Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

In my day, never was longer.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The words do not have to be perfect.

You are here: Home / Politics / Open Thread: Something to Remember + 3 pm Legal Zoom Links Sent

Open Thread: Something to Remember + 3 pm Legal Zoom Links Sent

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Something to remember this week as we trash Trump voters:

Text in full

People who voted for Trump:

– were also part of the resistance that stopped him from stealing votes in GA and AZ.

– were also part of the jury that held him liable for sexual assault.

– were also part of grand juries that voted to indict him.

– are also capable of convicting him for his crimes.

Don’t fall for the artificial hype around him.

The rule of law still matters to most.

Also, I just sent zoom links to everyone who sent email requesting them.  It’s the same link for the Legal Zoom today at 3 pm Eastern and the Legal Zoom link with Imm next Sunday.  If you didn’t receive a zoom link, send up a flair flare!

And if you missed the threads about the Legal Zoom but want to attend, send me an email message and I’ll reply with the link.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

127Comments

  1. 1.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Having just been on jury duty, I think Prosecutors (and Defense) are pretty good at vetting which people can’t put their biases aside to do their duty and follow the law.  And my understanding is that they prioritize people who have already been on juries before and were able to do their duty effectively.  Which isn’t a group that I think the really hardcore MAGA people are likely to be a part of.  Which is to say: I’m confident that plenty of Trump voters can still be unbiased if they end up on these juries.  It’s really only the foaming-at-the-mouth MAGA people that I think would try to ratfuck the trial, and I think the Prosecution will be able to weed them out during jury selection.

  2. 2.

    Alison Rose

    @UncleEbeneezer: This makes sense.

    And yeah, while some days it’s hard for me to believe it, I do know there are some GOP voters out there who aren’t Trump groupies. Also, some of them are probably getting tired of hearing from him just like we are. Like, just go away already.

  3. 3.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @UncleEbeneezer:  I have been on a jury only once, as an alternate.  My chorister daughter would say, “that means you have to learn the music but you don’t get to sing.”

    This one instance did increase my respect for the judicial system.

  4. 4.

    Redshift

    @UncleEbeneezer: Yeah, and the weight of the duty is impressed on you really heavily. Given that getting in people’s faces and owning the libs is a core part of the maga identity, I think the chances that one of them could hide it well enough to pull off jury nullification is pretty small.

  5. 5.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Alison Rose: They literally ask you “can you put X aside to do the job?” and they do it in a rather intimidating way that would make it hard to lie.  The jury I was on was an elder-abuse case.  A couple potential jurors had histories of that in their lives or families.  Both the Prosecution and Defense grilled the F out of them.  The jurors would say things like “I don’t know, I THINK so…” and the attorneys would come back forcefully with “If we were on a plane and the pilot passed out and I asked if you could land the plane, do you see how a mere ‘I think so’ wouldn’t be enough?”  The attorneys also hammered us all on whether we would just go along with the majority if we were the loan hold-out despite the peer pressure.  They really did seem to want to find the best jury possible to ensure a fair trial.  I’m guessing the attorneys who try these cases all have many of these sorts of approaches in their toolboxes for weeding out problematic jurors.

  7. 7.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Redshift: Exactly.  So much so that I resisted bringing up experiences from my own family that might have gotten me out of jury duty (but it would have been a bit of a stretch) because I really felt the weight of the duty and that it would be wrong to try and weasel out of it, when both attorneys seemed to want me on the jury.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    Partial Maui update.

    “I think what people are most interested in is housing, how we’re going to house our people,” Governor Green said. “We put together a Temporary Housing Task Force to work with our federal partners. We’ve already secured 1,000 rooms. Five hundred rooms will go to families that have been displaced because of the terrible fire, the other 500 rooms will go to support, initially …In the days that follow, we’ll have long-term rentals, those are the short-term rentals-turned-long-term. All of that is going to be covered, some by the state, some it’s going to be given charitably and finally, FEMA will cover a great deal of the cost,” he said. Source

  11. 11.

    tobie

    I just learning that ‘surfing goats‘ is really a thing. Evidently there was a competition on Friday in California and, though the goat fell off the board, the owner of the Surfing Goats of Pismo Beach held on gamely. BJ started the day with butter cows so surfing goats seems to fit with the theme.

