Legal

Alec Baldwin’s case was dismissed with prejudice.

What does this mean, IANAL view point

Alec Baldwin was charged with involuntary manslaughter after he shot and killed his cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins.

The relevant facts: Alec Baldwin was holding a real gun. Alec Baldwin pointed the gun at a person. Alec Baldwin cocked the gun (pulled the hammer back and set it on the sear). Alec Baldwin then pressed the trigger, causing the gun to fire, killing Halyna Hutchins.

Irrelevant facts: Somebody told Alec Baldwin that the gun was unloaded (Treat every gun as if it is loaded). Somebody said they loaded dummy rounds into the gun (Treat every gun as if it is loaded). He says he did not pull the trigger, (Never point your gun at something you are not willing to destroy/kill.). In addition, he injured the director(?) (Be sure of your target and what is beyond it).

Other irrelevant facts: Baldwin is just a trained monkey. He can’t be expected to know the safety rules. Baldwin is so stupid that he should never have been handed a real gun. It was somebody else’s responsibility to make sure that the gun was “safe”.

Things went wrong on that set. Some of it appears to be Baldwin’s responsibility. Including rushing the safety crew, disregarding safety “suggestions” and overall shitty safety.

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There were several cases GVRed at the end of June. This is one of the methods the Supreme Court uses to communicate with the inferior courts.

What they are doing is telling the inferior courts, all of them, that this opinion we issued, applies to these sorts of cases.

The Loper Bright case was the death of Chevron. Chevron was the horrible opinion out of the Supreme Court that said, if the agency administrating a law thinks it is ambiguous, then it is ambiguous. If it is ambiguous, the courts must use the agency’s interpretation of the law.

Since the Chevron opinion, the Supreme Court has been attempting to “fix it”. The problem was that they needed the inferior courts to do rational, reasonable things. Too many of the inferior courts did not do reasonable, rational things.

Chevron became a catch-all for any power hungry agency.

The Loper Bright opinion told the inferior courts, “Stop avoiding your job. You are the final arbitrator on questions of law, not any party. Get out there and read the law and do the right thing.”

Judge Aileen M. Cannon did exactly this.

Trump’s team had filed a motion to dismiss his case based on the theory that Jack Smith did not have the authority to bring charges.

While everybody has been calling Jack Smith “The Special Counsel”, that is a position that must exist.

The Trump motion points out that the Constitution defines how “Officers of the United States” are appointed. Those officers are separated into “inferior” or “principal” officers.

Principal officers must be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

Jack Smith argues that he is an inferior officer.

While inferior officers can be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in Heads of Departments. — U.S. Constitution

The state, through Jack Smith, argued that his appointment was lawful because it was done under an ambiguous law. Since it is an ambiguous law, the DoJ was able to say, under Chevron that of course they got it right.

But with Chevron dead, the Court looked at the law and determined that the DoJ did not have the authority to create the position. Since they could not create the position, Jack Smith had no special standing. I.e., his authority was no more than yours or mine.

This is another win for us. And this case was decided without a need for looking at Presidential Immunity for official acts.

In August 2022, Thomas and Diane Lamarco filed suit in the eastern district of New York. This is a different challenge to §922(g).

If you read §922(g), or you are familiar with from 4473, you know there is a long list of people that are prohibited from possessing firearms. We are currently arguing about the constitutionality of most of §922(g).

In Rahimi the Supreme Court said that people who have been adjudicated guilty in a court of law of being a credible threat of physical violence to another, can be temporarily denied their Second Amendment protected rights.

The Supreme Court has not said anything about non-violent people, nor about people who have served their time.

But did you know that there is another entire group of prohibited people? There is.

These are the people that reside on the same property as a prohibited person. The state assumes that if a person resides at a property, they have access to any of the firearms at that property. It doesn’t matter whether the firearm is secured or not. The state assumes the prohibited person has access.

At some point, officers responded to a “mental health assistance” call for somebody else at the residence. This response, in Suffolk County, means that the other residents lose their gun rights.

They want to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment is implicated. The burden shifts to the state to prove a historical tradition of matching firearms regulations in this Nation’s history.

This was filed on July 1st. The court was having none of it.

This is a text order, there is no citation to a paper. It is in the docket for the case.

This is a spanking of the state. No doubt about it. Good news.

What is a GVR?

The process for an appeal is to request that a case be heard. When the superior court Grants that appeal, the case is moved to a final opinion. One of the possible outcomes is that the inferior court’s opinion is Vacated.

When an inferior court’s opinion is vacated, the superior court has an option to Remand the case back to the inferior court for a do-over.

When the superior court does this without hearing anything from the parties outside the request to be heard, it is called “GVR”.

If the superior court were to just “GVR” a case, it wouldn’t be helpful to the inferior court. Nobody learns from “You are mistaken, do it over.” There needs to be some level of feedback.

