Legal Schnauzer passes 4 million page views and reaches its 13th anniversary, two major milestones in our effort to unmask legal and political corruption

 

 Legal Schnauzer recently reached two milestones, and I never dreamed we would approach either one. First, we passed 4 million page views. Then, we reached the blog's 13th anniversary.

Both are pretty neat when you consider that I started this little enterprise with the idea that it probably would last a year or so.

Along the way, we have . . .

* Been named among the top 50 law blogs in North America, the only truly independent blog on the list. All the others are connected to law firms, law schools, legal associations, media groups, or public-affairs organizations.

* Played a lead role in the ousting of corrupt political figures, such as Alabama "Luv Guv" Robert Bentley and his mistress "Home Wrecky Becky" Caldwell Mason, plus former U.S. Judge Mark Fuller. We played a supporting role in the investigative journalism that led to the conviction of former House Speaker Mike Hubbard. Most recently, we played a supporting role in the journalism that apparently led to the retirement of Jefferson County Probate Judge Alan King and the surprise resignation of U.S. Attorney Jay Town -- with Ban Balch playing a lead role on both stories.


* Perhaps more than any other news site in Alabama, we've exposed the hypocrisy of "family values" conservatives, reporting on the extramarital activities and financial shenanigans involving U.S. Sen. Luther Strange and Jessica Medeiros Garrison; former GOP Gov. Robert Bentley, and the fully nude, gay-porn photographs of U.S. Judge Bill Pryor,

* On a story that has international implications, we've reported on former Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his history of corrupt actions dating back more than 20 years in Alabama.Substantial evidence suggests Sessions was in the middle of the KremlinGate scandal, which should surprise no one who knows about Sessions' background in "The Heart of Dixie, including his ties to the scandal-plagued Balch Bingham law firm.

When we gave birth to Legal Schnauzer back in the George W. Bush era, we did not have many other muckraking  enterprises in the Alabama blogosphere. I'm pleased to report that we have some excellent company these days. Of particular note is banbalch.com, which came on the scene roughly four years ago and has become a highly influential blog in a relatively short time. Publisher K.B Forbes. is an aggressive investigator, with a colorful writing style, and we suspect that has made Ban Balch must reading for many in the Birmingham legal community.

As for our milestones, they start with our first post, which was titled "Is 'Your Honor' Really Honorable?" and published on June 3, 2007. Some 4,164 posts later, we are still cranking out the kind of investigative journalism that is found at very few news outlets in Alabama, or anywhere else.

We're not certain when we passed 4 million page views, but the current number from the primary statistics service that we use (as I write this) is at 4,339,434. Our all-time unique visits are at roughly 3  million.

For reasons I don't fully understand, our second stat service (which is Google based) provides significantly different numbers. It has our all-time page views at 8.4 million, which means we passed 4 million there a long time ago. I didn't sign up for the first stat service until I had been blogging for several months, while the second one is attached to the blogging platform itself, and that might explain part of the difference. But on a daily basis, the Google-based counter provides a number that is roughly twice that of  the independent counter.

Never have figured out why that happens. I like the Google numbers better, but I tend to look at the independent numbers as the official count for Legal Schnauzer.

The numbers show that our readership has steadily grown. After starting the blog on June 3, 2007, we reached 1 million page views on or about July 15, 2011. We reached 2 million page views on or about February 25, 2015. We' published a post about hitting 3 million page views on July 5, 2017.  This post, about passing 4 million comes on Nov. 11, 2020.

That means it took a little more than 4 years to reach 1 million, another 3 1/2 years to reach 2 million, another 2 1/2 years to reach 3 million, and another 3 years to reach 4 million. That indicates there is a serious appetite for the kind of journalism we produce at Legal Schnauzer -- and I would say that's a good thing, especially given that we have been in an era of public corruption unlike anything this country ever has seen. And much of it likely has ties to Alabama.

