Category: Legal Stuff

Kick Them All Out

Legal Stuff

Honestly, I just don’t have time for this kind of bullshit anymore:

The NRA filed suit Monday against the NRA Foundation, alleging rogue leadership at the foundation misused about $160 million dollars.

FOX News reported that the NRA “alleged the foundation used its trademarks without authorization and diverted donations intended for NRA charitable programs.”

The lawsuit claims that the foundation is run by a group of former NRA board members who lost control of the NRA board and are now bitter. Reuters pointed out that the lawsuit describes the former board members as Wayne LaPierre “allies.”

NRA attorneys wrote, “The Foundation has been seized by a disgruntled faction of former NRA directors who lost control of the NRA’s Board following revelations of financial improprieties, mismanagement, and breaches of fiduciary duty and member trust.”

Disband the lot:  the NRA, the NRA Foundation, and any of the rent-seekers on the periphery:  the fund-raisers, the pimps who push “NRA-approved” life insurance policies, and whoever else I’ve missed.

Keep, but rename the youth- and training programs, because that’s all the NRA is good for.

Feel free to take me to task for all the great things the NRA is supposed to have done for gun owners over the years, because in the immortal words of someone talking about something else, taken all together it doesn’t amount to a bucket of cold spit.  And that includes the NRA-ILA, which has a woeful track record in its stated purpose.

Forget about this lobbying group, and if you’re going to give money to the Cause, direct it towards the Second Amendment Foundation*, which does stuff like file successful lawsuits against the gun-grabbers — you know, things that actually work.

But the NRA?  Drop them all down a nearby well, them and their fucking “Foundation”.

*full disclosure:  I have nothing to do with the SAF and never have.  I have over the years, had plenty to do with the NRA, and the experience has left me mostly underwhelmed and unimpressed.

Malice Aforethought

Journalist Scum, Legal Stuff, Trumpism

I haven’t been keeping up with the Trump vs. BBC saga much, because as a rule trials make my eyes glaze over.  This one, however, may be different:

MAKE no mistake, Donald Trump’s $5billion (£3.7billion) defamation lawsuit against the BBC, filed yesterday, is a formidable document: it is a tightly constructed, meticulously argued claim that accuses the Corporation not merely of error but of intentional deception on a scale that, if proven, could be the most damaging legal defeat in its history.

Filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the complaint names the BBC, BBC Studios Distribution, and BBC Studios Productions as defendants. It seeks $5billion in damages for defamation and for alleged violations of Florida’s consumer protection laws.

What makes the filing so potent is that it weaves the BBC’s factual admissions, internal whistleblowing, patterns of bias in BBC coverage, timing, motive and governance failure – caused essentially by the BBC acting as its own judge and jury – into a coherent narrative of wrongdoing.

…and the article just gets better and better as Dave Keighley lays it all out for TCW’s Brit readers.  Read the whole thing.

Best part of all this?  The suit has been filed in Florida, where Trump’s a longtime resident (at Mar-A-Lago, for my Brit Readers).  In Florida (as opposed to NYfC or Kollyfornia) the jury is going to be made of Floridians, nay even a goodly number of Trump voters who, if all goes Trump’s way, will deliver a sound financial wacking to the BBC’s corporate pee-pee.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of smug, Leftist assholes, who will have their bias and underhanded skulduggery exposed to the entire world.

It’s just too bad that in the end, the financial penalty will be borne by the BBC’s license holders, i.e. the public, rather than by the BBC executives who perpetrated this travesty.

But hey… all the more reason for the Brits to dump the whole licensing bollocks altogether.  The public hangings can come later.

Question, Answered

Gummint, Legal Stuff

Seen at Insty, a thought from Randy Barnett concerning this issue:

Argument: Allowing the Prez to remove administrative officials will transfer an enormous amount of power to the Prez.

Question: Transfer from whom? Who currently has all that power?

One more question:  And where in the Constitution does it grant those executive powers outside the Presidency?

Ipse dixit.

Corollary thought:  if Trump wanted to make a serious difference to the Judiciary, he’d nominate Randy Barnett to the Supreme Court when one of the current super-lawyers retires or croaks.

Well, Now

Immigration, Legal Stuff

Seems as though there’s a teeny hole in the Constitution after all:

Twenty-five Republican attorneys general have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, challenging birthright citizenship.

“The idea that citizenship is guaranteed to everyone born in the United States doesn’t square with the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment or the way many government officials and legal analysts understood the law when it was adopted after the Civil War.

“If you look at the law at the time, citizenship attached to kids whose parents were lawfully in the country. Each child born in this country is precious no matter their parents’ immigration status, but not every child is entitled to American citizenship. This case could allow the Supreme Court to resolve a constitutional question with far-reaching implications for the States and our nation.”

I have to say that this little feature always nagged at me (despite being a one-time immigrant myself).  The idea that anyone born in the U.S. had automatic citizenship seemed on its face to be unreasonable — I mean, I think that we are the only country in the world that allows for this in our legal system.  (There might be a couple of others, but I suspect that these might be countries where nobody wants to live anyway.)

Whatever, I’d like to see this whole “anchor baby” situation disappear.  The child should be a citizen of the home country of either the mother or the father (if known).  If nobody knows who the father is (a regrettably-common feature of modern-day life) and the mother were to die during or soon after childbirth, then I might be prepared to accept automatic citizenship for the baby, if only for humanitarian reasons.

