Legal Eagle Completely Loses His Sh%$

IMHO, he is completely justified in doing so.

Devin Stone is profoundly unamused by the Trump slush fund, and I am surprised that he did not turn green and grow 8 feet tall.

Surprisingly Good News

The US Senate has adopted a rule forbidding its members from betting in prediction markets.

Since this is a Senate rule, and not legislation, this goes into effect without a vote of the House or a Presidential signature.

Now, how about banning the whole corrupt enterprise? 

US senators voted unanimously to ban themselves from making bets on prediction markets yesterday, about a week after Kalshi said it caught three congressional candidates betting on their own campaigns.

The resolution to prohibit senators from trading on prediction markets passed yesterday by unanimous consent. The action amends the Senate’s conflict-of-interest rules and does not require approval by the House of Representatives. The House has a pending resolution that would impose a similar rule on its own members.

“United States Senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck, period,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who introduced the resolution. “Serving in Congress should never be about finding new ways to profit; it should be about delivering results for the American people.”

Moreno’s resolution applies broadly to all bets on prediction markets, not just those related to events of which a senator has inside knowledge. The Senate also adopted an amendment submitted by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), which extends the trading ban to Senate officers and employees. Padilla said in a statement that the rule as amended “is a commonsense step to ensure that senators and their staff cannot use their positions of public trust to line their own pockets.”

The only question now is how lackadaisical the Senate will be in actually enforcing this.

Python Foundation rejects $1.5M grant with no-DEI strings • The Register

In a world where Tech Bros fall over each other to out bigot each other, it is refreshing to see the Python Foundation telling the National Science Foundation telling the NSF to put their $1,500,000.00 where the moon don't shine, because the grant demands that the organization cease all anti-discrimination activities.

I looked at recent data on executive compensation at the Foundation, and no one there got more than $200,000/year in 2023, yet more evidence that Dan Ariely,'s research on compensation, which shows that excessive pay reduces performance, is true.

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) has walked away from a $1.5 million government grant and you can blame the Trump administration's war on woke for effectively weakening some open source security.

The programming non-profit's deputy executive director Loren Crary said in a blog post today that the National Science Foundation (NSF) had offered $1.5 million to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and the Python Package Index (PyPI), but the Foundation quickly became dispirited with the terms of the grant it would have to follow.

"These terms included affirming the statement that we 'do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion], or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws,'" Crary noted. "This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole."

To make matters worse, the terms included a provision that if the PSF was found to have violated that anti-DEI diktat, the NSF reserved the right to claw back any previously disbursed funds, Crary explained.

By way of perspective, that $1.5 million is about ⅓ of their annual operating budget.

The Python Foundation is a  501(c)(3) not-for profit, and donations are tax deductible, and they manage thousands of volunteers working on development of the eponymous cross-platform FOSS programming language.

I have no opinion as to its merits as a programming language, but it is very widely used. (I'm not a programmer)

Sweet

The DC Bar has told law firms that cut a deal with Trump to either drop their clients who are challenging federal government actions or secure a waiver from them.

It makes sense under my understanding of legal ethics: 

Months after law firms made deals with President Trump to ward off punitive executive orders, the ethics committee of the District of Columbia Bar is warning that such arrangements may require firms to drop or obtain waivers from all clients who have interests at odds with the government.

An opinion issued by the committee this week could bring new scrutiny to several prominent law firms that chose to strike deals with Mr. Trump instead of challenging his executive orders targeting them.

Any lawyer or law firm that contemplates making a deal with a government that includes conditions that may limit or shape their practices, the opinion said, “must examine whether the arrangement would prevent the firm from providing conflict-free representation to clients — existing and new — who are adverse to the relevant government.”

………

Even though the committee’s opinions are not legally binding, they are considered authoritative and are often cited in disciplinary proceedings brought by the office that prosecutes legal ethics violations, which is overseen by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. Allegations of a conflict can also be important if a law firm is sued for malpractice.

The opinion did not specifically mention Mr. Trump. But it indirectly referred to his administration’s pressure on law firms not to challenge his policies, citing a Justice Department memo issued in May that says the administration will treat any firm that represents a client in a dispute with any executive branch agency as having a conflict with the entire executive branch — not just that agency.

