…well…on the upside…after today at least I’ll mostly STFU for a week or so…so…if you fancy stepping into the breach…or breech…drop @myopicprophet a line & let him know…there’s 4 DOTs between now & sunday week that are going begging…oh…& speaking of upsides

Former President Donald J. Trump was named as an unindicted co-conspirator on Wednesday in the investigation by the Michigan attorney general’s office into interference in the 2020 election.

Charges have already been brought in Michigan against 15 Republicans who acted as fake electors for Mr. Trump after President Biden defeated him in the state in 2020.
[…]
Whether Mr. Trump or any of his former aides or advisers face legal jeopardy in Michigan is unclear. Michigan is one of five swing states that are conducting investigations or prosecutions related to steps Mr. Trump and his allies took in trying to circumvent the will of voters after the 2020 election.
[…]
The election cases are playing out in five states that are likely to be crucial in deciding who wins the presidency in November. In Michigan, a lingering question has been whether others besides the fake electors could face charges.

An investigator said in court that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his aides conspired with fake electors to overturn his 2020 defeat in Michigan. [NYT]

…& where there’s unindicted co-conspiritors…you’d hope…there can be superseding indictments coming up behind

Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and a number of others who advised Donald J. Trump during the 2020 election were indicted in Arizona on Wednesday, along with all of the fake electors who acted on Mr. Trump’s behalf there to try to keep him in power despite his loss in the state.

Boris Epshteyn, one of Mr. Trump’s top legal strategists, was also among those indicted, a complication for Mr. Trump’s defense in the criminal trial that began this week in Manhattan over hush money payments made to a porn star, Stormy Daniels.

The indictment includes conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges, related to alleged attempts by the defendants to change the 2020 election results. Arizona is the fourth swing state to bring an elections case involving the activities of the Trump campaign in 2020, but only the second after Georgia to go beyond the fake electors whom the campaign deployed in swing states lost by Mr. Trump.
[…]
Also indicted were Mike Roman, a Trump campaign operative in 2020, John Eastman, an architect of the fake electors plan, and two other lawyers who advised Mr. Trump and his 2020 campaign: Jenna Ellis and Christina Bobb.

The indictment lays out a series of alleged efforts by the defendants to overturn Arizona’s election results. They are accused of pressuring “officials responsible for certifying election results to encourage them to change the election results,” including the governor, the legislature and the Maricopa Board of Supervisors.

In all, 35 people who acted as fake electors in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and now Arizona face criminal charges for signing certificates in 2020 falsely stating that Mr. Trump had won their state’s electoral votes.

Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Meadows, Mr. Roman and Mr. Eastman now face charges in two states, Georgia and Arizona. Ms. Ellis has already pleaded guilty to a felony in Georgia.

Among those charged in Arizona are some who served as top Republican Party officials there during the 2020 election, including Kelli Ward, a former state party chairwoman, and Greg Safsten, who at the time was executive director of the state party. Two state senators, Anthony Kern and Jake Hoffman, now also face charges.

…I know it still qualifies as a standard shibboleth for that lot & all…but…the courts haven’t been exactly kind to the claim the election results were the rotten part…so…I dunno what the defense is supposed to be against these charges…unless it’s some variety of the insanity defense in which they argue that it’s not illegal if you truly believe your own bullshit?

Some of the people who held themselves out to be Trump electors in states that he lost in 2020 have adamantly insisted that they were acting legally. After Dr. Ward and other fake electors gathered in Phoenix that December, she wrote in a social media post that “we are the electors who represent the legal voters of Arizona!” As recently as late last year, Mr. Kern said that “there’s no such thing as fake electors.”

…maybe they’ll call it the “I’m not crazy, you’re crazy” defense

Late Wednesday, Charles Burnham, a lawyer for Mr. Eastman, said: “The phenomenon of partisan lawfare grows more troubling by the day. Professor Eastman is innocent of criminal conduct in Arizona or any other place and will fight these charges as he has all the other unjust accusations leveled against him.”

Ted Goodman, a spokesman for Mr. Giuliani, said: “The continued weaponization of our justice system should concern every American as it does permanent, irrevocable harm to the country.”

Mr. Hoffman said in a social media post that he was “innocent of any crime,” adding that “I will vigorously defend myself, and I look forward to the day when I am vindicated of this disgusting political persecution.”

…”lawfare”…boy, howdy…could I go off on that little buzzword tangent…& its but-buddy “weaponization”…but…to try not to get carried away…sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…& on the one hand not everything that you can find seems to be pointed in your direction is thereby a weapon…even if it might roll over you like that scene from a fish called wanda

…&…to be fair

…how you fare when you come to the attention of the courts on account of your disregard for the law…if you want to talk about that in a bellicose metaphor…that makes your innocent-until-proven-guilty ass the aggressor…

…so…it’s all very well that it plays with your chosen choir…but…if we’re all clear that the only reasonable way this cavalcade of cravenly cabalistic calumny gets to not be found guilty in the eyes of the law…is if they get their co-conspirator re-elected to high enough office to be able to abuse his power to obstruct justice

…how exactly the fuck do we not get to stipulate consciousness of guilt & sidestep the caricature of presumed innocence?

…don’t get me wrong…I grasp the principle & get how that presumption is genuinely vital to a meaningful rule of law…to be charged is not a guarantee of guilt…& even things that ostensibly happen in full view on the public stage can turn out to have been rashomon-style different when all the facts are known…but…outside of the quantum of innocence extended as a matter of principle to schroedinger’s defendant…if the dead weight in the box hasn’t moved in years…& I say until you open the box & prod the bugger into motion the only way I can see it not being dead is if it’s comatose because it defies nature for those creatures to sleep that long…&…in translation…that means that to get an innocent verdict out of me you need to quit pissing about claiming there’s nothing for anyone to be guilty of & start showing me how your client specifically isn’t the party responsible for the thing that definitely fucking happened…I mean…that’s the deal in the documents thing the loosest cannon is becalming the crap out of in order to keep it safely ex-parte until after a potential change of presidential prerogatives…he took the shit…& even the bits they took back off him are unequivocally the kind of things that come with a side of jail if you treat them as takeout items…unless you do specific things that…specifically…he did not fucking do…so…you’d expect to be able to stipulate a fact pattern in that case in which the only remaining thing to decide is literally whether or not the self-evident truth of all men being created equal is, in fact, still admissible as evidence in florida’s federal courts…because if it is the man in question has neither a defense nor a fucking leg to stand on…so whether he’s dead or alive that cat is lying in that box one way or another

…how the fuck the founders forgot to add a sub-clause somewhere that said sometimes you got to accept that some people simply aren’t in the running for being in charge until after their innocence quits needing a presumptive existence & survives a fucking verdict I don’t fucking know…but when it feels like it might have gone quicker to exhume their remains & try getting an answer out of dem dry bones…fuck…trying to keep shit in perspective is hard AF from my perspective?