Anyway, I’m glad to see that the issue may soon be resolved one way or the other.  I’ll leave it to your imagination to figure out who might oppose this initiative by the various attorneys-general.

Muzzling Free Speech

Corporate Fuckery, Legal Stuff

…and also causing financial harm.

I seldom regard lawsuits with the same awe that the Powdered Wig Brigade may do (except when it comes to gun rights), but I think I’ll make an exception here:

In what could become one of the most significant free speech and digital rights cases in American history, Wimkin Social Media and its founder, J.C. Sheppard, are initiating a massive class-action lawsuit. Their targets are a formidable alliance: Big Tech companies, their advertisers, the Biden administration, and legacy media giants. This landmark legal action isn’t just about one company’s survival; it’s a defiant stand against what they call the “systematic silencing, blacklisting, and demonetization” of conservatives in the United States.

Wimkin’s legal action seeks to recover staggering financial losses while serving as a rallying point for every conservative content creator, publisher, and platform that has been censored, banned, or financially crippled by the combined power of Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and their media allies.

Wimkin’s legal action is a comprehensive effort to hold those responsible accountable for a coordinated campaign to suppress conservative viewpoints. The defendants include Apple, Google, Meta (Facebook), YouTube, X, TikTok, the Biden administration, and major advertisers and aligned media outlets. The lawsuit claims this coordinated effort, disguised as “safety” and “misinformation control,” has caused severe financial and reputational harm, directly violating constitutional protections. Due to the ongoing nature of these losses, Wimkin’s legal strategy invokes equitable tolling to preserve the statute of limitations, ensuring that damages as far back as 2019 can be claimed.

No, I’d never heard of Wimkin before, either.  But anyone who takes on The Man — in this case, Leftists and their corporate lickspittles — has my support.

But wait!  There’s moar!

Sheppard’s fight doesn’t end in the courtroom. He is also drafting a bill for Congress that would demand “real reparations” for conservatives who can prove financial losses from 2019 to the present because of politically motivated censorship or deplatforming. Sheppard draws a sharp contrast between this initiative and progressive calls for slavery reparations. “The left demands reparations for events that happened over 150 years ago, when no one alive today experienced them firsthand,” Sheppard states. “We’re talking about real, provable, measurable damages that have occurred in the last six years—damages that have destroyed livelihoods, stifled innovation, and robbed millions of Americans of their right to speak freely.” Sheppard believes the total recovery could exceed a staggering $500 billion.

Good luck, my son.  Hit them where it really hurts:  their fucking wallets.  Stick it to The Man, bigly.

Different Strokes

Legal Stuff, Rights

…different folks.

Background:  a little while ago, this happened:

Chinese and other foreign citizens could soon be barred from purchasing homes in Texas under a bill greenlit by the Texas House on Thursday [and since signed into law by TxGov Abbot].

The measure, which passed the Republican-led chamber in a largely party-line vote, was significantly narrowed-down from the original version. Lawmakers voted to add exemptions for individuals residing in the United States legally on temporary work or student visas. Dual citizens and permanent residents are also not included in the ban.

The legislation would block any other citizens of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran from purchasing homes, buying land or leasing apartments in Texas, and give the governor power to add other countries to the list.

Now, via Insty, this little development:

A pair of Chinese citizens asked a federal judge to block a new law banning Chinese nationals and people from a select number of other countries from buying or leasing property in Texas.

In a lawsuit filed July 3, Peng Wang and Qinlin Li, two Chinese citizens currently in the United States with visas, called Senate Bill 17 unconstitutional and racist.

Because of course.

Both plaintiffs said that while they plan to stay in the United States legally, they have no clear path to permanent residency and would be hurt by the law.

In its initial response to the lawsuit, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office argued the state was using its “police powers” to prevent foreign governments from gaining a foothold in Texas. The attorney general’s office argued that Wang and Li won’t be affected by the law because they are already in Texas lawfully and wouldn’t be prohibited from real estate transactions.

The complaint, however, argues that the law is centered around where people claim their domicile, or permanent home. People in the U.S. on student or work visas, like Li and Wang, can’t claim their home is in Texas, attorneys wrote.

That’s not the part which get up my nose, however;  it’s all legal stuff and whatever happens, happens.

Because this is the Houston Chronicle, the reported decided to provide a little “balance”, or what we conservatives would call “whataboutism”:

As of 2023, Chinese investors owned or leased about 277,336 acres of U.S. agricultural land, according to the USDA. Of that, 123,078 acres were in Texas. Most of the land was associated with wind energy investments, the agency said.

Other foreign countries own far more land in the U.S.

Canadians own or lease about 15.3 million acres of U.S. land, according to the USDA. The Netherlands, Italy, United Kingdom and Germany hold a combined 13 million acres.

Yeah.  The difference, however, is that unlike the Chinese, Iranians et al., the Canadians, Dutch, Italians, Brits, and Germans aren’t likely to use the land they purchase as a springboard to cause mischief.

And a huge percentage of the land already owned by the Chinese coincidentally(?) happens to be adjoining U.S. military bases.  What are we to deduce from this little factoid?

One last thought.  Both the plaintiffs aren’t exactly wealthy:  one is a salaried employee and the other a recently-graduated student.

So I’d like to know who, exactly, is paying the costs of this lawsuit.  Let me go out on a limb here, and suggest that once you peel away all the shell organizations or individuals who purport to be paying the legal costs, the thing is being funded by the fucking Chinese government.  I may be wrong, but somehow I doubt it.

Which is the precise reason for the law in the first place.