………

Four targeted law firms filed lawsuits, and a series of federal judges in those cases have blocked Mr. Trump’s orders against specific firms as unconstitutional.

But at least nine struck deals with him, agreeing to provide millions of dollars in free legal services to causes he favors. The exact details of the arrangements are murky. Mr. Trump announced them on social media, but it is not clear whether those are formal written deals that detail the scope of the obligations the firms have agreed to, as opposed to vague handshake agreements.

At least two of those firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Kirkland & Ellis, are now working on a range of matters for the Commerce Department, The New York Times has reported. A personal lawyer to Mr. Trump has also connected a third, Skadden Arps, with the department about working on trade deals for the Trump administration.

………

To avoid an ethics problem, the opinion said, such a firm must drop the client, pull out of its agreement with the government or obtain a conflict-of-interest waiver from the client. But, the opinion also stated, to validly consent to such a waiver, the client must be fully informed of all the ways in which a firm’s deal with the government might create a conflict and the potential consequences.

To quote the old joke, "I think we already established that, now we're just negotiating."

They whored themselves to Trump, and the Bar is acknowledging this fact.

What a Shame

The law firm of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft is learning a lesson, " Go fash, go broke," as Scott Lemieux so pithily notes:

Venerable New York Firm That Struck a Deal With Trump Is Losing Lawyers

Cadwalader avoided a punitive executive order, but the accord has left the firm in turmoil

By Erin Mulvaney, May 8, 2025 2:55 pm ET

You know the joke about, "Legal Ethics being an oxymoron?" 

It turns out that for a lot of lawyers, and a lot of lawyers who had very comfortable positions at the 233 year old white shoe firm, legal ethics is something that they take very seriously.

Good on them:

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft struck a deal with President Trump last month intended to secure the future of New York’s oldest law firm. Instead the pact is backfiring, adding to an exodus of lawyers that has placed the firm on uncertain footing.

Cadwalader already was facing troubles, including imminent attorney departures, before its April 11 deal with the White House in which it avoided a punitive executive order by pledging at least $100 million of pro bono work to support the president’s priorities. The agreement now is pushing more lawyers to leave, people familiar with the matter said, spurred by anger that the firm capitulated to Trump instead of fighting back against an administration campaign that many in the industry believe to be unconstitutional.

A key partner in the firm’s litigation group is in late-stage talks to join a boutique firm and several other litigators are planning an exit, the people said. J.B. Howard, who is counsel at the firm and a former Maryland deputy attorney general, is also leaving and sent a letter to firm leadership protesting its capitulation, people familiar with his departure said.

The firm, founded in 1792, made a record $638 million in revenue last year. A firm spokesman said that 2025 is on track to be even stronger than the previous year and that Cadwalader has added five new partners in recent months. “Departures can be tough,” he said. But he added, “Some attrition is normal and expected; it is part of the typical rhythm of a successful firm.”

Unlike the consultant/vampires who populate the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), these folks are actually (literally) putting their money where their mouths are.

I would remind folks out there that the famous Shakespeare quote, "First, let's kill all lawyers," is actually an endorsement of lawyers and their important role in resisting tyranny.

It is said in a discussion by a group of people planning to impose a reign of terror, and they want to kill lawyers because it makes them easier to do so.

This Post Aged Like Milk

Childhood is loving JK Rowling. Adulthood is realising that Neil Gaiman is vastly superior on every level as a creator and a person.
byu/Mr_smith1466 insaltierthankrayt

I'm not talking about the specific "issues" (which is to put all of this this VERY mildly) with either Mr. Gaiman or Ms. Rowling.

I don't want to talk about the specifics, but I do want to note something important:  Artists can produce great beauty and be complete fuckwads.

If you enjoy their work, whether it be Pablo Picasso (horrible to women), Ezra Pound (Nazi), or Lovecraft (racist), etc.

If you can enjoy their work, enjoy their work.  If you can't enjoy their work any more don't.

Setting them up as paragons of virtue is a sucker bet.

Artists have no more authority on morals or ethics than you or I do.  What they do have is authority over their own art.

