ABC is being forced has agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s Presidential Library(1) after being found guilty of defamation of character. “ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll(2).”

This is an interesting ending, one I sort of wish Trump had pushed to completion instead of settling. Carroll has never managed to get Trump convicted of rape. What she did was make complaints, and her lawyers set things up such that the jury decided the Bad Orange Man had to be guilty of something, so they went with the lesser charge of sexual assault and/or battery. Please know, that charge (which was not, to my knowledge, defined beyond that) can be handed off to someone who patted the ass of someone in public. It’s ridiculous. I have a real problem with it, because if someone has committed sexual assault, it needs to be dealt with in a court of law. If you can’t prove that it happened, then you need to walk away. Does it suck? Yeah, sometimes it does. But this is America. We don’t get to presume someone guilty until proven innocent, as they do in other countries.

Regardless, he was never convicted of rape, and ABC has to pay for saying he was. It’s not enough, though. We need to get back to our roots, where someone is innocent until PROVEN guilty. Not guessed. Not raked over the media coals. PROVEN guilty, in a court of law, in front of a jury of peers or a judge. I’m tired of the media telling us what to believe.

There have been a few wins for Trump, of late, beyond winning the Presidency. Near as I can tell, he’s basically stopped WWIII. Canada is so upset that they’ve got politicians standing up and vowing to tighten the border while simultaneously saying that Canadians must stand up for Canada and how dare the United States stand up for the United States! It’s rather funny, or it would be if it were a joke.

In the media, we’re seeing interesting reports. Democracy Forward is saying that Trump loses 93% of his cases in court(3), but it isn’t quite that simple. If you go to Policy Integrity’s “round up,(4)” you can see a list of the things Trump won and lost in his first term. If you actually read them, some of the “losses” are wins for Trump. It’s hard to understand, because they (the media, and these sites that report about court cases) just seem to dump everything out in a way that’s difficult to follow. I can only assume that’s because it hides the fact that Trump is doing pretty well.

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The trifecta of pro-Second Amendment cases

In the 60s, I can remember wrapping Christmas presents and then going to the Greyhound bus terminal with my mother. There, she would pay to have a box shipped to the Midwest. This had to be done weeks in advance.

My relatives would go down to the bus station when the packages arrived to pick them up. There were no tracking numbers, there were no promises to deliver on any particular date.

As regular people, it was how you shipped large boxes safely and “rapidly.” The US Post Office would tell you that by the early part of November you should have mailed all your Christmas presents.

When Federal-Express came into existence, the concept of getting something from here to there in less than 24 hours sprang into existence as well. For a few dollars, you could send your packages in early December and still get them there in time.

On Friday night, near midnight, I ordered a gift. It arrived Sunday morning.

Instant gratification.

The courts still move like it was in the days before the Pony Express. Everything takes more time than you want it to. Everything is slower than it should be. Everything is designed to allow for extensions to file.

Nothing is ever “fast”.

For example, you file a petition for writ of certiorari, the respondent has 30 days to file a reply. If that reply is not “We aren’t going to reply”, the petitioner has 14 days(IANAL) to file their response.

This back and forth always has a built-in delay. In addition, the parties can always ask for an extension. It is unusual for the extension to be denied.

September 16th, Petition for writ of certiorari is filed. It is a month before the state says, “we are not going to respond”.

October 28th, the court “requests” the respondent file a response. It is a month before the respondent asks for another 30 days to respond. They want 60 days to write a response.

The Court says, “No, you can have 14 days.”

The petitioner files their response on the day it is due. Do you think they wrote on the day it was due, or do you think they wrote it back when the request for a response was filed?

By the rules of the Court, the petitioner has 14 days to respond. This would put their due date as the 26th of December, past the date to distribute for the January 10th conference.

The Supreme Court conferences every(?) Friday to discuss which cases they will grant cert. These conferences are just the 9 justices. Nobody else attends them.

If the normal schedule was kept, that would mean that the case would not be conferenced until late January. Which means we might miss the 2024 Supreme Court term.

