In the first image when she was bending over I thought ‘she’s wearing a GoPro forehead camera, that can’t be possible.’ But it was a light fixture in the background superimposed, seen as she stood up.
Safety rules require her to wear a fall protection harness to climb the ladder to the diving platform. You wouldn’t get me out of that harness, much less unclipped. I never had one when climbing the 370 ft caged ladder on the smokestack we built. The cage wouldn’t save you BTW. Jobs best done by young men.
There were questions about the “!No Pasaran!” blog recently.
Here’s a current link:
neo’s “NoPasaran!” link on her
Blogroll list seems to work just fine without going through InstaPundit.
You’ve noticed, I’m sure, all of the leftist judges trying to use their rulings to put roadblocks in front of President Trump’s agenda and actions, and how many leftists –when they are even arrested and charged–manage to escape any serious punishment.
There is another angle of leftist attack, and that is SOROS funded attempts to teach leftist activists how to manipulate juries, so as to derail DOJ prosecutions of Leftists. *
It seems to me that at some point Trump and the DIJ will have to go after Soros himself, and the myriad of his leftist organizations funding a whole slew of subversive organizations, groups. techniques, and movements, all trying to force our country and government in the direction that leftist Soros wants.
If you are a member of a jury in a criminal case, even if you think the defendant is guilty of the crimes charged, you are entirely free to vote for acquittal if you think that the prosecution is malicious or unfair, or that a conviction in that case would be unjust, or that the law itself is unconstitutional or simply wrong. And if you do so, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Judges and prosecutors know this. But they don’t want jurors to know it, which is why we occasionally see cases like this one, in which jury-information activist Mark Iannicelli was arrested and charged with “jury tampering” for setting up a small booth in front of a Denver courthouse labeled “Juror Info” and passing out leaflets. Putting up a sign and passing out leaflets sounds like free speech to me, but apparently Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey feels differently.
The last time I noticed a case like this was in 2012, where a retired chemistry professor did pretty much the same thing. Federal District Judge Kimba Wood dismissed the indictment. At the time, NYU Law professor Rachel Barkow commented, “I don’t think sensible prosecutors should have even brought this case.” Well, sensible prosecutors didn’t.
And UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote: “It seems to me that such speech is constitutionally protected, and that the indictment therefore violates the First Amendment. One can debate whether jury nullification is good or bad for the legal system, but it’s clear that it’s not a crime for jurors to refuse to convict even when the jury instructions seem to call for a guilty verdict. So Heicklen is encouraging a jury to engage in legal — even if, in the view of some, harmful — conduct.” It’s legal, but prosecutors don’t want jurors to know about it because if jurors knew they were free to acquit in the interest of justice, it would weaken prosecutors. (Prosecutors don’t even like billboards aimed at educating jurors.)
Of course, prosecutors have essentially the same power, since they’re under no obligation to bring charges against even an obviously guilty defendant. But while the power of juries to let guilty people go free in the name of justice is treated as suspect and called “jury nullification,” the power of prosecutors to do the exact same thing is called “prosecutorial discretion,” and is treated not as a bug, but as a feature in our justice system. But there’s no obvious reason why one is better than the other. Yes, prosecutors are professionals — but they’re also politicians, which means that their discretion may be employed politically. And they’re repeat players in the justice system, which makes them targets for corruption in a way that juries — laypeople who come together for a single case — aren’t.
I didn’t even start the video, but the still image alone is terrifying.
Regarding “jury nullification,” I suppose it depends on whether one supports the the legitimacy of the law that was allegedly violated. For example, if one believes that America is a fatally flawed and evil country, then every criminal prosecution, regardless of the specifics, is subject to jury nullification. I believe this is the position of the left. Of course, when a leftist controls the criminal justice mechanism itself, then nullification is not required because no criminals will be charged or if charged, will be given a bargained-for sentence tantamount to no punishment at all.
@steve: I suppose it depends on whether one supports the the legitimacy of the law that was allegedly violated.
That’s one reason, others might include prosecutorial overreach, disagreement with the appropriateness of the crime charged or the mandatory minimum sentence, or just disagreement with the way the law works in a particular case but no disagreement with it in general. For example, see below. If a jury acquits Spencer it will not be because they think laws against murder are not legitimate.
