NFL WEEK 17 2024

 If you missed the Bengals -Broncos matchup yesterday, you missed maybe the best game of the year so far. The Bengal's winning TD in overtime, when they could have kicked the winning field goal cost your favourite federal blogger nearly four figures as we had  a three way parlay with the over plus Nix under 245 yards passing and the Broncos +4. But the TD gave the Bengals a win by six. 😠

On to Sunday's games. 

We like the under 33 in the Dolphins / Browns mashup of backup QBs.  But go light here because who knows?

We really like the DC Commanders -3.5 over the Falcons in a battle of rookie QBs. The Commanders are about to win their 10th game for the first time since Clinton was president. 

And we like the Vikes -1 at home over the Pack. 

And how about the J..E...T....S +10 in Buffalo in a game that we this the Lower NY guys keep close against the upstaters. 

MY TOP LIVE MUSICAL PERFORMANCES OF 2024.

 

I saw lots of stuff during the year. Since I love live music, I just don't go out to see my favorites, I see anything remotely interesting. Most bands deliver in live performances since that is their bread and butter. I did see some lame shows (Ryan Adams, Ray LaMontagne, Joy Oladokun) but for the most part, bands realize the need to entertain and go beyond just playing their songs. Here were my highlights ( along with corroborating video proof) ,

1. Maggie Rogers- Miami's Bayfront Park- She's talented, pretty, energetic...and sincere. She danced, whirled and writhed, placed her emotions on her sleeve and absolutely knocked it out of the park. The highlight was when she found out, while on stage, that her tour was so successful that it will start to be booked into larger arenas...her appreciative yet well deserved euphoria was beautiful.

https://youtu.be/LsnIaWIUjRM

2. Jason Isbell & 400 Unit- Solid Sound Festival, North Adams, MA- supporting WILCO for WILCO's unique festival at an Art Museum, Isbell put on a "deep cut" set focusing on wonderful, endless guitar solos. Between his 6 string dexterity and his ace-in-the-whole, slide-guitarist extraordinaire, "Sadler Vader", it was a feast for the guitar aficionado culminating with a killer, jammy cover of REM's " The One I Love"

.https://youtu.be/FWkUgoMiA4A

3. Nathaniel Ratliff & the Night Sweats- Farm Aid, Saratoga Springs, NY- This band took the stage completely on fire starting with their normally encore hit, "S.O.B." and then continuously taking it up a touch from there. The whole band seemed to act like a unified "front man" and they delivered the highest energy, smile-inducing show I saw all year.

https://youtu.be/Y8Ko00Ia7Fw

4. My Morning Jacket- One Big Holiday, Riviera Maya, Mexico. These guys took a bit of a hiatus but then came back to show that they are still one of the kings of live music. Night 2 ( of their 3 night run) closed with a killer tribute to Nirvana's Kurt Cobain by making "All Apologies" their very own. Seeing this band can be a religious experience.

https://youtu.be/kf2w-mqa_Y4

5. Kasey Musgraves/Lord Huron/Nickel Creek- Hardrock Hollywood, Fl - I enjoy Musgraves' gutsy and introspective pop songs yet is she a good live act? HELL YEA ! She is a terrific live act that has one foot in top 40 with the other entrenched in indie music. Her professionalism was top notch with every nuance of her vocals made acoustically perfect. Her addition of progressive bluegrass icons "Nickel Creek" and high energy Americana group "Lord Huron" stifled any appearance that this was a routine, mainstream, pop show. Musgraves has the songs, talent, looks, attitude and x factor to be a top notch live act for a long time.

https://youtu.be/ANW31Q1Qpfg

6. Charlie Crockett- Farm Aid, Saratoga Springs, NY. Charlie is a traditional country artist yet backed by an unusually bluesy, jammy and soulful band. Crockett first resembles a wooden, statuesque performer who then, out of nowhere, starts dancing and screaming out his vocals. His performance was unpredictable and surprising and making him a wonderfully difficult to categorize artist. He also has a damn fine catalog of catchy songs.

https://youtu.be/fiML2QlFYoU

7. Crazy Fingers- Tarpon River Brewery/Lauderale/Crazy Uncle Mikes/Funky Biscuit. This is, by far, the best value in live music . Crazy Fingers is a veteran Grateful Dead Tribute band. In a way, since the real Dead are no spring chickens, Crazy Fingers sings their classic songs better than the aging Dead & Company. The joy of this band is seeing the company they keep; the tie-dye, the dancing hippies, the cloud of smoke. For merely the price of a beer, you can sit back, sip on that glass and enjoy authentic Grateful Dead covers ...in a dynamic that is better than most over-priced shows where you are confined to a seat.