The lawyers for the petitioner (good guys) filed a short note requesting that the petition be distributed on the 24th of December for the January 10th conference. They promise to file their response on the 20th.

This puts this case on schedule for the 2024 term.

Conclusion

We might not see a response from the Court regarding this letter. What we will see is the filing of the response on the 20th.

What we want to see is the case distributed for the conference on the 24th. We are also hoping to see Snope and Ocean State Tactical distributed as well.

If that happens, then the Justices will be discussing all three Second Amendment cases on the 10th of January.

Out of that Conference, we can expect to see each case either relisted or denied. I do not expect to see any of them denied.

If they are relisted, the most likely reason is that they are being granted cert, barring anything procedurally wrong with the cases. That week, the law clerks will be researching those cases to make sure there are no monkey wrenches to be thrown.

The next week, we should expect another relisting. If we don’t see a relisting, we will see acceptance.

What we do not want to see is more than two relistings. More than two is likely to indicate something is wrong with one or more of the cases, and one or more of the Justices is writing a statement regarding that denial of cert.

I’m hoping this is true…

I love making different feasts. It pleases me to no end to come up with some new recipe based on something I saw in passing online. This recipe is based on something I saw on TikTok, and another recipe that I skimmed through on Facebook.

Ingredients:

• pork ribs (2 per person, roughly)
• barbecue sauce (your favorite)
• orange juice
• cranberries
• salt, pepper, paprika, thyme, oregano, red pepper flakes

Grease a large oven-safe pot or pan, deep enough to contain all the ribs plus the liquids. I use no-stick spray, but you could use any fat, really. Preheat your oven to 250F.

Place your ribs into the pan in whatever manner you like, but in a single layer. Don’t stack them on top of each other, or some will be delicious and the rest will be hard and yucky. While the oven preheats, whisk together the barbecue sauce and juice, then add in the spices until it’s right for you. You want enough to cover the top of your ribs, but not to drown them. They’ll make their own liquid as they cook, so you just need to coat the top.

Cover the top of the ribs with the sauce, using a brush to get all the nooks and crannies. Add in the whole, fresh cranberries or some dried ones (or dried cherries, or whatever floats your boat here). Cover the pan with a lid or tin foil, and place in the oven. Bake for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, check on the ribs. They should be partially cooked (pork ribs are fully cooked when they reach an internal temperature of 210F, but they also tend to fall apart when you try to take their temperature, so you can just judge it by that if you like) at this point. Move the ribs around if some of them are sticking out or looking dry, but otherwise, just check on them. Raise the temperature of your oven to 350F, and continue to bake, covered, until the pork is falling apart and ready. You’ll know it’s ready when it basically falls apart when you poke it with a fork.

Serve up hot, with delicata squash and fresh made spinach noodles.

Notes:

I spooned the liquid out of the pot over my noodles, and it was FANTASTIC. I made the noodles myself, although they were a bit soft. I didn’t add enough flour to the recipe. Still, they were tender and quite yummy. And green LOL!

It’s 0430 and I’ve finally regained access to my admin account. The good news is none of the other clients seem to have been affected.

The short of it, three days ago I started draining one of my nodes. It completed Sunday.

This allowed me time to move it to its new home IP and network. In the course of doing the move, I found that I didn’t understand OSPF well enough. But that’s working.

What I did find is that my system is both complex and very resilient. The system was slowly losing contact with different nodes in the OVN cluster. But because I had configured it to be an HA system, it all just kept working.

Even when it stopped, the rest of the cluster kept on trucking. No changes could be made, but it just ran.

This gave me a few hours to make sure all the network configurations were “right”.

Then I found more places where the HA was just working because I had not updated configuration files.

It all seems good now. A little slow, but it’s working.

Defamation: A statement that injures a third party’s reputation. It is a type of tort.

Slander: A false statement, usually made orally, which defames another person. The damages from slander must be proved by the party suing.

Libel: A method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person’s reputation.

In other words, it is all linked together. In general, we speak of libel as written defamation and slander as spoken defamation.