An Arkansas man accused of killing his teenage daughter’s alleged abuser won the Republican nomination for local sheriff while waiting to stand trial for murder in his rural county, where he ran on a message of seeing the failures of law enforcement.
Aaron Spencer defeated Lonoke County Sheriff John Staley in Tuesday’s primary elections, according to unofficial results posted by the Arkansas secretary of state. He would not be able to serve if he is convicted of killing Michael Fosler, 67, who at the time was out on bond after being charged with numerous sexual offenses against Spencer’s then-13-year-old daughter.
Spencer’s attorneys do not deny that he shot and killed Fosler but maintain he acted within the law to protect his child from a predator.
Golly gee, it’s just the same when the left funds, organizes, and trains useful idiots to ignore evidence and the trial process in order to get the desired outcome, and a juror deciding to nullify.
Yep, because there is no difference, Nick?
We aren’t stupid, Nick.
There is a difference.
My fear of heights makes it sickening for me to even look at the still photo.
Meantime in California, will the last company to leave turn off the lights?
California Post – 10 Mar 26
Yamaha pulling out of California after nearly half a century: HQ headed to…
Yamaha Motor Corp. USA is packing up its Orange County headquarters — trading Cypress, California for Kennesaw, Georgia in a sweeping corporate shift that will impact about 250 workers.
David French IS a plant — say, a potato or a carrot. Maybe a cabbage.
These are a quartet of weaponized string musicians and I gotta say I haven’t laughed this hard in years. “Death and the Maiden” in rehearsal at Aspen. Be warned (10:17): https://youtu.be/0-UaEnEtQDE
It’s one thing if–you are trying your best to be unbiased and objective and, after you hear and weigh all of the evidence in as objective a way as you can–you think the person being charged is not guilty, and you vote to acquit.
It’s quite another thing if you lie about having an unbiased, objective state of mind to get on to the jury, and, then, go into that jury room already having the clear, ideology-based intent to vote to acquit, as well as the training and the tool kit of tactics designed to bring the other jurors over to your side.
The first instance is the law at work, the second is deliberate subversion and sabotage.
Of course he was.
(Since that’s the way Iran’s American allies roll…)
President Donald Trump and his supporters were targeted by four consecutive FBI code-named counterintelligence investigations over the last decade that secretly subjected hundreds of innocent Americans to privacy-invading tactics and essentially treated the man twice elected president as a national security threat for most of the first nine years of his political career….
OM: In my job (long since retired) I used to occasionally have to climb to the top of a 120 ft tower – not nearly as high as yours. The ladders were in six staggered twenty-foot sections, with catwalks in between. I figured the staggered arrangement was made so that you could not fall more than twenty feet, which did not reassure me very much. At first, it took all my nerve to make the climb, but after a few times it didn’t bother me at all. Most other guys had no problems with it, but one or two just could not ever make themselves do it.
By the way, making that climb a few times is a great workout.
“My fear of heights makes it sickening for me to even look at the still photo.” Kate
It’s not the height but the sudden stop.
In the fall of 1969, at Navy boot camp, we were required to jump off a 35ft tower into a deep pool. It was intimidating for me, having never jumped off anything higher than a rooftop into a pool. Once over with, I immediately wanted to do it again. Fears faced… lose their power over us.
IrishOtter49:
I think French is a Mangle worzle, good for livestock, not so much for people
Mangelwurzel
A mostly European crop.
PG Wodehouse
Re Jury Nullificiation. The basis of it is that laws are supposed to reflect the values of the community, so if a selection of the accused peers deem they have done nothing wrong, then its the law that is incorrect, not the Jury.
Where this falls apart is when the jury is not representative of the community, because the vast majority of people have lives, jobs etc and avoid jury duty, and the leftists go out of their way to get onto juries where they support the accused.
Its one of those things that is fine in theory, but falls over in practice.
@Lord Azrael:Its one of those things that is fine in theory, but falls over in practice.
Then I’m sure you can easily propose a cure that is not worse than the disease. Shall jurors go to jail for bringing in the wrong verdict? And who will be in charge of deciding that the verdict was wrong (supposed to be in the hands of the jury) and who’s going to keep those decision-makers honest?
Bushel’s Case of 1670 involved a jury imprisoned without food, water, or heat for refusing to convict William Penn for holding an illegal religious assembly; it established the principle that a jury cannot be punished for its verdict. We returning to those days when they could?
