Tag archive: Themis

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SCOTUS Cockblocks Gay Wedding Sites

On June 30th, 2023, the last day of the term, the US Supreme Court issued a bizarre ruling regarding free speech and the ongoing culture wars over gay marriage, siding with a Colorado website designer who balked at having to design wedding websites for same-sex couples.  But here’s the thing – in 2016, when the suit was filed, Lorie Smith wasn’t designing wedding webizes at all, for couples of any sexual persuasion; she claimed to have been approached by a gay couple whom she refused the services she wasn’t offering to anyone, based on her religious objections to same-sex unions.  So, Lorie Smith’s suit against Colorado’s antidiscrimination law was hypothetical or, shall we say, prophylactic?

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Donald Trump’s 2023 Solar Return: The Year of Living Litigiously

Donald Trump’s 77th year promises to be a ballbreaker, if I may use the vernacular.  The effects of a lifetime of skirting, circumventing or outright flouting the law look to be finally catching up with him.  As the fatal date approaches, Trump was gifted with an early birthday present of a 37-count indictment from the Justice Department, alleging violation of the Espionage Act in his unlawful possession, retention and obstruction in returning several hundred classified documents, kept in bathrooms, closets and storage rooms at his Mar-a-Lago residence.  We already know of at least one trial date in 2024, set for late March when the porn star hush money payoff trial is slated to begin in Manhattan (more on that later); this case will likely come to trial in 2024 as well, and several more may be in the offing.

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Justice Comes for Trump

Well, the US Department of Justice, at any rate; we’ll see how the real thing plays out in time.

Yes, he’s done it again – Donald J. Trump has set another record!  Not content with being the first US President to lose the popular vote in both elections, the first to be twice impeached, the first to incite an insurrection against his own government, the first to be found liable in a sexual assault and defamation case, and the first to be indicted on state criminal charges, The Donald proudly becomes the first former prez to be indicted on federal criminal charges as well.

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Baby India Finds Justice

Almost four years ago, an infant newborn was found abandoned in a wooded area of Forsyth County Georgia, near Cumming, left in a plastic shopping bag.  Alerted by cries initially thought to be those of a cat, police were called to the scene when teenager Kayla Ragatz and her sisters investigated the sounds, finding the squalling baby, just hours old, with umbilical cord still attached.  Nicknamed “Baby India” for her apparent ethnic heritage, the girl was put into foster care and eventually adopted.  Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman promised justice for the foundling, and more than three years later was able to identify the child’s father, based on advanced DNA investigative processes.

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Justice 2, GOP 0

With national Republican figures, from the highest to the lowest, being indicted, tried and convicted of multiple crimes in both civil and criminal cases, the GOP runs the serious risk of becoming identified as the party of lawlessness as the 2024 elections careen toward us.  Two major developments in as many days in early May added fuel to the fire of Republican miscreants, much in the way a spate of stories involving GOP corruption and sexual misconduct led to Democrats reclaiming the House in 2006.  On May 9th, Donald Trump was found liable for sexual assault and defamation in the E. Jean Carroll civil rape suit, and on the following day Trump Mini-Me George Santos, with aspirations to ascend to Liar-in-Chief, was arrested and charged with 13 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying to Congress.

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Trump on Trial: At Last!

April 25, 2023 witnesses the opening of the first salvo of courtroom dramas involving former US president Donald J. Trump, although as a civil case, he’s not required to attend in person, and likely won’t do so.  The case is brought by journalist and author E. Jean Carroll, who alleges Trump sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.  No, the charge isn’t rape – it’s defamation of character, following statements Trump made after Carroll publicly accused him in 2019, when he denied ever meeting her, much less assaulting her, in terms peppered with his patented brand of denigration and misogynistic dismissal. 

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