  12. 12.

    eclare

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    I was called for jury duty last year for a civil insurance case.  One of the questions the defense attorneys asked us was if we could change our first name, would we.

    That seemed odd.

  17. 17.

    Citizen Alan

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Also, for Trump voters who have spent years in the RWNJ bubble, I would think that spending a few weeks in an enclosed environment, surrounded by people who are not part of the RWNJ bubble, and listening for hours ever day to calm, intelligent, and persuasive lawyers patiently explaining how and why Trump is a piece of shit might act as a form of deprogramming.

  19. 19.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Citizen Alan:

    … listening for hours ever day to calm, intelligent, and persuasive lawyers patiently explaining how and why Trump is a piece of shit might act as a form of deprogramming.

    or torture.

  23. 23.

    tobie

    @Alison Rose: Epic battle a la the Trojan War or perfectly choreographed water ballet. We humans manage to anthropomorphize everything.

    I’ve never been to Pismo Beach but am not wondering if it’s a free spirit beach as Santa Cruz used to be.

  24. 24.

    Alison Rose

    @Omnes Omnibus: Sure, but it’s exponential when your name has at minimum four common spellings, and the most common one is not yours. Although at least they can make reasonable guesses. My friend Genevieve was not so lucky…

  27. 27.

    Maxim

    I was on a jury once, for a vehicular manslaughter case. We didn’t reach the deliberations stage; the defendant decided to accept a plea deal before the defense phase began. Which was unfortunate, because the worst he would have gotten out of that group was a hung jury.

    The key witness for the prosecution was a CHP officer who was so obviously hostile that the *prosecuting attorney* objected on the record to some of his answers. There was enough reasonable doubt in the evidence the prosecution presented to drive a Mack truck through.

    We weren’t supposed to talk to each other about the case before deliberations began, but one of the jurors (old white dude) didn’t much care about that, and during breaks I overheard him making comments to other jurors that indicated he’d made up his mind and was eager to convict the (Latino) defendant. He’s the reason we might have had a hung jury if we’d gotten that far.

    Apart from him, though, everyone involved took their duty seriously.

  29. 29.

    Ruckus

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Have done jury duty several times. Am scheduled again at the end of this month.

    I used to live in a county in CA that had only 1/4 million inhabitants so a rather small jury pool and I seem to recall that I served every other year. Good times. Now I live in a county with 9+ million inhabitants. I’ve served here I think 5 times. At least now one only has to call in the night before to see if they have to show up, rather than show up, and sit there every day for a week. We’ll see how it works out.

  30. 30.

    Maxim

    @Baud: I know a family that gave all the kids a middle name of X, so if they didn’t like the first name they’d been given, they could change it to something else.

  34. 34.

    JPL

    Although I was summoned for jury duty several times, I was never selected.   Most of the cases agree to a plea when jury selection actually starts.   At seventy you can opt out, and since the last time I was at the  Fulton County courthouse, it took me seven hours to get home.   Six of those hours was driving eleven miles from the train station.   Yup snow storms here are not fun.   Once I reached 70, I opted out.

  36. 36.

    MomSense

    I’m enjoying a wonderfully lazy day, nibbling on local cheese, sipping rose and knitting.  And then a stupid car covered in trump crap flying a trump flag went down the street slowly while playing a very loud bullshit message about trump and trash talking Biden.  I gave the car the finger and noticed that a few people dining outside on the sidewalks did the same.

  37. 37.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Ruckus: At least now one only has to call in the night before to see if they have to show up, rather than show up, and sit there every day for a week. We’ll see how it works out.