Having slates of people claiming to be electors for Mr. Trump was an integral part of the effort to keep him in office after his loss at the polls in 2020. Mr. Trump and his allies sought to block or delay congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, hoping that Mr. Trump’s allies in the House and Senate might then consider a challenge to the validity of the results in a number of battleground states like Arizona and Michigan — and then accept the pro-Trump electors from those states as valid.

…that…shit…happened

…they did that shit

…& umpteen fucking cases claiming there were issues with the official line that shit tried to buck…died on their asses

…frame it as a frame job if you must…but…let me get this straight…joe biden…between mid-sentence naps in the model of abe simpson…conspired to make it look like he won…to the point that it was necessary to fake-out the fake result with a super-fake semper fidelis that only looks like you’re on the wrong side of history with the business end of the sic semper tyrannis looking to have you assume the position…&…that’s all supposed to be legal because if you’re guilty america as you claim to know it no longer exists?

…while we all wait endlessly for the courts to decide & then decide a few more times up & down the appeals process’ revolving door until the pet supremes get to rule whose master’s voice their canine hearing responds to

…could we just examine that premise a little…only I feel like I’m not the worst case of lost perspective in the current crop & that might help me out?

Mr. Trump has long made a strategy of falsely claiming election fraud. After he was defeated in the 2016 Iowa caucus, he said that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the winner of that contest, “illegally stole it.” And after Mr. Trump received fewer votes nationwide in 2016 than Hillary Clinton did, he said that he had actually won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

…if grandpa hits up the bookies & wants to bet the family farm on a horse that “can’t lose”…well…either grandpa knows what he’s talking about…in which case the fix is in & pappy’s in it up to his don’t-see-like-they-did peepers…or…the winner isn’t pre-ordained…& anyone looking to inherit would be well-advised to insert themselves between their scion & the betting slips…not extend the old boy an infinite line of credit because despite ceaseless object lessons to the contrary his system really is fool-proof & any day now he’s bringing home all the marbles, gaggles of golden-egg-laying geese & all the beanstalks a bunch of giants among men could wish for

Faced with criminal charges in the state elections inquiries, some of Mr. Trump’s allies and advisers have backtracked from his 2020 claims.

“Biden was elected, the process was followed,” Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the fake elector plan, told investigators in Michigan last year. Mr. Chesebro has emerged as a key witness in the state prosecutions.

James Renner, a former Michigan state trooper who was a last-minute substitution as a fake elector in that state, expressed regret last year to investigators, saying that he “had been walked into a situation that I shouldn’t have ever been involved in.” Charges against him were dropped as part of a cooperation agreement with the office of Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, a Democrat.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/us/arizona-fake-electors-trump.html

…sorry…guess maybe I’m demob-happy or something

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear oral arguments in Donald Trump’s immunity-appeal case on Thursday may appear to advance the rule of law. After all, few, if anyone, think that a majority of the court will conclude that a former president is completely immune from federal criminal liability.

But the court’s decision to review the immunity case actually undermines core democratic values.

The Supreme Court often has an institutional interest in cases of presidential power. But the court’s insistence on putting its own stamp on this case — despite the widespread assumption that it will not change the application of immunity to this case and the sluggish pace chosen to hear it — means that it will have needlessly delayed legal accountability for no justifiable reason. Even if the Supreme Court eventually does affirm that no person, not even a president, is above the law and immune from criminal liability, its actions will not amount to a victory for the rule of law and may be corrosive to the democratic values for which the United States should be known.

That is because the court’s delay may have stripped citizens of the criminal justice system’s most effective mechanism for determining disputed facts: a trial before a judge and a jury, where the law and the facts can be weighed and resolved.

It is this forum — and the resolution it provides — that Mr. Trump seeks, at all costs, to avoid. It is not surprising that he loudly proclaims his innocence in the court of public opinion. What is surprising is that the nation’s highest court has interjected itself in a way that facilitates his efforts to avoid a legal reckoning.

…uh-huh, uh-huh…sure…yeah…& your point is?

Looking at the experience of other countries is instructive. In Brazil, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, after baselessly claiming fraud before an election, was successfully prosecuted in a court and barred from running for office for years. In France, the former president Jacques Chirac was successfully prosecuted for illegal diversion of public funds during his time as mayor of Paris. Likewise, Argentina, Italy, Japan and South Korea have relied on the courts to hold corrupt leaders to account for their misconduct.

…yeah, bro…but, bro…like…bro…this is america^®, bro

Because the courts have been such crucial scaffolding for democracy, leaders with authoritarian impulses often seek to undermine judicial authority and defang the courts to advance their interests. As the national-security and governance writer Rachel Kleinfeld has pointed out: “democracies have been falling all over the world in recent years. The decline has largely occurred at the hands of elected leaders who use their popularity to ride roughshod over their countries’ institutions, destroying oversight by a thousand cuts.”

Consider India, Bolivia, Hungary and Venezuela, where the erosion of judicial independence of the courts has been accompanied by a rise in all-consuming power for an individual leader.

…&…I’m not going AWOL to take a training course in revolutionary counter-insurgency in a first-world urban context or anything modern-day-guy-fawkes-y with a side in v-for-vendetta-studies…I’m nearer retiring than revolting for a start & I don’t need to put my back out cross-training with an oversized chip on my shoulder…but…if I was younger…all this talk about orwell might have got me thinking about the difference between the man himself

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia

…& the ones who can’t keep his name out of their mouth (which this morning apparently includes my hypocritical ass) from the comfort of their seat before a keyboard

Before Election Day 2024, if at all possible, voters should know if the facts of a case establish that one of the candidates engaged in an elaborate election-interference scheme in 2020.

