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Roundup — 26 Comments

1. I just learned this:

   When a court dismisses an action, they can either do so “ with prejudice ” or “ without prejudice .” Dismissal with prejudice means that the plaintiff cannot refile the same claim again in that court.

   I never knew what that term meant exactly. I looked it up because of this:

   https://x.com/ThomasCatenacci/status/1887176791397167201

   It’s been an interesting couple of weeks hasn’t it?

2. When a court dismisses an action, they can either do so “ with prejudice ” or “ without prejudice .” Dismissal with prejudice means that the plaintiff cannot refile the same claim again in that court.

   My experience with the term comes from my serving on the board of my HOA (condos). A wealthy investor lost his first suit against the HOA, which meant he had to pay our attorney’s fees. He filed an appeal, or was it a second suit–don’t remember. On the day the case came to court, he finally recognized that he had no case against us, and requested that his case be dismissed. The judge dismissed his case “with prejudice,” so the wealthy investor could no longer sue us on those grounds. There was still a jury trial–for attorney’s fees. 🙂 In the two cases, the wealthy investor paid about $200,000 for his and the HOA’s attorneys. That, for him, was chickenfeed.
   I was the HOA’s liaison for the attorney in the second case.

   About the FBI and J6:

   I found it amazing—shall I say outrageous–that the FBI used 5,000 of its employees in the J6 case.

3. re. #4 — That defense did not fare well at Nuremberg, c. 1946, et. seq.

4. The EU is destroying Western Europe. France and Germany have shown that leftist western European governments will not allow themselves to be peacefully voted out of power. Nor will they allow Muslim immigration to be curtailed. A disarmed populace is helpless in the face of this, which makes Western Europeans… ‘dead men walking’.

5. The president signed an executive order today banning men from participating in women’s sports.

   “With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” he added.
   The president signed the order in the East Room of the White House, surrounded by young schoolgirls, female athletes, and advocates, including Independent Women’s Forum ambassadors Riley Gaines, Paula Scanlon, and Peyton Edwards; journalist Sage Steele; Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance, and others.

   “If we have to worry about them, we have a bigger problem,” he joked to his Secret Service agents as the crowd of middle-school-aged girls rushed to his side for the signing. “What a nice picture this is!”

   He then proceeded to carefully sign the executive order as the children watched closely, joking to them about his signature: “We have a 10!”

   “It is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy,” the executive order reads. “It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.”

   https://www.dailywire.com/news/surrounded-by-young-female-athletes-donald-trump-bans-men-from-womens-sports?topStoryPosition=undefined

6. Getting rid of the Department of Education seems to be a pro education move to me.

7. Husband is an assistant US attorney. We are both concerned with justice, rule of law, fair play, law and order, etc.
   Bondi has just issued some memos that we love, that are long LONG overdue, but also some of concern.

   In particular we are concerned about the one featured in this post.

   OTOH, this Administration is making it clear that they are going after potentially thousands of US attorneys and law enforcement officers such as those in the FBI for their actions regarding the investigations and prosecutions of the Jan. 6 folks. If I had to put a percentage on it, I’d say that only one or two percent of those who can be linked to the investigations had any say-so in actually authorizing investigations and arrests. Almost no one had any power to resist or refuse to take part, without being found insubordinate.
   And of course, many people did commit acts on Jan 6 that should have gotten them arrested; in some cases the sentences imposed were also appropriate.

   You see the issue? Presumably these thousands of agents and attorneys were in Trump’s eyes supposed to refuse to follow instructions to prosecute most if not all of the Jan 6 folks. As though there was some kind of clear- cut violation of the Constitution that the employees are deemed to have ignored and they have therefore now made themselves worthy of being fired.

   Now comes this memo by AG Bondi making it clear that prosecutors are NOT to refuse assignments because of an alleged conflict with their personal convictions.

   It would be profoundly unjust for anyone but the actual policy makers and those who may be shown to have clearly persecuted Jan 6 folks, knowingly and maliciously to be fired.