8. Remain in Light- Talking Heads tribute show at Hollywood Arts in the Park. With original member Jerry Harrison and virtuostic guitarists Adrian Belew, this was no pedestrian tribute...they combined with some high energy band-mates to produce a killer show. The same show touring the country to regular 3000-6000 venues played for free under the stars

https://youtu.be/zBUdWidaeCA

Fellow live music fans, what were your faves for 2024 ?

 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

Luke 2:11

Rumpole's Christmas Sermon:

The key word in the biblical verse is "You". "For unto YOU..." 

Who is you? Is it just citizens? Or Kings? Or Potentates? Or the rich and powerful? 

No. 

For unto you means humanity. All those who were created in the image of their maker; a savior was born for them.  For Presidents, potentates, and the poor, the sick, the prisoners, the weak and the strangers amongst us- the immigrant huddled in a doorway hungry and cold. This is who Jesus arrived in a manger for. 

Remember that in the coming months as the rhetoric heats up and people are dehumanized and called animals by the same people who attended Mass last night and today.  Remember who the lord came on earth for. 

Merry Christmas. 

H. Rumpole, Esq. 

Blog Proprietor and raconteur. 

PICTURE FROM MARS

 MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE REGJB BLOG 

NEWS🚨: NASA's Peservence rover just sent this image back from Mars pic.twitter.com/ho59JXWSiU

— Curiosity (@MAstronomers) December 24, 2024

 

BIDEN CHOOSES LIFE

 Fresh on the heels of two Miami Dade juries choosing life for two men previously convicted of two senseless homicides last Friday, President Biden commuted the death sentences of every defendant on federal death row save three: 

From the NY Times Article 

The three men who can still face federal execution are Robert D. Bowers, 52, who in 2018 gunned down 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, 30, the white supremacist who in 2015 opened fire on Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, one of the two brothers who carried out the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 that killed three and maimed more than a dozen others.

Rumpole muses- these are difficult issues.  Those who have experienced loss in their lives are often left to wonder why the person who caused the loss is allowed to live while their loved one is gone. This is the reason we should not turn questions of punishment over to victims and survivors. A justice system predicated on emotional vengeance is neither a justice system or justice. It is mob rule. A century ago and more, Mobs dragged innocent African American men out of southern jail cells and hung them in emotional reaction to the crimes they were accused of (usually involving accusations of crimes against white women)- we do not want to return to those times. 

In more recent times the vernacular has changed as those in power call the accused and convicted (not to mention immigrants) "Animals".  When you dehumanize people you get dehumanizing results inconsistent with a society founded on the principle that all people are created equal, not to mention the Judeo-Christain ethics that current politicians wrap themselves in, which includes the reflection that all people were created in the image of The Creator. 

The ideals of our justice system is to rise up above the emotional need for vengeance. 

Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love...  

Dr. Martin Luther King. 

Our own (considerable) experience with the justice system is that we have met very few people whose violent acts cannot be explained and understood as a combination of tragedy, abuse, and illness. We have yet to meet a child who on their own is destined for violence. But we have met many adults who treat children in a manner that puts them on a path for tragedy. 

By commuting the death sentences President Biden rises up above the mob's cry for vengeance. A devout Catholic, it is no surprise that these commutations come after his meeting with the Pope last week. 

There is more to do. There are more people languishing in federal prison who are more deserving of a second chance for life than those who were on death row. If we were President we would want our staff to find every woman used as a mule for a drug organization who is serving a minimum mandatory sentence- and start with commuting their sentences and pardoning those who merit it. 