Legal Schnauzer clearly has made an impact, largely because of readers who follow and support us, and sources who help inform us. Regular readers know that our kind of unbridled journalism comes with a price, especially in red states like Alabama and Missouri, where corruption flows like a river.

In October 2013, I was kidnapped by "law enforcement" from inside our home in Birmingham and tossed in jail for five months. In essence, I was "arrested for blogging," reporting on the gross corruption that only recently has caught the attention of the state's somnolent mainstream press. In summer 2014, forced from our home by a wrongful foreclosure, Carol and I landed in Springfield, Missouri, where I grew up. In September 2015, we were the targets of an unlawful eviction, which included cops pointing assault rifles at my head and shattering Carol's left arm so severely that it required trauma surgery.

It seems clear that both of these events were attempts to shut down Legal Schnauzer. But we are still here, and our readership is growing. The thugs have failed, in the face of devoted, intelligent, and thoughtful readers.

For your gracious support, we offer our most sincere thanks. And we invite you to stick around for the next 4 million page views.

On a final note, we reached one other milestone recently. On May 31, 2020, we had 65,199 page views -- a one-day record for the blog. The next day, June1, 2020, we had 59,163 page views -- for a two-day total of  124,362, another record.

Security concerns force U.S. agency to push for sale of Grindr, the gay-sex geosocial application that has been owned by a business with ties to Chinese government

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Retired Hawaii judge James Dannenberg resigns from U.S. Supreme Court Bar, blasting John Roberts and Co. as a political extension of the Republican Party

John Roberts

 Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court amount to little more than the Trump administration's "errand boy," according to a scathing letter from a retired state judge in Hawaii. James Dannenberg wrote the letter to announce his resignation from the Supreme Court Bar, of which he had been a member for 50 years, but Dannenberg made it clear he is disgusted with actions of the Roberts court.

It's rare to hear a lawyer publicly criticize another lawyer, especially when one of them is head of the nation's highest court. But Dannenberg apparently considers Roberts and Co. to be little more than a political arm of the White House, according to a report from Staci Zaretsky at Above the Law:

Last week, while the world at large was growing rightfully concerned about the burgeoning threat of the coronavirus, one judge found himself even more concerned about the state of the nation’s highest court.

Meet James Dannenberg. He’s a retired Hawaii judge who served for 27 years on the state’s 1st Circuit District Court. Prior to sitting on the bench, Dannenberg worked as the state’s deputy attorney general, teaching federal jurisdiction as an adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law, for more than a decade. The retired judge had also been a member of the prestigious Supreme Court Bar for almost 50 years — until he quit.

On Wednesday, he submitted a resignation letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, going so far as to refer to the Roberts Court as the Trump administration’s “errand boy.”

Zaretsky then provides an excerpt from Dannenberg's letter, which can be read in full at this link:

The Court, under your leadership and with your votes, has wantonly flouted established precedent. Your “conservative” majority has cynically undermined basic freedoms by hypocritically weaponizing others. The ideas of free speech and religious liberty have been transmogrified to allow officially sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, as well as to elevate the grossest forms of political bribery beyond the ability of the federal government or states to rationally regulate it. More than a score of decisions during your tenure have overturned established precedents—some more than forty years old– and you voted with the majority in most. There is nothing “conservative” about this trend. This is radical “legal activism” at its worst.

Without trying to write a law review article, I believe that the Court majority, under your leadership, has become little more than a result-oriented extension of the right wing of the Republican Party, as vetted by the Federalist Society.

That last line, about the Federalist Society, is a dagger -- with a serious purpose. Trump has been packing federal courts with Federalist Society hacks, and that story has a strong Alabama flavor. Birmingham-based Judge Bill Pryor, of the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, has been known as the "Johnny Appleseed of the Federalist Society" for his zealous efforts to help the organization grow, especially in the Deep South. That's the same Bill Pryor who is infamous for his 1990s foray into gay pornography at the Web site badpuppy.com. From a summary of a recent New York Times article about Trump's court-packing efforts, with assistance from Mitch McConnell:

President Trump has tilted the appellate courts rightward with conservative judges who are young, white, male and uncompromising, our analysis shows.