Justice Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the Manhattan criminal trial, and the New York appellate courts offer an instructive model of fair and expeditious case management. In less than a week, Justice Merchan has seated a jury, and he and many appellate judges have quickly ruled on Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the start of the trial.

If the Supreme Court resolves the immunity question quickly, allowing the federal election interference case to proceed, Judge Chutkan’s case management likewise will be pivotal in dealing with the intricacies of jury selection in a high-profile case and effectively distinguishing between frivolous and meritorious defense arguments that would prolong the trial timeline. These options may seem like a long shot, but they are the ones that remain.

Courts are supposed to serve as a neutral forum for the determination of facts and the adjudication of law. And, as examples in other countries illustrate, they can be a crucial bulwark for the rule of law in precarious times.

Politics and law are often seen as separate institutions, but in fact they regularly interact within our constitutional system as checks and balances — unless, as is the case here, the court takes on an overbearing role.

The Supreme Court’s review of the immunity issue delays indefinitely a jury trial of Mr. Trump’s role in obstructing the peaceful transfer of power — and therefore risks transforming our nation into a Potemkin village of democracy that bears the surface trappings of legal institutions but without actual checks on the executive branch of government.

The Supreme Court Has Already Botched the Trump Immunity Case [NYT]

…&…well…I dunno…until proven otherwise…maybe there are good people on both sides…but…it seems beyond even unreasonable doubt that there are mind-bending-ly-fucking-dumb people on both sides in apparent profusion

…what brought that to mind…oh…I don’t fucking know…I mean…who can say?

I Thought the Bragg Case Against Trump Was a Legal Embarrassment. Now I Think It’s a Historic Mistake. [NYT]

…& I think getting out of bed today was maybe a historic mistake…explain to me again why that gets to be anyone else’s problem when none of them can sleep for me?

…see…it’s like this

Jed Handelsman Shugerman (@jedshug) is a law professor at Boston University.

…jedshug…mind if I call you jedshug…more in a rhymes-with-slug way that a suge knight way…not death-row-record-ing anyone or anything…but…I confess you profess way the fuck out over your skis the way…I dunno…you project onto the AG’s office?

After listening to Monday’s opening statement by prosecutors, I still think the Manhattan D.A. has made a historic mistake. Their vague allegation about “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” has me more concerned than ever about their unprecedented use of state law and their persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud.

…when you say “historic mistake”…on a scale of “let’s fill the zeppelin with gas that burns so fast it looks like a bomb going off when a spark hits it” to “ladies & gentlemen, the 45th president of the United States of America”…how historic are you aiming for with that one?

Both the misdemeanor and felony charges require that the defendant made the false record with “intent to defraud.” A year ago, I wondered how entirely internal business records (the daily ledger, pay stubs and invoices) could be the basis of any fraud if they are not shared with anyone outside the business. I suggested that the real fraud was Mr. Trump’s filing an (allegedly) false report to the Federal Election Commission, and only federal prosecutors had jurisdiction over that filing.

…are you…seriously…with an expectation of being taken seriously as a serious person…trying to tell me that the manhattan DA done fucked up because…*checks notes*…they sought to make clear that in this specific case…with this specific defendant…the intent part is indivisible from a wider context that elevates the stakes of the matter before the court in a way that precedent struggles to accommodate because…despite the purportedly clairvoyant nature of the famous founding fathers…nobody’s ever tried to be this big of an asshole in this important a context before…for reals, jedshug-ah?

[…just clocked what the clock says so I’ll click this on its way to the realm of the visible & futz about with it from behind the curtain]

…nope…can’t do it…went away & had a coffee & a smoke…even a bit of a walk…but…damn it…I can not for the life me of stop dogging this bone-headed bullshittery

Instead of a theory of defrauding state regulators, Mr. Bragg has adopted a weak theory of “election interference,” and Justice Juan Merchan described the case, in his summary of it during jury selection, as an allegation of falsifying business records “to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 election.”

As a reality check, it is legal for a candidate to pay for a nondisclosure agreement. Hush money is unseemly, but it is legal. The election law scholar Richard Hasen rightly observed, “Calling it election interference actually cheapens the term and undermines the deadly serious charges in the real election interference cases.”

…fuck a duck, chuck…if this one judge saying that shit this one time about this one guy “cheapens the term” then…if you don’t mind my fucking asking…what exactly the fuck does that say about the…not even dime-a-dozen…dozens of bakers’ dozens of dozens a dime at this point in that particular pissing contest…of times the fucking felonious fanta-faced fake-news fucking feckless figurehead fingered his opponents’ frustrated attempts to point that fucking finger in his direction as indecently-open assaults intended to interfere with his electoral zones without redress to his world-famous line in bespoke emperor’s clothing…while we’re opining about the undermining & all?

…I can’t pinch enough salt to take with that without it winding up being a fucking natural emetic you egregiously intellectually blinkered blind man’s bluff of a bad faith interlocutor in an empty suit…& maybe if you never passed the bar you shouldn’t ought to get to set the bar for who gets disbarred…but…I don’t have to agree with the lecturer to audit the course & they tell me that free speech is apparently in urgent need of exercise lest it atrophy into a reduced range of effective motion & disable democracy…so…the just askin’ card is still in the deck, right?

…only…I’ve heard a few conflicting legal opinions on how to go about close-reading your way through this part

In Monday’s opening argument, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo still evaded specifics about what was illegal about influencing an election, but then he claimed, “It was election fraud, pure and simple.” None of the relevant state or federal statutes refer to filing violations as fraud. Calling it “election fraud” is a legal and strategic mistake, exaggerating the case and setting up the jury with high expectations that the prosecutors cannot meet.

The most accurate description of this criminal case is a federal campaign finance filing violation. Without a federal violation (which the state election statute is tethered to), Mr. Bragg cannot upgrade the misdemeanor counts into felonies. Moreover, it is unclear how this case would even fulfill the misdemeanor requirement of “intent to defraud” without the federal crime.