But this is a good continuation of his current polices of commuting sentences. There is more time and more work to do. 

FYI if you followed our football picks ye$terday, you can shoot us a thank$ in the comments. 

NFL WEEK 16 2024

 If you're looking for one thing today or this week that will make you smile, watch this - it starts slow but ends with such emotion you will be smiling all day.  We love a good flash mob. 

 

Still time for that extra Xmas cash. The bets you make today can be cash tomorrow. 

We will take the Commanders at home +4 over Eagles and for that matter the money line of +165 for DC to win outright. 

Our Fins getting +1.5 at home sounds nice as well as over 44.5. 

Rams at J...E....T.....S under 46.5  

PAIN AND GAIN

Very quietly several lawyers laboured in the big courtroom on 4 (4-1) from late October through Friday December 20, 2024 picking two juries for the retrial of the penalty phase for the two defendants in the notorious double homicide in the mid 1990s. The facts were bizarre to say the least.

A guy named Schiller was kidnapped by lead defendants Noel Doorbal and Danny Lugo. He was kept in a warehouse blindfolded and was a victim of extortion, signing over bank accounts, his house, and finally changing the beneficiaries to his million-dollar life insurance policy. Then he was "released" in a harebrained scheme that involved getting him drunk, putting him in a truck with propane tanks, and staging an accident. The truck caught  fire but the victim stagged out only to be hit by a passing car. He was taken to JMH and when he awoke from a coma, he told the nurses he had been kidnapped. "No" they replied, "you were injured driving drunk".  It took a while, but Schiller finally got law enforcement to believe his story and get involved. 

As MDPD was putting together the facts of the outlandish kidnapping story, a wealthy couple from Golden Beach who had made millions in the 1-900 business that was thriving in the days before the internet went missing. 

Their Lamborghini was found, and eventually people came forward with another bizarre kidnapping tale that ended in tragedy. Both were killed using an obscure horse tranquilizer, and once dead their bodies were dismembered and placed in various barrels and receptacles and dumped in the Everglades. The movie details the killers buying and returning chainsaws to Home Depot because they could not get them to work in chopping up the bodies.    

At some point MDPD connected the perpetrators of the first kidnapping to the second kidnapping and double homicide and Lugo and Doorbal were both convicted and sentenced to death. The details of the crimes emerged in a series of New Times Articles and Hollywood made a movie called Pain And Gain with Mark Wahlberg and the Rock. We haven't watched it. We hear it is so-so. 

30 years later with the US Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court playing chess with the death penalty, the two defendants were returned to Miami for a resentencing. 

ASAs Scott Warfman and Kioceaia Stenson for the State. 

Regional Counsel led by Silvia Gonzalez along with Alex Sola and Phil Reizenstein for defendant Lugo, and Bruce Fleisher and Francisco Marty for defendant Doorbal handed the defense. 

Judge Tinkler Mendez elected to try the cases simultaneously with two separate juries. The combined juries heard the prosecution's questions and then one jury at a time heard the cross. 

Earlier this past week both juries went out to deliberate. At one point one jury reached a verdict, but the Judge sealed it without revealing it while the other jury took another day to deliberate. Both verdicts were read on Friday afternoon and both juries voted for life in prison on both murder counts for both defendants. We hear- but are not sure- that both juries after finding some aggravators still each voted   12-0 for life. 

This was a stunning reversal of death sentences in a case that was notorious for its wanton senseless murders that shocked a community that is not easily shocked by violence and murder. 

We are no fans of the death penalty- but that does not mean we overlook the tragic murders of two innocent people who has their whole lives ahead of them. 

There are no winners here. Just tragedy, sadness, death and pain.  

Life in the REGJB marches on. 

  

FIRST CHRISTMAS POST 2024

 As we head into the Christmas/ Hannukah/ Kwanza slowdown, not to be confused with the MLK weekend slow down (Jan), Presidents Day weekend slowdown (February),                St. Patrick's day slowdown (March), Cino De May day slowdown (May) Memorial Day slowdown (June)...you get the idea... we have a few important questions for you. 

