Current Affairs
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A 100% business income tax rate in Oregon? Watch your ballot
Professor Bogdanski's post today about the corporate gross revenues tax that's the subject of Initiative Petition 17, which we may see on our November ballot, prodded me to pursue some math that I'd been working on for a week or two. The basic premise of the corporate gross revenues tax is that corporations that sold…
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Judge Engoron was the Trump fraud trial judge, but he wrote for the court of appeals
Did you read all 92 pages of Judge Engoron’s opinion of February 16 in the Trump fraud case? Isaac devoured every word, and offers this digest.
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Lament for Kevin McCarthy
Kevin McCarthy's nearly nine months in office (a full term in other contexts) deserves a ballad to commemorate his service. Isaac has written one. Lament for Kevin McCarthy (to the tune of “Whatever Became of Hubert?” by Tom Lehrer)Words by Isaac Laquedem (2023) Whatever became of Kevin? Does anyone even know? Once he…
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The fields of the House republicans need no Gaetz to guard them
At the instigation of Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a small group of revanchist republicans combined with the House Democrats to remove Kevin McCarthy from his post as Speaker of the House in revenge for his having worked with the Democrats last week to extend funding for the government and avoid a weekend shutdown. The…
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Wendell Phillips reminds us that history sometimes rhymes
The recent stalemate among the House republicans over their choice of speaker and the current threats of Speaker McCarthy to refuse to raise the ceiling on the national debt so that the nation can pay its bills brought to mind this delightful observation from a while back: "A few years ago * * * the…
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The House Democrats should pick a republican for speaker, but not just any republican
About a year ago, a republican political strategist named Sarah Longwell wrote in The Bulwark that the republican party was facing an ‘extinction event’ that resulted from Donald Trump having converted it into the MAGA party. The flailing efforts of the republican House majority to elect a speaker yesterday and so far today also are…
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Clarence Thomas points the way to the future – and to the past
I wrote on June 24 about the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, in which a majority of the court overruled Roe v. Wade, and argued that the two important opinions are not the majority opinion and the dissent, but Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion concurring in the decision but not…
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The Alito Court finishes its first year with a bombshell
Earlier today, to the surprise of none, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The court overruled Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 (1973) and ruled that the United States Constitution does not prohibit states from regulating or prohibiting abortions, even as soon as one day after conception. The…
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Yesterday we learned more about the pardon list
Amusement and consternation followed the revelation earlier this week that retired law professor John Eastman, one of the team that worked to undo the 2020 election in the waning days of President Trump's term, had sent an e-mail to Mr. Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani shortly after the January 6 insurrection. Professor Eastman wrote, "I've…
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The Supreme Court stands up for the parental rights of rapists
Yesterday, in a case called Vega v. Tekoh, the United States Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant who gives an incriminating statement under interrogation without being informed of his constitutional right to remain silent, and who is later acquitted, may not recover damages under 42 USC §1983, a civil-rights statute, from the government official…