In stretching jurisdiction and trying a federal crime in state court, the Manhattan D.A. is now pushing untested legal interpretations and applications. I see three red flags raising concerns about selective prosecution upon appeal.

…but my hours aren’t billable that way so I’ll leave that for the juris doctors to try to keep alive on the table…& just get mad about this side of things

First, I could find no previous case of any state prosecutor relying on the Federal Election Campaign Act either as a direct crime or a predicate crime. Whether state prosecutors have avoided doing so as a matter of law, norms or lack of expertise, this novel attempt is a sign of overreach.

…there are areas of law that are both counter-intuitive & fundamental elements of a system that is at least partially immunized against common, if at times byzantine, attempts to game it…there are matters of obscure but vital interpretation, interpolation & investigative deliberation…it is…in almost all settings & venues inappropriate to respond to a purportedly cogent example of an expansive illustration of such intellectual rigors with a line from a rap track

…but fuck all of that…it’s only us chickens…so…to sum it all up in the words of the genius-spelled-GZA…& I don’t care that the back streets of medina are in orleans county & not manhattan…the prosecution’s case…as I understand it in broad strokes…has some known cuts…money changed hands in a pattern as familiar to the exponents of the catch’n’kill trade as the cash-in-hand greetings of a dope-slinging corner crew…& the underlying logic of what the safe pair of hands was catching & why they’d be better off with it dead pertained to a…wider intent…an ulterior motive, if you will…that extended across a spectrum broad enough to start employing terms like running the gamut…in order to avoid having to run the gauntlet by the same strictures as any other serial swindler…so…that kinda rhymes with

About to set off something more deep than a misdemeanor
Under the subway, waiting for the train to make noise
So I can blast a nigga and his boys, for what?

…know-what-I’m-sayin’…fuggeaboutit

…it’s not like they made edward scissorhands walk the plank…but then he just maybe mistreated that one lady a few times…he didn’t see to it her entire gender could be endangered just for engendering a potentially new prerogative concerning the probative concerns of personal components of the process of potentially generating the generative component of hypothetically subsequent generations to be left stuck with the checks after it’s all in the balance…which would seem to paint women as altogether more generously equipped with reasons to be less generous in a number of respects than might please mr “they let you do it” in or out of a locker room…or a locked room…whose key has been mysteriously misplaced…ooh err, missus…errr…miss us, eh…& the mrs…not to mention them ms-es…who might be more old school muses than misses if you hit them marks that way

…so…err…those juries of his peers…those aren’t allowed to be picked on gender-selective-basis, last I checked…& even in those 42 questions I don’t think I found one that said having an opinion about the dobbs verdict was automatically disqualifying in a potential juror…but…if it really is a mistake of historic proportions to suggest that the case that has the eternal-campaigner his always-be-crimin’ self bound over & gag ordered for more than his waking hours in a courtroom that literally reeks of his ass…because they’re trying to argue that the matter belongs in the purview of a thing called the Federal Election Campaign Act?

…we could get into the weeds on that

https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/legislation

…there might even be a point in that as opposed to whatever the hell it is I think I’m doing…but…I’m here now & apparently this is what I’m doing…& on that basis…for that to be right it strikes me that it would very much need to be a laughably small domino in a much grander cascade of mistakes that…& this is sort of the part that’s looming large enough to have cast a pall over my day even if I don’t have a parade to get rained on…an apparently endless supply of willing…& indeed ardent…volunteers…are…well…volunteering to volunteer apologia for consistently choosing not to fucking side-step…mostly by talking out the side of their mouths…possibly on account of the adhesive properties of long-term foaming at the mouth…I dunno…I’m not an expert or anything…but if the embarrassing cap fits?

Second, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the New York statute requires that the predicate (underlying) crime must also be a New York crime, not a crime in another jurisdiction. The Manhattan D.A. responded with judicial precedents only about other criminal statutes, not the statute in this case. In the end, they could not cite a single judicial interpretation of this particular statute supporting their use of the statute (a plea deal and a single jury instruction do not count).

[…also…jedshug…if you’re gonna cite your own xitter account twice in a single paragraph…in a thing suggesting the manhattan DA is over-reaching by being disingenuous…have the courage of your convictions…you’re in the NY-fucking-T for fuck’s sake…& even wordpress can handle that shit…look…it’s easy]

Second

Trump argument p. 16:
"[b]y clear and unambiguous language, ‘any crime’ in CPL 160.59(3)(f) does not include crimes under the laws of another state.”
To our knowledge, no New York court has ever held otherwise with respect to § 175.10." pic.twitter.com/b1X6xDYNie

— Jed Shugerman (@jedshug) February 15, 2024

14/ @manhattanDA @AlvinBraggNYC whiffs on this new and important point.
They don't cite a single judicial holding to support their argument directly on 175.10.
The best they have is a plea deal and a jury instruction + acquittal.
p. 27-30 pic.twitter.com/IQjRVEn721

— Jed Shugerman (@jedshug) February 15, 2024

In the end, [in my carefully-reasoned opinion] they could not cite a single judicial interpretation of this particular statute supporting their use of the statute*

* – a plea deal and a single jury instruction do not count [to/with/according to me]

…what do you mean that’s not a fair representation of what you said, jed?

Third, no New York precedent has allowed an interpretation of defrauding the general public. Legal experts have noted that such a broad “election interference” theory is unprecedented, and a conviction based on it may not survive a state appeal.

…seriously, man…even if I put my both-sides^® water-wings on & grab a live-preserver…I can’t keep treading this water without the shoreline receding from view as the roiling waters close over my frantically-paddling ass…what are you saying, shug?

Mr. Trump’s legal team also undercut itself for its decisions in the past year: His lawyers essentially put all of their eggs in the meritless basket of seeking to move the trial to federal court, instead of seeking a federal injunction to stop the trial entirely. If they had raised the issues of selective or vindictive prosecution and a mix of jurisdictional, pre-emption and constitutional claims, they could have delayed the trial past Election Day, even if they lost at each federal stage.

…the historic mistake is the fruit of a tree too firmly rooted in a state-level jurisdiction that dictates a priori that moving it to a federal one even you think lacks the requisite merits…but…the federal one is fine for a pro-trump trumping in the form of an injunction injecting itself in to head proceedings off before they come to the first pass…when they woulda-coulda-shoulda skated by employing flannel cut from an altogether different cloth even if every time they waved that hunk of plaid they got run over by a succession of federal horns in bullring after bullring…because all that matters is that the idiot ball gets to punt before any timeouts expire…am I getting that straight?