    Wow, that must have been awful. When I first started doing jury duty in LA County in 2000ish, I think they were already at the call-in for instructions the night before, system. I did have a close call where we were all waiting Monday and late in the afternoon it looked like we were gonna have to come back the next day, but then something happened and she released us all.

  39. 39.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Only jury I was ever selected for, wax for first degree murder. Any other panel I’ve ever been on, it seemed like they screened out the educated people. This one was the opposite.

    We took deliberation VERY seriously. And tried our damndest to understand and adhere to the jury instructions.

  40. 40.

    Anonymous At Work

    Sadly this attorney/regulatory person is preparing for a regulatory jamboree on Monday at 8:30 with only one working day’s notice.  Wish me luck and have fun without me.

  41. 41.

    smith

    @Citizen Alan: I think you’re correct that getting any MAGA jurors out of the bubble, requiring them to interact with people who don’t live in Fox fantasy world, and being required to listen to testimony closely enough to discuss it, will greatly help mitigate the effects of any bias they bring to it.

    Having served on a couple of juries, I think the social dynamics of working with a group, especially on a task of utmost importance, also leads to a cohesion that makes it extremely hard to be the lone holdout. Obviously, there are contrarian jackasses and there are hung juries, but most people tend to move toward a group consensus in such situations.

  43. 43.

    Josie

    My late husband was a criminal defense attorney, so I was never chosen for a jury. He assured me that no prosecutor would want me anyway since I was a teacher. Sure enough, my middle son is now a prosecutor, and he says he would not want me on the jury unless the case involved injury to a child.

  44. 44.

    Edmund dantes

    This a false thing though. A lot of those people just don’t like trump the person. They are perfectly happy to vote for a W, a Desantis, etc so long as they are a little less uncouth.

    trump makes people forget how lawless and unscrupulous the W years actually were.

    so yeah. Thank good for small miracles that this version of the gop candidate trump is a bridge too far but that’s about it. The never trumpers are still horrible horrible party.

    like trump isn’t even a true believer in all the woke trans stuff but he saw what happened the few times he made noises about going away from it. So he snapped back into line.

    Trump is the symptom, he is not the disease.

  46. 46.

    MomSense

    Here’s my concern about the trial on the Jan 6 related charges.  The prosecution will be appropriate and will not leak information or make a lot of public statements.  Meanwhile the trump team will flood the zone with bullshit which will be amplified by the right wing media outlets.  I honestly think that fair minded people exposed to the facts of this case will determine that trump was committing fraud, and trying to overturn our election. If the trial is not televised in real time I do not think the truth will get through the fucked up media blockade.
    What can we do to advocate for televised trials?

  47. 47.

    MomSense

    @Josie:

    I’ve never even been called for jury duty.  Given my parents’ FBI files, they probably nixed me in utero.

  48. 48.

    eldorado

    only served on one, for armed robberies, which the defendent helped us out by changing his plea to guity for one of them in the middle of the trial. also his excuse of being really high while waving a gun around, captured on store video, was not as sympathetic an excuse as he might have hoped

  49. 49.

    eclare

    @MomSense:

    Gawd that is awful.  The invasion of all our spaces (wow is that a metaphor) is infuriating.

    It is not the same, but I went to an SEC school, love college ball, and then he went to the SEC championship.  You can’t let us have one goddamn thing to ourselves.

  50. 50.

    Citizen Alan

    @Alison Rose: Same. In my 54 years’ experience, I would say probably only 1 in 4 people can spell “Alan” correctly without me prompting them. Thanks, Mom.

  54. 54.

    zhena gogolia

    @eclare: What gets me is when someone I’ve known for years responds to an e-mail that has my name correctly spelled right at the bottom, and they misspell it. All they have to do is look down to get it right, even if they haven’t somehow assimilated the correct spelling over the past 25 years or so.