Working with his Republican allies in the Senate, he installed 51 judges in just three years — appointing more than a quarter of the appellate bench at a record pace. At least seven had previous jobs with Mr. Trump’s campaign or his administration, and all but eight had ties to the Federalist Society, a legal group with views once considered on “the fringe.”

Dannenberg does not ease up with the Federalist Society, taking shots at other sacred holdings of modern conservative "legal thought":

Yes, politics has always been a factor in the Court’s history, but not to today’s extent. Even routine rules of statutory construction get subverted or ignored to achieve transparently political goals. The rationales of “textualism” and “originalism” are mere fig leaves masking right wing political goals; sheer casuistry.

What about other "inconvenient truths" in Dannenberg's letter. Consider his introductory paragraphs:

Dear Chief Justice Roberts:

I hereby resign my membership in the Supreme Court Bar.

This was not an easy decision. I have been a member of the Supreme Court Bar since 1972, far longer than you have, and appeared before the Court, both in person and on briefs, on several occasions as Deputy and First Deputy Attorney General of Hawaii before being appointed as a Hawaii District Court judge in 1986. I have a high regard for the work of the Federal Judiciary and taught the Federal Courts course at the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law for a decade in the 1980s and 1990s. This due regard spanned the tenures of Chief Justices Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist before your appointment and confirmation in 2005. I have not always agreed with the Court’s decisions, but until recently I have generally seen them as products of mainstream legal reasoning, whether liberal or conservative. The legal conservatism I have respected– that of, for example, Justice Lewis Powell, Alexander Bickel or Paul Bator– at a minimum enshrined the idea of stare decisis and eschewed the idea of radical change in legal doctrine for political ends.

I can no longer say that with any confidence. You are doing far more— and far worse– than “calling balls and strikes.” You are allowing the Court to become an “errand boy” for an administration that has little respect for the rule of law.

Finally, let's consider these parting shots from the Dannenberg letter, which seem directed at Roberts' vaunted backside:

Your public pronouncements suggest that you seem concerned about the legitimacy of the Court in today’s polarized environment. We all should be. Yet your actions, despite a few bromides about objectivity, say otherwise.

It is clear to me that your Court is willfully hurtling back to the cruel days of Lochner and even Plessy. The only constitutional freedoms ultimately recognized may soon be limited to those useful to wealthy, Republican, White, straight, Christian, and armed males— and the corporations they control. This is wrong. Period. This is not America.

I predict that your legacy will ultimately be as diminished as that of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who presided over both Plessy and Lochner. It still could become that of his revered fellow Justice John Harlan the elder, an honest conservative, but I doubt that it will. Feel free to prove me wrong.

The Supreme Court of the United States is respected when it wields authority and not mere power. As has often been said, you are infallible because you are final, but not the other way around.

I no longer have respect for you or your majority, and I have little hope for change. I can’t vote you out of office because you have life tenure, but I can withdraw whatever insignificant support my Bar membership might seem to provide.

Please remove my name from the rolls.

With deepest regret,

James Dannenberg

Jessica Medeiros Garrison provides an Alabama angle to Clearview AI, a facial-recognition company with the potential to radically alter privacy rights in the U.S.

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Yesterday marked the sixth anniversary of my "arrest for blogging" in Alabama, as GOP herd stormed secure Capitol room in a similar "F--k you" to the rule of law

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Kevin Newsom, a Trump-nominated judge who used to be at Birmingham's Bradley Arant, casts a vote that chips away at "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard

Kevin Newsom

While many Americans wonder if Donald Trump will attempt to buy Greenland or officially be named "King of the Jews," Trump-appointed federal judges are chopping away at the fundamentals of our democracy. Do Americans notice?