Another reason a federal crime has wound up in state court is that President Biden’s Justice Department bent over backward not to reopen this valid case or appoint a special counsel. Mr. Trump has tried to blame Mr. Biden for this prosecution as the real “election interference.” The Biden administration’s extra restraint belies this allegation and deserves more credit.

…mighty white of you not to call that a historic mistake to be laid at the feet of the currently un-indicted candidate & all…but…what was that thing you were saying before about undermining & overreaching with the long arm of the law?

Eight years after the alleged crime itself, it is reasonable to ask if this is more about Manhattan politics than New York law. This case should serve as a cautionary tale about broader prosecutorial abuses in America — and promote bipartisan reforms of our partisan prosecutorial system.

Nevertheless, prosecutors should have some latitude to develop their case during trial, and maybe they will be more careful and precise about the underlying crime, fraud and the jurisdictional questions. Mr. Trump has received sufficient notice of the charges, and he can raise his arguments on appeal. One important principle of “our Federalism,” in the Supreme Court’s terms, is abstention, that federal courts should generally allow state trials to proceed first and wait to hear challenges later.

…I take it all back…now that I understand the importance of abstention I can totally see why neither jed-wad here nor the NYT could honorably abstain from holding forth to so clearly & concisely edify all us barely eddied constituents of the edifice we like to call the court of public opinion because it makes it sound like it contains grown up things

This case is still an embarrassment of prosecutorial ethics and apparent selective prosecution. Nevertheless, each side should have its day in court. If convicted, Mr. Trump can fight many other days — and perhaps win — in appellate courts. But if Monday’s opening is a preview of exaggerated allegations, imprecise legal theories and persistently unaddressed problems, the prosecutors might not win a conviction at all.

The meaning and origin of the expression: The law is an ass

…& before you tell me it’s unconstitutional to suggest anybody go medieval on that ass…what…would you prefer napoleonic?

At my age, ancient going on decrepit, there are not many things that can cause me to choke on my cornflakes, but, a Conservative MP stating, ‘English law is the greatest gift Britain has given to the world’, did just that. Many years ago a barrister said to me, ‘Don’t ever expect justice in an English court of law, all you get is law”. How true those words were, especially when weighted against any concept of ‘natural justice’. English law has long been in conflict with the perceived notion of justice.

English law as it now stands, due to ‘amendments’ by various Home Secretaries, has more in common with the diktats of any despotic dictator of a third world banana republic, than what passes for a modern ‘democratic’ country. However, in England even the word democratic should be questioned as it seems that the true rulers of England are the Murdochs, who own most cabinet members. It takes someone who has experienced the ‘Criminal Justice’ system to fully appreciate the farce and bias of English law, and the lack of remedies to correct basic injustice, which inevitably lead to miscarriages of justice, an area in which England truly does lead the world.

The most recent high profile and tragic miscarriage of justice case is that of Sam Hallam, whose father, unable to cope with his son’s wrongful conviction committed suicide 16 months ago. On the 16th May 2012 Lady Justice Hallett declaimed to family and friends of Sam Hallam, ‘I will not have my courtroom turned into a circus’. The reality is, all too often English courtrooms are exactly that, a circus, and there is no system, remedy or intent to correct the risible, but tragic theatrics that occur all too often. In Sam Hallam’s case, the CCRC sat on eight witness statements for more than four years which stated that at the time of the gang related murder of trainee chef Essayas Kassahun, Sam was in a pub with his Dad. Photos on a mobile phone finally cleared Hallam, information that the Metropolitan Police had kept for around seven years. Information that can undermine a prosecution case can sit for years, hidden in unused material held in police files. ‘There is often gold hidden in those vast files’, David Jessel told a recent Justice Gap meeting. Jessel should know, enjoying previous careers with BBC Rough Justice and Channel 4’s Trial & Error programmes.

The English courtroom farce begins with the police. In English courts it is claimed that the law proceeds on the basis that a person is innocent until proven guilty. The police follow the opposite view, grabbing the most convenient suspect, exclude any facts that point to innocence, shut down all other lines of inquiry, charge the suspect, then call a press conference to bask in media glory.

In France, under the Napoleonic Code, the police investigation is overseen by an examining magistrate to confirm there is a case. In the United States, the police evidence is examined by a Grand Jury. In England, the Grand Jury was abandoned in 1931 in favour of a committal hearing before a magistrate. Formal committal hearings are now a rarity, abandoned in favour of ‘paper committals’, which translate as a rubber stamp.

…& anyway…who the fuck cares what some random banged-up-brit wanted to get off his chest in 2012…he would say that kind of shit, wouldn’t he…unreliable narrator flag on the play…& anyway…they hadn’t embarrassed orangitasticus at that correspondents shindig then…much less let him take the ship of state for a spin to show off his dough-nut skillz

The introduction of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) was claimed to be a fair and open forum for miscarriages of justice, preventing recurrences of cases like the Birmingham six, Maguire Family, Guildford four, Cardiff three, Cardiff newsagent three, Bridgewater four, Eddie Browning, Barry George and all the many, many others. The CCRC have a success rate of about one quarter of one percent. By inference, that means 99.75% of everybody in prison is guilty. Anybody who believes that also believes in alien abduction.

In England, everyone is equal under the law. If thirty one members of the public witnessed a shooting incident, what would happen if they refused to be interviewed by authorities investigating the crime? The initial charge would be obstructing the police in the execution of their duty. Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice perhaps? That is the law? Apparently not, as the thirty one police officers involved in, directly or indirectly, the shooting of Mark Duggan on 4th August 2011, are all refusing to be interviewed by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) who are investigating the crime. Equality under the law? Don’t think so.

The well publicised cases of Mark Duggan, Harry Stanley and Jean Charles de Menzes, all victims of police shootings of unarmed men are perhaps the most graphic examples of the inequalities of English law. No policeman has ever been convicted of an extra-judicial killing even when the evidence of a premeditated, pre-planned event is overwhelming. In the de Menzes case, armed police threatened to ‘down tools’ unless the IPCC investigation was halted. Needless to say, the government caved in to this blackmail.