On July 2nd, 2024, the Supreme Court issued their final orders of the 2023 term.

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We knew that Sotomayor wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, I love how Justice Thomas cites to her opinion saying that AR-15s are in common use.

…does not even fall within the scope of …: That should have Easterbrook and Woods looking for a rock to crawl under. That is a strong rebuke, coming from the Supreme Court.

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I remember taking some classes back in the olden times, where they described the Republican form of government that was created for these United States. I seem to remember that the federal government was made up of three branches, the legislative branch tasked with creating laws, the executive branch, tasked with implementing those laws and has veto powers over laws passed by the legislative branch, and the judicial branch, tasked with resolving disputes about the meaning of the laws.

If the President decides that a bill that has passed congress is unacceptable, he can veto that bill. If congress strongly disagrees with his opinion, they can override that veto.

Once the bill has become law, the President, as head of the executive branch, implements the law.

If there are any disputes about the law, that goes before the judiciary for their opinion.

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Just what is —LaMarco v. Suffolk County, No. 2:22-cv-04629, slip op. at 6 (E.D.N.Y.)? Chevron is the case where the Supreme Court found that the courts, both the Supreme and the inferior courts, should defer to “permissible” agency interpretations of statutes those agencies administer.Missing citations for 68UX6LY9.

The Chevron doctrine was another two-step framework. 1) Did Congress directly address the precise question, and was the congressional intent clear? 2) Is the statute silent or ambiguous with the specific issue at hand.

If the answer to both questions was “yes”, then the court was required to defer to the agency administrating the statute.

Like the two-step shuffle of pre-Bruen Second Amendment jurisprudence, the courts always found for the state. Is the puddle in my backyard navigable waters of the United States, as defined in the EPA? Congress did not precisely address puddles, and since this is a dispute, it must be ambiguous. EPA, do you think that puddles in his backyard qualify as navigable waters of the United States?

Well, yes. You see, that water flows into that ditch, that ditch flows into that stream (which is dry 9 out of 12 months), from there it flows into that creek, from there into that river. Rivers are navigable waters and this puddle is connected to it and contributes to it. If the owner of the property were to divert that water, they are effecting the river.

Now, that might sound like a made up example, it is not. It is a case from memory where the EPA took a homeowner to court for violating the Environmental Protection Act because they changed the contours of their backyard to eliminate a soft spot that got yucky a few times a year.

What is Loper
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There was a reason that the DoJ wanted Rahimi before the Supreme Court. The facts in his case were bad facts. Bad facts lead to bad law.

The first thing to note about the Rahimi opinion, is that it is an “as applied”. This means the opinion only counts for Rahimi. The decision does not directly affect anybody else.

Rahimi claimed that §922(g)(8) was unconstitutional on its face. This requires that there are no circumstances where it could be constitutional. This is an extremely high bar to meet.

This is where the bad facts start. Rahimi was subject to a domestic violence temporary restraining order. This requires that certain requirements be met. As stated in other articles, the law, as written, does not require that the accused receive notification, only that the notification was sent. It does not require that the accused appear at the hearing, only that they have an opportunity to attend.

Rahimi received his notification, appeared in court. This means that the first two, of three requirements are met.

The third requirement, is that the accused be found to be a credible threat.

Rahimi admitted, and the court found, that he was a credible threat.

This meets all three prongs of §922(g)(8)
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The Harrel v. Raoul case is one of the many challenges to the Illinois PICA act. It is grouped with other PICA challenges.

For the last 6 Fridays, the case has been distributed for Conference. On the following Monday, the Supreme Court issues their orders. For 6 weeks, the case has been redistributed for Conference the following Friday.

Today’s order list is out. They did not grant nor did they deny cert.

They also did not Distribute for Conference on 2024-06-28. That could just be normal holiday behavior, but something different happened.

I’ve noticed that she likes to write her own little pieces. Almost as if she wanted the attention.

One of my favorite Jackson statements was something similar to “that would make it too hard for the government.”

It is always nice when a Justice tells us they are biased. She thinks she is better than those that who sat for Bruen. Regardless, even she agrees that Bruen affirming Heller is binding law. No two-step shuffle anymore. No interest balancing. The weakest Justice on the court sees it, so to should inferior courts.

The apparent difficulty that she is seeing is inferior courts attempting to circumvent the clear instructions in Bruen. Is it an arm? Does somebody want to keep or bear it? The Second Amendment’s plain text is implicated. The burden shifts to the state.

This isn’t difficult. Any judge or lawyer that wasn’t result/agenda driven could see that.

“It’s too hard!” they scream. Yes, it is too difficult to infringe on The People and not sound like a pretzel maker.

They are struggling because they lost the game. The two-step shuffle of deciding how much she was raped, and then deciding if the rapist (state) had a good enough reason for raping. She wasn’t wearing a full-body sack, she forced that rapist to rape her.
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