First, and this requires serious discussion....is Die Hard a Christmas movie? This is a serious issue endlessly debated, which has never stopped the Blog from wading into waters where others fear to swim. 

And whether or not DH is a Christmas movie, what are the best Christmas movies of all time. And we will remove It's a Wonderful Life from the discussion because there can be no debate it is the best Christmas movie of all time and the contest is for second place and below. 

Second- we have a long-time reader who has written a novel. They are seeking feedback and want us to post some chapters on the blog for honest feedback including readers spotting any typos or plot inconsistencies. 

Thoughts about this? It will relieve us from posting for the last two weeks of the year. We have read a few chapters and it is blog worthy. So yes or no? It's a non-legal thriller FYI.  We will post the chapters as PDFs but may be able to email them to readers who ask nicely. At the moment the author has requested anonymity, although we are encouraging him/her to take credit for the writing.  

Thursday Night Football. 

The Surprising Broncos play the Los Angeles Chargers. The Broncos are getting 2.5 on the road and the O/U is 41.5. We like the over a little, as both teams have decent defenses and the Chargers like to run the ball but the game could easily turn into a shootout. We will post our pick this afternoon pending resolution of a pesky federal motion. 

Yipee Kayee ....

LAST GOOD TRIAL WEEK OF THE YEAR

 "You have enemies? Good. That means you have stood up for something." 

Winston Spencer Churchill. 

If you have listened to Rumpole over the years and planned this out, you have a difficult trial set for this week. Once you get past the jurors who don't want to work as the holidays approach, you get people who are in a forgiving spirit. Based on decades of real data, this is the best week of the year to try a case. 

Honorable mention- if you had scheduled a sentencing over the next two weeks you are also a long time and careful reader of Rumpole's blog. Well done. 

This is a good NY Times op ed  on what Biden should be focusing on for the last month of his presidency. Certainly more pardons and commutations and perhaps a commutation of people on federal death row. Interesting and surprising is the advice to enshrine the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution via executive order. Apparently the amendment has been ratified. What do you think about that, as well as preemptive pardons for people like Lynn Cheney and members of his administration like the AG and prosecutors who prosecuted that well known felon. 

NFL WEEK 15 202

 This has been a great NFL season. We have thoroughly enjoyed the games - and despite the Dolphins disappointing season, there is a lot to be excited for. 

There are two potential super bowl matchups today. Both are 4pm games and we will be switching back and forth between Bills- Lions and Steelers-Eagles. 

But before we get to those two games, here's some way to make a little extra Xmas money and pay for that Kobe beef steak at Prime 112. 

We were at the Fins overtime win against the Jets last week sitting in a box next to the owners box- great seats but some weird people - which we will not comment on further. The Fins came out strong and then had an inexplicable let down in quarters 2 and 3 before getting back on track in Q4 and then OT when coach McDaniels went for the win.  Your Miami Dolphins are getting 2.5 in Houston. Tua is outplaying CJ Stroud and we narrowly missed our Archane rushing bet last week.  But not deterred, we are going back to the well- Archane over 46.5 yards rushing and over 46 for the score between the two teams. We worry that 2.5 is a bit light. The Fins on the road should be getting 4.  Tua is over 267.5 yards. Last week he needed OT to break his total of 270, so stay away from that, or consider the under. 

J..E...T....S at Jax. We like the over 41. 

Ok here are the two big games. 

Steelers at Philly. Take the over 43. Steelers will have to shut down Philly RB (and in our opinion league MVP) Barkley and they can only do that by bringing up safeties to stop the run, which opens up the passing game. If you can get a play on Steeler TE Washington getting over 1.5 receptions and 10 yards grab it. Ever since Russell Wilson became the starter, he has consistently targeted Washington 3-5 times a game and we have made a tidy sum on those bets. Hard to pick the Steelers to win with their WR George Pickens out, but +5;5 for Russell Wilson to keep it close and maybe a backdoor cover or win in the 4Th quarter with a late TD sounds nice.  One thing for sure is that we sure would really enjoy a Pats Cheesesteak while sipping an Iron City Beer while watching the game. Fun fact: Last time the Steelers won in Philly was 1965 at Franklin Field. Maybe they are due.  

