Though hardly “free” it may soon be get out of “jail” day for two actual and would be presidential assassins.  The forgetful and sloppy press coverage of the liberations proposed for Sirhan Sirhan and John Hinckley, Jr. is a profound disservice to the American public.  The cases are being analyzed and reported as very similar.  They were not and are not. Jodie Foster & John Hinckley, Jr. The important differences involve basic principles and goals of criminal justice.  Starting there, and contrary to what right and left fielders tell us – criminal justice aims to deter, punish and rehabilitate.  Not just one or two of those three. Hinckley was not only not found guilty of the attempted murder of actual President Ronald Reagan, [...]

He’s melting, but from a base not nearly as insubstantial as we said in HL 98 of March 24, 2020, an “ice cube.”  And going on to say that “[t]hose of us who have closely watched as time ravaged the once sharp or even brilliant minds of loved ones and colleagues, recognize what is happening to the good soldier Joe.”  He proved our metaphor wrong, though not necessarily the diagnosis, rallying, winning both the primary and general, transitioning to power despite the November 3 to January 20 insurrection and taking charge in a manner that had many calling his presidency “transformative” during the first few months. […]

Put yourself at the table with Andrew Cuomo.  You are his most trusted advisor.  The one he might listen to attentively, with some power of persuasion.  And your objective is not primarily to help Andrew survive but help New York first and foremost or hurt it least. We envision this because once we were such eminence grise, having been told “as of now  you are my counsel” and directed to leave home upstate at 4 am and arrive at the governor’s NYC residence at 7 am to give counsel.  We did, but only delayed by 52 hours an unnecessary resignation, with continuing disastrous consequences for the state, that included Andrew becoming its governor. […]

United States District Judge James Boasberg covered 120 pages explaining why he completely threw out an antitrust case by 46 states against Facebook and capsized the Federal Trade Commission’s companion case, while tossing it a flimsy life jacket.  But on page one of each dismissal Boasberg prominently referenced the governments’ blockbuster antitrust cases against Microsoft two decades earlier in the same courthouse.  Those first paragraph allusions to Microsoft made it clear “crystal” that he was going to throw both cases out and play heads and tails you lose with precedent and doctrine for the remaining 119 pages.  And that’s what he did. […]

It was said that bosses in Soviet Union industries pretended to pay workers who pretended to work.  Similarly, during this millennium and much of the last century, the roughly 130 NCAA Division I-A schools pretended their major sports athletes were “student-athletes” and most of those players went along with the pretense.  In recent decades, the NCAA, always an accomplice in this fiction, has pushed back some.  In part because of a fit of conscience, but mostly to avoid the Soviet’s fate and protect the major sports money machine.  […]

Extravagant power about to be exercised or smoke and mirrors?  More the latter but some of the former with some real ability to do things, but other than what is hoped for and promised of her: Lina Khan, the new 32-year-old chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Lina Khan Unlike the still unnominated Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, who unilaterally can get stuff done, the FTC chair (“Chairman” by statute) has one of five votes.  Khan may soon have on vote of four, when and if Rohit Chopra departs to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The fun bunch in the Senate’s Republican caucus may then try to block filling the fifth FTC seat, resulting in 2 [...]

Jack Weinstein one of the greatest American judges in history, and the greatest in “this boy’s life” died on June 15, two months shy of his 100th birthday. [1]  When he retired from the federal bench at 98, after 53 years, he was carrying a full load of cases – and a lucky load it was – for the litigants and their champions.  How was Jack Weinstein great?  Let others count the thousands of ways (and they are) but HL will mention a few personal and idiosyncratic. Thurgood Marshall Weinstein was already a role model when and where HL grew up on THE ISLAND.  Weinstein got there by way of Kansas, then Brooklyn and its Lincoln High School, where HL’s dad taught and [...]

HL readers know our subject selection is idiosyncratic and pursued only when our take is, if not unique, not what you’re getting virtually any other place.  This post like the previous 138 checks the second box, but not the first.  It was commissioned by several fellow tennis nut subscribers. The first self-evident truth in The Matter of Naomi Osaka was that it was predictable bordering on certain, and certainly predicted in our post of September 12, 2018, “A Young Version of Serena Williams Defeats Her in The U.S. Open Final” HL 59.  More about that later. Margrethe Vestager Second truth is that the four major so-called “Grand Slam” tournaments violated U.S., U.K., E.U. and Australian antitrust laws by agreeing not to compete in [...]

The obligatory prefatory recitation.  We don’t like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and considered his March 3, 2015 address to Congress a monumental breach of diplomatic norms, ingratitude incarnate and astoundingly ham-handed (irony intended).  His government’s interference with the sound equipment at Al-Aqsa during Ramadan, that disturbed the call to prayer, is as vile and antithetical to Jewish ethical teaching as anything we’ve witnessed during Israel’s lifetime, which roughly coincides with ours. […]

In reality and previous years a Roland Garros postscript followed the tournament (see HL 116 “Roland Garros 2020, Plus Ca Change, Plus C’est La Meme Chose”).  But this year a “pre” is in order, since as we begin to emerge from the pandemic the “Plus Ca Change” portion of the Parisian platitude for once has equal weight with the “Plus C’est La Meme Chose” part. […]