Jury nullification was part of the American resistance to British rule and abolitionist resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act. It has a long history.
Jury nullification is like free speech or a pardon. Yes, people will misuse it, but getting rid of it is worse than people misusing it.
As for jurors who lie in order to get on a jury, or break the law while on the jury, that’s already illegal and punished.
No I would not. Tower crane operators make the long trek up to the cabin every day.
Oh yes, and having the left funding, schooling, and recruiting jurors to lie and ignore evidence has a long and storied history in the USA and in Great Britain. It is the bedrock of our just system of law. (sarc x 11)
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Short answer is NO! Long answer is H NO!
In the first image when she was bending over I thought ‘she’s wearing a GoPro forehead camera, that can’t be possible.’ But it was a light fixture in the background superimposed, seen as she stood up.
Safety rules require her to wear a fall protection harness to climb the ladder to the diving platform. You wouldn’t get me out of that harness, much less unclipped. I never had one when climbing the 370 ft caged ladder on the smokestack we built. The cage wouldn’t save you BTW. Jobs best done by young men.
There were questions about the “!No Pasaran!” blog recently.
Here’s a current link:
https://instapundit.com/781623/
neo’s “NoPasaran!” link on her
Blogroll list seems to work just fine without going through InstaPundit.
You’ve noticed, I’m sure, all of the leftist judges trying to use their rulings to put roadblocks in front of President Trump’s agenda and actions, and how many leftists –when they are even arrested and charged–manage to escape any serious punishment.
There is another angle of leftist attack, and that is SOROS funded attempts to teach leftist activists how to manipulate juries, so as to derail DOJ prosecutions of Leftists. *
It seems to me that at some point Trump and the DIJ will have to go after Soros himself, and the myriad of his leftist organizations funding a whole slew of subversive organizations, groups. techniques, and movements, all trying to force our country and government in the direction that leftist Soros wants.
* See https://redstate.com/ben-smith/2026/03/10/left-wing-activists-caught-plotting-to-rig-juries-against-trump-doj-prosecutions-n2200039
Take-down of Douglas MacGregor by Bonchie: “Tucker expert Douglas Macgregor being wrong about literally everything, a thread.”
https://x.com/bonchieredstate/status/2031159778429252031
@Snow On Pine:There is another angle of leftist attack, and that is SOROS funded attempts to teach leftist activists how to manipulate juries,
It’s jury nullification, and it’s a bedrock of liberty when WE do it, but it’s “jury manipulation” when THEY do it and of course widdershins likewise.
Notice the flip-flop at Instapundit between 2016 and 2022. Here’s Reynold’s comments from 2015:
I didn’t even start the video, but the still image alone is terrifying.
Regarding “jury nullification,” I suppose it depends on whether one supports the the legitimacy of the law that was allegedly violated. For example, if one believes that America is a fatally flawed and evil country, then every criminal prosecution, regardless of the specifics, is subject to jury nullification. I believe this is the position of the left. Of course, when a leftist controls the criminal justice mechanism itself, then nullification is not required because no criminals will be charged or if charged, will be given a bargained-for sentence tantamount to no punishment at all.
@steve: I suppose it depends on whether one supports the the legitimacy of the law that was allegedly violated.
That’s one reason, others might include prosecutorial overreach, disagreement with the appropriateness of the crime charged or the mandatory minimum sentence, or just disagreement with the way the law works in a particular case but no disagreement with it in general. For example, see below. If a jury acquits Spencer it will not be because they think laws against murder are not legitimate.
Golly gee, it’s just the same when the left funds, organizes, and trains useful idiots to ignore evidence and the trial process in order to get the desired outcome, and a juror deciding to nullify.
Yep, because there is no difference, Nick?
We aren’t stupid, Nick.
There is a difference.
My fear of heights makes it sickening for me to even look at the still photo.
Meantime in California, will the last company to leave turn off the lights?