One such judge is Kevin Newsom, who now sits on the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta (covering Alabama, Georgia, and Florida) and used to work at Bradley Arant in Birmingham. An acolyte of former Trump attorney general and U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions and U.S. Circuit Judge Bill "Bad Puppy" Pryor -- both closeted gays, by the way -- Newsom served as Alabama's solicitor general when Pryor was AG.

Before that, Newsom worked at the D.C. law firm Covington Burling, which produced horrible Obama AG Eric Holder and brags about its ties to right-wing luminaries, such as Karl Rove. In what should be a surprise to no one, Newsom is a member of the Federalist Society, which has hand-picked many of Trump's judicial nominees.

What do these nominees stand for? It certainly is not the U.S. Constitution. Earlier this year, Newsom cast the deciding vote in a ruling that chips away at a bedrock principle of American law. People for the American Way (PFAW) addresses the case as part of  a blog series titled "Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears. From the post about Newsom's ruling, titled "Trump judge erodes the 'reasonable doubt' requirement for a guilty verdict." Writes analyst Paul Gordon:

In January 2019, Trump judge Kevin Newsom of the Eleventh Circuit authored a 2-1 opinion in U.S. v. Munksgard upholding a felony criminal conviction even though the prosecution had failed to prove a key element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Newsom cast the deciding vote to allow this constitutional violation.

Because tyrannical governments misuse the criminal law to imprison people for illegitimate reasons, the Constitution requires prosecutors to prove a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That requirement applies to every element of the crime. So when the United States charged Matthew Munksgard with making false statements in 2013 and 2014 in order to get a loan from an FDIC-insured bank, the prosecution had to prove that the bank was, in fact, FDIC-insured during that time frame.

But all they did was show that the bank had been FDIC-insured in 1990 (when it was chartered) and in 2016 (at the time of the trial). For Judge Newsom, that was enough for a jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that it had been FDIC-insured in 2013-2014, because there is (according to him) a “universal presumption” that a bank is so ensured. 

This is straight from the Munksgard opinion, which Newsom wrote:

Matthew Munksgard admits to knowingly making false statements in order to obtain bank loans—indeed, four times over. Even so, he contends, the government failed to show beyond a reasonable doubt, as it had to, that the institution he swindled was FDIC-insured. This case presents the (irritatingly familiar) question whether the government presented sufficient evidence to prove that pesky jurisdictional prerequisite. The proof of FDIC insurance here—as in other cases in which we have rapped the government’s knuckles—was hardly overwhelming. And given the ease with which insurance coverage could have been demonstrated—certificate, contract, cancelled check, etc.—inexplicably so. Having said that, “overwhelming” isn’t the standard, and when we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, as we must, see United States v. Frank, 599 F.3d 1221, 1233 (11th Cir. 2010), we conclude—albeit reluctantly—that the proof was adequate to demonstrate Munksgard’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But let this be a warning to federal prosecutors: You are (as the author’s mother used to say) cruisin’ for a bruisin’. Don’t apologize—do better.

Even Gerald Bard Tjoflat, the hideously crooked geezer from the Richard Nixon era, seemed taken aback by Newsom's "reasoning." Writes Gordon:

But as Republican-nominated Judge Gerald Tjoflat pointed out in dissent, knowing the bank’s insurance status in 1990 and in 2016 does not tell us much about 2013 or 2014, because that status is up for renewal four times each year: It could have changed as many as eight times between the alleged crime and the trial. That is hardly proving its status “beyond a reasonable doubt.” In addition, the jury was instructed to only consider evidence presented in the trial, so they could not base their ruling on some “universal presumption.”

Judge Tjoflat correctly stated that:

"If the majority’s statement of the law were correct, the government would be relieved of its duty to prove every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. That would violate the Constitution."

Nevertheless, Judge Newsom was willing to erode this bedrock of our liberty.

The influence of Judge Bill Pryor, with his ties to 1990s gay porn, seems to be growing as Trump seeks to pack Alabama courts with devotees of the Federalist Society

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