The Bills are looking shaky. The Lions are looking like a SB team. What we like a lot is under 54.5. Look for both teams to try and slow the game down and establish the run. Since the Lions have two quality RBs, we like them to win and will lay the -2.5 over a Bills team that suddenly looks like the 3rd o4 4th best team in the AFC instead of the first or second. We just got a whole Melinda's Hot sauce sampler courtesy of a satisfied client. Some Buffalo wings while trying out the various sauces sounds like a great way to enjoy the game. 

Two Monday night games are set- which is perfect for Pizza-Meatless- Monday. We will make those picks tomorrow. 

FRANK LUCIANNA'S LAST TRIAL

 Every trial lawyer  has a first trial and a last trial. 

Few get a documentary about their last trial. 

 

"The war outside still rages but you say it ain't ours anymore to win."

No Retreat No Surrender, Bruce Springsteen

Speaking of which, Judge Tess  Pooler is presiding over her last trial before retirement. Stop by and wish her well in her courtroom which is Two- something. 

NEW CONST CALENDAR

 Time again for everyone's favourite blog post- Judge Hisch's Constitutional Calendar. Today he explores the history of Kush Patel's FBI- 

(and we are looking hard at the over 49 on the MNF Bengals/Cowboys snoozer)

On July 26, 1908, Charles Joseph Bonaparte, who held the unique distinction of being both the Emperor Napoleon’s grandnephew and Teddy Roosevelt’s attorney general, complied with an instruction given by the latter. He hired nine agents away from the Secret Service, and 25 other detectives, and appointed them the first special agents of the Department of Justice’s newly-formed Bureau of Investigation. Congressmen and senators, who had not voted to fund this new agency, conjured up comparisons to the Okhrana, the czar’s much-feared secret police force; and made references to Joseph Fouche, the powerful chief of the secret police under Napoleon.  

Not immediately, but during World War I and the “Red Scare” that followed it, many of these fears came to fruition.  Those who were suspected of German sympathies, or communist velleities, or lack of enthusiasm for federal office-holders and their policies, were likely to find their homes or offices ransacked without warrant, their phones tapped without legal authority, their friends and family members shadowed or intimidated.  These practices reached their apex during the attorney-generalship of Harry Daugherty, easily one of the greediest and most corrupt of public officials, who headed the Department of Justice during all of the Harding and some of the Coolidge administration.  

When Daugherty became an unbearable political liability, Coolidge replaced him with the squeaky-clean Harlan Fiske Stone, giving Stone a mandate to clean up DOJ and especially its Bureau of Investigation.  Stone set out to do so, issuing a series of press releases and interviews to make his intent clear.  “There is always the possibility,” he went so far as to admit, “that a secret police may become a menace to free government and free institutions because it carries with it the possibility of abuses of power which are not always quickly apprehended or understood.”  But in the end, “the enormous expansion of federal legislation, both civil and criminal, in recent years, has made a Bureau of Investigation a necessary instrument of law enforcement.”  Stone knew that change would have to come from the top.  He appointed, as acting director of the Bureau, a 29-year-old lawyer already serving in the Bureau. His name was J. Edgar Hoover.

In private correspondence with Harvard Prof. Felix Frankfurter (with whom Stone would later serve on the Supreme Court), Stone aired the view that Hoover should be kept on as director, and could be trusted to keep the agency from sinking to the nefarious “secret police” practices in which it had formerly engaged. Frankfurter wrote back, expressing some reservations. His correspondence seems to suggest that Hoover had been on good behavior because Stone was his boss, but that it was impossible to know how Hoover would behave under weaker, or less principled, attorneys general.  “Hoover might be a very effective and zealous instrument for the realization of the ‘liberal ideas’ which you had in mind for the investigatorial activities of the Department of Justice when his chief is a man who cares about these ideas as deeply as you do, but his effectiveness might be of a weaker coefficient with a chief less profoundly concerned over these ‘ideas.’”  