H/t JR at the  Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Today in Journalistic Enshittification

A Draft of the Cartoon in Question
Long time Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from the paper following their spiking her cartoon because it was too mean to oligarchs.

Shown is Bezos, (Amazon) Zuckerberg, (Facebook)Altman, (OpenAI), Patrick Soon-Shiong, (LA Tiumes) and Mickey Mouse.

My guess is that it was NOT Mickey that the WaPo editorial board objected to.

Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post, said on Friday evening that she was resigning after the newspaper’s opinions section rejected a cartoon depicting The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

In a brief statement posted to Substack, Ms. Telnaes — who has worked at The Post since 2008 — called the newspaper’s decision to kill her cartoon a “game changer" that was “dangerous for a free press.”

“In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote. “Until now.”

Ms. Telnaes included a draft of her cartoon in her Substack post. In addition to Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the cartoon depicted Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg; Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive; Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of The Los Angeles Times; and Mickey Mouse, the corporate mascot of the Walt Disney Company.

The Washington Post OP/ED department, even with the absence of the late and unlamented Fred Hiatt, remains the 2nd worst editorial page in the nation.

Cancel your subscription.

Quote of the Day

I will let people better equipped to interpret such things provide a fuller interpretation, but if you read the Gaetz report (.pdf) starting at page 3 (as numbered) at Procedural History, it is the kind of Calvinball sh%$ you would expect from the Trump DOJ but it was Garland.

—Duncan "Atrios" Black on the degree that Merrick' Garland's Department of Justice aggressively obstructed the House Ethics Committee's investigation of Matt Gaetz.

(%$ mine)

The DoJ refused to provide information to the committee, even after it had been subpoenaed.

The money quote is, "To date, DOJ has provided no meaningful evidence or information to the Committee or cited any lawful basis for its responses."

This is not ethics, nor is it non-partisanship.  It is cowardice and corruption.

Pass the Popcorn

The House Ethics Committee will be releasing its report on Matt Gaetz.

So, we are going to be reading stories about his drug fueled exploits with young (underage?) girls shortly.

I am amused:

The US House of Representatives ethics committee has reportedly voted to release a report on sexual misconduct allegations against Matt Gaetz, the former Republican representative who was forced to drop his bid to become Donald Trump’s attorney general amid fallout over the accusations.

According to CNN, the House ethics committee voted earlier this month to release the report, which is expected to be made public after the chamber’s final votes of the year later this week.

The news comes a month after the committee deadlocked on whether to release the report, as members fell along party lines in the private vote. The recent decision now suggests that at least one Republican member of the panel has joined Democrats in supporting its publication.

I think that Gaetz underestimated just how much he is loathed by fellow members of the Republican House Caucus.

Quote of the Day

My spicy view about just why some billionaires - people who seemingly have everything they could possibly want and are almost entirely unaffected by anything that actually happens to the rest of us - are so into converting the country into a neo-feudal hellscape is that there are a couple of things that, despite their unimaginable wealth, they would have a hard time getting away with anywhere in the world.

Specifically, they want literal slaves, including child slaves, with all that implies.

—Atrios

Obviously, Mr. Black intent here is to be provocative, but that does mean that this is not true.

In fact, I would argue that this is, to quote Charles Dickens, "True ……… as turnips is. It was as true ……… as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them."

Billionaires want to be God Kings who are exempt from the ordinary norms of human decency.

This is not a good or a healthy thing.

It would be best for society to arrest them, deport them to China, and force them to work at a Foxconn.

Self Regulation is to Regulation as Self Importance is to Importance

Which is why, as Pro Publica so pithily notes, the self policing of the judiciary, "Doesn’t Work."

It does not work for product safety, it does not work for the environment, it does not work for workplace safety, it does not work for doctors, nor does it work for lawyers.

Self regulation does nor work here nor there,
Self regulation does not work anywhere.

Self regulation does not work with roof repair,
Self regulation does not work while flying in the air.

I do not like it Sam I Am.  

………

But I digress:

For decades, judges have relied on a select group to make sure the judiciary adheres to the highest ethical standards: themselves.

The Judicial Conference, a secretive, century-old council of federal judges led by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, oversees the ethics and financial disclosures for more than 1,700 federal judges, including the nine justices of the high court. Those financial disclosures, submitted yearly as a list of assets and gifts, are often the only window into whether judges with lifetime appointments have conflicts of interest as they rule on the country’s most consequential legal cases.