Just when you think the bigoted proponents of the myth of English law cannot sink any lower, they prove there are no depths they will not lower themselves to. Barry George who spent eight years in prison after being wrongly convicted of the murder of Jill Dando was told by the Ministry of Justice that he is not legally entitled to compensation. Why? Are the Ministry of Justice now claiming he was not the victim of a miscarriage of justice? Think again, MoJ!

https://insidetime.org/newsround/the-law-is-an-ass-charles-dickens-1838/

…boston had a tea party so it wouldn’t have to listen to anything penal-related from blighted blighty…GTFO with that shite…america first & all that

…uh-huh…I hear y’all

How a medieval English law affects the US gun control debate [BBC Jun ’22]

…still not a reliable-enough narrator for ya?

In his seminal work, The Nature of the Judicial Process, U. S. Supreme Court Justice and former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeal Benjamin Nathan Cardozo wrote of the land of mystery when constitution and statute are silent, and the judge must look to the common law for the rule that fits the case. He is the “living oracle of the law” in Blackstone’s vivid phrase.

The New York jurist Chancellor James Kent, known as the father of American jurisprudence, described the process by which the common law grew into use by gradual adoption, and received, from time to time, the sanction of the courts of justice, without any legislative act or interference. It was the application of the dictates of natural justice, and of cultivated reason, to particular cases. In the just language of Sir Matthew Hale, the common law of England is “not the product of the wisdom of some one man, or society of men, in any one age; but of the wisdom, counsel, experience, and observation, of many ages of wise and observing men.

Our present New York Constitution, the fifth since the inception of the State, Article 1, Section 14 provides that the law of the State consists of:

Such parts of the common law, and of the acts of the legislature of the colony of New York, as together did form the law of the said colony, on the nineteenth day of April, one thousand seven hundred seventy-five, and the resolutions of the congress of the said colony, and of the convention of the State of New York, in force on the twentieth day of April, one thousand seven hundred seventy-seven, which have not since expired, or been repealed or altered; and such acts of the legislature of this state as are now in force, shall be and continue the law of this state, subject to such alterations as the legislature shall make concerning the same. But all such parts of the common law, and such of the said acts, or parts thereof, as are repugnant to this constitution, are hereby abrogated.

So, the common law is organic and every day, judges working in courtrooms throughout New York State continue a judicial process that began over fifteen hundred years in Anglo-Saxon England. Their cumulative wisdom builds New York common law year by year, a heritage that will continue beyond their lifetimes to generations yet unborn. How utterly fascinating!

In this series of postings, I plan to look at the sources of this almost mystical body of law as it emerged in Anglo-Saxon England, and follow it through the centuries to 1776, the final year of the Colony of New York. This journey will lead us to the Constitutional Convention held at Kingston in 1777 when our Founding Fathers enshrined the common law in the Constitution of New York State.

Anglo-Saxon scholar, Patrick Wormauld urges that we bear in mind that the Dooms were never intended to represent the complete body of law that existed contemporaneously, and warns that “the King’s Word had permanent significance but only within the limitations of any verbal communication: that is, absolute integrity was dependent upon memory, and was subject, as such, to adjustment, both conscious and subconscious. Written legislation was a useful aid to memory, and sometimes an impressive manifestation of the civilized status of its royal author, but it was not binding, like modern statute law.”

…oh…really?

…how far up whose ass did you need to reach to pull that out under a rubric of “BLOG, EARLY LEGAL HISTORY, THE RULE OF LAW”, then?

…turns out

Historical Society of the New York Courts

[…although a plethora of alternative sources are easily available if anyone happens to be more interested than my man jed]

…dude by the name of donne once had it that compasses in the sense that come in pairs were a useful analogy…in that if the central point maintained the pivot for the full revolution…the travelling foot would chart a sure course back around to its beginnings…& in that respect there’s arguably even circular logic that can be of sound virtue…so…I might be doing jed a number of disservices regarding the service he’s so generously served us up…but…the context is a motherfucker

https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/impromptu/is-trump-above-the-law-the-supreme-court-weighs-in

…& amici curiae just about abound like abundance is going out of style

In late November 2021, as officials at the National Archives were trying to persuade former President Donald J. Trump to return a trove of records he had taken from the White House when he left office, one of Mr. Trump’s associates advised him in the sharpest terms possible to give the materials back, newly unsealed documents show.

“Whatever you have, give everything back — let them come here and get everything,” the unnamed associate told Mr. Trump, according to an interview the person gave the F.B.I. “Don’t give them a noble reason to indict you, because they will.”

Less than two years later, that admonition proved prescient. Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Trump last June with violating the Espionage Act, accusing him of illegally holding onto more than 30 highly classified documents and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.

A summary of the associate’s interview with federal agents was among nearly 400 pages of investigative records that were unsealed on Monday by the judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s classified documents case. The associate’s identity was redacted from the summary.

…of course…it would be unfair to extrapolate any generalized conclusions about why that worthy’s identity might be requiring of protective redaction…while jed’s credential-ed credulity gets to proudly put his byline out there among the bystanding masses…untoward inference is probably electorally of interferiority priority in litigative lingua franca anyway…so…best not

The records had initially been attached as sealed exhibits to a motion Mr. Trump’s lawyers had filed in January asking for additional discovery evidence from the government. But the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, made the exhibits public after ruling two weeks ago that prosecutors could remove from them the names of several potential witnesses to protect their identities and safety.

…apparently even come-on-aileen gets a bit “c’mon…pull the other one, it’s got bells on” if the best you can muster up is “but if we can’t use it to doxx them as a method of court-endorsed witness intimidation the way we like we wouldn’t have even given you that part” while submitting whatever we decided to call the opposite of brady documentation is…well…some people say it involves dicks being stepped on…some say rakes…some invoke joined up shoelaces…or ass-biting…personally I’m just amazed she didn’t come right out & pre-judicially declare it to be cast-iron evidence of ineffective counsel & attempt to dismiss the whole thing from that transparent docket of hers…but…I’m no jurist…as I think we’ve established beyond reasonable doubt…& the average person’s reserves of patience

Person 16 told the F.B.I. that Mr. Trump reacted to his warning with a “weird ‘you’re the man’ type of response” and left the impression that he would in fact return the materials to the archives. Their conversation was interrupted when a Mar-a-Lago club member and a “much younger woman” walked up, Person 16 recalled, and asked to have a photo taken with Mr. Trump.