E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her. Trump denied the allegation he raped her. Carroll then sued Trump for defamation.

Trump lost the defamation case. I believe that the case is on appeal.

This is the case that leftists have been using to say “Trump was found guilty of rape.”

No, he was not. Rape is a criminal offense, tried in a court of law, prosecuted by the state. E. Carroll was unable to find a single prosecutor willing to charge Trump with rape.

She brought a civil case. In a criminal case, the accused must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, it is a preponderance of the evidence. Very different.

Nobody on the left is willing to say that a court that finds in the way they want might be biased, while at the same time screaming that any court that finds against their wishes must be right-wing extremists/right leaning bias. In terms of this case, the suit was brought in a notoriously anti-Trump court.

The court allowed statements that did not directly relate to the charge.

In the end, the jury found that no rape occurred but felt that there was a sexual assault. See past articles regarding multiple charges to allow a jury to do the right thing and then give a lesser charge to make the plaintiff (in a civil suit) or the prosecutor a “smaller” win.

The jury awarded E. Carroll 5 million dollars.

Trump makes it all back, and then some

Yesterday, December 15th, Trump reached a settlement with ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle Trump’s defamation suit against ABC News for statements made by George Stephanopoulos.

George claimed that Trump had been found guilt of Rape. This is a false statement that damages Trump’s reputation, i.e., defamation.

Rather than a length and expensive civil trial, which they would have lost. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million for the building of the Trump presidential library. They will also pay $1 million dollars towards Trump’s legal fees.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/george-stephanopoulos-abc-apologize-trump-forced-pay-15-million-settle-defamation-suit

Divination is the art of predicting the future or reading a person using some type of indicator.

Most people can do a cold read of a person and get it mostly right. Others do a much better job.

My personal example was being on a date with a young lady while at university. We had had a nice dinner and were sitting in the rose garden on campus, watching and listening to the water of the river.

I wasn’t pushing, being mostly stupid about females at the time, I was just talking and listening.

I stopped, and said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you had been raped here.” The “guess” was right. I was able to observe her discomfort, and divine what was causing it. Was it magic? No. It was simply a logical result of analyzing the situation and her no verbal cues.

One of the methods that “readers” use to do divination is “reading the tea leaves.” Tea is poured into a teacup with loose tea. The person drinks the tea, leaving the leaves behind. The reader then looks into the cup and divines something about the person, often predicting what will happen to that person.

They read the non-verbal cues to do this, frequently without even understanding the cues they are reading.

The Supreme Court is mystical in how they decide what cases to hear. It is difficult to predict how they will decide given the questioning during oral arguments. Yet, we insist on trying to predict what they will do.

The information we have to work with is typically very limited. In this case, we are attempting to predict if they will grant certiorari in a Second Amendment case.

We have access to the case histories, we have access to the opinion pieces written by others, we have the briefs filed by the parties. We know what other cases are seeking certiorari. And we know cases that will be seeking certiorari.

And we have the orders issued by the Court.

The case which is furthest along appears to be Snope v Brown. It has been fully briefed, it was scheduled to be discussed yesterday.

Snope is an “assault weapon” ban.

Another Second Amendment case is Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island. It has been fully briefed, it was scheduled to be discussed yesterday.

Ocean State Tactical is a “large capacity magazine” ban.

Then there is the case of Gray v. Jennings. This is one of the interesting cases because it doesn’t ask the Court to decide a Second Amendment issue directly, instead, it asks how the inferior courts should address motions for a preliminary injunction.

In September 2024, the petitioner (good guys) filed a petition for writ of certiorari. They are asking the Court to clarify a Winter factor.

Winter factors are the four questions that must be answered before a preliminary injunction is granted, or a stay is granted.

The first question is, “Is the party likelihood of success on the merits of the case?” In other words, is the party requesting the injunction or stay likely to have the winning argument.

The second question is, “Is the party likely to suffer irreparable harm without the injunction/stay?” Losing money is not irreparable harm. Losing your life is. Losing your business? That might be something that can be fixed with lots of money.