The judiciary's leaders argue that the conference has been an effective watchdog over America's third branch of government. The conference’s authority plays an important role in judicial controversies and has been at the center of some defenses of the court following ProPublica’s reporting on possible ethical breaches. With its “sound structure of self-governance,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in 2021, “the Judicial Conference has been an enduring success.”

In reality, the Judicial Conference has instead often protected, not policed, the judiciary, according to interviews and previously undisclosed internal documents. For decades, conference officials have repeatedly worked to preserve judges’ most coveted perks while thwarting congressional oversight and targeting “disloyal” figures in the judiciary who argued for reforms.

This is what happens in all cases where the fox guards the henhouse.

It is all about protecting the prestige of their institutions, and their phony baloney jobs.

Only being a federal judge is not a phony baloney job.

In the mid-1990s, two judges — a member of the Supreme Court and a judge on the conference — arranged to obscure a legal publisher’s role in underwriting meetings for an awards ceremony attended by judges at lavish resorts in locales like the Virgin Islands and Hawaii.

………

And when the judiciary clarified its rules on federal judges’ disclosures earlier this year, the final version was watered down, according to internal documents obtained by ProPublica. The goal behind some of the proposed edits, a staff attorney explained in an email to a subordinate, was to avoid “drawing bright lines.”

………

Across the federal government, financial disclosures and potential conflicts of interest are self-reported. But experts say the judiciary has the least oversight of all three branches.

………

Even one of the Financial Disclosure Committee’s main functions — making sure judges’ self-reported income, assets and gifts comply with the law — is designed to help judges, not hold them accountable, according to nine federal judges and current and former staffers. Most of that daily work is farmed out to an obscure government agency known as the Administrative Office.

………

Last month, the Supreme Court adopted its first-ever code of conduct but stopped short of defining an enforcement mechanism. That, coupled with the Judicial Conference’s record, has led some observers to assert that the new rules will ultimately change little.

That’s the way some judges like it.

I don't care if the judges like or not.

I want them to not be corrupt.  That does not appear to be too much to ask for, does it?

Speaking of the Corruption That Is Our Healthcare System

So, we have a healthcare analyst looking at Pfizer's missteps on obesity drugs, by which I mean injuring people, with adverse side effects effecting nearly ¾ of test subjects.

So, what is a the response of a highly respected financial adviser on Wall Street, to ask, "Is it time to buy Pfizer yet?"

Seriously, a 73%+ (the 73% is just for nausea, when you roll in the vomiting and diarrhea it undoubtedly goes higher) adverse side effect rate, and you are wondering if it's time to buy?

Something is very wrong with incentives in society.

Running Grisly Numbers

As I have noted earlier, I've not made much in the way of comments about the Gaza war, because I have very little to add.

Then there was a discussion of plans by IDF to bring in large pumps and flood the Gaza tunnel complexes with seawater at the Stellar Parthenon BBS, and someone said that they should use desalinated water to minimize the damage.

And then I got to go all, "Guardian of Forever," because I got to run numbers. Someone gave me a problem to solve, and by Spock's pointy ears, once you do that, there is no stopping me.

Just ask Sharon*, when I said early in our marriage that I was neither of us were the divorcing kind, we were the murdering kind, and she asked me, "So how would you kill me?"

Give me a problem, and I will look for a solution.  It makes me happy to figure stuff like this out.

My solution, rather upset Sharon* for a few days, but as the chicken said, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

So back to the flooding problem.

Point 1 which should be obvious to everyone, is that flooding the tunnels will do enormous damage regardless of the salinity of the water , because pumping that much water into a cave complex does a f%$# tonne of damage.

So, let's assume that the IDF has about 20 so pumps to flood the Tunnel.

The first question is, "How much water will they move?"

Well, given that the Three Gorges dam has a flow rate of about 600–950 cubic metres per second with a water head of 86m through through its generators, and you are looking for flow rate, and not pressure (head), we can say that about 20 pumps could likely put out about 100 m3/s, (26,417 gallon/s) probably with about a 10m (32.8 feet) head.