  55. 55.

    raven

    @Ruckus: Same here, I got picked almost every time I got called until the last one. They did a group questioning and asked if anyone had ever been in a “physical confrontation”. Thirty people and I was th only one who raised their hand. The asked me to tell them about “it“! I said “it“, how much time do you have? They dismissed me. The most awful one I was on was a guy who raped a girl after her six year old daughter opening the sliding door an let him in. They put that little kid on the stand and it was horrible. We convicted him and he got life plus 140 and it didn’t seem to bother him a bit. Three hots and a cot.

  56. 56.

    Citizen Alan

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, they’ll bet the first two right — and usually stop there! When I was a kid, I hated being called “Al” with a fiery passion and would usually correct people, but in my late 30s, I was like “Okay, whatever. I’ll make allowances for the fact that two syllables is beyond you.”

    What really frustrates me is that my last name starts with “AL” as well, which means when I introduce myself, most people don’t hear my name properly and assume I’m stuttering.

  57. 57.

    eclare

    @zhena gogolia:

    I just don’t care.  My first name has a gazillion different spellings and pronunciations.  Unfortunately my last is not much better.  Let’s just say lots of vowels.

  62. 62.

    Kirk

    Kirk gets Kerk gets Kurt gets Curt – and that’s before they mis-hear the name and go for Burt or Dirk or something like that. So yeah, I get it.

  65. 65.

    Montanareddog

    My one time on jury duty was an eye opener. Trivial case: driving while disqualified. The defendant was accused of riding a motorcycle. He was not stopped but the 2 police officers went on the stand and said they recognised him as he drove past them 100 yards away wearing a helmet. Defendant was a middle-aged family guy, from an ethnic minority not typically associated with a love of motorcycles who said he had never ridden one in his life.

    In the jury room, 1st vote was 11-1 to acquit. The one holdout just kept saying, I know the evidence is weak but my gut tells me he is guilty. We were unable to get her to understand that you cannot vote to convict on gut feeling.

  67. 67.

    Cameron

    While I was at the railroad I worked with a lot of people of Italian extraction, so “Cameron” often mutated to “Carmine.”  It didn’t make it any less confusing that there was a real Carmine in the same office.  Later on at one of the nonprofits I worked for, there was another Cameron and the boss found this so befuddling (despite the fact that the other Cameron was female and 20 years younger than me) that I had to go by my middle name for the couple of years I worked there.

  70. 70.

    japa21

    Both my first name and last name are common. So common that in second grade there were 3 of us in the same room. Teacher had to use middle initials when she called on us. Things were fine until we moved to a suburb of Milwaukee. When I would say my last name everybody asked me to spell it, because it was pronounced the same as a very common German last name and it seemed like every other person was German.

  71. 71.

    StringOnAStick

    I was nearly born during a episode of Gunsmoke, and while I was given the most common “K” name for girls of my era, I grew up being called “Kitty”. You can damned well guess that I changed my name as an adult.  I have a deep voice for a woman and I’m short and blonde, “Kitty” is an extra burden I don’t need.

  72. 72.

    RaflW

    @eclare: Would they have liked my disquisition on having been 11 years old and having the same first name as a goofball character on 1976-77’s top rated sit com? Because I wanted to change my first name for much of my public school career (I’m just fine with my name now).

  74. 74.

    Jackie

    Jamie Raskin has decided to turn the tables re the “Biden Crime Family” with this announcement on ABC this morning!

    “Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” with host Jonathan Karl, Rep Jamie Raskin (D-MD) interrupted the host’s questions about Hunter Biden’s legal problems to announce a forthcoming report on all the outside money Donald Trump and his family raked in while he was in office.”

    “With Karl asking about a special counsel being appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to look into President Joe Biden’s son’s business deals, the Maryland Democrat changed things up by bringing up the Trumps.”

    ““We’re going to release a report about all of the foreign government emoluments and millions of dollars we can document that Donald Trump pocketed at the hotels, at the golf courses and through business deals when he was president and that his family got,” he told the ABC host.”

