Blog Posts

Although the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump has yet formally to begin, I can say this much: The House managers’ impeachment trial brief wins my vote as the better of the two briefs filed.
First a word on process.
An impeachment...

In a normal court case, a party is free to raise whether a court has jurisdiction over the subject matter at any time. The court itself can raise the question. Once a court determines it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction, the case ends immediately. If there is no power to hear a case,...

The cancer attacking the fabric of American political life is not Marjorie Taylor Greene. It runs far deeper than that. There is a broader crisis of legitimacy in the land. Congresswoman Greene, like former president Donald Trump, is a symptom, not the cause. Ad hominem attacks on both...

News that Donald Trump and his impeachment defense lawyers have decided to go their own separate ways raises questions about what will, and will not, take place at the impeachment trial set to begin on February 9 in the United States Senate.
Trump’s five lawyers apparently...

It is difficult to fathom why federal prosecutors waited four years to bring charges against Douglass Mackey, a.k.a. Ricky Vaughn, and it is inconceivable that they did so by dispensing with the requirements of a grand jury. The only explanation is that this is a political prosecution....

Jumpin’ Jiminy, Holy Moly, and WTF: Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York have either lost their minds, or never had minds to being with. They are prosecuting a social media influencer for the snake oil he tweeted in the 2016 election.
It goes...

Elections have consequences, I get that.
But do we really have elections so that familial legacies can be seeded?
Rumors swirl that Connecticut United States Senator Richard Blumenthal is busily at work advancing the cause of his son, Matthew, to be...

In the midst of a never-ending pandemic straining the bonds of civil society comes Don DeLillo’s latest novel, The Silence. It, too, sheds light on what happens when what we take for granted is suddenly absent. But in this brief book -- it is an easy read in one brief sitting --...

One of the good guys died today, United States District Court Judge Dominic J. Squatrito. He was 82.

I don't know how many cases I tried before him. It was a lot. All were federal civil rights verdicts. Several of them were astounding. He presided as a common man, never putting on airs,...

My cell phone blew up mid-afternoon yesterday. Was I watching what was going on in Washington, D.C.? The Capit0l was being stormed! There was a coup taking place!
I never turned on the television, or did more than scan a few Internet accounts of the events. I even asked...