Each pump would put out 5m3/s (1321 gallon/s).

By way of comparison, the one of the larger fire boats out there the Warner L. Lawrence  can put out about 38,000 gallon/minute. (633 Gallon/S or 2.397 m3/s).

OK, so we would probably be looking at more pumps, or less water, but comparative numbers are the same.

The equation for the energy required for pumping is:

P = q h ρ / (6116 103 μ) (3)

where

P = power (kW)
q = flow (liter/min)
h = head (m)
ρ = density (kg/m3) (water 1000 kg/m3)
μ = pump efficiency (decimal value)

100 m3/s equals 6 million liters per minute, we've got a head of 10 feet, and I am assuming a pump efficiency of 80%, which is probably a bit low.

Crunching those numbers, we get 12,263 kW, which is a lot of power, about ⅓ of the shaft horsepower of a Virginia Class SSN.

So for 100 m3/s of water desalination, how much power does it take?

Well, it takes between 3 and 9 kWh/m3 of water using reverse osmosis, generally considered the most efficient method. Taking the low end, 3kWh = 10,800,000 Joules, so to desalinate 100 m3/s of water, you would need, 1,080,000,000 Joules/s = 1,080,000,000 W = 1,080,000 kW = 1,080 mW = 1.08 gW.

That is roughly 88 times more power than involved in just pumping sea water, and about 5% of Israeli generation capacity of 21.5 gW.

As such it is likely not viable.

Now this is all just spitballing, and I am not considering the humanitarian and moral issues, because this serves as a way for me to avoid the potential humanitarian and moral issues.

Please, feel free to check my math.  It is late at night, and I am still recovering from whatever variant of the Plague that I caught from my wife, so my mind is no where as clear as it should be.

Feel free to castigate me for running these numbers as a way to avoid looking at the moral dimensions here.  I just can't do that yet.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Beaver Bombing, It’s Not What You Think

Ecological activists are reintroducing beavers to rivers without the proper permits.

I have mixed emotions about this.

On the one hand, we have all sorts of ecological chicanery carried out under the auspices of restoration, and on the other hand, it's beavers, who are ecological miracle workers:

In 1998, Olivier Rubbers “beaver bombed” his local waterways.

In layman’s terms, that means he re-released beavers into the wild, letting them naturally dam up a river. It was technically illegal, but it raises the question — is it wrong?

Rubbers picked up beavers from Germany, then crossed the border into his native Belgium to release them. He repeated this several times over two years, bringing a total of 97 beavers into his country. He watched as the beavers did their magic, turning streams into beaver ponds, a perfect habitat for frogs, fish, and more.

………

And Rubbers is not alone. There is an underground network of wildlife lovers who also do this type of conservation: illegally introducing, removing, or reintroducing species to bring balance back to nature. Some have proper scientific backgrounds, while others, like Rubbers, do not.

Not sure how I feel about this while phenomenon.

What I do know is that the permitting process should be more efficient, and these actions should not be limited to cute animals like beavers.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Has a Lox on the Ethics Issue

While Clarence Thomas was taking millions of dollars of bribes, Elena Kagan refused a gift of lox and bagels from former high school classmates, because she felt that the ethical considerations were too involved.

The contrast is stunning:

A group of women who went to high school with Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wanted to send her bagels and lox from Russ & Daughters, the legendary deli on the Lower East Side. But they scrapped the plan after Kagan expressed concerns about the court’s ethics rules for reporting gifts.

The idea for the gift originated in a Facebook group for women who attended Hunter College High School in Manhattan in the 1970s. (Kagan was in the class of ’77.)

Full disclosure, my mom was class of 1954.

“I somewhat tongue-in-cheek said, ‘I feel so badly for her, it must be so lonely and difficult, we should send her a care package,’” recalled Ann Starer, Hunter class of ’75.

The idea of sending the appetizing spread was proposed in February 2021 and abandoned soon after. But Kagan’s ethical concerns about accepting bagels and lox from her high school pals are newly relevant in contrast with the scandal surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas, who failed to disclose luxury vacations and other gifts from billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.