    “He then added that attacks on President Biden have come up empty, explaining, “They haven’t shown any criminal corruption on his part.”“

    Scroll down to watch the video – it’s worth it!

    https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2663621293/

     

  75. 75.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Cameron: ​

    While I was at the railroad I worked with a lot of people of Italian extraction, so “Cameron” often mutated to “Carmine.” It didn’t make it any less confusing that there was a real Carmine in the same office. Later on at one of the nonprofits I worked for, there was another Cameron and the boss found this so befuddling (despite the fact that the other Cameron was female and 20 years younger than me) that I had to go by my middle name for the couple of years I worked there.

    Ah yes, the given name that can swing both ways; I’ve known Camerons of both genders. I’ve got one of those, only it’s a woman’s name >90% of the time. So I get “ma’am”ed a lot over the phone, especially because I’ve got a fairly high voice for a guy. It’s been decades since I bothered to correct anyone, absent a legal necessity; it amuses me more than anything else. OTOH, I’ve been finding the pronoun business useful; now I put “(he/him)” after my name at the end of an email.

    It’s also my middle name, with the usual complications there.​

  76. 76.

    Montanareddog

    @eclare: I forgot one part. Police must have got the license plate, and this must have come out in discovery, because the owner of the bike was called as a defense witness where he said he did not know the defendant and did not loan him his bike. It was such a weak case I can only assume the police thought the defendant would just cop a plea rather than hiring a decent lawyer.

    But the interesting part was that the young, white owner turned up to testify in his leather bike jacket decorated with pins, including a swastika. The judge went ballistic. “I spent several years of my youth literally fighting against that symbol and you will not wear it in my courtroom”. This was in 1981 and the judge was obviously of that generation.

  79. 79.

    Geminid

    @Jackie: This makes me glad Jaime Raskin passed on the race to succeed Senator Ben Cardin. I think he would have had the inside track in that contest, but Raskin believes there is a lot of important work he can do as a Representative and he’s demonstrating that.

    I think Raskin is setting a good example for other office holders and for Democrats in general.

  83. 83.

    Geminid

    @eclare: I think that Raskin knows that he is leaving the path open for another capable Democrat. Prince Georgetown’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks has announced for the seat, and she has been elected twice to run a county of over 900,000 residents. In terms of experience, I would consider her a peer to Raskin, or to Rep. David Trone who is also running for Cardin’s seat.

  88. 88.

    Alison Rose

    @eclare: One of my brothers is Jamie, and he had a teacher in elementary school who, in the first week or so, kept calling him James because she “didn’t like nicknames”. He told her it wasn’t a nickname but she wouldn’t listen until my mom went to the school and explained to her that it said Jamie on his birth certificate. People are weird.

  90. 90.

    MobiusKlein

    My name was so common when I was growing up, I had one class with a total off 5 sharing the same first name, including two of us sitting adjacent in the flute section.
    So everybody called me by my last name throughout junior high and high school, even teachers and scoutmasters. Well, not my family for obvious reasons.

  93. 93.

    zhena gogolia

    @Alison Rose: On Gunsmoke, Miss Kitty was the proprietor of a certain frontier establishment, so if you’re named after her, you’re named after a sex worker. Which is what my NFTG father admitted to me was the case with me, when I was 26 years old. I was pissed, but now I find it amusing.

    ETA: I guess the expression is NFLTG

  94. 94.

    piratedan

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/vanderbilt-university-medical-center-faces-civil-rights-investigation-over-release-of-transgender-health-records/ar-AA1f9gaB

    Because the local lawmakers are on a Transgender crusade, the Vanderbilt University Hospital did a very bad thing and caved.  HIPAA is serious shit and I suspect that this will not end well for the University.  Unsure how it will go for the State asshats that pressured them to cave, but the Hospital should have told them to go fuck themselves.

    I fully expect examples will be made.

  100. 100.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    [ON topic]  Thanks, WaterGirl and all who attended.  That was fun.  See you all next week.

  102. 102.