The third question is, “Does the balance of equities and hardships tip in favor of the party seeking the injunction/stay?” If the hardship is trivial, then it does not justify an injunction or stay.

The fourth question is, “What is in the best interest of the public?”

In the past, the state has often won injunction’s and stays by getting the courts to modify the order of the factors. They claim it is in the public’s best interest, the court agrees, so never looks at the likelihood of success. Or the court finds that the party is likely to win on the merits, but no harm and no hardship is happening.

The Supreme Court not only set forth the “Winter Factors” but they later ordered that the factors be done in order. Success on the merits must always be done first.

In most civil rights cases, if the party is likely to succeed on the merits of the case, they are granted the preliminary injunction or stay. Having your constitutionally protected rights infringed is always irreparable harm. You will never again be able to speak at that moment.

The balance of equities always favors the protection of The People’s rights.

The public has no interest in enforcing unconstitutional laws.

The exception, of course, has always been Second Amendment cases. Many courts believe that there is no harm in denying The People their constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.

Gray asks, “Is the infringement of Second Amendment [protected] rights per se irreparable injury?”

The Reading

Snope and Ocean State Tactical were both conferenced for December 13th. The state declined to respond to the petition in September/October by Gray. The case was scheduled for conference on November 8.

Five days after it was scheduled, the Court issued a demand for the state to respond.

This is tea leave one. If the Supreme Court is “requesting” a response, it means that they are looking at the case seriously. You get your response in.

The state delayed in responding, then asked for an extension. The extension was granted. The date for the state to respond was fixed at December 12th.

The response is the normal anti-gun garbage. They first claim that there is no circuit split. This is not a requirement, it is just an assumption. The Court will often let an issue simmer until there is a good case. The one place where they are more likely to step in, is if the interpretation of the law is different in different parts of the country.

Their second argument is that the plaintiffs (good guys) should have presented evidence that being unable to purchase guns and magazines was actual irreparable harm.

Finally, they argue that the Circuit court not only rejected their appeal regarding the denial of preliminary injunction on winter factor two, but on factors three and four.

Because the petitioners (good guys) are only challenging the second Winter factor, if it is a Second Amendment challenge, then it is irreparable harm. The reason is that the other two factors also favor the plaintiff, per current case law.

Conclusion

The Supreme Court likely wants to discuss all three of these cases in the same conference. When we see these three cases distributed for conference on the same day, that will be a strong indication.

The Supreme Court can decide to combine the three cases, combine two and leave the third separate, or hear all three.

Of course, they could decide to hear none of them, this is highly unlikely.

Okay, today’s post is a bit of a cheat, but what can I say. I like to window shop, even when the window is Amazon. LOL!

There are a ton of items out there that would make excellent gifts for the Prepper in your life. I hope you find some of these to be of use.

• Weather Radio, USB Charger, combo with great ratings
• Flatpack solar lantern
• The P38 stocking stuffer special
• Power Bank/solar charger
• Zip ties, because if someone says they have enough, they’re lying
• A garden starter kit
• Thermal blankets, because they’re very useful
• SAM Splints, because you may need them some day

It’s just a little list. It’s one I think is worthwhile looking into. Create your own. If you have young ‘uns or teens, give them a Get Home bag for part of their stocking. Plan out your garden for next year and get all the seeds as stocking stuffers. Heck, get seeds you can start indoors now, and plant outside when it gets warmer.

There are some items that are “always buy” in my opinion, like the zip ties and thermal blankets. No matter how many you have, more is always a good thing. Also in that list would be paracord on the roll, small first aid kits, rain ponchos that fit in a purse… There are so many ideas.

Happy holidays, folks. No matter what you celebrate, this is a month full of holy days, and may each of you find something soul comforting over this month.

Networking, still

Major reconfigurations took place. Ceph is now running over OVN/OpenVSwitch. The choice was to determine how to have 5 different networks for the cluster network, or to make just one.

One method would have been to make the cluster network a larger network and then have each of the room networks a subnet of those. This would require some magic that I didn’t want to figure out.