Person 16 also suggested that some of Mr. Trump’s children had been enlisted in the task of persuading him to return the presidential records to the archives. The person recounted to the F.B.I. that one of the children was told: “There are issues with the boxes. They belong to the government. Talk to your dad about giving them back. It’s not worth the aggravation.”

While the unsealed exhibits did not greatly alter the basic story of the classified documents case, they did provide a few new details.

…ignore the sense of déjà vu…you must have just imagined that those details aren’t new to you

Some of the exhibits revealed, for instance, that the F.B.I. used the code name “Plasmic Echo” for its initial investigation of the classified documents that Mr. Trump took to Mar-a-Lago.

…ok…I hadn’t heard that before…but now I’m just thinking about whether a plasmic echo chamber would be like being inside one of those glass globes filled with noble gases that have a van de graaf generator at their heart…you know…they call those plasma balls, don’t they?

…where was I?

Another exhibit contained a minute-by-minute timeline of the F.B.I.’s search of the property in August 2022, about a year before the indictment was returned, documenting precisely when agents entered the estate, when they gained access to Mr. Trump’s safe “via technical means” and when evidence seized during the search arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport for transport to Washington.

Another exhibit suggested that the bureau at one point discussed doing “loose” surveillance of Mr. Trump’s airplane to “determine if any boxes are loaded onto the plane.”

But Person 16’s interview with the F.B.I. was among the most informative of the unsealed records. The person asked the agents not to record their conversation, concerned that any recording would be a “risk for him in the Trump world.”

…they tell me it’s a fun ride…but…the costs are a little steep the way it looks to me…so…thanks but no thanks?

One of the lawyers, according to the interview, was brought on board after being seen by Mr. Trump on television. Another member of the team was hired by Mr. Trump, Person 16 said, because of how they “dressed” and by placing themselves directly into Mr. Trump’s “line of sight.”

Person 16 also suggested to the F.B.I. that Mr. Trump may have told his personal aide, Walt Nauta, who was ultimately charged as a co-defendant in the case, that he would receive a pardon if Mr. Trump was elected again.

“Nauta was also told that even if he gets charged with lying to the F.B.I., FPOTUS” — an abbreviation for former president of the United States — “will pardon him in 2024.”

Judge Cannon still has not issued a decision on the underlying motion to which the newly unsealed exhibits were attached.

…a bottom bitch ain’t gonna pinch her pimp for a little pardon-dangling, for real…blood?

The motion is an attempt by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to persuade the judge to grant them access to communications between prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, and officials at the archives and at national security and intelligence agencies. The lawyers want that information to bolster their potential trial defense that members of the so-called deep state conspired with the Biden administration to have the indictment filed against Mr. Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/us/politics/trump-warning-classified-documents-case.html

…if you’re openly trying to pull a move you say it takes a “deep state” to pull off…who’s reaching around who in this circle-jerk…& isn’t it some sort of indecent assault on the body of the law?

Imagine that during a Supreme Court argument, protesters angry about the case storm the court building. The mob breaks doors and windows and assaults security officers while forcing its way into the chamber. Some shout that they want to hang the chief justice. The justices and attorneys are forced to flee for their lives. It’s several hours before law enforcement secures the building and the argument can resume.

Has the court proceeding been obstructed or impeded? That doesn’t seem like a difficult question. But that’s essentially what the Supreme Court heard debated in arguments last week in Fischer v. United States, a case challenging a law being used to prosecute hundreds of people, including Donald Trump, for the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

…cui bono?

Joseph Fischer is charged with being part of the mob that rioted at the Capitol, forcing members of Congress to flee and disrupting the electoral vote count. Along with assaulting police officers and other charges, he is charged under 18 U.S.C. 1512(c), which provides:

(c) Whoever corruptly —

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

…well…possibly joeseph might get to spend less of his time as a fischer among men incarcerated…which he might find a bonny prospect…but…hard not to think of his bonnie wee prince-among-paupers…the poor man’s rich man who’s all manors & no manners…too hard for me, anyway…but come & have a go if you think you’re hard enough…as they sing on some terraces

Jan. 6 defendants have repeatedly challenged the use of 1512(c) in their prosecutions. More than a dozen federal judges in Washington have rejected those challenges. But in Mr. Fischer’s case, a Trump-appointed judge, Carl Nichols, concluded the statute must be limited to obstructive acts involving documents, records or other objects. Because Mr. Fischer wasn’t charged with impairing the availability or integrity of any physical evidence, Judge Nichols dismissed the charge.

…are we going to wind up with a lawyer for trump asking a witness to show him on the puppet where the bad man touched the innocent electorate or some…fuck nietzsche…he only made it beyond good & evil…that’d be beyond kafka somewhere in the realm of the master & margarita’s final act…but…stranger things continue to happen like accidents of hourly proof in a world of health & safety gone mad

The language of the statute seems clear. Subsection 1 prohibits obstructing a proceeding by tampering with physical evidence, and Subsection 2 is a catchall, backstop provision that prohibits “otherwise” obstructing a proceeding by means not encompassed by Subsection 1. Connected by the word “or,” they define alternative ways to violate the statute. You have to struggle pretty hard to find any ambiguity here.

…you say “struggle pretty hard”…some might say…say…flip-flop about like a fish out of water…or bounce about like a dead cat…but that’d be the implicit bias talking, I expect

As the majority in the D.C. Circuit held, that should be the end of the matter. In describing the D.C. Circuit dissent, Judge Florence Pan borrowed a line from an earlier Supreme Court case to say that it seemed like “elaborate efforts to avoid the most natural reading of the text.” After all, textualism — relying on the plain text of a statute and the common understanding of its terms — is the favored method of statutory interpretation today, especially among conservatives.

