#jack goldsmith

[dumbestthingiveeverheard]

Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 8/8/2023

Fifth Place: Frank Luntz

"This is not the party that I that I joined 40 years ago," said Republican pollster Frank Luntz on the topic of Donald Trump, specifically in reference to his strong support of Russia. Of course, Luntz seems to want us to forget that he got his start in politics working for the campaign of the nationalist and self-described neo-isolationist Pat Buchanan back in 1992, who has also been a stern defended of Putin throughout his life.

Fourth Place: Ron DeSantis

Ron DeSantis is not going to be President, I am certain of that--and I knew it from day one. The people who want somebody with his policies want Donald Trump and the people who want somebody who isn't Donald Trump don't like how similar he is to Trump, it's the same issue Warren had back in 2020 (anybody to her left went to Sanders and anybody to her right went to Biden).

This was confirmed once again today through a Mediaite article which documents that DeSantis has now fallen behind Vivek Ramaswamy in terms of betting odds! Ramaswamy, of course, also has no shot at the Republican nomination, let alone the Presidency as the polls have constantly made it clear that the only person who can win the primary is Donald Trump. Still, this is yet another piece of bad news for DeSantis, and nothing about his campaign has shown he has any chance at getting the nomination short of Donald Trump dropping out--and even then, that wouldn't be guaranteed.

Third Place: Tommy Tuberville

Did you know that a sitting United States Senator isn't a politician? Because that's what Tommy Tuberville said on Laura Ingraham's show last night! I don't even have a joke for this one, it's just really dumb.

Second Place: Matt Walsh

Media Matters caught this line from Matt's show today where he proves he is, quite literally, panphobic:

This is just creepy. I gotta say. It's made up, obviously. That's the main thing. Pansexual is not a thing. It's not real. It's also creepy. I'm able to be attracted to anyone, he says. Ew. Like, calm down. That -- I can walk into a room and just be attracted -- just the way he phrases it, to me, makes it creepier. I am able to be attracted to anyone. Like, this is some sort of superpower that he has. I can walk into a room and be attracted to anyone or anything. Okay? Just watch me. You don't think I can? Not something to be proud of, man. That's -- the fact that you're in a constant state of arousal is not something you want to brag about in the news. It's not open minded. It's just weird.

Matt goes on like this for awhile, not getting that being attracted to people regardless of their gender identity--which is what pansexuality actually is--is not the same as literally being attracted to all human beings everywhere. Matt, it seems, does not understand that if a pansexual says they're "attracted to anybody" they're speaking metaphorically.

First Place: Jack Goldsmith

Another New York Times opinion piece, this time by a member of the George W. Bush Administration who is warning against prosecuting Donald Trump, most likely because that means they might also go after the Republican Administration he worked for.

You see, according to the article, if Donald Trump is convicted of a crime--that means Republicans won't trust the same justice system they stopped trusting when it refused to allow Donald Trump to remain President despite losing the 2020 Presidential Election.

Jack Goldsmith, you've said the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

[arcticdementor]

Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal

In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong.

Covid-19 has emboldened American tech platforms to emerge from their defensive crouch. Before the pandemic, they were targets of public outrage over life under their dominion. Today, the platforms are proudly collaborating with one another, and following government guidance, to censor harmful information related to the coronavirus. And they are using their prodigious data-collection capacities, in coordination with federal and state governments, to improve contact tracing, quarantine enforcement, and other health measures. As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recently boasted, “The world has faced pandemics before, but this time we have a new superpower: the ability to gather and share data for good.”

Civil-rights groups are tolerating these measures—emergency times call for emergency measures—but are also urging a swift return to normal when the virus ebbs. We need “to make sure that, when we’ve made it past this crisis, our country isn’t transformed into a place we don’t want to live,” warns the American Civil Liberties Union’s Jay Stanley. “Any extraordinary measures used to manage a specific crisis must not become permanent fixtures in the landscape of government intrusions into daily life,” declares the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group. These are real worries, since, as the foundation notes, “life-saving programs such as these, and their intrusions on digital liberties, [tend] to outlive their urgency.”

But the “extraordinary” measures we are seeing are not all that extraordinary. Powerful forces were pushing toward greater censorship and surveillance of digital networks long before the coronavirus jumped out of the wet markets in Wuhan, China, and they will continue to do so once the crisis passes. The practices that American tech platforms have undertaken during the pandemic represent not a break from prior developments, but an acceleration of them.

As surprising as it may sound, digital surveillance and speech control in the United States already show many similarities to what one finds in authoritarian states such as China. Constitutional and cultural differences mean that the private sector, rather than the federal and state governments, currently takes the lead in these practices, which further values and address threats different from those in China. But the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable.

In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values.

(Emphasis added)

This, from a Harvard law professor.

[bigtickhk]

Review | An ambitious lawyer, a stepfather with mob ties and the death of Jimmy Hoffa

Jack Goldsmith digs into the union leader’s disappearance, in which his stepfather was a leading suspect.

In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth by Jack Goldsmith https://amzn.to/2obLpHK

[bigtickhk]

Made Man: ‘In Hoffa’s Shadow’ Replays a Famous Disappearance

Was his stepfather involved in Jimmy Hoffa’s murder? In a new book — part memoir, part forensic procedural — Jack Goldsmith tries to find out.

In Hoffa's Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth https://amzn.to/2obLpHK

[universitybookstore]

New from FSG and Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith, In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth. It’s a familiar story, from a unique perspective; the author and former assistant attorney general was also the stepson of Chuckie O’Brien, the right-hand-man of the famously mobbed-up union boss.

[votenet-blog]

Keep the FBI out of politics

Keep the FBI out of politics

Author: Eli Lake / Source: Newsday

Undated Still image of Richard Nixon from a video clip submitted by Hofstra University Law profesor Brian Frye and his wife, Penny Lane, a filmmaking prof. at Bard College. Photo Credit: HANDOUT

The American people have a right to know if their president is a Russian agent.

Richard Nixon delivered a version of this line in November 1973, as the Watergate…

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[dr-archeville]

We have never had a president so ill-informed about the nature of his office, so openly mendacious, so self-destructive, or so brazen in his abusive attacks on the courts, the press, Congress (including members of his own party), and even senior officials within his own administration.  Trump is a Frankenstein’s monster of past presidents’ worst attributes: Andrew Jackson’s rage; Millard Fillmore’s bigotry; James Buchanan’s incompetence and spite; Theodore Roosevelt’s self-aggrandizement; Richard Nixon’s paranoia, insecurity, and indifference to law; and Bill Clinton’s lack of self-control and reflexive dishonesty.”

Jack Goldsmith, The Atlantic 2017-10 issue [source]

[minnesotafollower]

Pre-Veto Controversies Regarding the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA)         

A prior post reviewed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) (S.2040) that was passed by Congress on September 28, 2016, with sufficient votes to override President Obama’s veto of the bill. Now we look at the pre-veto legislative history of JASTA and controversies over the bill.

Legislative History

S.2040 was introduced in the U.S. Senate on September 16, 2015, by Senator John…

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