8. I think most here would agree SCOTTtheBADGER.

   Can someone who really follows politics (not me) tell me the likelihood of it getting done “properly”? Congress votes it, and the president signs it. I assume it will take 60 senate votes. Any way to peel-off/bribe/whatever-it-takes to get those votes?

9. I have big hopes for AG Bondi, I lost track of 3 Jan6 Ralliers who were kept hostage when all others were pardoned, and another read is in Canadian prison who ran there when the Eff Bee Eye was after him. Searching can’t find anything.

10. “We (US attorneys, LEOs and FIB) were just following orders.”

    Sorry, no tears for the jackbooted Keystone Kops who persecuted and prosecuted their fellow citizens for their actions (and inactions) in the staged and government-instigated fiasco known as J6!

    The US attorneys, LEOs and FIB should be prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned and barred from federal employment. After their release from prison, true justice would have them deported and banned from re-entering the USA.

11. The article you linked about Europe is spot on, and many Europeans understand the problem. I fear, however, that the majority still believes the institutions or, at least, are ready to believe them if they promise to change – like von der Leyen did a few days ago, and like the German CDU did as well.
    Of course, if Germany does not change in the next election, the EU ruling block (largely independent from actual election results, in any case) will revert immediately to its former plans: here is full of politicians dreaming of censorship as the panacea to all *their* problems.
    Italy is a bit better than elsewhere, but the clash with the politicized judiciary is at its peak. There’s a powerful, well organized part of the judiciary (formed by the ex Communists), which is opposing the government in a very open and hostile way, and they justify their stance claiming obedience to the EU over the elected government.

12. RigelDog – I think you’re absolutely correct but, unfortunately, we don’t do nuance anymore. Neither side does.

    This is the mirror image of the left trying to disbar attorneys who worked on Trump’s 2020 election cases.

13. @ RigelDog:

    “Now comes this memo by AG Bondi making it clear that prosecutors are NOT to refuse assignments because of an alleged conflict with their personal convictions.”

    If agency instructions come down that conflict with whatever your personal convictions are, you tender your resignation.

    Us humans like to complicate things, split the baby, have our cake and eat it too, etc. But really ethical situations are easy. If you can’t stomach an ethical conflict, you don’t partake in it.

    I’m surprised that law school grads are having a hard time figuring that one out.

14. They need to feel pain disbarment inprisonment cancelling of pensions otherwise they will do this again.

    Jack smith weissman mccabe mccord leifman brennan those are just a few that come to mind

    They drove men And women to desperation and suicide over simple trespass if that they let the cities burn to a raging mob

    They sent swat teams to a presidents residence over a paperwork dispute

15. This is the mirror image of the left trying to disbar attorneys who worked on Trump’s 2020 election cases.
    ==
    The prosecutors in cahoots with judges and bogus public defenders were in the business of injuring people who were (a) innocent or (b) subject to malicious and selective prosecution or (c) treated to draconian penalties for very little. There is not one J6 defendant who did anything more heinous than break a window or slug a cop.
    ==
    What the people attempting to have Trump’s attorney’s disbarred are doing is to nullify the sixth amendment for the politically disfavored.
    ==
    This is not an obscure distinction.

16. Grunt on February 6, 2025 at 9:05 am
    Of the several responses to Rigel Dog’s comment [so far], I am most closely aligned with your view.
    Art Deco and Miguel also state positions with which I mostly agree.
    I also endorse the remarks from Dax, except I would stop short of deporting those found quilty of chargeable offenses.

    A government where the people are sovereign also raises the bar on the role the people [should] play in their own consent and performance of holding said govenment accountable. Improving the availability and ability to exercise that accountability now seems to be on the upswing and we can hope it continues. Given the current evidence exposed even in so short a time, plus what may well become visible over time, we might well expect a major restructuring of agency control, perhaps even having Congress regain their legislative institutional preference [longer term].

    On the inspectors general, I think that such a role is still valid, but must exist with a dual path of reporting for whisle blowers or others to report either to their agency IG or to a designated member of Congress [with probably both R and D reps identified for that purpose]. Such a matrix reporting scheme is common in defense contracting and probably other types of organizations as well (e.g., maybe larger law firms?). If you don’t trust one path, then use the other.