The writer Sarah Schulman, who also went to Hunter, posted on Facebook on May 6 that the care package for Kagan was envisioned “as a sign of support for the nightmare of having to go to work with Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch every day. She turned it down because her ethical standard is to not accept any gifts. I mean, she said no to lox and bagels!”

Compare that to Thomas, Schulman added, with “his real estate, fancy travel and cold hard cash. Lox!”

Clarence Thomas is a lying corrupt son of a bitch.

So is Gorsuch, and Alito, and Kavanaugh, and Antonin Scalia was on a Thomas-style junket when he died from choking on his own bile in 2016.

Next time that I am in New York City, I need to check out Russ & Daughters.

Today in Corrupt Supreme Court Justices not Named Clarence Thomas

Unlike the case with Clarence Thomas, the conflicts of interest seem to be far more direct.

You see just 9 days after he was confirmed to the Supreme Court, Brian Duffy, the head of the white shoe law firm Greenberg Traurig bought some land that he co-owned, which he had been trying to unload for some time.

Rather suspiciously, Brian Duffy's name was not mentioned in Gorsuch's disclosure forms.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that since Neil Gorshuch was seated Greenberg Traurig has been involved in dozens of cases before the court.

It appears that there is an ethics problem at the court, but don't expect anything to change, Chief Justice John Roberts just told the Senate to go pound sand on their ethics investigation:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told Senate leaders Tuesday that he would “respectfully decline” to testify at a Senate hearing focused on the Supreme Court, offering instead a statement signed by all the justices in which they “reaffirm and restate foundational ethics principles and practices” to which they abide.

There did not seem to be new proposals or guidelines in the “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices.” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) immediately labeled it insufficient, noting recent revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas that the senator said illustrated the need for more scrutiny.

The Senate Juciciary Committee needs to subpoena John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch. but they can't because Dianne Feinstein* is unable to attend meetings right now, and is not coming back, and her staffers are desperate to maintain the illusion, and the status to go on with their positions, so we won't see a resignation and replacement.

That leaves the executive branch to go and do a deep dive on every single member of the court, including a forensic audit, but Merrick "Slow Walk" Garland would never do that, because pursuing lawbreaking by some of the most powerful people in the country might lead to people thinking that the DoJ is engaging in partisan prosecutions.

Deciding not to prosecute criminals because politicians will talk smack about you is not an exercise in non-partisan integrity, it is craven cowardice.

For nearly two years beginning in 2015, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sought a buyer for a 40-acre tract of property he co-owned in rural Granby, Colo.

Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court. Gorsuch owned the property with two other individuals.

On April 16 of 2017, Greenberg’s Brian Duffy put under contract the 3,000-square foot log home on the Colorado River and nestled in the mountains northwest of Denver, according to real estate records.

Let's be clear, Gorsuch and his partners could have sold their land in a lot less than 2 years, but they could not get the price that they want.  The head of  Greenberg Traurig paid that price, 9 days after his confirmation.

How convenient.

………

He and his wife closed on the house a month later, paying $1.825 million, according to a deed in the county’s record system. Gorsuch, who held a 20 percent stake, reported making between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale on his federal disclosure forms.

Gorsuch did not disclose the identity of the purchaser. That box was left blank.

The box was left blank?  How convenient.

Since then, Greenberg Traurig has been involved in at least 22 cases before or presented to the court, according to a POLITICO review of the court’s docket.

At least 22 cases?  How convenient.

………

Duffy, who in addition to serving as CEO is chief of Greenberg’s entire 600-lawyer litigation department, said he has never personally argued cases before Gorsuch or met the justice socially.

“I’ve never spoken to him,” Duffy said. “I’ve never met him.”

Once he learned Gorsuch was among the owners, Duffy said, he cleared the sale with his firm’s ethics department.

His doing a multi-million dollar favor to a Supreme Court Justice and his business partners was cleared by the Greenberg Traurig ethics department?  How convenient.

Gorsuch did not respond to inquiries about the sale, his disclosures or whether he should have reported Duffy’s identity as the purchaser.

He did not respond? How convenient!

………

Unlike Crow, who bought properties from Thomas, Duffy says he is neither a friend nor a confidant of Gorsuch. But he is one of the nation’s most powerful attorneys.

One of the nation’s most powerful attorneys?  How convenient.