The switch I purchased turned out to be a dud, for me. It only supports MTUs up to 1550 bytes. That is not going to work.

It also turns out that I’m becoming a Cisco router person. Seems that all of these routers I’ve been working with use the Cisco CLI and methods. Yeah.

IPsec

I’ve been using virtual private tunnels for a while now. I’ve been using OpenVPN for the most part. I’ve done a couple of other tunnels. Now I am learning VTI and XFRM tunneling over secure IP. It will be interesting.

Daniel Penny, found not Guilty

After deliberating for multiple days, the jury was hung on the charge of second degree manslaughter.

When the judge allowed the prosecution to drop that charge, leaving criminally negligent homicide, most people expected a guilty plea. That is the norm.

In a shocking turn of events, the jury returned a Not Guilty verdict after only a short deliberation. It appears that the jury was not happy with the judge nor with the event as a whole.

Snope (Bianchi) v. Brown (Frosh) rescheduled

Cases that are seeking a writ of certiorari go through different stages. One path is the emergency docket, the other is the regular docket. This case is on its third petition for writ of certiorari. The first was granted, the lower court’s opinion was vacated, and the case was remanded for further work in light of Bruen

The second time. The case was denied certiorari because the case was in an interlocutory state.

This case is in its final form. It is ready to be heard by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court was originally scheduled to discuss this case today. It has been rescheduled.

Those people who spend their lives reading the tea leaves of the Supreme Court all agree. They all agree they have different opinions and the other guys are all wrong.

I am withholding my opinion until I find out when the case is rescheduled.

Question of the Week

Given all the gun laws on the books, both at a federal and state level. What changes that are pro-Second Amendment and achievable would you like to see in the next year?

By achievable, I mean that “total repeal of all gun laws” is not an achievable goal for 2025.

This might be the most important case regarding the Second Amendment since Heller.

Kolbe v. Hogan

This case started when the Fourth Circuit Court issued their opinion in Kolbe v. Hogan. Fourteen judges sat, en banc to hear a challenge to Maryland’s “assault weapon ban”. Only four of the judges found that the Second Amendment protected the right of The People to acquire, posses, and use “assault weapons”.

Judge King wrote the opinion of the majority. They start with story telling.

You can always tell that an opinion will be a great legal work when the opinion starts with stories of events taking place, outside the legal system. In this case, they decide that the most professional way to start an opinion is by telling their version of the evil Bushmaster AR-15 type rifle that killed so many children at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The entire reference to human autonomy is “a gunman” Everything else is the action of those evil “assault weapons”.

They go on to list other mass shootings, all done by evil black rifles.

Using the standard tap dance of the time, the lower court found that the law implicated the Second Amendment and then decided the government should win, so selected “intermediate scrutiny.”

A three judge merits panel of the Fourth Circuit split for The People, vacating the lower court’s rulings and telling them to “do it over, using strict scrutiny.”

The Fourth Circuit could let this stand, so the en banc vacated the merit panel’s opinion and heard the case.

The en banc Fourth Circuit then decided that the proper position wasn’t strict scrutiny, nor even intermediate scrutiny. No, they decided that “large capacity magazines” and “assault weapons” don’t even implicate the Second Amendment because they are “like” “M-16 rifles.”

Bianchi v. Frosh

This Second Amendment Challenge was started as one of the many cases attempting to get another Second Amendment case before the supreme court. It was a direct challenge to Kolbe.

As such, the case barely paused for a rubber stamp at the district level. The district court, correctly, ruled that they had to follow the superior court, the fourth circuit, and found for the defendants (bad guys).

The gist of the court’s opinion was: This question has been asked and answered by the circuit court. You lose.

The plaintiffs filed an appeal, as planned.

This went before a three judge merits panel. That panel did the same thing the district court did. “The en banc has been asked this question and they answered. You lose.”

On December 20, 2021, the plaintiffs filed a petition for a writ of certiorari. At that point, this became one of a half dozen Second Amendment cases waiting for a writ of certiorari.

In the end, the Supreme Court chose to hear New York Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen.