    Geminid

    @zhena gogolia: Then Quince, the half-Native Blacksmith showed up. Burt Reynolds never visited Miss Kitty’s saloon. He was always working, flexing his biceps as he hammered on horse shoes and wagon wheel rims in a sleeveless rawhide shirt.

    Travellers would ride into Dodge City and ask, “Where can I get some good beef cake?” and people would answer, “Check out the Blacksmith’s shop, you’ll see plenty there.”

  108. 108.

    sab

    @smith: One of them had Joe Biden on e ery Sunaday. He rotated around but was always on at least one Sunday show while he was senator. No other Democrats, but always him.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    Word came Friday from distraught educators that a new Advanced Placement course on African American history was suddenly on the chopping block, just two days before the first bell of the school year was set to ring in Arkansas high schools planning to offer the class.
    An official from the Arkansas Department of Education reportedly alerted high school teachers by phone on Friday that the class would not be recognized for course credit by the state in the 2023-24 school year. And unlike with every other AP class on offer, the state would not cover the $90 cost of an end-of-year test that gives students the opportunity to qualify for college course credit.

    On Saturday morning, the state sent emails to district curriculum administrators letting them know the course would not be recognized. The terse email appeared not to be an official announcement but simply an alert to a change made in the education department’s course management system. The message indicates AP African American Studies was deleted from the state’s roster of offerings at 4:02 p.m. on the Friday before school starts for most public school students in Arkansas.

    The low quality work of the sleazy, corrupt Huckabee clan.

    They announced this on Saturday morning. School starts Monday.

  111. 111.

    Joy in FL

    I really enjoyed the Zoom this afternoon. Thanks to WaterGirl for coordinating everything and to everyone who was there. I’ll be there next week as well.

  114. 114.

    Jackie

    @Geminid: There’s a tiny worry I try to keep way down inside that Jamie’s bout with cancer (and not his first,) that committing to a six year term vs two year terms is part of his decision.

    Personally I LOVE his role and leadership in the House – especially with the MAGA clowns. His and other Democrat leaders in the House mature and wise qualities show such a sharp contrast even Republican voters can’t help but notice.

  115. 115.

    Ruckus

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    My last time was 5-7 yrs ago in Pasadena Superior and we had to sit in the jury waiting room every day. I wonder if each district was/is done differently. Or if it changed 15 minutes after my last service..

    The other nice thing is that if you work or sleep late, etc now you can do that if you don’t get called up.

  117. 117.

    Dan B

    @Kay: Being acquainted with Jim Crow Arkansas it’s disgusting what the state is doing.  They love to punch down.

  119. 119.

    zhena gogolia

    @Jackie: I wasn’t that thrilled with the clip. It was only in the last few seconds that he pointed out that JOE Biden wasn’t guilty of anything. He let Karl go “Hunter Hunter Hunter” all over the place.

  124. 124.

    Mousebumples

    @tobie: No idea how they handled the fires, but Surfing Goat Dairy on Maui has/had great goat cheese. Was more centrally located, I think, so hopefully okay…?

  125. 125.

    Chris T.

    @Ruckus: I got called up one time but had just been rather seriously injured and the doctor’s note made them delay me for a year, by which time I’d moved across the county line (though still within the SFBayArea). After that, I had jury duty once, and the case involved someone in an automobile collision. Given that my serious-injury was from me (as pedestrian) being hit by a car, I expected to be kicked off via peremptory challenge, but I wasn’t!

    More recently I had several notices that were all of the “check in each day” form (one of them had me check twice each day!) but I never got called in for any of those.

    Since I retired and moved to WA state, I haven’t had any notices yet, but if it happens I’m ready to go do my jury duty. It’s much easier when one is retired!

  126. 126.

    Chris T.

    @MobiusKlein: “Chris” was also extremely common (probably still is) when I was a kid; I’d be in a class of 35 or so with 2 or 3 boy Chris-es and 2 or 3 girl Chris-es total sometimes.

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