36 replies
  1. EW Moderation Team says:

    A reminder to all new and existing community members participating in comments:

    — We have been moving to a new minimum standard to support community security over the last year. Usernames should be unique and a minimum of 8 letters.

    — We do not require a valid, working email, but you must use the same email address each time you publish a comment here. **Single use disposable email addresses do not meet this standard.**

    — If you have been commenting here but have less than 1000 comments published and been participating less than 10 years as of October 2022, you must update your username to match the new standard.

    Thank you.

  2. bmaz says:

    Huh, did you also discuss what a shit show Fulton County is? Seems like that discussion has been magically lost on this blog.

    • ExRacerX says:

      You pose a legitimate question, albeit in a totally passive-aggressive way.
      The “old man burns bridges; returns to yell at cloud” act grows more annoying with each post. For my personal sanity, I’m just gonna skip ’em all. I respect your legal mind, but I’m not gonna sift through any more garbage for the odd nugget of wisdom.

      Mods, please feel free to delete this post, but I could no longer not restrain myself. I’ve been here long enough to know that this sort of repeated unpleasantness is not tolerated at EW. I also appreciate there’s a long history here, one in which bmaz played a part and I did not.

      I apologize, but it’s been a long, shitty week.

      • Allagashed says:

        Amen, brother. I’m not a lawyer, I’m a retired farmer. I come here and devour the postings, and then go out and try to educate myself a little more; Ms. Wheeler, thank you. I am not competent to comment on the legal issues I see presented here. What I am competent to comment on, is basic human decency and civility; both, features that Bmaz fails to exhibit in the slightest. He may have a legal mind that commands respect, but his inability to live within certain social graces is beyond off-putting.

        • jdalessandro says:

          Bmaz is my favorite part of Emptywheel. I don’t defend all of the ad hominem stuff, but that’s what you get with the package. His point of view is needed here, and basic civility is not included. Stop waiting for it to miraculously pop up. I knew foul mouthed acerbic lawyers in the Bronx who reminded me of him, and they were really good lawyers. Now, some you might not want representing you, granted. But you wouldn’t stalk out of a Don Rickles or Andrew Dice Clay [more modern reference needed] Show, outraged by his foul remarks to you. You paid for it. I just wish he would post more often, especially about the Georgia shit show, so we would know exactly why some of the rapturous posts here are “horseshit.” Its not always clear.
          I could have done without the Rayne thing. We didn’t need to have that exchange here. I don’t know beans about F1 by the way. I thought it was an FBI tech reference, and had to look it up.

        • Rayne says:

          You may be fine with the ad hominem but it’s not permitted between commenters nor aimed at contributors/moderators.

          I don’t really care what you think about me or my work here, but I’m also going to point out the masthead here: this is emptywheel, it’s Marcy Wheeler’s site. We’re here — commenters, contributors, moderators — at her sufferance.

      • wetzel-rhymes-with says:

        People owe bmaz this forum. The dozens of commenters who have gathered over the years actually have something to say. They were selected through a “bmaz process”. For everyone of you, bmaz has driven ten away ten people in an emotionally damaged state who don’t know legal argument and who wanted to make this a political blog. You are upset with bmaz but you are still here because you can make an argument that’s relevant within the legal topic. I would just read past bmaz until him and Rayne make peace, if they can. Rayne and bmaz seem to be in some kind of equilibrium, anyway, and she has tough skin. Why bring this up? Rayne and Marcy want him here. Maybe I have had five good things to say here. I know bmaz and Rayne have both helped my writing. They make a whole Skinner box. This forum is second only to when they are working together. Then you get the best out of this forum, but bmaz won’t change.

        For my part, I think that the emotional damage people do to each other is like hitting them with a stick, and so I dream a future Rayne and bmaz will be friends again, but people need to keep this from turning into a political blog while bmaz and Rayne are having disagreements, especially when the politics is highest. I think Rayne is doing fine, but she lets me get away with all kinds of shit.

        For my part I don’t want to talk about Fanni Willis, but I’ve never heard of it being tolerated for a prosecutor to be chased around by private investigators. The facts seem largely ginned using Wade’s disgruntled divorce attorney Terrence Bradley. I’m just waiting for Kanye’s publicist to pop up. I try to imagine this treatment being put on Willis, all-too-human, now supposedly such a fallen lady she cannot do her job, to imagine that being put on Lesley Wolf or Leo Wise obviates any discussion of Fanni Willis as a scandal per se.

        Same thing happened to Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bill Clinton. You can be upset with people for not respecting the gravity of their position, but who does? My job got a lot more important, I guess, than it used to be, but I’m still the same idiot.

        • Rayne says:

          Wetzel, only the last 142 of your total 389 words should have been published. The rest is unnecessary conjecture and opinion.

        • Matt Foley says:

          I don’t know where people get the idea that this is a lawyers-only blog. Author descriptions under About indicate that 5 of this blog’s 7 authors are not lawyers. I suspect a similar ratio for commenters. Also, for those of us who care about the rules, the first sentence of the Comment Policy is: “emptywheel welcomes comments that are respectful and on point.”