………

Gorsuch and his associates purchased the property in 2005 through their LLC, the Walden Group, which was dissolved after the 2017 sale. The home was originally listed, in July of 2015, for $2.495 million. The fact that the property had sat on the market for so long and that its price had been lowered a couple times suggests the partners were having trouble finding a buyer.

How convenient! 

Nothing to see here, move along.

^*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.

Today in Horrible Ideas

A bill in Massachusetts is proposing time off of prison sentences for donating organs.

I understand that there are often shortages of organ donors, but this proposal is not  a slippery slope thing, this is a fucking step off of a fucking cliff.

How could ANYONE propose this?

Massachusetts Democrats have a bold new proposal for prisoners: donate your organs or bone marrow, and get as little as a couple of months off of your sentence. The legislation, which has attracted five cosponsors in the state House, raises major bioethical concerns for the 6,000-plus people currently held in the Bay State’s prisons. In essence, the bill would ask prisoners which is more important to them: their freedom, or their organs and bone marrow.

The bill appears to go significantly beyond other organ-donation policies for prisoners. The Federal Bureau of Prisons says that prisoners may donate their organs while incarcerated, but only to immediate family members. In 2013, the state of Utah allowed organ donation from prisoners who died while being incarcerated. Most other states do not allow organ donations from prisoners at all.

The Ethics Committee of the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that administers organ transplants in the United States, has panned proposals like the Massachusetts bill. “Any law or proposal that allows a person to trade an organ for a reduction in sentence… raises numerous issues,” the committee says in a position statement on their website.

The legislation, HD 3822, states, “The Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program shall allow eligible incarcerated individuals to gain not less than 60 and not more than 365 day reduction in the length of their committed sentence in [prison], on the condition that the incarcerated individual has donated bone marrow or organ(s).”

This has dystopia written all over it.

Corrupt as Hell

Scalia took dozens of trips, virtually none paid for, and now these freebies show up in this story. There are now multiple overlapping intersecting scandals at Supreme Court. https://t.co/zG5FpF3D2Y

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) November 20, 2022

Curious

Remember when the decision for the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization striking down the right to abortion was leaked to the press, and there was a furor over someone betraying the tradition of secrecy of the court??

After about a week or so, suddenly all the questions about who the leaker might be stopped.

There was a theory that his had happened because the leaker was the author of the decision, Justice Samuel Alito.

Well, now he have reports from whistleblowers showing that Alito leaked like a sieve:

As the Supreme Court investigates the extraordinary leak this spring of a draft opinion of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a former anti-abortion leader has come forward claiming that another breach occurred in a 2014 landmark case involving contraception and religious rights.

In a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and in interviews with The New York Times, the Rev. Rob Schenck said he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced. He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show, and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that was the winning party in the case.

………

Mr. Schenck’s allegation creates an unusual, contentious situation: a minister who spent years at the center of the anti-abortion movement, now turned whistle-blower; a denial by a sitting justice; and an institution that shows little outward sign of getting to the bottom of the recent leak of the abortion ruling or of following up on Mr. Schenck’s allegation.

The evidence for Mr. Schenck’s account of the breach has gaps. But in months of examining Mr. Schenck’s claims, The Times found a trail of contemporaneous emails and conversations that strongly suggested he knew the outcome and the author of the Hobby Lobby decision before it was made public.

Mr. Schenck, who used to lead an evangelical nonprofit in Washington, said he learned about the Hobby Lobby opinion because he had worked for years to exploit the court’s permeability. He gained access through faith, through favors traded with gatekeepers and through wealthy donors to his organization, abortion opponents whom he called “stealth missionaries.”

………

In May, after the draft opinion in the abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was leaked in what Justice Alito recently called “a grave betrayal,” the chief justice took the unusual step of ordering an investigation by the Supreme Court’s marshal. Two months later, Mr. Schenck sent his letter to Chief Justice Roberts, saying he believed his information about the Hobby Lobby case was relevant to the inquiry. He said he has not gotten any response.

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.

But wait, there's more.  It appears that there is an ongoing pattern of inappropriate contacts, and inappropriate benefits accruing to Justices going back to Scalia's tenure:

Lawmakers are demanding further investigation at the Supreme Court and renewing their calls for binding ethics rules for the justices, after allegations that a landmark 2014 contraception decision was prematurely disclosed through a secretive influence campaign by anti-abortion activists.