17. Ummm……let’s see; “just following orders.”

    Where have I heard that before?

    Would be very interested to find out how many federal agents participated in the January 6 “insurrection.”

18. Timely analysis.
    Essential, in fact.

    “Lessons from the Spanish Civil War”
    (Nathan Pinkoski)”—
    https://tomklingenstein.com/lessons-from-the-spanish-civil-war
    H/T Powerline blog.
    Key grafs:

    … Some historians trace Spain’s rapid political decay to the failure of its liberal reforms. Others…blame institutional conflict. Still others…hold that the republic’s collapse originated in longstanding rightist conspiracies. The Franco regime’s official line was that the collapse began with a Communist plot to bring down the republic, justifying General Franco’s rebellion. Payne makes a different argument, finding the cause of conflict in the eruption of revolutionary politics—and showing the ongoing danger this form of politics can pose.

    …Payne examines Spain in light of Europe’s cycle of revolutionary civil wars that made the first half of the 20th century so violent. Most civil wars before the 20th century concerned either succession—conflicts between potential heirs—or secession—such as the American Civil War. In the 20th century a new, revolutionary kind of civil war arose in Europe, pitting irreconcilable conceptions of state, society, and culture against each other. In these conflicts, revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries aimed to establish radically different regimes. Payne is fond of quoting Joseph de Maistre’s dictum: “the counterrevolution is not the opposite of a revolution, but is an opposing revolution.” Once the revolutionary process begins, the old regime is finished…. [T]he determination of both sides to establish a new regime is the reason why revolutionary civil wars bring unprecedented levels of violence. The goal is to overturn the whole legal and political order associated with the enemy, leading to the call for the enemy’s absolute elimination.

    What accounts for the rise of revolutionary politics in Europe in the 1920s and ’30s? Some scholars stress the social and economic shocks of World War I and the Great Depression; others, the absence of liberal traditions across the half-formed democracies that collapsed during those decades. Payne grants that these theses explain some of Europe’s revolutions. But the Spanish case calls into question their overall explanatory power….No exogenous shocks explain the rise of revolutionary politics in Spain, the fall of the Spanish Republic, and the civil war. The Spanish brought revolution upon themselves.

    Though a variety of parties helped set the revolution going, Payne argues that the chief culprits were the Spanish socialists. Unlike Bolsheviks, who seek to overthrow liberal constitutionalism by direct means, revolutionary socialists use the constitutional system to provide cover for their plan to dismantle it. They don’t overthrow the legal system, they exploit it. Legalists of the center and the Right struggle to respond to this tactic. In Spain, their failure was particularly acute. In The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 1933–1936 (2005) and The Spanish Civil War (2012), Payne describes Spain’s descent into a brutal three-year war as the result of the socialist Left’s brazenness meeting the center’s carelessness and the Right’s pusillanimity.…

19. If your Democrat friends declare that Republicans are against education for their desire to close down the Dept. of Education, you may remember, and perhaps even quote, the great Frederic Bastiat, who provides us this, from The Law:

    Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

20. Rigeldog–.

    And of course, many people did commit acts on Jan 6 that should have gotten them arrested; in some cases the sentences imposed were also appropriate.

    I’d appreciate you citing some of these cases with the “appropriate sentences,” because I have yet to see one. And when you do, note please as well how long the defendant was held before being charged, what the original charges were and how the plea deal went down. Also, the length of time the defendant spent in solitary confinement.

    Posting analogous ones of BLM protestors–or the Pussy Hat protestors of J20, ’17– would bolster your argument as well, especially in regard to the appropriateness of their sentences.

    Good luck with all that–because you are going to find the story your husband tells you, and you are telling us, is simply that–a story.
    Which is what good people tell themselves to justify what is a lack of moral courage.