        • John Herbison says:

          I am none too impressed with bmaz’s legal chops. Invective is no substitute for actual analysis.

    • pH unbalanced says:

      They didn’t. If you wonder why, Nicole is probably the person to ask, since she sets the agenda.

      • Nicole Sandler says:

        We didn’t — I rambled off a long list of shit going on at the top of the show, not including the Fani Willis shit show – and we didn’t get to all of that either. An hour only goes so far. As I said at the end of the show, we could have gone on for another hour. That said, leaving that out was my mistake, not that we would have had time to deal with it. The whole case is an embarrassment.

  3. OldTulsaDude says:

    I want to hold out hopes that this SCOTUS is genuinely concerned with the law but having watched the steady erosion of ethics of the holy right wingers since Gingrich in 1994 I find it impossible to trust them to do anything but protect the party.

  4. Savage Librarian says:

    Marcy, on your 2/17/24 post about Smirnov, I mentioned that there is a Smirnov who lives in Naples, FL who also lived in Troutdale, OR. I thought it was interesting since you had previously told us that on November 27, 2018, someone appears to have accessed Hunter Biden’s iCloud account from Troutdale, OR.

    And in today’s podcast you mentioned that Smirnov has a cousin in Florida. Would that be the same guy?

    But you also seemed to imply that there is someone else, someone connected to Giuliani who may have a bigger role. I can’t access the WSJ article you recommended. So, I’m wondering how I might learn who Rudy’s relevant connections are in this regard.

  5. dark winter says:

    Q: when you mentioned that Jack Smith, getting delays from Cannon, might use that time to start going after 2nd tier thugs: ie: Stone, Rudy? will he also then go after L Graham, Grassley, and several others who had constant contact w/djt on J6 that are still serving in Congress?

    It sickens me the theatricals of Comer/Gym will still go on because I tell you true, it’s working w/the ignorant and too many of those w/limited 411 cling w/ this shit and call into WJ/cspan every damn morning……so it’s real to too many and that is what makes me ill w/all this. Thank you for an excellent and fun show tonight ..grateful

      • BRUCE F COLE says:

        Regarding Trump’s unindicted co-conspirators, if Smith were to decide to charge any or all of them sooner rather than later (as was mentioned briefly in yesterday’s show with Nicole) would that be under a separate indictment or would he have to do it as a superseding set to Trump’s case, mirroring how DeOliveira was added in FL?

        It seems to me that if it’s the latter, there’s no way he could consider it at this point — but if it’s the former it might make strategic sense, given the bolloxed trial scheduling Smith is facing — and if it’s a speaking indictment and the details are well curated and forcefully presented it could put Trump on his back foot pretty hard. Plus, there might be more flipping in the offing.

        Scrambling for “hands on deck” would be a big argument against it, I assume. Wishful thinking (per usual)?

  6. Bay State Librul says:

    I want to know why Thomas didn’t recuse himself like Rehnquist did with the Nixon tapes.

    • Rayne says:

      It’s simple, don’t look for complexity here: Thomas is a corrupt motherfucker.

      The only question is how long has he been fully owned.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Mostly, he refuses to recuse because he can do so without consequence. Trump has enabled and ennobled the expression of unrestrained bias, emotion, and Fascist violence, without which dictators cannot rule.

      Thomas thinks the current hard right supermajority on the court is a once-in-a-lifetime godsend, and that its members have a duty to God to finish the American pseudo-religious revolution they’ve started. The law is merely a tool toward that end.

        • BobBobCon says:

          It was either Thomas or Alito who backstabbed Roberts on his last ditch effort to maintain some semblance of Roe and avoid the political damage Roberts saw coming.

          I agree with EoH that Thomas is on pseudo-religious crusade at this point. He probably also thinks he’s got a big reward coming, but Trump never pays his debts. Thomas will be lucky if he gets another RV after being kicked to the curb for a new justice three years out of law school.

        • RitaRita says:

          Justice Thomas and his wife have already received adequate recompense for their work on behalf of the “greed is good in my religion” crowd. I doubt they are looking for much of anything from Trump himself. Why would they when they have friends who really billionaires, unlike the paper billionaire Trump? Trump has just been a means to an end. I also think that Justice Thomas relishes the opportunity to give his enemies the back of his hand.

        • ColdFusion says:

          Thomas is a tool, in every way. Doesn’t he care the people he is helping want to ban interracial marriage? Has he every looked at his own wife?

        • P J Evans says:

          He’s a member of the “Leopards Eating faces” party, and thinks they won’t eat his.

  7. Bay State Librul says:

    I don’t think it’s religious in nature.
    It’s more like a Anita Hill vendetta complex

    • RipNoLonger says:

      Agree. And in his own way, getting back at society that gave him opportunities that he could never accept with thanks. He deserved more.

Comments are closed.