Biden’s Coercive Social Media Tactics

Plus: Double gun cases

By and
134

Sidney Powell may be the best lawyer ever, SCOTUS might finally have a tech term, and David’s humble brag didn’t get past anyone. Sarah and David fly through a mix bag of legal topics including:

-Presidents coercing social media platforms
-Plea deals from fraudsters
-“Cheese-bro”
-David brings up trans issues
-Sarah brings up feminism
–Law firms dealing with “unlawful” affirmative action practices and fellowships
-A gun case
-ANOTHER gun case (but with ghosts, kind of)
-Employment division triggers David
-And…pot-smoking generations

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  1. Daniel Poeana

    When Sarah segued into David’s story with “David, tell them how you saved the house,” I momentarily thought that David somehow saved the House of Representatives during the speakership standstill HAHAHA

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    Aylene Wright

    Mailbag question for David, although not sure it qualifies as a legal one. I get the impression that the common rejoinder of Hamas apologists to the charges that the Hamas terrorists killed babies, is (in addition to just denying it happened) is "whatabout all the Palestinian babies the IDF killed?"

    Some people saying that, actually are accusing Israelis of deliberately murdering the babies. But I get the impression most are referring to babies who died as "collateral damage" of an airstrike. And certainly, per a strict legal analysis of rules of war, as David has mentioned in the past, there's a big difference.

    But, I know that David also thinks there's some utility in critical theory of law, and that he does think systemic racism is a thing. But per that analysis, or at least per a "folk wokism" twisting of it, there actually is no moral/ethical distinction between the two deaths. In fact, the deliberate murder of the Israeli baby, might even be seen as a lesser crime than the unintended but foreseeable death of the Palestinian baby in an airstrike.

    Palestinian supporters on the left, seem to see the situation as a pretty morally simplistic situation of racist white Israelis colonizing a land belonging to innocent brown Palestinians. Hence the apartheid accusations.

    My understanding is that systemic racism can exist, and be a moral evil, without any actual deliberate racist intent by those perpetuating the racist system. Intent doesn't matter, only outcomes, and if the outcomes are unjust, that's prime facie evidence of guilt.

    So, if David believes this analysis is at least partially valid, how does he square that with his analysis of the rules of war?

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  3. Dave Thatcher

    I read all the comments, usually I do not due to time constraints but here had to so I can see the coming attractions. No question but a comment and, yes, a humble, or maybe not so much brag. When you boil down David’s heroics to the facts you get (a) he heard water running when it shouldn’t have been (after an extremely long fact gathering session to get to that conclusion) and (b) he called a plumber. Other than that the plumber apparently showed up fairly quickly I am not that impressed. Now the brag. My wife dropped a necklace down the sink Friday and asked me to take apart the sink so I could dump out the p trap and get the necklace. Instead, because I for sure would have screwed that up, I went to Ace Hardware and explained to the person who greeted me that I had a necklace down the sink situation and had heard about a tool to grasp things out of drains. She said “aisle 12, about a third of the way down on the left.” I went to aisle 12, found the grabber, with a very handy built in LED light, came home and grabbed the necklace out of the drain. Come on folks certainly there should be massive kudos!

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  4. Alan.Crystal

    Mailbag question:
    You’ve addressed free speech on college campuses many times on Advisory Opinions. Could you speak to the situation today, after the October 7th Hamas massacre of Israel civilians, when many Jewish students feel threatened by protesters supporting Hamas, (which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government). Under what circumstances could those protests cross the line and become harassment or incitement to violence? Does it simply come back to the Brandenberg standard? Could it be different in private schools?
    Florida Governor Ron Desantis has banned pro-Hamas student organizations at state Universities in Florida. Do you expect this ban to be upheld in court?

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    PaulH

    Mailbag Question: Have you been thinking about how AI affects various areas the law? For example, at least one court has ruled that an AI cannot be an inventor on a patent. Also, there are a number of copyright suits against AI companies claiming that having the AI scour the internet and learn from their materials constitutes a violation of the copyrights of the authors/artists; I am not sure I understand the basis for these suits as it seems like the AI is doing the same thing a human could do -- but at a greater scale.