    You do know no law enforcement officers died on J6. That Biden had to pardon the Officers who testified at the J6 Show Committee, four of whom went on to testify at sentencing trials. Lying drama queens, who need presidential pardons for their perjury.
    Only 15 officers even went to the ER. None warranted hospitalization.
    Five citizens DID die that day–all as a result of behavior of the law enforcement officers’ behavior on the scene. That there is video of Roseanne Boyland being beaten; Ashli Babbitt being shot–with no warning. Three men succumbed to MIs and a stroke after being gassed.

    5000 FBI employees–all of whom took an oath to the Constitution—spent the past four years tormenting citizens who had exercised their first amendment rights; were likely incited to enter the Capitol by government employees, who were incited to RIOT when attacked by Capitol police.
    How many innocents died on that sidewalk in New Orleans on this New Years day? Again a “known to the FBI” terrorist is their murderer. Like Boston Marathon, Florida nightclub. Yet another violent terrorist slips through–
    But the FBI got the grannies who walked through the rope lines on J6–as directed by the Capitol police!–all locked up.

    These agents knew what they were doing was wrong. That it was politics, NOT domestic terrorism. They could have quit, or become whistleblowers.

    They could have resigned. They could have gone to Congress. The decent ones, the ones with moral courage, did.

    Any sleeplessness, angst they are experiencing right now is nothing compared to the torment they have WILLINGLY, INTENTIONALLY, KNOWINGLY caused decent men and women.

    See Julie Kelly’s, Darren Beattie’s, Rasheem Kashamm’s extensive reporting on the facts of what J6 was, if any of the above was news to you.
    They’ve got it well documented.

    BTW–what does the US attorney husband think of exculpatating video being withheld from the defendants by the DC judges? The video showing htey were defending peopel from attacks by the officers when they confronted them? That’s what I’d like to know about–why are attorneys of the DC bar not working to get these judges impeached?

    It’s being reported that Trump is not looking to fire these guys—just get the goods on their bosses. And maybe scare them all straight in the process???

21. Lee: you are barking up the wrong tree. Beating a straw dog. Caught the wrong scent and followed it into the weeds if you think that we are ignorant of the excessive response to the protest and subsequent unrest and riot of Jan. 6.

22. RigelDog:

    I’d also be curious, however, to learn of an example where a protester who was violent and actually deserved a sentence got what would be considered a fair sentence. It seemed to me that, for the most part, they got much harsher sentences than similar offenders on the left in previous riots.

23. @ Barry > “Lessons from the Spanish Civil War”

    I agree that this is an essential link, because Payne’s book (as reviewed by Pinkoski) exactly describes what we have seen the Left/Democrat/Media doing in the US — they used to hide their agenda better, but their actions since 2016 are mirrored point-by-point in Spain’s history.

    From the foreword:

    In this review of the work of historian Stanley Payne, Nathan Pinkoski looks to the Spanish Civil War as an invaluable study in the revolutionary threat to democratic societies, and in the often ill-defined reaction such revolutions inspire. This essay was originally published in the Winter 2021/22 issue of the Claremont Review of Books under the title “Arming the People Against Revolution.“

    We have been warned.

24. Re: Jan 6 getting appropriate sentences, I was basing that just on impressions that I had from reading so much about the subject. From what I read and heard on podcasts the overwhelming majority of prosecutions struck me as being overcharged and the sentences as being disproportionately harsh.
    One factor that may have made me think that at least some of the sentences were appropriate is whether the person had a bad prior criminal record.

    I always wondered if they ever identified that group of men, dressed in black with ski masks, who swarmed a bank of windows at the Capitol and broke them out in a coordinated expert attack. It looked fishy to me in terms of maybe being a false flag.

25. RigelDog, I take the above to mean that you have no example of an appropriate sentence for the actual offense committed, despite your statement to the contrary.
    Now you “think” at least some were appropriate based on someone’s unrelated prior alleged behavior.

    That is far different from your earlier assertion that there ARE appropriate sentences. Thank you for the clarification.

26. as with the palmer raids, the failure of due process was so lacking that a blanket pardon was necessary, there were many instance when evidence was omitted or erased from the records,

    julie kelly one lone cronicler of these matters, in a sea of fakirs,

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