California Post – 10 Mar 26
Yamaha pulling out of California after nearly half a century: HQ headed to…
Yamaha Motor Corp. USA is packing up its Orange County headquarters — trading Cypress, California for Kennesaw, Georgia in a sweeping corporate shift that will impact about 250 workers.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/10/wealth-tax-leads-in-california-poll-but-faces-major-headwinds-00819733
Wealth tax leads in California poll — but faces major headwinds
Voters are likelier than not to support the measure. But it’s not overwhelming, according to a new poll by POLITICO and its partners.
https://nypost.com/2026/03/02/real-estate/mark-zuckerberg-in-contract-to-buy-a-200m-miami-mansion/
Mark Zuckerberg splashes out $170M on just 1.84 acres in Miami as he becomes the latest billionaire to flee California
https://thefederalist.com/2026/03/09/david-french-suffers-an-apparent-brain-injury-over-james-talarico/
==
You get the impression that over that whole run of years (1997-2015) David French was some sort of plant?
David French IS a plant — say, a potato or a carrot. Maybe a cabbage.
These are a quartet of weaponized string musicians and I gotta say I haven’t laughed this hard in years. “Death and the Maiden” in rehearsal at Aspen. Be warned (10:17): https://youtu.be/0-UaEnEtQDE
It’s one thing if–you are trying your best to be unbiased and objective and, after you hear and weigh all of the evidence in as objective a way as you can–you think the person being charged is not guilty, and you vote to acquit.
It’s quite another thing if you lie about having an unbiased, objective state of mind to get on to the jury, and, then, go into that jury room already having the clear, ideology-based intent to vote to acquit, as well as the training and the tool kit of tactics designed to bring the other jurors over to your side.
The first instance is the law at work, the second is deliberate subversion and sabotage.
Of course he was.
(Since that’s the way Iran’s American allies roll…)
“Trump targeted by four FBI code-named counterintel probes that ensnared hundreds of Americans”—
https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/trump-targeted-four-consecutive-fbi-counterintel-probes-ensnaring
Opening graf:
OM: In my job (long since retired) I used to occasionally have to climb to the top of a 120 ft tower – not nearly as high as yours. The ladders were in six staggered twenty-foot sections, with catwalks in between. I figured the staggered arrangement was made so that you could not fall more than twenty feet, which did not reassure me very much. At first, it took all my nerve to make the climb, but after a few times it didn’t bother me at all. Most other guys had no problems with it, but one or two just could not ever make themselves do it.
By the way, making that climb a few times is a great workout.
“My fear of heights makes it sickening for me to even look at the still photo.” Kate
It’s not the height but the sudden stop.
In the fall of 1969, at Navy boot camp, we were required to jump off a 35ft tower into a deep pool. It was intimidating for me, having never jumped off anything higher than a rooftop into a pool. Once over with, I immediately wanted to do it again. Fears faced… lose their power over us.
IrishOtter49:
I think French is a Mangle worzle, good for livestock, not so much for people
Mangelwurzel
A mostly European crop.
PG Wodehouse
Re Jury Nullificiation. The basis of it is that laws are supposed to reflect the values of the community, so if a selection of the accused peers deem they have done nothing wrong, then its the law that is incorrect, not the Jury.
Where this falls apart is when the jury is not representative of the community, because the vast majority of people have lives, jobs etc and avoid jury duty, and the leftists go out of their way to get onto juries where they support the accused.
Its one of those things that is fine in theory, but falls over in practice.
@Lord Azrael:Its one of those things that is fine in theory, but falls over in practice.
Then I’m sure you can easily propose a cure that is not worse than the disease. Shall jurors go to jail for bringing in the wrong verdict? And who will be in charge of deciding that the verdict was wrong (supposed to be in the hands of the jury) and who’s going to keep those decision-makers honest?
Bushel’s Case of 1670 involved a jury imprisoned without food, water, or heat for refusing to convict William Penn for holding an illegal religious assembly; it established the principle that a jury cannot be punished for its verdict. We returning to those days when they could?
Jury nullification was part of the American resistance to British rule and abolitionist resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act. It has a long history.
Jury nullification is like free speech or a pardon. Yes, people will misuse it, but getting rid of it is worse than people misusing it.
As for jurors who lie in order to get on a jury, or break the law while on the jury, that’s already illegal and punished.
No I would not. Tower crane operators make the long trek up to the cabin every day.
Oh yes, and having the left funding, schooling, and recruiting jurors to lie and ignore evidence has a long and storied history in the USA and in Great Britain. It is the bedrock of our just system of law. (sarc x 11)