Gastonia, NC The word doing the work in this indictment is "enterprise," and I want to start there because I spent two days last week finding out that the word does not mean what I assumed it meant. My assumption, and I suspect most people's, was that a racketeering statute reaches organizations whose business is … Continue reading Was the Fulton County racketeering indictment a conventional use of a state RICO statute against an alleged effort to overturn a certified result, or a county prosecutor’s attempt to nationalize a political dispute the voters were already going to retry?
Government
Was the appointment of a special counsel on November 18 an insulation of the documents and January 6 files from electoral politics, or an admission that the Department could not be trusted to finish those files in daylight?
Gastonia, NC Insulation is what you call it when the referee leaves the field so the game can be honest. Admission is what you call it when the referee changes shirts because nobody believes the old one anymore. Last Friday looked more like the second thing, and the calendar tells you why. Trump announced his … Continue reading Was the appointment of a special counsel on November 18 an insulation of the documents and January 6 files from electoral politics, or an admission that the Department could not be trusted to finish those files in daylight?
Does the New York civil-fraud complaint filed last week against the Trump Organization belong in the same “accountability” story as the federal criminal files, or is it a state-law valuation fight being asked to do national political work?
Myrtle Beach, SC A civil case about how a building was described to a bank is not a cousin of a documents warrant merely because the caption contains the same surname. That is where I start, and last Wednesday's filing makes the point better than any argument I could construct. The complaint is brought under … Continue reading Does the New York civil-fraud complaint filed last week against the Trump Organization belong in the same “accountability” story as the federal criminal files, or is it a state-law valuation fight being asked to do national political work?
Did the August search of Mar-a-Lago — and the way information about it reached the public — strengthen public confidence that no one is above the law, or teach half the country that the law now arrives with a media package?
Myrtle Beach, SC Confidence is what you have when the same tool would be used on a man your side still likes. I want to test that standard against the actual sequence, because the sequence is more damning than the version most people are shouting, and it is damning in a different place than they … Continue reading Did the August search of Mar-a-Lago — and the way information about it reached the public — strengthen public confidence that no one is above the law, or teach half the country that the law now arrives with a media package?
Now that the National Archives has confirmed classified material among the returned boxes and referred the matter to the Justice Department, is that ordinary records enforcement, or the conversion of a Presidential Records Act dispute into a criminal predicate?
Gastonia, NC The Presidential Records Act was written as a retrieval statute, not as a tripwire. That distinction matters because institutions develop habits from the verbs they use. Archives collect. They inventory. They send letters. They argue over ownership, custody, classification, privilege, access, and whether the box on the truck belongs in one building or … Continue reading Now that the National Archives has confirmed classified material among the returned boxes and referred the matter to the Justice Department, is that ordinary records enforcement, or the conversion of a Presidential Records Act dispute into a criminal predicate?
Should the House January 6 select committee have been constituted as a genuine bipartisan investigative body with minority subpoena rights, or does its design make a predetermined narrative inevitable?
Myrtle Beach, SC A real investigation can surprise its authors. This one is being built so that surprise would be a malfunction. That is the problem I keep coming back to, and it starts earlier than most of the coverage admits. Before there was a select committee there was a bill for an independent commission … Continue reading Should the House January 6 select committee have been constituted as a genuine bipartisan investigative body with minority subpoena rights, or does its design make a predetermined narrative inevitable?
Did the closure of houses of worship raise constitutional questions the courts have handled well, or has judicial deference to emergency public-health authority gone further than it should?
Owatonna, MN Correspondent — I taught music for years, so let me say the uncomfortable thing first, because nobody at these tables who isn't a musician is going to. The singing evidence is real. In March a choir rehearsed in Washington state — sixty-one people, one infected, and fifty-three of them caught it and two … Continue reading Did the closure of houses of worship raise constitutional questions the courts have handled well, or has judicial deference to emergency public-health authority gone further than it should?
Did the closure of houses of worship raise constitutional questions the courts have handled well, or has judicial deference to emergency public-health authority gone further than it should?
Las Vegas, Nevada Correspondent — I'm the wrong person to be neutral here, because the case that made this national was about my industry. Nevada capped worship attendance at fifty people. Not fifty percent — fifty people, in a building of any size. A casino floor operated at half capacity, which in this town is … Continue reading Did the closure of houses of worship raise constitutional questions the courts have handled well, or has judicial deference to emergency public-health authority gone further than it should?
Did the disruption of the 2020 census produce a count the country can rely on for the next decade?
Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Minnesota is the state with the most direct stake in this and most people here know it. In 2010 we kept our eighth congressional seat by fewer than nine thousand people. That was the last seat apportioned in the entire country. Had the count gone slightly differently, it would have gone … Continue reading Did the disruption of the 2020 census produce a count the country can rely on for the next decade?
Did the disruption of the 2020 census produce a count the country can rely on for the next decade?
Bismarck, North Dakota Correspondent — I'd say we won't know for some time, and that not knowing is itself the problem. The count was suspended in the spring, the schedule was compressed, the end date moved more than once and finally landed in mid-October after the Supreme Court allowed the shortened deadline. Then last month … Continue reading Did the disruption of the 2020 census produce a count the country can rely on for the next decade?