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  6. Ras

    Sorry David, but your humble-brag lost me at "called a plumber". A real man would have just gone to Home Depot and fixed this piddly little plumbing problem himself.

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    Bryan W

    Mailbag question: What goes into the decision to stop practicing law? I've been practicing for just shy of a decade, and I've been deeply unsatisfied for most of that time. Any advice for considering next steps?

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    1. Davidbenjaminlat

      Find a hobby or a "side hustle" that will let you try out something other than practicing law—and who knows, your avocation could turn into your vocation. That's basically what I did. While working as an assistant U.S. attorney, I started a pseudonymous blog called Underneath Their Robes in 2004. After that site developed a following, it gave me the confidence to leave the practice of law. I started Above the Law in 2006, and I worked there from 2006 until 2019.

      Now I make a living from my Substack newsletter, Original Jurisdiction, plus outside writing and speaking gigs. I greatly enjoy what I do, I get to be my own boss, I have a ton of flexibility, and I earn more than I did as a lawyer (although my last job as a lawyer was as an AUSA, not at a firm).

      I consider myself very, very fortunate. But there are lots of other lawyers with stories like mine. When I was at Above the Law, we wrote about them regularly, under the "Career Alternatives for Attorneys" series:

      https://abovethelaw.com/career-alternatives/

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    2. Dave Thatcher

      Tough one. My two cents, worth about that. Make lists of what you like and what you don’t and see if you can figure out from the lists what could change to make you satisfied. Practice area, as in another response, is a good one but what about practice type or what do you like doing versus what you don’t like doing, etc. then take your lists and call a good recruiter and get them thinking on it. They may not have a job in their current searches that fits but good recruiters are very knowledgeable about various situations and almost always willing to help because it builds their network.

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      Ms. SSM

      Consider your practice area. I’d change that before changing carers whole cloth. Consider your practice intensity level. Maybe a smaller firm or government writing work. These are low stress legal jobs without clients.

      If nothing can make you happier consider if job happiness is needed. I work for my paycheck. With that check I go live a nice life. I don’t need fulfillment.

      After you’ve exhausted all that then you can say it’s not for you.

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        Kevin M. James

        An excellent point about fulfillment. I advise undergraduates for a living; all too often they're programmed to seek a career that is their "passion" and that is the primary source of meaning in their lives. When I reassure them that it's absolutely fine to simply find a job that pays the bills, that they don't hate and aren't ashamed of, and that ideally leaves them with a good amount of time and energy for other, more meaningful things in life...well, often the relief on their faces is palpable.

        As an inactive member of the bar who's worked for the university for over 20 years now, I will also observe that a lot of lawyers would envy most everything about my job except for the paycheck...which is sometimes barely enough, but enough all the same.

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        Bryan W

        I’ve already had one major practice area switch and it definitely helped. A low stress government writing job would be great but those jobs aren’t abundant, but I have been keeping an eye out. I haven’t considered job happiness to be necessary for a long time. My problem is the stress of the work takes over my life and prevents me from enjoying my time off.

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    Stephen Dause

    Mailbag question: Could you talk more about how confident you are that the events of Jan. 6, or Trump and co.'s actions after the 2020 election more broadly, constitute an insurrection? The law review article by Baude and Paulsen defined an insurrection as "concerted, forcible resistance to the authority of government to execute the laws in at least some significant respect." They didn't cite any particular source for that as far as I can tell. How likely are the courts to use a similar definition?

    Thanks in advance!

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  10. Laura Bolling

    Mailbag Question:

    Along the same lines of the discussion today about third wave feminism ideology and trans ideology, I've been thinking about the idea from Brown v Board - "separate is inherently unequal" and wondering what happens when we apply that to the idea of men versus women? Do we get the idea that separate bathrooms are unequal? What about sports/competitions? Maybe we just say race & sex are different enough that we don't apply the same ideas to them, but I think like Sarah was saying, we spent much of the late twentieth century saying men and women are the same.

    Similarly, what's the deal with the ERA? I heard lots of discussion around it after Dobbs, and since then, its gotten quiet. What would happen if that went through?

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