that the GOP / "Conservatives" have been pushing all this malarkey knowing it serves a function beyond the usual thing of whipping the wingnut voters into a rich creamy lather.  She says they know most of the shit they're putting into the law is ridiculous, and it'll be struck down, but that the little extras that go along with these new statutes stand a good chance to stick. 

So first - yes it's true - one of the best things for a man is the company of a smart woman.

Second, I need to look a little closer at what else is included with the bullshit in Georgia and North Carolina and may be coming up in Michigan.  

Circling this back to SCOTUS and empty seats on Federal Benches, it's an interesting little game.  Because a whole strategy has to emerge now for moving the challenges to existing law thru the courts.  With a real probability of a prolonged 4-4 split at SCOTUS, each of the circuit appeals courts becomes a de facto mini-SCOTUS.  And won't that be fun?

And now, kinda skipping to the chase, I've recently been thinking some of these newer developments are starting to make sense if I factor them into a wider strategy that looks a whole lot like a continuing assault on the Redress Clause of the 1st Amendment.

For quite a while, Conservatives and Neo-Libs have been pushing for things like Tort Reform and Mandatory Sentencing, and Forced Arbitration (instead of law suits) on everything from Cable Subscriptions to Employment-At-Will Agreements, and a variety of other things I'm sure I'm totally unaware of.

An awful lot of power is being brought to bear to make it harder for "Regular Joes" to seek relief thru the courts because LLC's (eg) are finding it easier to off-load or duck entirely their responsibilities under the law. 

I have to consider it a pretty bad sign when so many people in positions of power and privilege seem to view our Justice System as something that's old and clunky and just too inconvenient; or they see the probability of having some judgement going against them as just another business expense.

And then add in a coupla hundred million people who can't or won't - or anyway don't - pay much attention to the whole thing because they're increasingly too busy keeping their last nostril above the water line, and holy fuck, Batman, how do I not think we're crazy stoopid close to Caesar crossing the Rubicon.

I really don't like myself when I get all alarmist like this, but honest, kids - this shit ain't good.

Somebody talk me down here.

Olbermann On Joe Pa

It's one of the saddest things ever. Joe Paterno has been a hero for a lot of us for a very long time. And while I think this is something that happened as much in spite of his management rather than because of it, I also think this is a good example of what can happen when somebody stays in a position of great power for way too long.

Word is that Paterno will resign at the end of the season. I have to agree with Keith on this one (fire his ass today), but I'd go one more step and say that Paterno should be in front of a judge right now, trying to make a case for why he should not be in jail.