Despite the plain language of the law, Mr. Fischer and his supporters argue it should be limited based on the reason behind its passage. During the Enron scandal in the early 2000s, the prosecution of the accounting giant Arthur Andersen for shredding an enormous number of documents was hamstrung by weaknesses in the existing obstruction laws. Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, which included section 1512(c), in response to that scandal. Mr. Fischer claims the statute must therefore be limited based on Congress’s intent to respond to crimes involving evidence impairment.

But as Justice Elena Kagan noted during oral arguments, that’s not what the statute says. As she also pointed out, Congress easily could have written the statute that way if that was what it meant.

*cough*
…for-profit-prisons
*cough*
…13th amendment
*cough*
…”insurrection clause”
*cough*
…(disqualifying clause)

…sorry…better out than in…isn’t that how the saying goes?

Limiting the statute as Mr. Fischer proposes would lead to absurd outcomes. Members of a violent mob who shut down a proceeding would not be guilty of obstructing that proceeding. But if in the process they happened to damage an exhibit, the statute would apply. Filing a false affidavit in a proceeding would be covered, even if it had no effect at all; violently halting the entire proceeding would not.
[…]
Nevertheless, Jan. 6 defendants maintain the court must disregard the statute’s clear language based on fears about how it might be applied. They argue that if the law is not limited to evidence impairment, prosecutors might target trivial offenses or otherwise protected activities, like lobbying or peaceful protests.

Several of the conservative justices seemed sympathetic to this argument. Justice Neil Gorsuch, for example, questioned whether a sit-in that disrupts a trial or heckler at the State of the Union address would violate the law. Pointing to such supposed dangers, Fischer’s counsel, Jeffrey Green, urged the court not to unleash this sweeping new prosecutorial power.

Except it’s not new. Section 1512(c) has been on the books for more than 20 years. Another federal statute that prohibits the corrupt obstruction of congressional proceedings has been around since the 1940s. If prosecutors were itching to prosecute peaceful protesters and legitimate lobbyists for felony obstruction, they’ve had the tools for decades. And yet we haven’t seen those cases.

…speaking of sights we’ve seen

As Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar pointed out, that’s because “inherent constraints” built into the statute — chiefly the requirement of corrupt intent — limit its reach. It’s true there are many nonviolent and lawful ways to influence a proceeding. But only those for which prosecutors can prove corrupt intent beyond a reasonable doubt risk running afoul of the law. That’s why, as General Prelogar noted, out of more than 1,300 Capitol rioters prosecuted so far, only about one-fourth — generally the most violent, egregious offenders — have been charged under 1512(c).

Mr. Fischer also argues that Section 1512(c) has never been used in a similar case and that this proves the statute does not apply to the events of Jan. 6. But all this really demonstrates is that unprecedented crimes lead to unprecedented prosecutions. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed, because we’ve never had an event like Jan. 6 before, “I’m not sure what a lack of history proves.”

…maybe mr randall d [former chief of the fraud and public corruption section at the U.S. attorney’s office for the district of columbia] eliason could point his fellow NYT opinion-giver in the direction of sonia’s pithy little rejoinder on that score…could have prevented his having shaved years off the life of a poor working stiff of a keyboard somewhere…not to mention a bunch of scrolling in this neck of the woods?

The use of a relevant, clearly applicable obstruction law to prosecute the unique events of Jan. 6 does not mean prosecutors will suddenly abandon the discretion and judgment they’ve used for decades when applying the law to more routine cases, any more than prosecuting Mr. Trump for those events means that criminal prosecutions of former presidents will become routine.

It would be foolish to ignore the plain language of the statute to excuse the Capitol rioters based on feared abuses that live only in the imaginations of those seeking to avoid liability.

Even if the Supreme Court agrees that 1512(c) is limited to obstruction involving evidence impairment, the charges against Mr. Trump will probably survive. Prosecutors can argue that attempting to submit slates of phony electors and efforts to have the real ballots discarded constituted evidence-based obstruction. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson both raised that possibility during the argument, although without referring to Mr. Trump’s case.

Why Is the Supreme Court Making an Easy Case Related to Jan. 6 Rioters Hard? [NYT]

…presumably one of those ladies didn’t even need to consult a man in her life, first…imagine that?

How ‘The Squad’ and Like-Minded Progressives Have Changed Their Party [NYT]

…that saying about how if you hang out long enough in NY all of life will wander past you…or however it went…that wasn’t supposed to just be about the NYT opinion section, was it?

…only…I may have been laboring under some illusions…&…that would explain…a lot…as it happens?

…& happen I find some tunes at some stage…I’ll be taking my soapbox backstage for just shy of a fortnight now…so…you know…don’t be shy?

The debate about Sonia Sotomayor is not about sexism. It’s more dire. [WaPo]

Opinion: What would come after Trump overthrows the system? [WaPo]

Opinion: We have a radical democracy. Will Trump voters destroy it? [WaPo]

…hate the playa?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/24/in-the-us-they-think-were-communists-the-70000-workers-showing-the-world-another-way-to-earn-a-living

…hate the game?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/24/uk-helping-russia-pay-for-its-war-on-ukraine-via-loophole-on-refined-oil-imports

…everyone deserves their day in court

…but some folks…kinda looking at you jed…as I mention-no-names-but-watch-my-eyes attempt to provide something of an example…could stand to take a few days…& a seat…somewhere way in the back?

…oh…nearly forgot what kicked off this bit of kneejerk reaction to reactionary jerkdom

Why Losing Political Power Now Feels Like ‘Losing Your Country’ [NYT]

…why, indeed…indeed, in deed, even…ah, well…never mind me…I’ve a kit-bag full of troubles to pack up so I can take my show on the road…so…while I see about seeing myself out & what sort of salutary songs might befit such a serious undertaking…I’ll throw in an appetizer before I keep on trekkin’ truckin’

…sorry, y’all…didn’t mean to leave you hanging on that note…but…thanks to the little algorithm that could…apparently this is the bulk of the stuff that’s been bending my ear since I straightened up out of bed…less the people talking on the radio & the odd IRL exchange, anyway…so…”laters…soonest…“…fifty seven tracks might be less than the full 60-count kipling required to fill the unforgiving minute…but while I take a minute to take care of some things…they ought to be enough to keep you going, as it were…I’m still on my feet…so…so far so good?