“The first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, wrote on Twitter. “At SCOTUS, the problems run deep.”

………

That decision — like the one leaked this spring, overturning the right to abortion — was written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Mr. Schenck said he learned the Hobby Lobby details from a donor who had dined with Justice Alito and his wife. Both the justice and the donor denied sharing the information.

………

The revelations underscored the lack of accountability mechanisms at the Supreme Court. Unlike other federal judges, the justices are not bound by a written code of ethics; legislation that would create one is pending in Congress.

“While there are many potential solutions, here’s one that the Court could adopt in one minute: OPERATE UNDER THE SAME ETHICS RULES AS EVERY OTHER FEDERAL JUDGE,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat and another member of the Judiciary Committee, tweeted in response to the Times report.

………

Ed Whelan, the head of a conservative legal group who clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, said on Twitter that, while the private breach alleged by Mr. Schenck was a different scenario, “It’s long past time for Chief Justice to provide a report on what Dobbs leak investigation has uncovered.”

………

But other scholars and lawmakers said the Times investigation pointed to the need for new transparency rules. Mr. Schenck said that his “stealth missionary” operation was premised on the court’s lack of firmly enforced rules. The court is more permeable than it looks, he said, describing how his group reached the justices, including through their faith, meals together and invitations to vacation homes.

This is the first time that I've seen a Times article that even obliquely alludes to the gratuities that are a routine part of the life of the right-wing Supreme Court justices, and this is what Senator Whitehouse alludes to.

As to the question of how to enforce it, make the ethical standards legally binding, and allow the Department of Justice to prosecute violations.

Well, This Explains a Lot

It appears that senior bureaucrats at the Federal Trade Commission are heavily invested in the large internet companies, which might explain why, at least until Lina Khan took the helm, the agency was so lackadaisical at enforcing antitrust law:

The top watchdog of American business is also home to Washington’s most active Wall Street investors.

The Federal Trade Commission in recent years has opened investigations into nearly every major industry. It has launched antitrust probes into technology companies, examined credit card firms and moved to restrict drug, energy and defense-company mergers.

At the same time, senior officials at the FTC disclosed more trades of stocks, bonds and funds, on average, than officials at any other major agency in a Wall Street Journal review of financial disclosures at 50 federal agencies from 2016 to 2021.

Many of the investments overlapped with the FTC’s work.

………

The officials were most heavily invested in technology, an industry that has come under increasing scrutiny by the agency. Nearly one in four top FTC officials owned or traded individual stocks of tech companies such as Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. 

………

An FTC chairman owned Microsoft, Oracle and AT&T Inc. while the agency was conducting sensitive reviews affecting the tech and telecom sectors.

The head of the FTC’s international division bought and sold Facebook stock through a financial adviser as his office coordinated with overseas enforcement officials on an investigation involving Facebook.

And an FTC consumer-protection official owned stock in more than 10 companies as the agency scrutinized mergers or acquisitions involving the firms. 

………

For years, the FTC has faced bipartisan criticism for not more aggressively enforcing competitive practices in corporate America. Now it is poised to take a far higher profile. President Biden has signaled tougher antitrust scrutiny and appointed as chairwoman a vocal critic of large companies.

Senior bureaucrats should be forbidden from trading individual stocks, and their ownership of various funds should limited to those available to the general public.  (The same goes for Congress)

Of course, at least according to Nancy "We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that" Pelosi, won't ever allow anything close that to reach the floor of the House, so this will continue.

Irony Much?

I literally could not have imagined, even as a joke, that the firm EY (Formerly Ernst & Young) was just fined for (among other things) cheating on ethics exams that it was required to give its staff.

This from an industry that frequently uses its (alleged) need to maintain a sterling reputation as a shield against accusations of wrongdoing. 

When the clients paying your salary demand a cover up, auditors give them a coverup.

This is true today, this was true in the 2008 meltdown, this was true in the 2000 dotcom bubble bursting, and this was true in the 1929 stock market crash.

To imagine anything else is a recipe for fraud and corruption.