On December 10, 1924, Attorney General Stone informed Hoover that he was no longer merely “acting,” but was the director of the Bureau of Investigation (or, as it would become in 1935, the Federal Bureau of Investigation).

THERE IS MORE TO THIS

UPDATE: In a serious blow to our Swiftie fans and younger readers/judges/pds/asas, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals just upheld the law...steady now...BANNING TIK TOK!!!!   

As out Swiftie readers are wont to say (over and over and over ) OMG OMG OMG !!

Now what? 

For you non-Swifties, who read, here is the Politico Article. 

 

Have you seen this guy? 

This is the picture of the man who assassinated the CEO of United Health Care in Manhattan earlier this week. 

There is more to this story than meets the eye. 

First, it is a shocking assassination done in a cold-blooded manner on a busy street in New York City. 

Second, the immediate effect of this will be for corporations to provide 24 hour security to their CEOs now that they have become fair game. 

But there is a deeper story here and it relates to the health insurance industry. 

The response to this killing on social media has been predictably, not sympathetic. 

There are comments like "My ability to feel sorry for this is unfortunately out of network and not covered."

The health insurance industry is broken. Doctors are routinely denied authorization to provide palliative or lifesaving care.   In response, doctors and hospitals have added a layer to the health care bureaucracy with patient advocates who structure care and prescriptions in a manner designed to get approval. In response the insurance companies have added a layer of employees to decode the patient advocates. It is an arms race where innocent people are being killed. 

Perhaps it is time to recognize that private health care insurance does not work. Privatizing health care insurance has not brought market efficiency to the industry. It has turned it into an enormous and money wasting bureaucracy. 

The free-market incentives do not work because companies like United Health Care are beholden to shareholders who demand quarter by quarter increases in profitability and stock price. This in turn creates short-term thinking at the expense of the health of the public. 

The GLP-1 drugs are a perfect example. They are by all accounts  a miracle drug that not only helps people lose weight (it was revealed this week 70% of Americans are obese), but has been shown in preliminary studies to increase life span, and lower desire for alcohol and drugs. Spending a billion dollars now to help people achieve a healthy weight lowers future health care costs by tens of billions of dollars. The GLP-1 drugs will help end the diabetes epidemic. But companies like United Health Care cannot afford to think long term. Medicare and Medicaid can. Which is why it is time to re-think the use of private health insurance companies in the matrix of health care. 

What we have now does not work. And the tragedy of the murder this week is just the tip of the iceberg of the hatred the abusive conduct of private health insurance companies have created. 

FYI- Eli Lilly's new drug Tirzepatide  was shown to be 5X more effective than Ozempic. Just saying that you might want to look at Eli Lilly as a profitable investment in the long term GLP-1 arena. 

PARDONS 2.0

 First some sad news. Word reached us that retired Circuit Judge Martin Kahn passed away on Thanksgiving. Martin Kahn was a judge for too few years. He was wise, intelligent, and applied common sense with a good dose of humor, He was a judge during a time when judges did things - as he did- like have lasagne competitions and cookie bake-offs with defense and prosecutors participating. He was a fun person to be around and he loved his job and he loved doing justice. He had no discernible political bent on the bench and his eye was fully on the case and now how his decisions would affect his personal ambitions. There were too few like him then, and even fewer now. We will have more to say about him in a future post.

Our guest blogger found President Biden’s pardon of his son repulsive. We find it to be well taken, needed and hopefully will highlight the need for a closer examination of prosecutions and people serving long sentences from the 90s war on drugs. 

As to his son Hunter, the incoming administration has made no secret of its plans to seek revenge on their enemies by prosecuting them. President Biden had every reason to believe the incoming president would direct the DOJ to file more cases against his son as revenge for his multiple indictments. We are approaching a world where our justice system is going to be perverted by angry idiots who have never read the Constitution and have no intention on following it. More on that in January. 

What we hope is that the President turns his attention to the thousands  of people serving long sentences for non-violent drug crimes. Many of them have been in prison for 20,30,40 years and and it is time to set them free with a commutation.  Fair is fair, and these people have not been treated fairly. 