Justice Thomas wrote the opinion in Bruen and it was powerful.

On Aug 1st, 2022, certiorari was granted in Bianchi. The Supreme Court vacated the opinion of the Fourth Circuit and remanded the case to “do it right”.

Moving at lighting speed, the Fourth Circuit merit’s panel scheduled and heard the case on Dec. 6th, 2022.

And then nothing. For over a year, nothing.

Then on January 12th, 2024, the Fourth Circuit granted a rehearing en banc. Nobody had requested a rehearing, the Fourth just decided to yank it from the merits panel’s hands before they could issue their opinion.

Reading between the lines and often on the lines, it was clear that the merits panel was going to issue an opinion favorable to The People. The dissenting judge refused to provide the dissenting opinion, keeping the opinion from being published.

The en banc Fourth Circuit heard oral arguments on March 20th, 2024.

The plaintiffs filed another petition for writ of certiorari, but it was denied because the case was still in an interlocutory state.

In a surprising move, the Fourth Circuit published their opinion in only 5 months. It was as bad as we expected.

The majority opinion with respectful consideration and benefit of Bruen” upheld their original judgement. They found that they had done it right in Kolbe and that “assault weapons” are outside the ambit of protection of the Second Amendment.

Snope v. Brown

This case has been going on for so long that the AG of Maryland has changed, and might change again before this case is heard. The original lead plaintiff has left the state of Maryland, making David Snope the lead plaintiff.

The petition for writ of certiorari was filed August 21st, 2024.

The state, waited to the last minute, then filed a motion to extend the time to respond. This should have been a no-brainer. They knew this case was going to be appealed. This is just the state intentionally stalling.

By September 23rd, all the plaintiff and amicus curiae supporting the plaintiff had been filed. Not a single filing by the state.

On October 9th, the state requested another 30 days. This was limited to just two extra weeks. This is a big win for The People.

The Supreme Court is now in the 2024 term. This runs from August 2024 through June 2025. All briefings and arguments need to be completed in time for the court to come to a decision and write their opinions before the end of the term.

This means that any case that will be heard in the 2024 term must be granted cert. before the end of January. With final briefings filed by November 12th, the case is conferenced for December 13th. If the state had gotten a 30-day extension, the case might not have been conferenced until mid-January, pushing oral arguments into the 2025 Term.

Remember, this was before the election. The state was hoping that they could push the case into the next presidential term and hope for a more favorable to the state Supreme Court.

In every case before the Supreme Court, the most important part is making sure the question presented is representative and will focus the opinion correctly.

Here is how the state put the question:

Wow, that is difficult to parse. I think it might be a question, there is a question mark at the end of the paragraph.

Translation:

1. Is Maryland’s assault weapon ban consistent with Heller?
2. Did the Fourth Circuit faithfully apply Bruen?
3. Is there a need to resolve a conflict among the lower courts?

I was once a teaching assistant for a computer science professor. His examines were horrible. He thought I was there to proctor the exam. Instead, I took the exam. Scored my answers against the answer sheet outside in the hall. Then told him which questions he would be throwing out as bad questions.

He loved to add negatives to his questions. I can’t even write a question the way he did. It wasn’t uncommon for one of his multiple choice questions to have four or more negatives in it. I taught the students to count the number of negatives. If it was an odd number, then it is a true negative. If it was an even number, then it was a positive.

This increased the grades of all the students significantly.

As normal, the next lecture was students challenging questions on the exam. After the second challenge, he took my list, read it to the class stating, “These are the questions that Chris said to remove. I’m going to remove them.”

He gained 75% of the lecture time back. After the next exam, he didn’t even let the challenges start. He read the list of questions that were being tossed.

This “question” reminds me of attempting to decode Dr. Reed’s exam questions.

Compare the state’s convoluted “question” with the plaintiff’s question:

Hmm, that is much easier to parse.

Conclusion

We should know by mid-January if this case is granted cert. If it is, you can expect all the usual suspects to jump in with amici curiae briefs. Some will be fun reading, most will be emotional blackmail.