We also hope the President preemptively pardons former military officials, and current members of his administration who the incoming President and his brown-shirt like thugs have threatened. They have threatened to recall retired generals who protected the country and spoke out against the former and President-elects crimes and attempts to use the military against the citizens of this country. They have threatened to prosecute the media  who they call “enemies of the state” and they ascension to power is going to being very dark days indeed to this country. 

But for now, having protected his son, President Biden can commute the sentences of thousands of people serving non-violent drug crime sentences and allow them a chance at a life. 

PARDON MY FRENCH

NOTE for those of you unfamiliar with blogs RUMPOLE did not write this post! Guest blogger Scott Saul did. We have no problem with what President Biden did. And we hope he follows it up with hundreds of more pardons and commutations for people serving long drug related sentences. And to our Swifty fan - try reading before attacking. Less time on Snap and TikTok and more time reading books.

For everyone within the criminal justice system that aspires to simply do a “proper job”, how is it possible to coincide what we all should be aiming for, with the arbitrary favoritism exemplified by the executive pardon of Hunter Biden…or all the other friends and family of presidents, that are rewarded with a get-out-of-jail-for-free card?   

Hunter Biden's past conduct appears to be that of a degenerate that benefited simply by his last name and the connections that comes with it. As a family  man,  I cannot condone his lifestyle yet, at the same time, I have never seen a firearm prosecution like the one he went through.  I have always viewed his conviction with skepticism but, at the same time, being a Monday morning quarterback doesn't equate to being fully knowledgeable about the entire situation. The gun charge seemed to be a farce...but the failure to pay taxes...those are usually cut and dry cases.

However, whatever my personal feeling is about a case, the proper protocol is usually the jury has spoken and an unhappiness with a verdict is supposed to be left to the purview of the appellate system. That regular protocol is fine from a theoretical standpoint, yet this $%^&in’ (remember…my french) pardon system can embody a sickening , disproportionate style of justice that is no different from a blatant caste system.  With laws [theoretically] designed to create consistency with the application of the law, that blindfold upon Lady Justice looks awfully transparent. How can these arbitrary pardons be reconciled with what goes on in any courthouse? While I know it is improper to compare cases, doesn’t the institutionalized disproportion of cases trigger due process concerns for all ?  What happens when a similarly situated defendant remarks, “Why am I being prosecuted when Hunter Biden was able to have his day in court and, despite the verdict, just get a pardon?  

Can you blame a person's dissatisfaction and distrust with authority where there are clearly different standards depending  on your DNA ?  Would it be fair to argue that the government-promoted,  disproportionate treatment of a defendant is an affront to the whole criminal justice system?  I realize that this favoritism has always existed yet the ever increasing technology thrusts this issue into the public’s face more intensively than ever. Can you believe that last night, every network interrupted their regular broadcast for a “special report” on this event? I thought something substantial, like WWIII was going on.    

Look, as a father, I would do anything to protect my children and I do not blame President Biden for doing what he did; however, as a dedicated criminal defense attorney, I am repulsed.  

NFL WEEK 13 THANKFUL EDTION

 As we pass Thanksgiving, like nearly every blogger, we pause a moment to list what we are thankful for: 

Judges we are thankful for in 2024__________; Appellate decisions in 2024 we are thankful for:__________; Prosecutors we are thankful for in 2024: ______________. Get the drift?

Your Miami Dolphins are thankful for locking in a high draft pick in 2025 and not much else. Playoff teams win road games in Green Bay in November. The Fins lost and looked lost and this season, mostly by virtue of Tua's injury, is lost. Like it or not, when he's playing TT is a top ten QB and the Dolphins need him. 

Bills at -6 at home  and thankful for the snowy weather over a 49ers team facing a lost season like the Dolphins. 

Denver -6 at home and thankful for the snowy weather over a Cleveland team that reached its apex ten days ago on Thursday night. 

Philadelphia +3 on the road in Baltimore thankful for getting points for probably the last time in 2024/2025. Eagles are well on their way to an NFC Championship clash with the Lions. 

Don't bet the Christmas budget on these games, but the Seahawks getting a point over the hapless Jets in New Jersey and the Bucs on the road giving a big six over the Panthers.